Meat-Eating and Human Evolution (Human Evolution Series)

✍ Scribed by Craig B. Stanford, Henry T. Bunn

• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 383
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

0195131398......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Contributors......Page 12
Introduction......Page 16
I. Meat-Eating and the Fossil Record......Page 24
1 Deconstructing the Serengeti......Page 26
2 Taphonomy of the Swartkrans Hominid Postcrania and Its Bearing on Issues of Meat-Eating and Fire Management......Page 46
3 Neandertal Hunting and Meat-Processing in the Near East: Evidence from Kebara Cave (Israel)......Page 65
4 Modeling the Edible Landscape......Page 86
II. Living Nonhuman Analogs for Meat-Eating......Page 112
5 The Dog-Eat-Dog World of Carnivores: A Review of Past and Present Carnivore Community Dynamics......Page 114
6 A Comparison of Social Meat-Foraging by Chimpanzees and Human Foragers......Page 135
7 Meat and the Early Human Diet: Insights from Neotropical Primate Studies......Page 154
8 The Other Faunivory: Primate Insectivory and Early Human Diet......Page 173
9 Meat-Eating by the Fourth African Ape......Page 192
III. Modern Human Foragers......Page 210
10 Hunting, Power Scavenging, and Butchering by Hadza Foragers and by Plio-Pleistocene Homo......Page 212
11 Is Meat the Hunter's Property?: Big Game, Ownership, and Explanations of Hunting and Sharing......Page 232
12 Specialized Meat-Eating in the Holocene: An Archaeological Case from the Frigid Tropics of High-Altitude Peru......Page 250
13 Mutualistic Hunting......Page 274
14 Intragroup Resource Transfers: Comparative Evidence, Models, and Implications for Human Evolution......Page 292
IV. Theoretical Considerations......Page 316
15 The Evolutionary Consequences of Increased Carnivory in Hominids......Page 318
16 Neonate Body Size and Hominid Carnivory......Page 345
Conclusions: Research Trajectories on Hominid Meat-Eating......Page 363
B......Page 374
C......Page 375
F......Page 376
H......Page 377
I......Page 378
M......Page 379
P......Page 380
S......Page 381
T......Page 382
Y......Page 383