Re: Sussman and Hart: thinking outside the PA box

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Date: 13 Feb 2005 13:19:20 -0800

Paul Crowley wrote:
> Jim McGinn wrote

> > > Sussman says. "These early humans simply couldn't
> > > eat meat. If they couldn't eat meat, why would
> > > they hunt?"
>
> They didn't hunt in any real sense,
> because they were far too slow.
>
> > And the only tools/weapons they had were rocks
> > and sticks.
>
> But rocks and sticks were more than any other
> species had. They could use them to get at
> certain prey, inaccessible to others :-- tortoises,
> turtles, snails, porcupine, armadillo, and the like.

Good point. But this mostly would have been a result rather than a
cause.

>
> > > The predators living at the same time as
> > > Australopithecus afarensis were huge and there
> > > were 10 times as many as today.
>
> There may have been a greater range of
> species, but the overall numbers would not
> have been any greater.

They would have been much, much more numerous than they are now.
Currently human are ecologically dominant. we take the best habitat
and we tend to do things like put fences around it. Also the landscape
is less productive because it is dryer, therefore less animals can be
supported than back then.

>
> > > There were
> > > hyenas as big as bears, as well as saber-toothed
> > > cats and many other mega-sized carnivores,
> > > reptiles and raptors.
>
> Those animals must, presumably, have
> preyed on large herds and large herbivores.
> So long as the hominids kept off the plains,
> they would not have encountered them to
> any great extent.

Nonsense. They were in constant competition with inmigrating food
competitor (which were followed in by predators). Especially during
the dry season when a locality could fall into a feeding frenzy.

There were a lot more browsing species back then. (Did you not read
the paper indicated in this thread?)

>
> However, those species highly probably
> operated as individuals -- and not in co-
> operative groups

No. There were lots of social predators.

 (i.e. they worked like
> leopards, cheetahs or tigers, and not as
> lions, hyenas, wolves or wild dogs).
> If so, that left them (as local populations)
> extremely vulnerable to attacks on their
> young when the mother left her cubs to
> hunt. An intelligent co-operative ape,
> armed with sticks and rocks could eliminate
> them from its territory, by carefully
> observing the local animals, and making
> sure that no young survived to maturity.

It would only be effective on the part of large groups preventing
inmigration.

>
> Persecution by hominids is the probable
> explanation for the disappearance of these
> species.

Some, yes, especially those that were dependent on garden habitat,
which hominid came to dominate.

>
> > > Australopithecus afarensis
> > > didn't have tools, didn't have big teeth and was
> > > three feet tall.
>
> Males were much bigger.
>
> > > He was using his brain, his
> > > agility and his social skills to get away from
> > > these predators.
>
> You don't need social skills nor brains to
> climb up into trees. You just need to be
> able to get to them fast. Hominids were
> anything but fast.

Well stated. Social skills have to do with large groups. Large groups
have to do with fending off food competitors. Fending off predators
has to do with preserving resource through the dry season so that the
whole community does not become targetted as a canditate for a
predatory siege.

>
> > > "He wasn't hunting them," says
> > > Sussman. "He was avoiding them at all costs."
>
> Avoidance is not a policy that a slow
> ground-based species can pursue for
> long without going into extinction.

Yep. (Or, at least, not the type of avoidance that they (vaguely) must
be assuming.

>
> > > Sussman and Hart provide evidence that many of
> > > our modern human traits, including those of
> > > cooperation and socialization, developed as a
> > > result of being a prey species and the early
> > > human's ability to out-smart the predators.
>
> True -- but they have not the first clue
> as to how hominids did 'out-smart' their
> predators. (Presumably they assume
> that the hominids kept to the trees.)

Human intelligence has social origins. It is ludicrous to suggest it
is directly traceable to out-smarting predators.

>
> > Sussman and Hart are to be commended for thinking
> > more outside the box than do most anthropologists.
>
> Their only thinking 'outside the box' is
> their acknowledgement of the existence
> of predators. THAT is their great break-
> through. In the context, it is an enormous
> one. Standard PA assumes (as a matter
> of routine) that predators don't exist.

Well, I think you are going too far. What they are saying is no so
much a breakthrough. It's just good that they've rejected the
hunter-ape nonsense.

>
> > But what they are conveying here just doesn't
> > quite add up. There had to be something more to
> > it than what they are suggesting here.
>
> Correct. Early hominids (and hominids
> at any time) did not cower in their trees
> indefinitely. Sure, parties of them did it
> often enough -- but the taxon had, by-
> and-large, over-the-millennia, ways of
> tackling the problem. They could keep
> large predators away from their 'home
> territory' -- most of the time -- enough
> for them to successfully raise families.

I agree. But even this doesn't draw enough of a distinction between
hominid evolution and the evolution of the other species in the same
habitat. Communal selection is the missing distinction. And this is
phenomena only emerged as a result of the implications of monsoon dry
season, patchification of forest habitat, and predatory sieges, feeding
frenzy. IOW, until it became possible for whole communities of Apith
to be decimated or massacred only then did it become selectively
advantageous for members of a community to work together to preserve
the resources. Communities that lacked such became impoverished and
predators seek out impoverished communities to lay siege and produce a
feeding frenzy. IOW, it's the economy.

>
> > <snip>
> >
> > > "One of the main defenses against predators by
> > > animals without physical defenses is living in
> > > groups," says Sussman.
>
> Eh? The only 'defence' against predators by
> animals without physical defenses is to RUN
> and RUN FAST.

Well stated. I agree wholeheartedly. If anything large groups are
only larger targets for predators. As you suggest, really the only
strategy they had when in the presence of predators (bear sized Hyena!
Sabertoothed cats!) was to run, get up a tree.

The strategy that was most successful, and the strategy that lead to
hominid evolution, was for the whole community to avoid predators by
way of maintaining their resources so that the predators sought out
weaker, more desperate, prey.

 The switch to bipedalism was
> manifestly in direct violation of that principle --
> and calls for explanation -- and NOT putting
> one's head in a bucket.

I agree.

>
> Hominids clearly had physical defences.
> They might not have been much use when
> directly attacked by such huge beasts, but
> they were highly effective in general and
> in the long run.
>
> > > "In fact, all diurnal
> > > primates (those active during the day) live in
> > > permanent social groups.
>
> Sure, night follows day, and grass is green.
> The fact that primates live in social groups
> has little to do with ground-based predators.

I think you're going too far now.

> (Snakes at night are more of a problem.)
>
> > > Most ecologists agree
> > > that predation pressure is one of the major
> > > adaptive reasons for this group-living. In this
> > > way there are more eyes and ears to locate the
> > > predators and more individuals to mob them if
> > > attacked or to confuse them by scattering.
>
> Irrelevant (and almost entirely nonsensical)
> -- when applied to tree-living primates, and
> then to derived ground-based hominids.

I diagree. this would have been useful as for the reason they
indicate. But it would have been more useful for preventing
inmigration from food competitors, which was the main threat to their
surivival. Because once food competitors had depleted their resources
it was inevitable that the whole community would draw the attention of
feeding-frenzy seeking predators during the depths of the dry season.

> The core attribute all such prey species
> need is SPEED. And that's the one thing
> hominids lack.
>
> > Like I said above, there had to have been more to
> > it than just this.
>
> A lot more. While they are in a league far
> above that of standard PA (in that they do
> actually recognise the existence of predators)
> they go so wrong from that point on, that
> nothing they say is worth reading.

Well, I don't know, I'm impressed that they are at least looking for
other alternatives and are not pretending to know it all like most PAs.

• Previous message: Philip Deitiker: "Re: Did humans ride dinosaurs in the past ? ? ?"
• In reply to: Paul Crowley: "Re: Sussman and Hart: thinking outside the PA box"
• Next in thread: Jim McGinn: "Re: Sussman and Hart: thinking outside the PA box"
• Reply: Jim McGinn: "Re: Sussman and Hart: thinking outside the PA box"
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