Thomas Bridgeland wrote:

> On Monday, Feb 7, 2005, at 20:58 Asia/Tokyo, William wrote:
>
>>>
>>> It was not possible for early humans to consume a large amount of meat
>>> until fire was controlled
>>> and cooking was possible.
>>
>> snip
>
>
> Wow, somehow those genius chimps manage to catch and eat meat, and they
> with blunter, thicker teeth than early humans. Hmmm. How do they manage
> it?


I think the key is "large amount."  Modern chimps' consumption of meat
is only about 4% of their diet, so it's fair to say that they only
consume a small amount of meat.  Now it's interesting that Sussman and
Hart chose to base their research on Australopithecus afarensis.  This
species, indeed, was more ape than human, and probably had a more
ape-like diet.  You don't need fangs and claws to be a meat-eater if you
have tools.  "Sussman points out that the first tools didn't appear
until two million years ago."  Well, as far as I know the earliest and
most primitive stone tools are in fact associated with Australopithecus,
and it is accurate to say that they were an "edge species," living in
the boundary between the forest and the plains.  Sussman and Hart seem
to presuppose that a species could not have been both predator and prey,
but it seems to me that if you look at the whole continuum of hominid
species from Australopithecus to homo sapiens, what you see is more
predation and less being preyed upon, precisely as tool use and social
complexity increased.  There would have been a substantial period of
more scavenging than hunting too.  Australopithecus probably ate less
meat than any subsequent hominid species, because they represent the
beginning of the transition from ape to human.  But, according to the
article, Sussman and Hart emphasize the fossil record going back 7
million years.  Well, that is definitely not the period of "man the
hunter," or "hominid the hunter."  It's questionable whether any species
from that period even deserves to be called hominid.

There is no question that primates other than humans are *not* primarily
meat-eaters, and it is very likely that Australopithcus and the primates
that came before it were not primarily meat-eaters either.  But the
evolutionary pressure toward meat eating did not become intense until
hominids left the "edge" and became savanna dwellers once and for all.
That is the forge in which hominid to human adaptation took place, and
Sussman and Hart appear to ignore it.

Todd Moody
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