Explorers reported sighting Steller’s sea cows, gentle sea mammals resembling manatees but three times larger, in the waning years of the nineteenth century. Whalers hunted them to extinction. The last aurochs, magnificent large bisonlike creatures, disappeared from the forests of Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. The moa, a large flightless bird resembling the ostrich but triple its size, was once abundant in New Zealand. It vanished from the archeological record coincident with the arrival of the first ancestral Maoris. And so it goes, right up to the bison, condor, and snow leopard in our present day. The one creature that has endangered all the others is Homo sapiens. In Genesis, Yahweh encouraged us to “subdue nature” and predicted that “fear” and “dread” of us would be upon every beast. Verily, it has come to pass.
Our aggression has not only been outwardly directed, at other species. Intraspecies mayhem—in the form of wars, duels, fights, persecutions, diabolical tortures, and genocides due to ethnic, racial, and religious hatred—has no parallel in the animal world.‡ The sexual aggression exhibited by some human males toward females is without correspondence in the wild. No other male animal would consider murdering the female with whom he has just copulated. And inwardly turned aggression in the form of self-flagellation and suicide is also absent from nature. Are these male behaviors all due to cultural indoctrination, as many believe, or are they hard-wired into the male nervous system? If the latter, to what evolutionary factor do we owe this extraordinary bloodthirstiness, and why is it so skewed toward the male of the human species?
Prior to the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago, hunting consumed the majority of a male’s “working” life. To understand better why Homo sapiens took so eagerly to his life’s chief occupation, we must examine predatory behaviors in earlier hominid species. That the immediate precursors of modern humans ate meat is not in doubt. Their success at this endeavor, however, is one of nature’s improbabilities. Imagine early hominid hunters’ consternation when they realized that they had puny canine teeth encased in weak jaws, and pathetic fingernails instead of claws. They could not run fast enough to catch the animals that housed the most meat, nor were they strong enough to wrestle big prey to the ground barehanded.* Even if they were lucky enough to come upon a recently deceased animal, how were they supposed to tear off its hide? What did they have going for them that would have encouraged them to challenge lions, eagles, tigers, and crocodiles in the killing department?
The two physical traits that most distinguish a hominid from every other primate are bipedalism and a big brain, the signature Hominidae traits. They are the same two that eventually precipitated high maternal-mortality rates in the human line. How or why we originally acquired either is presently unknown. Bipedalism was, as Stephen Jay Gould claimed, “the greatest single adaptation in the line of human evolution.”6Many in differing fields have tried to understand why we would have adopted such a strange means of locomotion.
Anthropologist Owen Lovejoy commented, “For any quadruped to get up on its hind legs in order to run is an insane thing to do. It’s plain ridiculous.”7 He pointed out that standing up made us more susceptible to being knocked or tipped over. Our speed was considerably slower and our footing less sure than that of animals that moved on all fours. We would have had to practice walking to perfection near the proximity of dense trees, because, as Lovejoy remarked, “no hominid could have ever ventured out on the savanna as a stumbling imperfect walker and learned to do it better there. If it had been unfit for erect strolling on the savanna it would have not gone. If it had gone, it would not have survived the trip.”8
Lovejoy believed that hominid males initially reared back on their haunches so that they could have their hands free to carry food to nursing females. Robert Ardrey proposed that the primary reason early hominids adopted an upright stance was their need to arm themselves with clubs. Leo Laporte and Adrienne Zihlman suggested that, in the mosaic habitat in which the Pleistocene hominids lived, they needed to carry food and water when trekking across arid grasslands to reach a distant gallery forest.9
Many other theories abound. One states that our ancestors needed to run fast in short bursts on the open savanna. Others propose that standing up increased the scope of a vertical primate’s vision, a trait called “sentinel behavior.” Another theory: Perpendicularity cut down the skin’s exposure to the hot sun; bipedalism was therefore driven by a hominid’s need to regulate its body temperature.10 Still another proposes it was a defensive measure, because predators are “triggered” by moving horizontal shapes, not vertical ones.11 All these variations can be grouped together under what is called the Savanna Theory.
A different premise for why bipedalism evolved is called the Aquatic Ape Theory. In 1920, marine biologist Alister Hardy published an article suggesting that humans diverged from the primate line by wading out into the water and staying there for several million years. Championed doggedly by Elaine Morgan, this theory notes that, somewhere between twelve million and nine million years ago, a great drought settled over Africa. Trees shriveled and plants withered. Deprived of their arboreal habitat, one group of primates returned to coastal and river waters.
Hardy’s hypothesis is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first glance. Seals, dolphins, otters, and beavers were all originally land mammals that had made this transition. But after swimming and living in the surf lines and along riverbanks, the ancestors of hominids, unlike the other sea mammals, returned to the land as climatic conditions improved. Millions of years of wallowing in the shallows forced our ancestors to stand up to keep their heads above water.* According to the Aquatic Ape Theory, when we emerged dripping wet from the riverbank we had lost our fur, acquired a thick layer of blubber we call subcutaneous fat, had downward-pointing nostrils streamlined for swimming, and, most significantly, were perpendicular.12
The other missing piece of the great puzzle is the evolutionary reason for our massive brain, a subject that will be dealt with in greater detail in a later chapter. Social intelligence, language, accuracy in throwing, and many other reasons have been put forth, yet none of them has been uniformly accepted as the primary one.
Once we had made the transition to bipedalism (for whatever reason) and grew an outlandishly sized brain (for whatever reason), we made an arresting discovery. Free hands could brandish a weapon that a big brain could imagine. Balanced on two feet with two unfettered hands, we were off and running, figuratively and literally. But even these advantages were still insufficient to convert us into the earth’s most fearsome hunters.
We are the newest predator on the block. Nearly every other major killer was operational by sixty million years ago, with many sporting a longer history. In those sixty million years, very few significant new predators joined the ranks except the Hominidae.* Astonishingly, we made the conversion from prey to predator in a scant three million years. The major rise in our killing prowess occurred primarily in the last hundred thousand years, with the sharpest spike limited to the last forty thousand.
Despite our tardy entry in the predatory sweepstakes, Homo sapiens has become the fiercest, bravest, most sadistic, and most successful predator of all. Since large primates can maintain their health quite successfully on a vegetarian diet, why did only one ape take to killing as a way of life? If meat consumption was the path to species longevity, why didn’t other ground-dwelling primates, such as gorillas, baboons, chimps, and bonobos, embrace the hunting life as enthusiastically as we did?
An integral part of the Savanna Theory posits that rising temperatures, diminishing rainfall, and thinning forests turned our ancestors’ habitat into a patchwork of isolated woodlands and open grasslands. These environmental changes propelled hominids to try their hands at hunting because vegetable foods became scarce.
Given the circumstances that paleontologists surmise existed, why didn’t our ancestors evolve a gut that could digest grass and leaves, the most plentiful source of plant protein in drought condition
s? Our divergence from all other primate species in our lust to kill is still more remarkable because there would have been daunting obstacles to overcome for any primate that aspired to emulate a carnivore.
A courageous hunter requires a killing disposition that revels in danger. When the first hominids contemplated leaping across the high boundary separating prey from predator, they had to override their innate fear reflexes without getting eaten or gored in the process. A primate has finely honed instincts, ingrained over fifty-five million years, that when activated cause its owner to flee from danger. Among primates, only a human is brave enough to stalk an animal that could turn and kill him.† Foraging and gathering are significantly less dangerous than hunting. If no other primates can match Homo sapiens’ steadfast courage and unquenchable bloodthirstiness, why did we alone acquire such a strong penchant for both? The search for the answer to this question brings us back to the subject of iron.
When women gained the requisite free will to adamantly say No! and forestall sex, the specter of extinction began to haunt the human species. A fertile woman could coolly and accurately assess the risks and costs to her of pregnancy, delivery, and child-rearing, and might decide to remain childless. (Throughout history, some women have made, do make, and will continue to make this choice.*)
Without children, Gyna sapiens could reasonably conclude that she would not need a male for anything. Rational decisions, however, cannot be made without the input of the older, emotional side of human nature. Maternal instincts, her still incompletely controlled sexual urges, and the pleasure she could, under the right circumstances, derive from male companionship, ensured that ancestral woman would remain engaged with the opposite sex. And there remained another inexplicable and chaotic element—“that old black magic called love.”
The male, meanwhile, after much fumbling, rejection, and confusion, gradually realized that a surefire first step toward melting her resistance was to bring her a gift that contained iron—preferably in slab form. Delighted with his perspicacity, he immediately set about planning his quest to satisfy her wish. It was then that he learned, to his eternal dismay, the presence of another very significant obstacle standing in his way.
Food sources such as nuts, roots, berries, and leaves possess a characteristic that makes them very easy to acquire—they can’t run away. But an animal must be caught and killed before anyone can sink his or her teeth into its flanks, and cornered prey will always put up a spirited self-defense. The strategy of scavenging carcasses killed by more efficient carnivores has its own risks, not the least of which entailed having to elbow aside bad-tempered competitors such as hyenas, wild dogs, and vultures. Procuring meat was definitely fraught with danger.
Another salutary feature of plant foods is their relatively long shelf life. Most vegetables can be gathered, eaten at leisure, or stored for consumption on another day. Meat will not keep. It decays rapidly, and in a most revolting manner.†
Unfortunately for the eager hominid hunter, the freshest meat happened to be firmly attached to the stout bones of dangerous animals that did not take kindly to being eaten. Early man had to summon up great courage before he could begin his courting routine. Though it was certainly true that he could bring his intended a bunny or a gazelle fawn at no great risk to himself, he knew she would admire him more if he brought her something heftier and possessed of more cachet—like a bear haunch accompanied by a set of its teeth strung as a necklace.
Natural Selection had sixty million years or longer to fashion the reflexes of the mainline predators so that they were fast, cruel, smart, and fierce. To level the playing field, prey animals were equipped with thick hides, tusks, quills, and horns, as well as defense mechanisms to help them escape from, fend off, and confuse predators.
Predators responded to the latter developments by adopting one of two different hunting strategies. The leopard, cobra, or crocodile seeks out prey alone. Social predators like lions, wolves, and hyenas hunt in cooperative groups. Functioning as a unit, social predators can increase the odds of their success and augment the quantity of meat they can garner in a single kill. Ancestral hominids learned to hunt in bands to bring down dangerous quarry an individual hunter would never dare to attack alone.
A common denominator among nonhuman social predators is that the female of the species plays a leading role in both the hunting and killing. Lionesses and wolf and dog bitches frequently bring down the quarry. A dominant female leads a spotted-hyena pack. In the human species, the new transcendent skill called killing evolved into an occupation performed almost exclusively by males.
The reasons for this gender skewing are obvious. Bipedalism makes running an awkward exercise for late-term pregnant women. A menstruating female could signal a wary prey that a group of their dreaded human nemesis was near. A mother cannot take a crying baby along on a hunting expedition; if a nursing mother left her young for long, she would cease lactating. Women responsible for the safety of small children cannot leave them for extended periods. Unlike the females of every other social predator, pregnant women and those burdened by young children are not disposed to hunt large game.*
Footprints fortuitously preserved in volcanic ash at Laetoli in Africa confirm that a bipedal primate walked the land some 3.6 million years ago. Paleontologists have identified these impressions as belonging to a precursor species that led eventually to us. Numerous fossils of Australopithecus afarensis—a half-ape, half-hominid—have been excavated; the most familiar and complete skeleton found so far is Lucy, named by her discoverer, bone hunter Donald Johanson. Evidence of meat consumption is plentiful among our ancient hominid ancestors. Experts’ examination of the teeth of these extinct primates has revealed beyond any doubt that Australopithecus afarensis’ favorite dinner was a wide variety of other inhabitants of the area, though it is not known for sure whether they were successful scavengers or bold hunters.
Archeologists have also established that both Homo habilis and Homo erectus, the next two archaic relatives in the line leading to humans, ate meat.* Females of both species may very well have participated in hunting, and males may have provisioned new mothers unable to secure their own share of a kill. Approximately 10 percent of mammalian males exhibit a similar pattern of paternal behavior.
It is highly unlikely, however, that any of these precursor species’ males considered meat primarily as a commodity they could barter for sex. Before meat could transmute from comestible to aphrodisiac, females would have had to lose the urgency associated with the estral sexual madness that periodically inflames every other primate female. Not until the obsession associated with estrus drained away could females think clearly enough to understand the connection between sex and pregnancy, which, in turn, precipitated major realignments in relations between the sexes
The males of the human species, similar to males in virtually all other species, compete for dominance, aware that the King of the Hill has the best chance of achieving sexual access. No doubt earlier hominids hunted prey. However, it was not until Homo sapiens that the male, prompted by Gyna sapiens, finally grasped that his chances of succeeding as a lover were intimately connected to his skills as a hunter.
Anthropologists studying a wide range of hunter-gatherer tribes have amply documented that a man’s hunting skills are directly related to his success with women.16 Kim Hill observed that the men of the Hazda, an African tribe of hunter-gatherers, do not hunt primarily to provision their young ones but, rather, secure meat to trade with women for sex (usually for extramarital affairs).17Homo sapiens learned that he could satisfy his sexual hunger only after he first satiated Gyna sapiens’ hunger for iron. “Going downtown to make a killing” and “bringing home the bacon” are modern colloquialisms that tacitly acknowledge the role hunting played long ago, at the dawn of human society.
Another factor goading Homo sapiens to take up hunting as a way of life was the drastic change occurring in his sexual programming. In combination with the immense changes
that occurred to Gyna sapiens’ reproductive cycle, the interlocking needs and desires of men and women became jarringly askew. Whereas she was gaining control over her sex drive, his was increasing its power over him. More and more, his sex urges seized control and dictated his actions. His runaway sexual agitation increased unabated until Homo sapiens became the most sex-crazed male of any living species.
With a few rare exceptions, males of other species express no sexual interest in females who are not ovulating. In many cases, males and females compete for the same resources, and the male shows precious little chivalry toward a female that a few months hence could be a potential mating prospect.
When the nonhuman female becomes sexually ready, however, the nonhuman male’s attention becomes riveted on her erogenous zone. He will engage in deadly combat, put on elaborate displays, perform intricate dance routines, or sing his heart out—all in an attempt to attract a female that, just weeks before, he treated with disregard. The contrast between a male’s behavior in the presence of an ovulating female and his behavior in the presence of a nonovulating female is extreme in all of the several million sexually reproducing species—except one. Only Homo sapiens has a sexual furnace set at full blast all the time.*
Doesn’t it seem odd that Mother Nature would make Homo sapiens obsessed with sex? What could be the benefit to the fitness of the species of having a male lusting for a female during wide swaths of time when there was no chance that engaging in sexual congress would result in a conception? Why was the human male endowed with such a careening, out-of-control sex drive that some would lust to have sex with old women, dead women, menstruating women, other men, little girls, or prepubescent boys? Are there any male animals that impersonate females? Any that find being dominated by a female sexually arousing? Any that routinely fantasize about inserting their penis into the mouth of a female? Any that long to insert it in her anus? In the millions of hours that have been spent observing animals in the wild and captivity, has any ethologist ever observed these desires actually happening?*
Sex, Time, and Power Page 14
