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Ancestors of Homo Sapiens Hunted by Birds
CFTM writes "The associate press writer, Alexandra Zavis, reports that 'A South African anthropologist said Thursday his research into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds.' The article raises some really fascinating questions, particularly when one begins to think about the evolutionary impact that this may have had on humans." From the article: "The Ohio State study determined that eagles would swoop down, pierce monkey skulls with their thumb-like back talons, then hover while their prey died before returning to tear at the skull. Examination of thousands of monkey remains produced a pattern of damage done by birds, including holes and ragged cuts in the shallow bones behind the eye sockets. Berger went back to the Taung skull, and found traces of the ragged cuts behind the eye sockets. He said none of the researchers who had for decades been debating how the child died had noticed the eye socket damage before."
Perhaps our psychological fascination with dragons and birds of prey are subsequent results of frequent bird attacks on our ancestors? At any rate, it's been commonly believed that several thousand years of exposure to a species results in a slight increase of instinct of fear with each newborn. Books like Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond explain how evolutionary fears in species develop over many thousand years of exposure. Could what we see in movies of carrion-like dragons be a remnant of psychological fears imposed by these raptors on our ancestors?
... the easiest access being the eyes.
If at one time our ancestors were hunted by large birds, what happened to them? One can easily think of ways for other large predator animals to be removed from the food chain but large raptors seem to have no natural predator. Did modern man learn to defend himself from such birds? Did our stone weapons suffice for protecting us from such large aerial predators or was it not until bronze weapons that we were specialized enough to protect ourselves?
While the telltale signs might remain in skeletons, these issues raise a host of new issues that obviously require much more research to be determined.
More importantly, aren't the researchers overlooking the obvious possibility that the "ragged cuts" behind the eye sockets resulted from carrion birds after the death of the individual?
Perhaps it was the case that many of these ancestors were wiped out from a plague that left no evidence of itself and there just happened to be large scavenger birds everywhere to capitalize off of these corpses? The result would be thousands (if not millions) of dead corpses left for scavengers to ravage. Corpses close enough to an aviary or bird sanctuary would likely suffer from these skull markings. Were the markings also present on other parts of the bodies? I've seen vultures pick a corpse clean and they probably worked pretty hard to get at the fat and oil rich brain
Maybe the eyes of dead human corpses are merely a delicacy among scavenger birds or some other scavenger that left similar markings?
My work here is dung.
I don't feel so bad about wind power any more.
I get hunted by magpies when i'm 3 metres out the front door!
Czech language for absolute beginners
This story is mostly old news; the same researchers proposed it about ten years ago. The original idea was that the site where the skull was found (Taung) had a lot of young monkeys, which not only suggests predation, but also a relatively lightweight predator. Most of the other South African caves preserve larger adult specimens as well, which might have gotten in themselves or been carried (or dropped) by larger predators like leopards. It is a very tricky case to say that the accumulating agent at Taung must have been eagles, though, since it is much more likely that different predators and non-predation factors operated at different times for any given site.
What they found that justified a new paper was damage inside the eye orbits of the specimen, which is one area where eagle talons damage their prey. It could be true, but on the other hand there is a lot of doubt. After all, eagles aren't the only predators that damage the eyes, and there are other ways that the bones may have accumulated, chiefly water transport, that might not require predation at all. As one of my colleagues put it, so many young primates die of disease or inadequate nutrition; the chances of this story is greater than zero, but how much?
--John (my anthropology weblog is at http://johnhawks.net/weblog/)This has been known a long time, their primary diet consists of monkeys and sloths which they pluck from trees. Not many of them left though.
Wikipedia entry for Harpy Eagle.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
...but now it's PAYBACK TIME!
...because I don't think there is any bird alive today that doesn't fly away the minute we get anywhere near them, no matter how large. (okay, maybe an ostrich will fight us, but that is a BIG bird...)
How do we know that the holes in the heads didn't come from other proto-humans that fastened a bird talon to the end of some spear and then battled one another? That would seem to make a pretty lethal weapon.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Story reminds me of trying to eat fries outside a fast food joint and fighting off the seagulls.
alka-seltzer is your friend. watch the seagulls pop.
I mean these guys are coming up with these ideas way before scientists...
So the whole eating chicken thing is some unconcious racial memory payback thing?
I for one say farewell to our old bird overlords.
Finally, an explanation of my morbid fear of live chicken.
Interesting cycle.
Odd.. seems completly ontopic to me.. I guess if it was a lousy 'in soviet russia' joke, it would've been modded ontopic.. pSc
Proud Rememberer of the BBS Days.
If a person does not cooperate with the group and stakes his own territory, then he risks his own survival. By himself, he will have a hard time in finding the necessary food and hospitable living space on a tiny island constantly ravaged by tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes.
What is the result of these 2000 years of group think? It has produced a nation where the group has more value than the individual. Such thinking is perfect for mass production, where each worker must be a cooperating cog in the great wheel of industrial manufacturing. Toyota is hard to beat for this very reason.
There a kind of symetry involved that birds once considered us fast food and now we eat deep fried birds as fast food. I wonder if we gave them high cholesterol?
This was already well documented in 1963:
The Birds
I am always fascinated by how we modern humans portray our predecessors as stupid, bumbling idiots. On one hand we claim how smart they are, the on the other we have them doing stupid things even monkeys wouldn't do.
...part of the USA, I can tell you that you really shouldn't be so fascinated and surprised.
Couldn't the birds have attacked AFTER death?
so, our ancestors were killed by birds, and now the birds are at it again with their pesky flu
are you sure you weren't on a Alfred Hitchcock set?
Today children (and even adults) occasionally get killed by domestic dogs. But if you were frozen and woke up in 50,000 AD and got told by an anthropologist that in AD 2000 human beings were preyed on by domestic canines wouldn't you tell him that he was mistaken?
What happened to all these gigantic human-hunting birds? Did humans kill them all? It seems like they'd still be pretty successful, especially in rural areas. I'm glad I don't have to constantly be on the lookout for giant birds that could swoop down from the sky and pierce my brain with its talons through my eyeballs to let me dangle until I die. That's pretty horrific- someone should make a movie where a crazy scientist does some Jurassic Park shit and brings these birds back from extinction by crossbreeding them with pigeons. Being part pigeon, they multiply rapidly and quickly spread to the mainland US to terrorize the population....
Human skulls used to be thicker, right?
They'd have to have some might powerful talons to break through a thick skull.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
to recategorize The Birds (1963) as a 'documentary'.
There is a rather large african bird that runs and pack hunts on the African plains even now. I'm sure that one of you will know the name of it, as it escapes me at the moment. It is quite feared in the regions it is known to inhabit because it currently has the rather uncomfortable habit of killing and eating members of our species. People joke about the dragon saying "Humans...yes...I like them. They're crunchy and taste good with ketchup." However, we often forget that being slow, weak, and unarmed (compared to other species and their natural equipment) that we make a tempting meal for a great many things. Since this is true of modern man, even with all of our technology (googling on "man killed by bear" brings up at least 10 pages), this must have been even more true of our early ancestors.
The whole reason that we consider a 30.06 superior to a flint tipped spear or big stick is because it can kill more stuff before that stuff can kill us. I can only imagine what it would have been like to try to fight of a predator armed only with the most basic implements. This leads me to think that early man was on the menu rather often. While this may sound cold to many of you, we have all benefitted from it, so don't feel too bad for the early guys. We know that our ancestors evolved quite a bit from looking at the fossil record. What's the big driving factor behind evolution? Predation. Wolves make the deer smarter and faster by culling the weak and stupid. Birds force moths to shift their coloration patterns by eating anything that "stands out". Why do we have these big brains and not a whole lot else? Predation. Since we didn't have fangs or claws or venom, we had to think our way out of being eaten. This selected for intelligence.
One theory has it that we're here because we're loosers. Now, don't squeal...keep reading. We know that early hominds lived in forests. Why? Plenty of food and plenty of cover. The same reasons that modern apes are found in forests. Given the idea that forest is the most desirable habitat, why did early hominds forsake the forest and creep on to the plains? It's simple...they didn't leave because they suddenly thought "You know, going out there on the plains where there's no food, no water, and a lot of predators we can't out run sounds like a MARVELOUS idea!" They were driven out. Groups of apes, chimps, etc. war over territory constantly. Early hominids lost a battle to retain their territory and were driven out of the forest and on to the plains because they were loosers. That's right, we're all decended from a big bunch of loosers who made the best of what they had left. Sound familiar??? Being on the plains made forced the evolution of walking upright so that we could see over the top of the grass to see predators coming at us. Once we starting walking around as bipeds instead of knuckle draggers, we had these free hands. With free hands and opposable thumbs, well you can just get into all kinds of trouble can't you.
Given that we have a long history of being dinner, I fail to see why these scientists think it's so odd. It seems emminently logical that some predator made the wounds on the skull.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_bird
And there's at least a little evidence that some very large predator-birds existed in South America much more recently than that.
I would guess that this is probably the original origin of the "overlord" cliche.
Some little pip-squeak sitting around the communal fire, 2-million years ago trys to be cool and impress his commrades by announcing "I for one welcome our new avian menance overlords" Snicker snicker snicker. After months of repeating this phase with multiple variations his brained cracked skullcase somehow ended in the fire pit.
I got chicks following me everywhere I go.
Kentucky-Fried Chicken: Primate's ultimate finger-licken' revenge.
Table-ized A.I.
the birds are coming to get me!!!
/. editors need to be more sensitive to us Hobo Sapiens.
What's that you say? Homo sapiens? * phew * I thought you said HOBO sapiens. You
blah blah blah
...welcome our new Hitchcock overlord.
The Haast egale, now extinct was the worlds largest eagle and is believed to have hunted people as recently as 800 years ago... Cant be bothered looking for a link, do your own research.
..when one begins to think about the evolutionary impact that this may have had on humans
In defence, we developed killer mohawks
I love humanity, it is people I hate
I guess that missing link is for the birds... Hahaha...stupid birds lost the evolutionary battle. Too bad, so sad...mwuhahaha
A good indicator, of how fast the best genes spread, is the story of Gengis Khan. According to a recent investigation in 2003, Djengis Khan's Y-chromosome is now carried by 16 million males in asia. Since these chromosomes are only given by fathers to sons, this 16 million multiplication of his genes in 800 years is quite remarkable. If he had superior genes then, he wouldn't have it as much today.
Noticed quite a few posts about imagined giant doom-birds swooping down to attack cave people, so I thought I'd mention a few things.
First of all, the Taung baby was not a modern human. (Ausralopithecines are bipedal, but closer to apes than to modern humans apart from that). An adult averaged between 65 and 90 lbs., depending on gender.
Second of all, they're talking about a child. It would be tiny, and the idea of something that small being attacked by a larger predatory bird doesn't seem that far-fetched. No need for Mothra.
People forget humans were much smaller in the good old days. Men weren't 150lbs. Male proto-humans might weight 70lbs and females much less. So the birds are really going after prey in the same weight class.
When I go out jogging, I feel a natural fear of mountain lions and the like, but not birds. In fact I feel pretty capable of kicking a birds butt. If pre-humans were hunted by birds I think that'd mean that we at least figured out how to hold our own. We are talking about africans here, who were in the stone age until what, the 1800s?
This was like, what, over a million years ago?
Get over it!
dubito ergo sum
...when not three hours ago I finished watching Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" with my family.
-:sigma.SB
P.S. I didn't read the other comments before posting; this will probably be modded Redundant.
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
Packs of carnivorous birds eating modern humans? Never heard of it. Neither has google.
I for one welcome our new cranium smashing bird overlords
> We are talking about africans here, who were in the stone age until what, the 1800s?
Oh for God's sake: Great Zimbabwe, Zanzibar, all of North Africa (Phoenicians, Egypt)...
Did I miss something? I don't recall reading the child's age. How do we know it wasn't an infant. The skull in the photo looks pretty small. You wouldn't need a bird bigger than what we have around today, would you?
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
In opposite: human skull is less protected than monkey skulls: the human brain will grove after birth because the bones did not merged yet. But the monkey skull is already completely locked at birth, no further development will occure. Thus a human skull was/is an easier target.
This vulnerability could be a disadvantage in the beginning but soon developing a bigger brain became an advantage,
We can see in nature that vultures and other praying birds hunt weak/sick animals. Probably they did it with humans too and as I recall there were similar report from wars that birds prayed wounded humans still living but unable to defend themselves.
The question could be how many of these weakened human (child) were already dead but imho a seriously weakened person was in that times practically dead anyway. Attack from any animal bird or not just would speed up the process. There were a lot of animals that prayed humans when an opportunity was given. Even today hypopotamus, crocodile, tiger etc. are taking humans.
Actually this news should not been such a big news except for urbans never entering the "jungle out there".
Im so glad that somreone has had the guts to step forward and talk about this problem, since its still happening to this very day, and possibly because of the awful nature of this situation, it remains a deep and unspoken taboo.
... and the circling sillouettes of those predators of the sky. Their beady eyes ever watchful for an opportunity to swoop and claim their victims from amongst the innocent below.
..... BUT .. during the 5 minutes that I was in that queue, the ceiling in the building was smashed inwards by the razor sharp talons of a spiteful Hawk and its over-grown mate. The evil pair of them fell down onto the head of an old lady, wantonly ripped at her eyes, and then dragged her off towards the exit. At the door waiting for them was a flock of gleeful vultures .. ready to make fast on this unexpected feast.
Look up in the sky on any given day - and behold the clouds, the blue skies, the sunshine
It was only weeks ago that I was having a picnic by the river with my girlfriend and her 2 gorgeous children. Many other families were there as well, happy, laughing, breathing the fresh air and revelling in the sunshine. During this blissfull experience, I couldnt help but notice the sight of a pack of ibises chasing a young child of about 3 years old. The child was wailing in terror, and the ibises eventually cornered the victim in the reeds, tripped him over, and began to peck greedily at his flesh. The child's wailing died down to the replaced only by the squelching sounds of torn flesh.
Whilst this awful scenario unfolded, everyone - including the child's parents, seemed to be totally oblivious to this horror. Countless generations of conditioning have left humankind in a position where we turn a blind eye to the sadistic excesses of our avian overlords.
"Oh my - arnt the ants bad today !" explaimed my girlfriend. Yes, the ants were out in small numbers, but the shocking fact is that she made this statement as an ibis trotted triumphantly past us, dragging a ropey length of some unnamed human organ from its most recent victim - that cornered child !. This march of triumph was conducted in full view of everyone present - however it seems that acknowledging this sight was soooo clearly taboo that it remained blocked in the minds of the observers. I cannot forget the blazing triumph in the eyes of that Ibis, nor the mocking grin sculpted permanently onto its beak !
And yesterday - queuing up in the local bank branch to deposit some cheques - there were at least a dozen people in the queue, all waiting patiently for service. Whilst things proceeded quickly enough, a few people were heard to mutter jokingly how they thought that the bank could afford to put on some more staff to speed up the level of service. A valid complaint perhaps
Walking out of the bank, people continued about their business and even stepped over the grisly remains of the old lady - AS IF SHE WASNT THERE, AND AS IF THEY HAD NOT SEEN A THING. Smiling to themselves, they remembered the worst thing at the bank being the not-so-bad wait for service.
The deeds of birds remain blocked in our minds.
WHY ?
THWACK! THWACK!!
hey, man, cut it out. I'm Hindu, you insensitive clod!
That totally explains my tendency to run and swat everytime a giant eagle starts clawing at my skull. I thought it was just me, but I guess it's instinct.
The Catherine Wheel was a product of the middle ages, especially popular in Germany. The victim's limbs were crushed with blunt objects. His (or her) still-living remains were subjected to the wheel. This meant the mangled arms and legs were threaded through the spokes. The wheel was then hoisted into the air using a long pole. Hungry vultures and crows picked at the body. Death came slowly.
So in conclusion, Homo Sapiens used torture?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
The Pouakai, or Haast eagle of New Zealand was hunted to extinction by the Maori. But before it lost this battle, it also hunted humans.
http://www.nzbirds.com/birds/haasteagle.html
In Soviet Russia, Birds hunt you!
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
... well ... the irony
now,.... who's laughing now birdie?! MUHHAHAHAHAHAHA
"Do the chickens have large talons?"
It doesnt seem that farfetched to me that a species of eagle with a 12" wingspan (largest flying bird ever was more than twice that) would prey on children or even small adults untill we were quick enough with spears and smart enough with tactics to turn the tables.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
...you insensitive clod!
In prehistoric russia birds eat you! -matt
I guess I should fear my big ass parrots... ::cowers in a corner as they say "HELLO" to him:: hehe
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
I for one am glad we are rid our avian overlords.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
"The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth."
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast's_eagle
The wikipedia article gives no indication humans were hunted by it, in fact it says humans hunted it and it's food to extinction.
everybody knows when you go back to the Taung skill you'll find cuts behind the eye sockets.
Maybe human death rituals (e.g. burial, burning, leaving to vultures) got started because they ensured predators didn't profit from the death of the victim.
In Pascal Boyer's book, Religion Explained, he suggests that burial rituals may have formed for a variety of reasons. One idea is that burial rituals mark a transition between two states of being, since our human free agent inference system in our brains still think of the corpse as somehow still possessing an attribute of human-ness. In that way, burials can be viewed in the same light as other rite-of-passage rituals like baptism or marriage.
Another theory is that mentioned by the parent poster, in that dangerous scavangers are less likely to come near the clan looking for dead bodies to eat. The problem with that idea is that early humans were nomadic foragers, which would make it easy for them to avoid such an invasion. And then why do these early burials involve such unnecessary components as flowers, aligned horns, or tools? Furthermore, it would seem that risks of infection from a decaying body would present a more compelling reason to dispose of the body (burial, burning, ingesting by a spiritual specialist, etc.).
Death rituals are likely to stem from the natural human disposition that something must be done. I could go on for several more paragraphs, but this diversion has gone on far enough; those who would like to more fully investigate the phenomenon of burial should read chapter 6 of Boyer's book.
Onto the subject of being preyed upon by birds -- Joseph Campbell talks about experiments wherein scientists draw a wood cutout of a hawk on a string across a chicken pen. The chicks will scurry for cover when that happens. When the scientists drew the hawk across the pen backwards, the chicks did not react. Campbell identified this behavior as an innate releasing mechanism (IRM). It is somewhat like a hard-wired circuit in the brains of these animals that evolved through the selection pressure of millions of years of being hunted by hawks. Other posters have mentioned that perhaps that is why we are so fascinated by dragons and what not in our mythological tales. We have an inference system in our brains that is wired to evoke a stronger emotive response to the image of a big bird-like creature, and hence that leads to the adoption of the bird meme in the images of our culture.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
agoraphobia _is_ an adaptive behavior.
Haven't we all seen these
posters plastered everywhere?
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
when my girlfriends parrot get jealous it also does a slow flight around my head and then takes the plunge into the back of my neck....and I also start screeching like a mad monkey...just to fullfil my primal duties
The article didn't say much about the damage or how it was ascertained that it was not a postmortem marking from scavangers. (Ever see a big buzzard chow down on a carcass? They tear the crap out of it). They also steal from each other carting off verious pieces (like the skull). Say monkeys (or some pre-humanoid critter with an unpronounceable name) had some ritual where they were creeped out by the dead still eyes of the recently departed--what if they liked to poke 'em out with some stoney object they made/found? Or maybe The Falconer set the steely talons of Donald upon his mortal enemy--the pre-humanoid critter with an unpronounceable name, feasted upon his worm monkey brains, and thus, drove him to extinction!
Science like this begins where you assume something is true and you run with the theory--and if you can't find any evidence that goes against your theory, everyone congratulates you on your brilliant discovery. Perhaps a new technique down the road will prove this one wrong like this one refutes the sabor tooth tiger mauling. I think the damage could have easily been done postmortem by scavangers--unless they can prove otherwise with necropsy details. Although, with a 2 million year old cold case, it's anyone's guess.
CSI: Pliocene Epoch
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Raptor attacks would [rein]force hominids into social bands. Even stoning would be an unacceptible risk to the fragile wings. So raptors would only attack out of absolute panic starvation/desparation.
How about giant chickens? :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I always had the suspicion that Big Bird was just as evil as Bert, but preying on young children...
But your monthly newsletter must be pretty whack
how come humans don't run around like crazy whenever a raptor shadow passes over like chickens do?
... Birds eat you!
Wow. Bigbird hunted kids. Who woulda thought.
Remember that chimpanzees and other apes develop faster than humans. Although the adults were a bit less in mass than living people (35 - 45 kg instead of 55 - 70), the toddlers would have been either about the same or slightly more for their age than living humans. My 2-year-olds are 30 pounds.
--JohnThe problem with that hypothesis is that it doesn't explain the accumulation of lots of eagle-eaten monkeys in a single cave. Transport does explain it, but then you have to figure out how they moved the hominid. I myself think that the swooping and eating hypothesis is more likely, but it isn't how the hypothesis came to be.
--JohnFarnsworth: No, no. That was all just special effects! Now let's have breakfast. I hope everyone likes eggs.
I, for one, welcome this new variation on the "I, for one, welcome our new {x} overlords". And I'd like to remind /. readers that as a trusted moderater, I can be helpful in modding up other variations to the effect that more /. readers are made to toil over such musings in their underground sugar caves.
I for one welcome our new avian overlords?
I've been swooped by magpies before, they are deadly accurate and hurt like blazes and oh yes, they aim for the head. They just act territorially when they are nesting.
I've also seen emus act in a pretty intimidating way, and cassowarys attack people when nesting. Many other birds will also take you on when nesting, they can be absolutely fearless when aroused and size is no matter...
If we were substantially smaller I'd totally believe we could be prey for large birds. Or if not prey targets as we tried to steal their eggs.
A good club would suffice as it is difficult to hit a flying eagle with a spear or arrow. Then again my archery skills were mediocre even after years of practice, but I have seen good archers and few could hit a flying bird of prey.
I am sometimes surprised that large birds seldom attack humans and other large animals today. Being an outdoorsman I have seen eagles close up and can tell you that there were a couple which were unbelievably huge. One had a head as large as a small dog's. At that moment you realize if an animal like that decided to hunt peple, it could.
On the flip side, a native friend once described to me how men in his tribe used to have themselves buried in dirt or sand with only their hands sticking out. Between their hands a friend would place fish remains to bait eagles. And then they waited, hours upon end, often unsuccessfully. As soon as one would alight the hunter would grab for its legs and if successful, burst up out of the ground and kill the animal with his bare hands.
Good call, many animals enjoy eating eyes.
Eagles don't hunt humans because they're not durable enough to reliably survive the encounter.
The largest known species of eagle (now extinct) weighed in at under 30 pounds. The largest eagles in North America today weigh in at about fifteen pounds, under seven percent of which is extra-light hollow bone. Very large, but very light. Not very resistant to being turned into an Eagle Pretzel by an unarmed human because cause light, hollow bones are not well designed to cope with blunt force trauma.
Eagles are highly-evolved killing machines, but they're literally nowhere near our weight class-- under 15% of even adolescent human body weight, and with less than half of the bone mass per pound. *SNAP*
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
A lot of my problems would be gone today.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I sleep with the demon duck of doom.
Be nice to birdies, one day they might come for you again...
A bit of clarification. I'm not counting adventitious use as invention. Yes, clubs date WAY back, in the sense of adventitious use. I.e., grab any convenient branch at hand and use it to beat with (or, in another metaphor, the thighbone of an antelope [or the jawbone of an ass]). But it's not a tool invention in my sense unless you select it for performance (possibly adapting it for improved performance) and retain it. Thus a boy may select a good skipping stone, but I wouldn't count it as a tool unless after selecting it he retained it for future use.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Not much has changed.
We today are being in danger from their remains > the crude oil. What we could do to slow the greenhouse effect would be to discover a few engines that use fuels that don't pollute this planet.
http://free.seekon.com/NonNuclearFusionEngines/ .
Or, there's always Plan B >. htm
Learn how-to control the weather
http://www.newpath4.com/WorldwideClimateEngineMsg
And if all that effort isn't good enoughp rocessexplainedindetail06062006.htm
we need to -Plan C- order lots of CASKETS.
http://www.newpath4.com/skyisfallingendoftheworld
You mentioned possibility of a plague? A lot of people think
the plague has already started on http://www.newpath4.com/ .
I, for one, welcome our old avian overlords.
Human-eating birds - let's eat 'em! :)
Yum, yum - this is why everything tastes like chicken - Nature's revenge! :)
Best,
Auri Rahimzadeh
Author, Hacking the PSP
www.hackingpsp.com
Author, Geek My Ride, http://www.geekmyride.net
Or Grandma Ugh started to stink up the cave, so they buried her out back.
No sig for you!!
Not all societies bury their dead. Humans are notorious for having diverse, and perverse, behaviour. Northern Europeans once, and not that long ago either, would lay their dead out in the open to be devoured as carrion. But I'd say that generally yes the dead are buried.
Bitter and proud of it.
This isn't news. I presented this theory to ANTH 101 students four years ago.
The Terror Bird. It was around at the same time as early man.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Is that you, Diane?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com