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Small prey compelled prehistoric humans to produce appropriate hunting weapons
- myshpa 3y ago> A new study from the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University found that the extinction of large prey, upon which human nutrition had been based ... We ate them all. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline A global population half the size of London contributed to many of the world’s largest mammals to extinction. The per capita impact of our hunter-gatherer ancestors was huge. ... Trace the footsteps of these tiny populations of the past and you will find extinction after extinction after extinction. https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction Between 52,000 and 9,000 BCE, more than 178 species of the world’s largest mammals were killed off. These were mammals heavier than 44 kilograms, ranging from mammals the size of sheep to mammoths. From the article: "But one may well ask: Why did humans become smarter all of a sudden? What was the advantage of having a large brain that consumes so much energy? We demonstrate that these biological and cognitive changes correlate directly with the size of prey. To hunt small elusive animals humans had to become smarter, faster, more focused, more observant, and more collaborative. They had to develop new weapons for hunting from afar and learn how to track their prey." Eating meat is often credited with boosting human intelligence, but it probably was the challenge of adapting to decreasing biodiversity and the need to hunt smarter that truly accelerated our cognitive development. Similarly, as we grapple with climate change and pivot towards plant-based diets, these new challenges may offer opportunities for our intelligence to evolve even further. ;)
- ChuckMcM 3y agoOne of the interesting things for me about the hypothesis is that if humans had developed better food preservation techniques this outcome might have been different. Specifically a lot of large animals would rot before one could finish eating them so the rate of consumption was higher than strictly necessary. (not that early humans cared, but later humans developed a wide range of preservation methods due to scarcity pressures it seems).
- SoftTalker 3y agoI think more to be able to live in climates where hunting, foraging, or farming year-round was not possible.
- jahewson 3y agoEarly humans were nomadic. They had no need to stay in the same place year-round. Just follow the animals.
- SoftTalker 3y agoThere is almost zero evolutionary pressure on the human species right now. We are probably backsliding.
- Robotbeat 3y agoThere’s massive evolutionary pressure now that we’ve developed birth control.
- SoftTalker 3y agoTrue, I mean evolution in the forward sense, implied by my "we are probably backsliding"
- Nursie 3y agoWhat do you mean by backsliding? Is it only 'evolution' when things become stronger/smarter/faster? Evolution is organisms adapting to their environment in the face of selection pressure, it has no particular direction.
- SoftTalker 3y agoA lot of people who would not have survived childhood in the past now live. Birth defects, childhood cancers, diabetes, severe asthma or allergies, poorly functioning immune systems, profoundly poor vision or hearing, etc. Who uses birth control? Smart, pragmatic, disciplined, responsible people. This is being selected against. I was using "evolution" in the sense of "survival of the fittest" and there aren't really selections for "fittest" (healthier, stronger, smarter) operating on humans anymore, it's more the opposite.
- j16sdiz 3y agoOh. That's why Elon Musk have 11 kids.
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- peteradio 3y agoIt's hard to understand how such a small population could have managed such an outsized ecological impact when we are several orders of magnitude more populace now.
- debacle 3y agoDuring the ice age, the "world" was a lot smaller than it is today.
- njharman 3y agoSee also sixth mass extinction event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
- preisschild 3y agoI don't think we will pivot completely to plant-based diets, but we could use artificially grown meat.
- distortionfield 3y ago> “Ultimately, we hypothesized that prey size had played a major part in human evolution: at the beginning the largest animals were hunted, and when these were gone humans went on to the next in size, and so on. Finally, when hunting was no longer energetically viable, humans began to domesticate animals and plants. That's how the agricultural revolution began." I had never considered this angle before. I always thought humans started agriculture to deal with scaling and the development of cities, but the idea that it was actually a scarcity pressure from decreased size of huntable game is a really interesting alternative.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoEarly cities were pretty undesirable places to live, so it makes sense,
- Detrytus 3y agoModern cities are no different.
- gigglesupstairs 3y ago“Desirable” is a variable though across such different times
- kadoban 3y agoAs evidenced by what? All the people that want to live in them? "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
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- jterwill 3y agoIt’s hard not to see this angle as making the capacity for cultural evolution very fortunate for us (or unfortunate for other species). What other animals can exhaust primary food sources and ‘quickly’ pivot to another? I’ve often wondered how much rituals and social routines for affiliation and bonding drove for this capacity (which we often associate with lithic tools) as opposed to the need for food. Perhaps some of this is due to another scarcity: hair. How did hairless apes manage relationships without grooming?
- gerdesj 3y ago"But one may well ask: Why did humans become smarter all of a sudden? What was the advantage of having a large brain ... To hunt small elusive animals humans had to become smarter, faster, more focused, more observant, and more collaborative." So why didn't the big cats, larger insects, dogs/wolves, crocs n that, let alone bloody great 'awks 'n that etc become ... "smarter" for the same reasons? "Just so" stories are lovely to read and so easy to digest and are just so much bollocks! "And they had to choose their prey carefully, with preference for high fat content, to ensure a sufficient energetic return" Total and utter bollocks: Predators pick off the easiest targets - sick, infirm or inattentive prey. There is absolutely no way they weight up calorific value. You grab what you can and try to survive. I suggest that any numpty writing an article/paper like this tries to kill their own next dinner to discover why things are the way they are ...
- myshpa 3y ago> the big cats, larger insects, dogs/wolves, crocs n that, let alone bloody great 'awks None of them are able to make all their prey go extinct.
- Detrytus 3y agoBack to "origins of intelligence", I'm not sure what's the cause and what is the effect here. The reason why humans are different from other animals is that our intelligence makes us adaptable. Take a lion, or a spider, or a hawk and the whole species exhibits basically the same behavior, which is based on instinct. If you saw one of them then you've kind of seen them all. Humans can change their behavior, develop new tools, new hunting methods, which is why we've been able to make some of our prey go extinct.
- myshpa 3y agoI think it's more about our ability to use advanced language than just being smart. Humans can talk, share stories, and pass down knowledge. That's how we build culture and learn from the past, and it makes a big difference.
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- pizzafeelsright 3y ago"humans began to make stone tools about 3 million years ago" is just as accepted as "male and female he created them". I wonder if others read this text the same way I do.
- klyrs 3y agoI accept the first statement as an indication that we have reasonably strong evidence that human-ish (that is, genus homo) primates were using tools that had been fabricated, not just found; and that such fossils have been dated back to 3 million years ago, give or take. The second statement comes with no evidence, no proof, no error bars. And the interpretation of the Bible as literal truth is an invention of the 18th century. So no, the two statements are not "just as accepted."
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoThe papers written by whom and for how long? Did this research of a multi-million year old world and evidence exist prior to the 18th century?
- klyrs 3y ago> The papers written by whom and for how long? There are dozens of references to be found [1] if you're interested in reading more. But I'm not sure what you mean by "for how long." > Did this research of a multi-million year old world and evidence exist prior to the 18th century? Yes, people located multi-million year old dinosaur fossils prior to the 18th century. They didn't have enough evidence at the time to recognize the implications of what they were finding, nor the extensive chronological dating technologies[2] that we have today. But I think you're mistaking my point about the 18th century: if the authors of the Bible did not believe it to be the literal truth, why should anybody else? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_dating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_dating
- mhb 3y agoMaybe it is less risky to hunt smaller prey and the humans that learned to do so were favored. Doesn't explain the decline in the large prey animals, but that might be coincidence.
- j16sdiz 3y ago> Doesn't explain the decline in the large prey animals, but that might be coincidence. It was "decrease in the quantity of bones of large prey (in settlement)". Could be they just stopped hunting large prey animals.
- dhosek 3y agoIt’s a pretty widespread coincidence. The extinction of Western Hemisphere megafauna correlates quite well with the arrival of humans. Megafauna that has survived to the present day has generally evolved in place with humans (viz, Africa and south Asia).
- ETH_start 3y agoThere is no need for any species to go extinct for evolutionary pressures to select for adaptations that allow for predation on other species. The population of a predator reaching the carrying capacity of the existing prey base is enough to make it evolutionarily advantageous to develop means of adding new species to the prey base, ceteris paribus.