Hunting Humans

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Sociology/Anthropology 2260By Distance Education

War and Aggression

Course Manual23rd Edition



Copyright ©Dr. Vincent Walsh, 2011, 2010, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996,1995, 1994, 1993









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Part I and II













of the fierce killer ape, rather than murderers of a rather shy, retiring, peaceful,

and likeable animal of great intelligence, who also happened to be one of our

closest living relatives.

To add a little spice and raunch, the killer apes of fiction were often pictured

carrying off voluptuous women, scantily clad, presumably to have their "way"

with them. Enough to keep pages turning and eyes glued to the screen.

Dart

The figure of Raymond A. Dart (1893–1988) looms large, not only in the

"killer ape" theory of human ancestry, but in the field of peleoanthropology.

Dart, who was an anatomist, found the skull of a hominid in South Africa,

which he named australopithecine, in 1924. He was convinced that his find was(on the basis of anatomical structure such as teeth) the fossil of one of the

ancestral species of human beings. He had to endure years of scoffing by

European scientists who joked about him digging up bones of deformed

chimpanzees. But he stuck to his guns and lived to a ripe old age, and saw most

of his work and his ideas vindicated. His fossil finds of hominids were proved

valid, and the theory that man originated in Africa is now considered

unshakable. Previous to Dart, anthropologists had believed, for no apparent

good reason, that man had originated in Asia.

In 1966 Dart published Man's Evolution. One of the main ideas was that our

early hominid ancestors were carnivorous, homicidal, and cannibalistic. Dart'swork in comparative anatomy was brilliant, but much of his work in the

interpretation of other fossil evidence related to his early man discoveries, is

now regarded as faulty. Australopithecus and homohabilis were scavengers.

They had neither the physical or technological skills to hunt.

Soon others were actively hunting for African hominid fossils, and when a

sufficient number had been collected, it became apparent that the ancestors of

humans were not apes at all. This idea was developed by Finnish paleontologist

Bjorn Jurten in his book, Not From Apes: A History of Man's Origin and

Evolution (1972). Jurten points out that human ancestors and ape ancestors

parted company long before humans were humans or apes were apes.

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Hunting Humans