The Hunting Hypothesis: Why Aren't We Apes?

The Hunting Hypothesis 1976 is the capstone of Robert Ardrey's "nature of man" series of books: African Genesis 1961, The Territorial Imperative 1966, and The Social Contract 1970. Throughout these books Ardrey promoted a different view of human nature than the one reigning by the mid twentieth century. "Not in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born" is the first sentence of the series. The commonly accepted origin for mankind was either in Asia, the discovery of Homo Erectus in Indonesia in the late 19th century, or in Europe as the infamous piltdown man fraud in Britain 1912 convinced many for over 40 years. In either case it wasn't in Africa that modern Homo Sapiens evolved, a reflection not only of archaeological discoveries and hoaxes at the time but also racism and ethnocentrism. The skeletons found there were seen as too primitive and close to the ape to be our direct ancestors. It was also thought that the expansion of the human brain is what separated us from apes and made us human. The skull of piltdown man was actually a Homo sapiens skull fitted with a modified orangutan jaw to make it appear that the big brain preceded decrease in jaw size, preceding a change in diet. Humans must originally have been scavengers or even vegetarians at first, rarely acquiring meat. We were smart peaceful mostly vegetarian apes who learned to walk on two legs because of our ability to make tools and because we searched the ground for food instead of trees.

As for human nature in the traditional social science paradigm, that is determined by culture. Only our physiology is inherited, not our behavior and social practices. Evolution just gives us fixed instinctual responses and physical response capabilities to stimuli. Anything more complicated is socially learned early in life from authority figures. It is society which makes us violent, we're either good or amoral by nature. This is the view shared more or less by the influential behaviorist and Marxist perspectives, see Lysenkoism in the USSR which opposed genetic research. Sigmund Freud applied evolutionary theory in his anthropological/cultural writings, though not always with modern Darwinian mechanisms. The blank slate view was reinforced by the discovery of pre-agricultural people in the "new world" who observers concluded represented how humans originally lived rather than a separate path from our ancestors, much like the idiotic "we come from monkeys" critics lob at evolutionary theory, as if primates today are the same as they were millions of years ago. Also the fact that many animal studies were done in capativity, the conditions which alter animal behavior. Thorndike's cats, Pavlov's dogs and Skinner's pigeons. 

By the 1950s this view was being challenged. Raymond Dart discovered Australopithecus Africanus in South Africa back in 1924 and identified it as the beginning of our line, but was dismissed for decades. In 1953 Dart wrote the article The Predatory Transition from Ape to Man which argued that man evolved from a line of apes in Africa which became reliant on hunting and eating meat from evidence of fractured bones in A Africanus caves. Some primates like baboons will eat meat when nothing else is left, but A Africanus made it part of its diet, and with large beasts. Upright posture, freeing hands for tool use, would only be made adaptive to use weapons for hunting prey. The A Africanus skulls indicate that decreased dentition preceded a big brain, as eating meat cut up with tools along with use of fire would deliver a lot more energy and less mastication than fruit and tubers. Man didn't evolve to be upright as Friedrich Engels thought just by labor and technology freeing the hands, but by a need to hunt and subsist below the trees which gave us a reason to use tools. Meat eating and as we'll see changes in social organization preceded expansion in intelligence.

The transition to hunting ape most likely didn't happen this far back in history with A Africanus however. These hominids probably were scavengers and opportunists for meat and mostly ate fruits and nuts. However by Homo Erectus nearly 2 million years ago, who also discovered fire and left Africa, the hunting transition became part of human nature.

Robert Ardrey took Dart's work and presented it to the public, making it an all encompassing story of human origins. Back in the Miocene epoch about 20 to 5 million years ago forests were more abundant and the primates flourished. There was plenty of food for the vegan primate diet and tree cover to live in rather than facing formidable terrestrial predators. But then an unremitting drought and diminished rainfall wiped out millions of square miles of Miocene forest. The climate turned against the apes by the time of the Pliocene; the forests of Africa began to disappear and ape populations have slowly dwindled ever since. What was left was the environment of the savanna. To survive in this environment an ape would have to compete with the specialized claws and fangs of land predators for the new food source of raw meat. Man was expelled to the east of Eden, and came to bear the mark of Cain. The only was to thrive was to adapt from the ape legacy what could be used for predation: starting with a greater upright stature and hands specialized from feet and then sweat glands and less body hair for going long distances. 

The great question of The Hunting Hypothesis is why are we human beings and not apes? We diverged from our common ancestor with chimps 5 to 7 million years ago and have taken radically different paths. Chimps are known to hunt small game occasionally, though it's not an important part of their diet. This implies that at some point chimp ancestors could have taken the hunting ape path. Humans retain much of their ape ancestry such as a body fitted for general tasks not specialization, reliance on vision, a natural curiosity, desire for varied taste pallet and diet, social behavior and intelligence and the higher apes walk upright for periods of time or in a hunched position. The social behaviors that make us different like sharing food, cooperation on hunts, and keeping a home base are shared with meat eating predator animals like wolves and lions. Before better weapons like bow and arrow, slings, or throwing spears were developed hunting would have been most effective in groups. Cooperation and strategy would have to suffice for mans inferior hunting equipment. Baboons travel in large numbers so the rudiments of social organization were availiable from ape life. Hunting life would mean becoming a more territorial animal with a sexual division of labor, men going out to hunt and women protecting the home. Males would have to learn to trust one another, to work together and share the rewards of their collective effort, and eventually develop a different social order than one with the alpha ape on top having primary access to women and food. Some greater access to women had to occur, be it monogamous pair bonds or sexual promiscuity, which occurred with early humans is still debated. With agriculture and a surplus of wealth the alpha male emperor with a harem of females would be reestablished in early societies around the earth: Babylon, Egypt, China, the Aztecs, the Incas. But by the time of hunter gatherers relative egalitarianism between males and monogamy would for the most part rule. Multiple wives as well as slaves are costly. 

Ardrey's project has a larger goal than establishing hunting and eating meat as crucial in human development. This is to link behavior with evolutionary development; that certain behaviors and social practices are due to genetic inheritance and behavior itself produced evolutionary changes. Anatomical change comes about as a consequence of behavioral change. "Birds do not fly because they have wings; they have wings because they fly." There are roughly three "instinctual" or imperatives that drive behavior in all organisms. These are dominance, territory, and sexuality. Animals have a "pecking order" which determines who has access to food and territory. The importance of dominance is that whoever can outwit or brow beat their fellows into submission is more likely to pass on their genes, and so animals have a disposition to fall in line, like a castration complex. Ardrey appears to disagree with Freud and psychoanalysis that sexuality is the driving force in behavior, instead arguing that those who don't come on top or outcompete don't get to reproduce and so dominance is actually preliminary to acquiring a mate. However the position that sexuality but not dominance/aggression is innate is really that of Neo-Marxists like Herbert Marcuse who tried to incorporate Freud into the general Marxist canon, minus the aggressive drive. Individuals are motivated by drives, but the species is defined by reproduction and so there will evolve ways to gear sexuality towards behavior which will secure reproductive fitness. 

"First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women." Scarface 

Sexuality is the drive that produces greater bonds between individuals. Most animals go through seasons of heat and rut, reproducing only a single part of the year. There isn't an incentive for the mates to stick around after fertilization, and sex isn't a very pleasurable affair for many animals. The incentive of continual sexual activity isn't there. Regular periods of ovulation, estrus, means year round sexual receptivity and an incentive for the male to stick around. Once the eggs are laid for reptiles or chicks born for birds the parents don't stick around the offspring. These two things begin to change with mammals and particularly with primates. Giving live birth and providing fluids to offspring extends the amount of time the parent spends with the child, giving a stronger social bond. "Primate sexuality was the consequence, not the cause, of primate social life. Basic to that life was the handicap of slow growing young, the long years of learning, and the immobilization and vulnerability of mothers. Without the group, few would be the young who lived to maturity." Continual sexual receptivity became adaptive because it ensured greater paternal investment in the female and children, needed because of the long time it takes for us to mature. Sex became personalized with face to face sex, itself a product likely of bipedalism. Human females have "concealed ovulation" in that most of her sexual organs are not on display and isn't immediately apparent when ovulation is occurring. So the prospect of sex year round for the male and greater time raising offspring for females is what gives us our family unit. 

Territory is the drive that Ardrey has the most to say, as he wrote an entire book on it. Dominance and sex are pretty well known, though those on the political left downplay the former and those on the right would downplay the latter as determining human behavior. Territory was not really considered relevant to human behavior until The Territorial Imperative came out. Anthropologists used to think that scarce resources and/or property ownership are what caused social conflict, and in turn the struggle for dominance. But it isn't as if all people are under harsh scarcity all the time, there can be plenty out there but none for Peter is Paul monopolizes the good land. Those who don't have territory also have bad prospects for mating. Territory is very important to animals as it is defined within a species as well as between males which decides access to females as well as resources. 

The concept of territory has some misconceptions. Keeping territory isn't about killing intruders or taking revenge, just repelling them. Human aggression and war have to do other factors as well as territory. For most of the time, people can just avoid one another especially if populations are low, which they would be in the envrionment of our ancestors without agriculture, and space is large. Humans are so generalizable and curious that we can travel in succeed in a variety of different environments. But if somebody intrudes on your territory, the first instinct isn't to welcome them. As Thomas Hobbes noted we still lock our doors even when we live under a state with laws, sometimes locking rooms or possessions away from people we live with or welcome into our home. In Anglo law at least an individual does not have to retreat of defending their home. In the US many states have adopted the castle doctrine-the right to use firearms when on your property. But as divisive as territory is it also brings people together.

Ardrey has the amity-enmity complex to apply the territorial complex to civilization; humans protect their own and destroy their enemies because of the same impulse of defending what is theirs. This complex purports to explain the social behaviors altruism, loyalty, charity and mercy as compatible with the struggle for survival. We identify with people like us because of who we're against and vice versa we identify who we're like. Plato identified this as a quality of the guardian in his Republic; fierce towards enemies and loyal toward masters, like a dog. No doubt the transition to hunting intensified the dual nature of the complex, extending who identify with as well as who we're against. From the family to the clan, to tribe, to nation against other families, clans, tribes, and nations. As populations increase and come in contact, both unity and division is the result. It's no secret that the enemy of an enemy is a friend, which is why the complex works on different levels. Families within a nation will unite against an enemy nation in war even if they don't like or know each other. The good of social life is mixed with the bad, and it doesn't seem likely or easy for us to identify with all at the international level and against no one, in spaceship earth. 

The final chapters of the book concern the relationship between human nature and climate, between the last ice age and the current interglacial period. The question for humans after the transition from ape is why did we leave Africa, and what happened to the other hominids living in Eurasia? The answer seems to be a combination of natural curiosity and want of variety from primate past along with new technology from hunting enabling survival. Homo sapiens became Homo sapiens during the last ice age when some of us left Africa and didn't come back. Those that left didn't come back because our evolution transcended the former forests which our ape ancestors once live, and it isn't possible for us to revert back to that lifestyle anytime soon. It was our new technology, eventually fire and dogs, and social organization that allowed us to survive in different environments. Much of the world was frozen over and sea levels far lower than they are today. In addition we had to contend with large land mammals and other hominid species. By the end of the ice age 12,000 years ago humans were the only hominids left, Neanderthals going extinct 30,000 years ago possibly absorbed by the Cro-Magnons or other modern humans. Ardrey argues that the disapearance of the Neanderthals in Europe was genocide, clearing the way for territory. Just look at how much people hate others who differ from them in small ways. But Cro-Magnons inhabited Europe with the Neanderthals for 10,000 years or so without wiping them out, and today both the Cro-Mags and Neanderthals are considered to probably just be homo sapiens. The disappearance is a mystery, but it would follow Ardrey's theories on conflict which don't exclude some interbreeding. As human populations grew and explored new areas, they wouldn't be able to avoid one another and be content to evict intruders. It takes 3-7 miles of hunting range to support one person, claims Ardrey. The possibility of ethnic cleansing was opened up given the same weapons we used to hunt and cut open meat. Individual transgressions would turn into collective ones if a stray male was ganged up on or a female stolen from the camp. Small separate bands could practice avoidance and satisfy the territorial imperative, but no longer. 

Homo sapiens has prospered since the end of the ice age. I myself wondered why if humans in modern form were around for hundreds of thousands of years, why do the earliest civilizations only go back 10,000 years? Its because an interglacial period began 12,000 years ago. By the end of the ice age fire was discovered, wolves domesticated, some men permanently left Africa, and other hominids were gone. Warmer temperatures are better for global human flourishing, opening up new land for agriculture; see the viking colony of Greenland during the medieval warming period. The industrial revolution occurred soon after the end of the "little ice age" around the 19th century and temperatures have risen since. Ardrey thinks humans are doomed, or at least will have their standard of living dramatically reduced, in the long run because of the eventual return of another ice age thousands of years from now. Ardrey today reads like a climate skeptic; he didn't buy into global warming apparently, but then again not so many did back in the 1970s when some mainstream publications warmed of global cooling. Of course there are many climate skeptics/deniers today, the worst who deny any warming trend and the more cogent who attribute it to solar cycles. This dates the book more than anything else, along with a very brief discussion of the then new inclusive fitness view of evolution, which is that organisms evolve to promote their own genes and not that of the group. Ardrey speculates whether his hunter hypothesis follows the some of the logic of group selection, though I don't think it has to given that the argument is that while individuals can behave altruistically, the species' continuation is due to selfish imperatives. Such imperatives can be largely unconscious to the individual, and made to seem virtuous.

I thought The Hunting Hypothesis was quite good. The book is relatively short and very general, but full of informative speculations which go well with his other books. Robert Ardrey's influence is pretty widespread, which can unfortunately dull the impact of his ideas today. That humans came from Africa, weren't peaceful vegans/scavengers, and evolutionary history still has an effect on us aren't as heterodox positions as they once were. The Neo-Darwinian paradigm was developing when he was writing his series, and the popularity of his works gave a ready audience for sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Director Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie with Arthur C Clark 2001: A Space Odyssey is influenced by Ardrey, most obviously the opening scene when the ape proto-men pick up bones as weapons, something actually mentioned in African Genesis. The jump cut of the bone thrown up into the air to a space probe acknowledges that this change from primate behavior exhibits itself even in the space age. Another director of the same time period Sam Peckingpah read Ardrey; his controversial 1971 film Straw Dogs definitely exhibits the territorial imperative. In general his thesis of human evolution from apes as being due to hunting of meat is widely accepted today, even by honest vegans who like the wisest of us recognize the incongruity between reality and human's desires. Robert Ardrey was a professional playwright before writing his series of books, and here he gave a popular audience his evolutionary tragedy of man.

There is one conclusion derived from the hunting hypothesis that is still debated and relevant today, which is that the switch to a hunting lifestyle for males meant a change to a more pair bond or monogamous living situation for hunter-gatherers, a position taken in The Naked Ape 1967 by Desmond Morris. The recent book Sex at Dawn 2010 uses the evolutionary psychology position to argue that humans were originally promiscuous free lovers, like the bonobo chimps which are as related to us as are regular chimps. Bonobo chimps have egalitarianism between male and females who hunt together and sex is used as an aphrodisiac. Bonobos have face to face sex, something shared with humans and not chimps. So rather than humans being naturally polygamous or monogamous, we had sexual freedom, equality, and because we didn't care about paternity uncertainty or mate guarding, peace. This conclusion is controversial and probably not all true, but not without merit, but it demonstrates the continuing relevance of the hunting hypothesis and reconstruction of our evolutionary past which even the political left is starting to see matters for society today which is a testament to Ardrey's work.