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The Evolution of Human Hunting pp 11–45Cite as

Reconstructing How Early People Exploited Animals: Problems and Prospects

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Abstract

If we can judge by the behavior of our closest living relatives among the apes, our remotest ancestors, who evolved in Africa more than four million years ago, probably ate little or no meat. In contrast, meat was a significant dietary staple in most historic hunter-gatherer societies. It has generally been assumed that meat-eating became progressively more important as people evolved, but it is also possible that the shift occurred in relatively short bursts coinciding with major evolutionary events, such as the emergence of modern humans sometime between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago. It is also possible that there was a stage, perhaps a very long one, in which meat was acquired mainly by scavenging, or alternatively that hunting was important even early on, perhaps becoming more important and more successful as time passed.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Richard G. Klein

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  1. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Matthew H. Nitecki  & Doris V. Nitecki  & 

  2. Department of Geology, Field Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60605, USA

    Matthew H. Nitecki

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Klein, R.G. (1987). Reconstructing How Early People Exploited Animals: Problems and Prospects. In: Nitecki, M.H., Nitecki, D.V. (eds) The Evolution of Human Hunting. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8833-3_2

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