Persistence
Hunting
Some years
ago, the BBC Life of Mammals episode 10 demonstrated an African hunting
method that our ancestor used that 3 hunters selecting a heavy deer
and chasing, tracking the deer for a few hours to drive the deer to
exhaustion, because human could sweat and carry enough water in a
sunburn day. A few month ago I shared it with my friend and he did
not believe it, his argument was the deer speed was about 35-40 mile
per hour, best human marathon runners run at 25 mile per hour, so the
targeted deer could run a few minutes and rest, when the men
reappeared, the deer had already rested and would continue the run. I
browsed on the Internet there was a documentary on a test program
with 5/6 world best marathon runners trying to chase a gazelle or a
small deer in Mexico a few years ago, but they never got close to the
target for a couple days. So I was kind skeptical about this
tradition too.
Today, on the soccer pitch my friend Paddy and I chatted about this great program again,
and back home on the train I suddenly had eureka moment, solved the
inconsistency.
First,
the trial run in Mexico it’s new ground for the Marathon runners, and
athletes were not our ancestors, hunters, they had no hunting
experience and familiar landscape knowledge about the ground. It
wasn’t well planned. Second,
the BBC program shows only 3 runners each with a spear, a leather
water bag, and some food. So basically luck played a major factor.
The deer must run to a direction where there’s no woods and no
water hole. The hunting environment must be hot day and dry land. It
takes a pack of wild dogs run at 45mphr to chase a 50mphr wildebeest
for 20 minutes to exhaustion, so basically in 20 some minutes they all
run nearly a whole length of marathon(26 miles), and men’s perfect condition
in ancient time probably 20mphr for 10 minutes barefoot. So our
ancestors must combine the persistence hunt with other methods like
herding, trapping to increase the chance of hunting success.
The
ancient hunters grew up in their hunting land, they knew all the
turns and rocks, the river crossing, the waterholes, the woods. They
might have to fell some trees to make blockade if they had to. So the
tribal chief, the old hunters past on their knowledge about the
migrating herds, so the young runners probably age 20-30 that’s prime
for speed, fitness, strength to throw a spear for potent hit, and
experience to know where to trap ambush the targeted prey were
totally bread winners and bloodline of the tribe. They might divide
in groups of two or even more, a large group aging experienced
hunters and top form young runners who team up to select and drive
the targeted prey to the direction they want, by using tactic of
layered formation with shouting or even burning smokes, zeroing in like how 4 midfielders and 4 defenders to pin down a fast skillful dribbler dribbling his ball, so the prey away from the
water source and the woods, and another small group of hunters
probably already wait at bottle neck or choke point with their
sharpest spears for their best shots. And the size of tribe must
produce minimum 10 top form running hunters in every 10 years, and a
baby girl or a boy probability is 50% so 20(boy and girl) within 10
years times 5 generation (age 20-40 for procreation) that roughly
makes size of a tribal population 40-60 couples, considering minors' fatality or death by accidents and malnutrition, and the hunters must
hunt 3 times a week together, so they could recover from running or
injury, a deer could be divided portion of 50 for families, so a
refrigerator was no use for them.
Hunting is team event, requires signals to co-work, languages to communicate and inform, planning and studying of animal prey, learning about weather condition and seasons, using advantage of landscape or even doing a minor change that’s how the herding and animal farming developed later, training kids and fashion good spears and bows, and the last, forming complex social structure, who be the alpha male to lead the hunt, who takes more share, and what's fair… that’s how men’s brain and culture develop.
Hunting is team event, requires signals to co-work, languages to communicate and inform, planning and studying of animal prey, learning about weather condition and seasons, using advantage of landscape or even doing a minor change that’s how the herding and animal farming developed later, training kids and fashion good spears and bows, and the last, forming complex social structure, who be the alpha male to lead the hunt, who takes more share, and what's fair… that’s how men’s brain and culture develop.
As
that BBC programs show only men can master hunt strategies like how
wolf pack hunt, four wolves run down a rabbit, prime of lions in two teams to take down a zebra, a
troop of chimpanzees ambush and drive the treetop monkeys into their pocket, but too bad our huge
brain has not realized we are hunting and uprooting everything,
moving animal and non-moving trees, we are the super hunter, the big league predator, the primal opportunists have already turned into opportunity creators, no
distance is too far range for us to reach, and our device is too wide scope coverage that
we ourselves are all trapped in it. Catch You!
