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| Meat-Eating and Human Evolution (Human Evolution Series) | 
| Creators: Craig B. Stanford, Henry T. Bunn
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $110.00
Buy New: $77.60
You Save: $32.40 (29%)
New (16) from $77.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 839706
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1
ISBN: 0195131398
Dewey Decimal Number: 599.938
EAN: 9780195131390
ASIN: 0195131398
Publication Date: June 14, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
When, why, and how early humans began to eat meat are three of the most fundamental unresolved questions in the study of human origins. Before 2.5 million years ago the presence and importance of meat in the hominid diet is unknown. After stone tools appear in the fossil record it seems clear that meat was eaten in increasing quantities, but whether it was obtained through hunting or scavenging remains a topic of intense debate. This book takes a novel and strongly interdisciplinary approach to the role of meat in the early hominid diet, inviting well-known researchers who study the human fossil record, modern hunter-gatherers, and nonhuman primates to contribute chapters to a volume that integrates these three perspectives. Stanford's research has been on the ecology of hunting by wild chimpanzees. Bunn is an archaeologist who has worked on both the fossil record and modern foraging people. This will be a reconsideration of the role of hunting, scavenging, and the uses of meat in light of recent data and modern evolutionary theory. There is currently no other book, nor has there ever been, that occupies the niche this book will create for itself.
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| Customer Reviews:
"Love said, come taste my meate..." February 6, 2003
12 out of 16 found this review helpful
"Love said, come taste my meate,
So I did sit and eate." John Donne's verse has endeared itself to countless undergraduates, not least through suspicion of a triple-entendre (at the very least). Be that as it may, the book under review is about ordinary eating of ordinary meat, specifically wild mammal meat. It supports the traditional consensus view that humans evolved from a mostly-vegetarian ape-like ancestor with a small brain, with the evolution of sociability, intelligence, and cooperation being due in large part to the exigencies of meat-eating. Meat is good food for the growing brain, among other things, but hunting--in an animal lacking fangs and claws--tends to require a great deal of cooperation. (In fact, even such fanged creatures as lions and wolves depend on exquisite cooperation within complex social systems.) Humans evolved in Africa, which seems less well endowed with easily exploited vegetable foods than some other continents, forcing more dependence on hunting and scavenging. The present book summarizes the enormous recent advances in our understanding of human evolution. A combination of archaeology, nutrition studies, and comparative studies of other primates have provided new proofs for the old model. It looks as if humans progressed (if that is the word) from near-vegetarians two million years ago to people who, at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, were eating anywhere from 10% to nearly 100% animal foods--average perhaps 20%. Neither the view of humans as natural vegetarians nor the view of humans as savage "killer apes" can be supported.
The book suffers from two flaws: first, over-reliance on a very few contemporary hunter-gatherer groups--especially the Hadza, who hunt with bows and metal-tipped poisoned arrows. These are a far cry from the crude stone tools of early hominids. Second, the authors seem a bit unclear on whether human advance was due more to meat as a food, or hunting as an activity, or omnivorous foraging (with hunting as only one part). I vote for the last alternative. We have evidence enough to make it reasonably clear that human skills in finding and processing vegetable food went right along with improvements in hunting. By widening their ethnographic net, the authors would have had to deal with hunter-gatherers who relied overwhelmingly on vegetable foods, often cooperatively produced, harvested, and/or processed. The Australian aboriginals and the Native Americans of what is now the western US come to mind.
The serious student of human foodways should definitely read this book! And the less serious meat-lover can revel in shoving it under the noses of those vegetarians who insist that theirs is the "natural" way.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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