Ancestors of Homo Sapiens Hunted by Birds 286
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."
Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Why are proto-humans always filthy? Most every animal on the planet washes his arse, but not proto-Human. He can make tools but not wash his ass. They hunt in groups, but jump around and make more noise than a herd of elephants. We do we paint pre humans this way?
Those must have been BIG birds.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Those must have been BIG birds.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly so, if it was big enough to carry the kid off -- we're talking about a 2-4 year old toddler -- it would have to be a LOTR-size eagle. Maybe Gandalf called in an airstrike?
I think either an attack with damage inflicted at the site of attack, or an eagle who had later access to a carcass killed by another predator and carried off only the head would be more likely hypotheses.
An earlier poster suggested that carrion birds might have been responsible, and I think that is a good idea as well.
--John (My post is at my anthropology weblog, http://johnhawks.net/weblog [johnhawks.net])Happened Then...Happens Now (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Overlords (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is belived that Haast's eagle [bbc.co.uk] preyed on early New Zealanders.
"Most every animal on the planet washes his arse, but not proto-Human"
If you got close to a wild animal you would find it "filthy" and riddled with parasites, I have never seen one "wash it's arse" unless you count licking. If that is what you have to do to "wash" I would rather have a dirty arse.
"They hunt in groups, but jump around and make more noise than a herd of elephants."
They are the "beaters" that are jumping around, the purpose is to drive prey toward an ambush. It is a simple and very effective way to hunt in groups, wild chimps have been filmed hunting monkeys in a similar fashion.
"[Why] do we paint pre humans this way?"
Because it is the way they lived, many people don't have a clue of what it takes to live like a caveman. These people simply conclude the strange actions of "filthy" cavemen are "stupid" (or there is a conspiracy to portray them as filthy and stupid).
Re:Happened Then...Happens Now (Score:1, Insightful)
Correcting some misconceptions (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Birds of Prey or Carrion Birds? (Score:3, Insightful)
The obvious way to ensure that eagles don't benefit from a dead human lying around is to eat it first.
"It" being either the eagles or the body.
Re:Happened Then...Happens Now (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to discount your point, but:
1) You versus a wolf might win, but you wouldn't look too pretty.
2) Wolves are pack hunters.
Re:Happened Then...Happens Now (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, surprisingly weak, in fact. A gorilla or chimpansee is a *lot* stronger, when compared to body size.
I can't really see a wolf attaking and killing, alone, a grown human male.
Well, that's because wolfs don't attack alone. Like us, they hunt in packs. But if you were to be attacked by a lone wolf sometime, I'd put my money on the wolf, unless you were armed or Conan the Barbarian.
So in most climates we'd be at the top of the food chain, or close.
I agree. And that's most likely because we are intelligent revengeful flock animals. Mess with a human, and you get killed by other humans. And if your species mess with humans repeatedly, you get extinct! But I think the GP was trying to give an explanation for how we achieved that position, not trying to describe the status quo.
Man is man greatest enemy they say? It's true. Wars, competition for resources, competition for a mate, all lead to winners and loosers. If animals were our greatest problem, we'd all have fangs ;)
But this is all about history or prehistory. The GP was talking about natural history, which is a bit before that...
Some theories on human burial rituals (Score:5, Insightful)
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.