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When Humans Were Prey

May 30, 2021
In 1924, a limestone quarry worker in the town of Taung, South Africa, made an incredible discovery. It was the fossilized skull of a juvenile hominid, a member of the human lineage that includes us and all of our ancestors that emerged after our split from chimpanzees and bonobos. That small skull became the type specimen of Australopithecus africanus and would become one of the most important fossils in the study of human evolution. Today, the specimen is known as the Taung Child. The discovery of it revolutionized the way we think about our past for several reasons. For one thing, at approximately 2.8 million years old, it was the first fossil evidence that our first human ancestors originated in Africa.
when humans were prey
But there was something else. The skull had been found among many bones of other animals, mostly small, and many of them were severely damaged, as if they had been butchered. Therefore, for decades, experts interpreted these fossils as evidence that hominids like Australopithecus were not frugivorous apes, but carnivorous hunters, the so-called "predatory ape-men." It would be more than 80 years before scientists realized that the Taung site was not, in fact, evidence that Australopithecines were hunters. Rather, it was actually evidence that the hominids themselves were being hunted. No one noticed it at the time, but Taung Boy's skull bore the telltale marks of violent trauma: punctured holes at the base of his eye sockets, a depressed fracture at the top of his skull, and scratches on his sides.
when humans were prey

More Interesting Facts About,

when humans were prey...

Over time, these would prove to be the hallmarks of a predator no one suspected. But this child's skull is just one example of evidence that, not long ago, our early human ancestors were under constant threat of attack by predators. And it turns out that this difficult chapter in our history may be responsible for the adaptations that allowed us to be so successful. We may be who we are today, because of the time we were

prey

. The idea that our ancestors were once hunted by other animals would have been a surprise to the anthropologist who first studied the Taung Child.
when humans were prey
His name was Raymond Dart and he proposed that one of the driving forces of human evolution was what he called “bloodlust.” For Dart and many anthropologists of his time, the impulse to kill

prey

was seen as a deeply ingrained part of our heritage. Dart observed baboons that appeared to hunt prey “spontaneously” and observed that living hunter-gatherers appeared to be hunters first and then gatherers. Dart then argued that Australopithecines were voracious carnivores, as more and more fossils emerged that seemed to support his model. One such fossil was unearthed in a South African cave in 1949: the bone cap of a juvenile hominid with two very suspicious puncture marks.
when humans were prey
This partial skull belonged to a young member of Paranthropus robustus dating to between 1.8 and 1.5 million years ago. It was found alongside other fossil mammals, such as antelopes and baboons, many of which were also damaged or only their skulls preserved. The boy's skull was labeled SK 54 and he had suffered two punctures to the back of his head. And the bone on the inside of the lid, where those punctures were, flaked upward, indicating that the victim was probably alive, or recently dead,

when

she was attacked. At the time, a science writer named Robert Ardrey took this fossil as evidence of interpersonal violence: SK 54, he said, was the victim of two blows to the back of the head with a pointed object by another hominid.
Soon, the idea began to take hold that our evolution was deeply shaped by violence, even among

humans

. Ardrey gave this idea the rather sensational name "The Killer Ape Theory." Dart described it as “the predatory transition from ape to man.” And this vision seemed to get another big boost thanks to a discovery made in a South African cave called Makapansgat. The cave was found to be filled with bones of Australopithecus africanus and many other mammals, most of which, as at the Taung site, were broken. Raymond Dart studied more than 7,000 remains from this site and was surprised by the fact that the fossils consisted almost entirely of skulls and neck vertebrae.
So he concluded that the fractures in these bones were evidence of blows by hunters and that the high proportion of skulls meant that hominids took the heads of their prey as trophies, including the heads of their own species. But within the field of anthropology, changes were afoot. Just as the killer ape theory was reaching its peak of popularity, more scientists began to suspect that we had actually spent most of our evolutionary history being preyed upon by other, better hunters. Here comes the American anthropologist Sherwood Washburn. While researching in a game reserve in Africa, he noticed how modern predators selectively ate carcasses: eating the soft, fleshy parts and leaving behind skulls, jaws, and upper vertebrae.
It occurred to him that this was the same pattern of bones that Dart saw at the sites of supposed hominid "head hunters." Washburn also observed hyenas taking carcass parts and hiding the bones around their dens, again creating a pattern like the one Dart was seeing in the caves of South Africa. Washburn published his observations in 1957 and argued that australopithecines were not headhunters, but rather prey to carnivores such as hyenas. This was a major turning point in our understanding of our evolutionary history. For decades, Dart and his contemporaries had been studying human nature in the violent social context of World Wars I and II, so it made sense that they understood that our history was shaped by aggression.
But while sticking to that model, younger anthropologists began to explore Washburn's ideas. And his work had such an impact that

when

another damaged hominid fossil was found, this time in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1960, other hominids were not considered prime suspects. In this case, the fossil was OH8, a partially shattered left foot of Homo habilis, discovered by anthropologist Louis Leakey. The ankle bone had teeth marks, and Leakey's wife and partner, Mary Leakey, concluded that the marks came from a carnivore that was probably not a hyena, but also not another hominid. So by the mid-1960s, anthropologists were at least beginning to think that hominids might have been prey.
Then, in 1970, paleontologist C.K. Brain revisited the cave site where SK54, that cap with puncture wounds, had been found. He wanted to try to figure out why all those fossils had accumulated where they were. And he realized that the fossils were not signs that hominids were hunting, much less fighting each other. Instead, he argued, those fossils had fallen victim to a hungry ancient leopard. For one thing, he noted, modern leopards often hide their prey in the trees that grow around these types of caves. And bones often end up falling into caves. But the most compelling evidence was that the puncture wounds on SK54 perfectly matched the lower canine teeth of a leopard.
Which means that some big cat must have attacked Sk 54 and dragged him by the head into a tree, and his bones then fell into the cave. So, as with Washburn, Brain's observations about the behavior of living carnivores were instrumental in rethinking whether our hominid ancestors were the hunters or the hunted. The big cats and hyenas turned out to be very good at creating precisely the types of bone assemblages that Dart had seen in those South African caves. And once anthropologists started thinking about how bones are deposited and preserved in different environments, it seemed less likely that small hominids like australopithecines were powerful, bloodthirsty killers.
And this new thinking eventually made its way to that crucial early hominid fossil: the Taung Child. In 1995, researchers looked again at fossils from that site and noticed a whole new set of clues. For example, they noted that the nature of the damage on Taung's skull was similar to that found on baboon skulls found there. And it caught their attention that the other bones were generally from small animals. And remains of large eggshells were also found in the area. The team then proposed that the Taung Boy, along with the other animals found with him, were actually victims of a large bird.
They found even more compelling evidence in 2006, when they compared the Taung boy's skull to that of modern monkeys that had been preyed upon by eagles. The cuts and punctures at the base of their eye sockets matched the damage done to those monkey skulls. So the Taung Child was probably killed by an ancient giant bird of prey. Also, remember OH8, the Homo habilis foot found by the Leakeys? Well, in 2012, researchers also took a second look at that fossil and noticed something new. The puncture wounds in the bone had two additional grooves that matched the ridges found on crocodile teeth.
Crocodiles are ambush predators, and such attacks leave characteristic marks and damage patterns on the bones of their prey, which, again, match the damage done to Homo habilis. We've come a long way since Raymond Dart's ideas about bloodthirsty hominids. Today it seems that our evolution was determined less by our need to kill than by our need not to be killed. After all, Africa during the Pliocene and Pleistocene was a dangerous place for our ancestors and fossil relatives. And with selective pressure comes adaptation and evolution. So the evolutionary legacy of that time in which we were prey is enshrined in our bodies today.
Becoming larger than our ancestors, for example, has helped protect us from birds and smaller mammalian predators. And some experts argue that becoming bipedal allowed us to better scan the horizon for threats, move quickly while carrying food or babies, and generally appear larger. Plus, with our hands free, we could also throw things at potential predators, something chimpanzees still do today, although not as well as we do. Some experts also point out that speech has given us the ability to plan, rather than simply react. Living primates have alarm calls that are specific to certain predators, but speech allows us to know in advance what to do when we hear one of those calls.
But it's worth noting: Taung Child, SK54, and OH8 were all bipedal hominids, and they still got eaten. So other researchers have suggested that perhaps our evolutionary legacy from that dangerous time is simply our ability to cooperate. Hominids would have needed to live in groups and also work together to protect themselves from threats. And studies have shown that our brains still activate in specific ways when we do things like play cooperative games, which activates our reward centers when we work together. In contrast, studies with chimpanzees have shown that they do not help others, even when doing so is costless.
But even if all of these adaptations evolved from the need to defend ourselves from predators, they obviously didn't always work. Polish researchers recently discovered the finger bones of a Neanderthal child who lived just 115,000 years ago. And those bones were covered with dozens of small, distinctive holes that could only have occurred when passing through the digestive tract of a large bird. So, as recently as the Late Pleistocene, our ancestors were still preyed on by birds, or perhaps scavenged, just like the Taung Child. But being able to recognize the signs of predation in our past has marked an important shift in the way we think about ourselves, one that has allowed us to better understand the selective pressures that helped make us who we are today.
Thanks as always, family, and many thanks to our current eontologists, Jake Hart, Jon Ivy, John Davison Ng, and everyone's favorite hominid, STEVE. Do you want to join them and maybe I'll mispronounce your name and make fun of you? Then visit patreon.com/eons and donate! Now, what do you want to learn about? Leave a comment for your friend and don't forget to go to youtube.com/eons and subscribe.

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