BRIAN DEER:
NATURE'S PREY Page
3
About
the time my father took me to see Kubrick's movie,
Desmond Morris fronted a TV show, Zoo Time,
which, as I recall, included chimpanzee tea parties,
in which the animals were dressed in clothes. In his
book, Naked Ape, Morris was equally at one
with the times in synthesising Dart's theory with the
ape observations of Jane Goodall - and later with
those of two other disproportionately influential
young women installed by Louis Leakey (Dian Fossey,
gorillas, and Birute Galdikas, orangutans) - to
repackage African Genesis as zoology.
"With
strong pressure on them to increase their
prey-killing prowess, vital changes began to take
place," was how Morris explained the
transformation from Australopithecus to Homo.
"They became more upright - fast, better
runners. Their hands became freed from locomotion
duties - strong, efficient weapon-holders. Their
brains became more complex - brighter, quicker
decision-makers. These things did not follow one
another in a major set sequence; they blossomed
together, minute advances being made first in one
quality and then in another, each urging the other
on. A hunting ape, a killer ape, was in the
making."
Morris's
well-titled book has never gone out of print (or
amended to take account of its falsification), but
the new investigations in Kenya and Tanzania kick
dust in his naked ape's face. Studies of
australopithecine pelvises show, for instance, that
upright posture preceded major brain expansion by
some two million years, and almost every clue
gleaned by every relevant specialist reworking the
Leakey's once jealously-guarded domains shows that,
whatever our ancestors did on these landscapes, they
certainly didn't command.
Most
critically, new evidence suggests that early
hominids, at most, ate meat only as a last resort.
Dental studies by an English anatomist, Alan Walker
of Johns Hopkins University, have revealed no sign
that australopithecines ever consumed flesh,
but plenty of it chomping on roots and nuts. And
similar studies, combined with laboratory analysis of
fossil site debris, suggests that Homo erectus was
also firmly vegetarian, although sometimes driven to scavenge
dead animals.
"The
hunting scenario is now totally out of the
window," said Richard Potts, fellow of the
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, who is leading
large-scale excavations at Olorgesailie in southern
Kenya. "There is clear evidence from studying
the archaeological remains from early sites - that
is, starting from around 2.5 million and especially
around 2 million years ago - where we have very nice
bone preservation. And we see evidence that early
humans were exploiting certain animals, but there is
no indication that they were hunting them. There is
clear evidence that they were getting the bones and
cutting meat off them, and there is clear evidence
that they were smashing the bones for bone marrow.
But that's about as far as we can go. The first clear
evidence we see of hominids as aggressive hunters is
not until very late in the archaeological record: within
the last 100,000 years."
One
research approach that has clinched this part of the
argument are re-examination of museum fossils
previously trayed as hominid kills. Under electron
microscopes, it has been possible to determine in
what order bones were gnawed at by wild dogs
or cats and slashed at with the stone tools of our
ancestors. In key locations, these studies suggests
that Homo got to animal carcasses after their
four-legged rivals - sometimes (evidenced by
scrupulous fieldwork) after by pelting dogs with
rocks.
Far
from the demeanour of Dart's triumphant hunters,
evidence suggests that Homo erectus must have skulked
warily among the trees that lined the rivers and
lakes - or literally been running scared. Hominids
have always been among the frailest midsize mammals,
especially when encumbered by babies. For creatures
who were smaller and weaker than we are, and with
brains upwards of half the size of mine, you need
only need to get stuck mud on the Serengeti, as my
Hyundai, to know how quiet and scary the savannah
gets before a Land Rover arrives to drag you out.
The
uncomfortable truth for Dart's hypothesis was that
even Homo erectus, much less Australopithecus, wasn't
ruthlessly killing beasts, "young and old".
Such bloodthirsty pursuits were the other way around:
the beasts were killing our forebears. These were
landscapes on which heroes died. It was cowards who
multiplied.
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