Rough and Tumble: Aggression, Hunting, and Human EvolutionTravis Rayne Pickering argues that the advent of ambush hunting approximately two million years ago marked a milestone in human evolution, one that established the social dynamic that allowed our ancestors to expand their range and diet. He challenges the traditional link between aggression and human predation, however, claiming that while aggressive attack is a perfectly efficient way for our chimpanzee cousins to kill prey, it was a hopeless tactic for early human hunters, who—in comparison to their large, potentially dangerous prey—were small, weak, and slow-footed. Technology that evolved from wooden spears to stone-tipped spears and ultimately to the bow and arrow increased the distance between predator and prey and facilitated an emotional detachment that allowed hunters to stalk and kill large game. Based on studies of humans and of other primates, as well as on fossil and archaeological evidence, Rough and Tumble offers a new perspective on human evolution by decoupling ideas of aggression and predation to build a more realistic understanding of what it is to be human. |
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adult African aggression anatomy ancestors animal antelope ape-men Ardipithecus Ardipithecus ramidus argue Australopithecus afarensis Australopithecus africanus Australopithecus boisei Australopithecus garhi Australopithecus robustus behavior Berger Binford bipedal Blumenschine bonobos Broom Bunn bushbaby butchery canines carcasses carnivores caves chimpanzees Clarke cranium cut marks Dart's diet Dikika Domínguez-Rodrigo earliest early hominin early Homo Ethiopia evidence evolutionary females FLK Zinj Fongoli chimpanzees foraging fossils genus Homo Gona Hadza Homo erectus Human Evolution human hunters humanlike hunter-gatherers hyenas isotopic jawbone Journal of Human killing Koobi Koobi Fora Leakey leg bones leopard lethal raiding Makapansgat males million years ago million-year-old modern humans morphology Nariokotome Boy Nature Neandertal Olduvai Gorge paleoanthropologists passive scavenging Pickering Pleistocene porotic hyperostosis predation prehistoric premolars prey primate Raymond Dart recent robust australopithecines savanna Science skeleton skull social South Africa Sterkfontein stone tools Swartkrans Tanzania taphonomic Taung Child teeth tion tooth Toth Trinkaus ungulate violence Wrangham