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."

Comments

Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds?

[Gorobei]

Bah. A behavior as simple as protecting your tribe's corpses from opportunistic predators quickly ensures you generally don't get attacked by eagles. Once a raptor sees it doesn't get a free meal from attacking proto-humans, it quickly gives up.

Heck, burying your dead becomes a great advantage: predators gain nothing from killing your species, and soon seek prey that actually gives them food! 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.

KFC for Vendetta

[EnsilZah]

So the whole eating chicken thing is some unconcious racial memory payback thing?

Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds?

[lawpoop]

I happen to agree with this theory of evolutionary predation fears. I think this could be used to explain all these 'hairy men' creatures that appear all over the world.

Up until about 200,000 years ago there were about 5 or 6 different apes running around alongside our direct ancestors. These guys were smart, and they could use spears. My guess is they had a lot of body hair.

My personal pet theory is that about 100,000, human beings began systematically exterminating all other groups of hominids besides their own. The only hominids crafty enough to escape the slaughter were other homo sapiens.

You can see this continue today. Any group of human beings that give themselves some kind of group identity hate those other guys -- that group next door -- and will try to kill all of them, given the opportunity. They also think of other groups of people as savage animals.

So anways, rewind 100,000 years ago. A hairless human hunter venturing out into the woods to track down lunch stood a good chance of being killed by some hairy spear-wielding apeman.

Fast forward to today. People are still catching glimpses of hairy apemen in the woods (Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, whatever). Not that those hairy apemen are still alive, but that it's better to be paranoid and *suspect* that a creaking branch or other ambiguous sensory data is a hairy apeman, rather than foolishly walking into a hairy ape-mans' spear. To this day, human groups view their neighbor groups as savage animals who they are probably better off getting rid of.

Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds?

[legalize.ganja.now.]

well, you don't have to be stupid to be attacked by a bird. a math-teacher of mine was once attacked by a hawk while he was training for the marathon. he spent 2 weeks in hospital after that.

Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds?

[lawpoop]

Here is somewhat of a brainstorm to your answers:

You may not be afraid of bigfoot because you didn't have an experience of 'encountering' a bigfoot in the woods. My theory currently states that you have some ambiguous sensory experience in the woods, and the paranoid hunter/gatherer part of your mind incorrectly interprets it as an ape-man. If you haven't had the experience and misinterpretation, you wouldn't be afraid. The same way you may not be afraid of the ghetto if you've never been mugged in the ghetto -- which happened to me recently. I live in Columbus, OH, which is a relatively safe place, and does have its share of ghettos. I never had any fear walking around in them, but a couple of weeks ago I was mugged in the ghetto. Nothing bad happened -- I just got hit and they took my wallet. However, now I am suspicious of every guy I see when I'm walking in a ghetto, and if someone gets close to me, the hair on the back of my neck stands up.

Why are you not a racist? One answer is that maybe you aren't a typical human being. My theory states that *groups* hate each other, not necessarily individuals hate other groups or other individuals. If you look at human group relationship around the world and across time, they always hate or at best think poorly of the other group. The theory does not predict or address individual behavior. Here in Columbus Ohiom there is an intense Ohio State / Michigan rivalry. This always results in fights between college age fans. Now, if those people weren't wearing Ohio State or Michigan jackets, nobody could tell them apart. But somehow being a Michigan fan during a home game in Columbus gets you a beating. It's the same for any other group identification, whether it's high schools, gangs, neighborhoods, religions, or ethnicities.

Also, have you ever been to a place where you were a minority? I'm guessing that you are a white male living in the US. That's my background -- I never had a problem with other people until I spent a couple summers in Ecuador, where I was very obviously a minority. I don't hate Ecuadorians or Hispanics or anything like that, but I definately felt a sense of "me against them" while walking down the main streets of Ecuador.

I guess my theory states that after a violent trauma, the human mind haphazardly groups recognizably 'other' people together in a danger category. If a member of your own group beats you up, you probably won't hate your own group as a whole, because you know too many individuals. But if can't differentitate any individuals of the other group, you mind will just err on the side of caution and fear all of them.