I don’t know how these guys do it, but my guess is the San have skills that we’ve just turned over to driving cars and running computers.
Or maybe we’ve lost this knowledge entirely.
The persistence hunt is supposedly the oldest form of hunting. This is how our ancestors got most of their food. Granted, mine probably weren’t chasing Kudu in Northern Europe, but they were hunting red deer, caribou/reindeer, aurochsen, wisent, horses, and marine mammals.
While impressive, I’m not sure that this is really the “most primitive method of hunting”. First, Chimps hunt but they don’t do it by persistence hunting – they more or less encircle and take out monkeys and other animals that they hunt. “Ardi” indicates that Homo originated in forest or forest/savannah mixed environments and again, probably did not do persistence hunting of 8+ hours chasing down an animal but used an ambush/chase or surround and kill method. The bushman doing the persistence hunt is in desert –an area the bushmen have been pushed INTO from their original homelands. One would expect that their hunting techniques have changed from when they were in more forested or even jungle environments. Shoes and a water container (a truly ancient container would be more fragile or more unwieldy or both) also make this a bit more questionable. The evidence of Neanderthals isn’t a persistence chase – but a stalk/short chase. Since Homo was hunting earlier than the Sapiens/Neanderthal split, – a stalk/chase using first spears then (in Sapiens but apparently NOT Neanderthals) spear-throwers is more likely a more primitive method. Persistence hunting clearly works, but it is less effective than the wolf or African hunting dog “relay” method of running down an animal – after more than 8 hours, how much energy was expended vice the gain of the meat? Was this set up to show the most extreme type of hunting rather than the “usual” — my understanding of bushmen hunts is that they try to sneak up (same method the Amerindians used), WOUND the animal and then run it down if needed. There’s been some strong suggestion that like Amazon hunters, the bushmen may employ poisons in their hunts.
This form of hunting dates to 2 million years ago and predates the use of slings and other projectile weapons.
Here’s another form of hunting (not for Vegans to watch):
I’m not so sure this is the most primitive form of hunting either. Surprise ambush/short rush and various impoundments/traps/chasing over cliffs is a very effective method for killing very large animals (sometimes in large numbers).
This is fascinating, and undeniably incredibly skillful, but not remotely efficient. I can’t see it being a viable technique in richer environments where homonids could surround or otherwise outmanoeuvre prey.
Withouth weapons, all people could do is run them off cliffs or wear them out.
This is how lynx hunt deer. They make them run and run, and then kill them when they wear out. A person wouldn’t have to chase them long distance. It would merely have to keep the animal moving.
I don’t have anything to back up the assertion but I’m not certain that early homonids would have hunted “without weapons”. Without sophisticated technology, certainly, but they would likely have used stones to throw and sticks as clubs since this behavior has been documented in Common chimpanzees. Low tech as that is it works if you surround something with multiple people, all waving weapons. That way you can also exhaust a prey animal, just by running it in endless small circles between the spread out group of people, and eventually batter it down. That’s actually the traditional way some native peoples where I am used to hunt deer. They’d uproot brush and pile it up to create a funnel/corral, and then chase the deer into it. Once they were impounded they’d hammer at them with clubs. It’s particularly effective when deer yard together in large numbers in winter.
The Beothuck used to hunt caribou in Newfoundland using fences.
In Australia, the indigenous people used to burn large sections of the countryside to 1. promote new growth and 2. drive creatures out.
Clubs are not spears or slings. You have to be right on the animal before you can use it. I’d rather have it worn out until it doesn’t have much energy to fight.
I’ve also seen mustelids doing this behavior when hunting rabbits. They simply keep the pressure on the rabbit until it becomes exhausted.
And you’re also forgetting something else– only one person is needed to do this type of hunting. The others can feed off of his labor, and if he kills something big, he can feed the whole clan. It’s awfully efficient.
One person can do it, yes, but what about keeping the kill and transporting it back to the others? Even if the rest of the clan are following at a slower pace they’d have to get there quickly in an African savanna environment, otherwise other predators would run the single human off and take the kill. A human can keep lions or hyenas off their person just by throwing rocks/acting threatening, but that wouldn’t dissuade them in the face of a kill to scavenge!
Consequently the prey item would either have to be small enough that the human could carry it back to the others, or others would have to be close enough quick enough to parcel out the kill and secure it before the scavengers could move in, or numerous enough to dissuade them. This isn’t as big of a deal with the desert environment shown — large predators are widely spaced. But if you’re talking a savanna like the Serengeti there are a variety of predators/scavengers resent in relatively large numbers. Even the birds would pose a challenge. (I saw black kites rip sandwiches out of tourist’s hands in Ngorongoro, and storks and vultures have been known to chase off picnickers and take their food.)
You bring them to the kill.
Still not fast enough depending on the environment. They’d have to be there in something less than a half hour to make a difference if you’re talking about a rich environment with high predator densities. That means the other humans would either have to be following closely, or participating collectively, and runs counter to the solitary hunting method shown in the video.
Of course I’m talking hypothetically, but even where I am (northern North America) you can’t leave a deer kill for more than half an hour in the fall, or you’d come back to find it gone. Or possibly interrupt a bear scavenging it.
I still think that it’s about the only way we could have hunted before the advent of projectile weapons, and it explains too much of our anatomy– the fact that we sweat so much and that we’re nearly hairless. We are very efficient at getting rid of heat, which causes us a lot of trouble outside of the tropics. I’ve noticed that my dog has a very different concept of temperature than I do. Part of it is because she has a higher body temperature, and the other part of it is that her body is designed to retain heat.
My experience with black bears is that they are very frightened of people, and they aren’t hard to drive off.
However, other predators may have scavenged human kills, but because a large number of people showed up, they were easily driven off. I think that in the end we were probably better scavengers than hunters.
We have grizzly here. They’re not easy to drive off (they’ll often turn around and come back), and one killed a hunter and took his elk just last year.
I agree completely about the whole “humans are better scavengers”. I suspect those evolutionary traits (sweating, being able to walk or run long distances) are more of an adaptation for how our hominid ancestors lived, versus just hunting. Even in a rich, diverse landscape you have to travel long distances to take advantage of whatever is ripening at a given time. While you travel you run down small things to eat (reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds, rodents, etc.). It’s also useful to be able to run away from large predators, and to outlast them over distance.
I’m definitely going to follow up on the information you’ve provided here, since the whole topic is fascinating. Thanks again.
I also found this article that might be of interest: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/krigbaum/proseminar/Bramble_Leib_2004_nature.pdf
I also read this book a few years ago: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/krigbaum/proseminar/Bramble_Leib_2004_nature.pdf
I’m a terrible runner. I’d do far better doing the neanderthal hunting technique!
These are very interesting. Thanks for sharing them! I haven’t had the chance to do more than skim them yet, but it’s certainly valuable food for thought.
For my part I can run fairly well over distance (though I’m too slow to make a good sprinter), but depending on the terrain chasing things over cliffs or surrounding them with large numbers just seems to be simpler for catching more and bigger food (to feed more people for longer). Then again, these are the techniques used by indigenous people in the area I’m in, so I might be suffering from an unintentional cultural bias. I may change my mind once I have time to really sit and dig through what you’ve linked.
If you’re also interested, Grover Krantz, the noted anthropologist, who would have been even more respected but for his obsession with bigfoot, thought that sasquatches hunted using this the persistence hunting method.
Sasquatch? Seriously? I have to tell several people every year not to worry about Bigfoot, and to just leave Bigfoot alone. (They’re typically misidentifying an American black bear. “But it was standing on two legs!”… I better stop or I’ll recite the whole thing from memory.)
By the way, I don’t know if this is your end of it, or mine, but I’m not getting mailed comment notifications even though I’ve subscribed to them. I get the “sign up” notifications, but not the actual comments.
Of course they are.
However, Grover Krantz was more than a one trick pony, and a lot of his physical anthropology is very interesting.
It’s a shame he wasted his career on a fantasy animal.
Check your spam folder.
The spam folder is empty. Either your system’s not sending, or mine’s not receiving. Weird.
Grover Krantz discussing persistence hunting in humans:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2740396 (lower third of the second column).
This is actually pretty interesting anthropology. Why he wasted so much time on Harry and the Hendersons is beyond me.
More:
http://books.google.com/books?id=mKHRUUQbt34C&lpg=PA195&ots=jXcM8flbM1&dq=grover%20krantz%20persistence%20hunting&pg=PA195#v=onepage&q=grover%20krantz%20persistence%20hunting&f=false
Wolpoff has an interesting contribution. That man simply walked the prey to death. Man is a far more efficient walker than he is a runner.
I should also mention that Sir David Attenborough studied anthropology at the London School of Economics in the mid 40’s.
I’m not sure I understand the discussion completely but my perspective is that humans like all predators, are opportunists they will hunt in whatever method is most convenient at the time (and technology available). Is it possible to state which method of hunting is the oldest? The easiest method of hunting where game is common is probably to use the method where you will expend the least amount of energy, ambush style. In areas where game is scarce persistence is neccessary, if this man was to give up he would just have to start over again so he is forced to endure. The chances of his ambushing prey in that environment are slim to none. Also humans are not adapted to desert environments as is evidenced by the comlete loss of fluids, in a very short time this man will die unless he finds a souce of water; our cultural adaptations (canteen) have hidden the fact that we are not really suited to that environment, and since it is the environment which neccessitates this hunting method we are not really adapted to such a style. I think that hunting in this style is converse to our effective anatomy. Rather it supports our living like you stated within the tropics (we expend head easily), but also close to water, and if there is water there is game. If game is plentiful persistence isnt such an efficient tactic.