LECTURES IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE? 



hominids hunted in groups. And, like the carnivorous, band- 

 hunting gray wolves— aside from man, the most sociable of the 

 beasts of prey (Murie, 1944)— it is likely these hunting bands 

 employed signals to coordinate their hunt. (I will return to 

 this matter of "wolf calls" a little later.) 



Here, of course, I am speculating. Modern wolves are not 

 Pleistocene australopithecines. We will never have a motion 

 picture of australopithecine hunting methods. We do have 

 motion pictures showing the coordinated activity of two baboons 

 pursuing and killing a young antelope. And we do have motion 

 pictures showing the coordinated activity of two or more mem- 

 bers of primitive human hunters engaged in similar activity. 

 It is certain that the early hominids killed large animals for 

 food. Also it is clear that carnivores that take large animals 

 get a large supply of calories at each kill. This concentrated 

 food is more easily transported to a central, continually used 

 shelter or campsite than is low-calorie and bulky plant food, 

 especially before extra-somatic containers were available. 



We know Australopithecus and Pithecanthropus made tools; 

 we know they killed animals for food. We infer the members 

 of the latter genus, and perhaps the former, must have been tool 

 carriers as well as tool users. Food-getting behavior is the clue 

 to their carrying of tools. As I suggested earlier, tool carrying 

 implies a type of cognitive behavior not required in the occa- 

 sional use of natural "tools" (White, 1942; Bartholomew and 

 Birdsell, 1953). It implies behavior with insight and purpose. 

 It implies a mental event which occurs prior to the starting on 

 the hunt, a mental association of the tool with an activity (the 

 getting of food by killing an animal) which is to occur in the 

 future. This type of minding has not been observed in captive 

 monkeys nor chimpanzees. The archaeological record demon- 

 strates it was a consistent part of hominid behavior by Middle 

 Pleistocene times. 



The availability of compact animal protein high in calories 

 is a good basis for food sharing. Of non-human living mam- 

 mals, it is only the carnivores that share gathered food (in the 

 sense that a dominant animal supplies food for a subordinate 

 animal). Human children, long after weaning, are dependent 

 on food supplied by an older male or female. It is unlikely 



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