The Human Animal (1994–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - The Hunting Ape - full transcript
How did the human animal come to dominate all other life-forms
on the planet Earth?
What's the secret of our unparalleled success?
Could it have something to do with the way in which during the course of
our evolution,
we radically changed our social behaviour.
Becoming more cooperative
as we faced daunting new challenges.
In one important respect, we became unique among the primates. We became pack hunters.
Indeed hunting became a human obsession,
that went beyond mere feeding
to become a whole new way of life.
It was to transform us
and make us, not the lion,
the king of all the animals.
For millions of years,
our ancestors were hunter-gatherers.
Now all that has changed.
Now we gather everything.
We still eat meat, but we no longer
have to hunt it down.
Instead we encounter it
neatly cleaned and packaged
as we forage among the urban
branches of our supermarkets,
packing food from the shelves
Viewed as a pattern of human
feeding behaviour, a trip to the
supermarket is the remarkable
end point of a long journey
through evolutionary time.
A journey that started in a primeval forest,
and ended at a checkout counter.
To me, it's a story of an arboreal ape
which became a ground-dwelling predator,
which in turn became a credit card customer.
It was working at the zoo back in the 1960s that gave me
my unusual approach to the subject of human behaviour.
I'd started out my studies
looking at fish, then birds
then mammals and finally, chimpanzees.
It was as though, without planning it,
I was approaching the human animal
by climbing up its family tree.
This gave me a very different slant from people like
psychologists or psychoanalysts,
or anthropologists or sociologists.
During my position here,
I gave the human species an animal
name, the naked ape.
And I set about describing our behaviour in exactly the same
way as I'd used
when looking at all those other species
in my earlier research.
The more I studied chimpanzees,
the more I realised just how
intelligent they are.
But despite their intelligence,
wild chimpanzees have to spend
most of their time feeding.
This interminable food collecting is typical of animals
that depend largely on a vegetable diet.
Nutritionally inferior,
to meat, a great deal of vegetation has to be eaten
every day for survival. In the primeval forests,
this feeding process has been going on for millions of years
endlessly time-consuming and
monotonously repetitive.
And it's against this background
that our own story begins.
About 10 to 15 million years ago,
the early apes from which
we ourselves evolved must have looked rather like this.
In this series, we've reconstructed
and reanimated our earliest
forbears as a reminder that humans did not in fact descend from
chimpanzees, but from this common ancestor.
It probably had a similar lifestyle to modern chimps with fruits, berries
and nuts as its main source of food.
And like them, it will
occasionally have eaten a little animal food
as a valuable addition to its diet.
Although later this was to change,
its original herbivorous
lifestyle is one that's left
its mark upon us even today.
From our ancient primate ancestors
we've inherited a love of
ripe fruits, berries and nuts.
Food which they found in the treetops
and which we still consume
today in a hundred different forms.
One of the key qualities
of this kind of food is its sweet taste.
And this has left us for the decidedly sweet tooth.
In fact, we're so fond of sweet things, that we will search
for them everywhere.
Even at the risk of being stung
by angry bees. In some tribal cultures
the craving for honey is so strong that the tastes
of as many as ten different types are distinguished by the
expert honey seekers.
And it's no accident that the very first alcoholic drink
ever created by our species was mead.
Made, of course from honey.
Another continent, other insect.
This type of ant collects honey in its abdomen which becomes
massively swollen and distended, making it easy to catch.
For these native australians,
honey ants are a special delicacy,
collected and savoured like small ripe fruits.
Everywhere you look in the world you find evidence of this
human devotion to sweetness,
inherited from our primate ancestors.
And nowhere
is it stronger than among our children,
as a simple experiment will show.
Here, sweet foods are on the left,
non-sweet foods on the right.
When children are allowed to take anything
they want, they fall on the sweet foods and ignore the others.
And it's not only children who react like this.
It's worth asking why, if eating sweet things is so natural,
it should often be viewed as unhealthy.
The answer is that in nature,
nutritional value and palatability
go hand in hand.
Whereas in modern life,
any food can be made attractive.
Simply by artificially sweetening it.
It's intriguing that
whenever we feel like a small snack between meals,
we usually choose something sweet as though in these casual moments,
we're reverting to the primeval feeding behaviour
of the forest.
The fruit picking life in the treetops
must have been comfortable
and secure for our ancient ancestors.
But then something happened.
Perhaps there was a dramatic change in climate.
Perhaps the forest suddenly shrank.
We can't be sure. But whatever
it was, it set our ancestors off in a search for a new habitat.
They struck out into more open country away from the trees
and began to explore this new environment.
And as they did so, their diet began to change.
The fruit-eating
forest ape had to become a meat-eating plains ape.
So the evolving human animal was to acquire a split personality.
Part herbivore, and part carnivore.
When our ancient ancestors turned
to meat-eating, they faced
a daunting new challenge,
because now, they were in direct
competition with the well-established carnivores and with
his powerful bodies and strong jaws and teeth,
animals like this.
With our weaker jaws and smaller teeth,
we had to find an alternative solution.
We had to use brain instead of brawn.
With our efficient hands
we began to make weapons.
Wooden spears to kill our prey.
In our early days the simple act
of accurate throwing must have been one of
the most essential of all human skills.
Precise aiming became
nothing less than a matter of human survival.
And we soon found that we were
at our most efficient when we acted together
as a hunting pack.
Mutual aid on the hunt became another
essential feature of our emerging species.
Selfish, self feeding herbivore
had to become a helpful social carnivore.
Old primate competition had to be tempered by new
human cooperation.
In this way, we were able to turn our attention to bigger
and bigger prey,
making our hunts increasingly efficient
and giving us more and more spare time,
during which our early
technologies could develop and prosper.
Our problems didn't end when the prey
was finally caught and killed. The meat
was too tough for our small jaws.
Our answer was to attack it not
with our teeth but with sharp implements.
About 3 million years ago
we invented the flint knife
to slice the meat up into chewable pieces.
And then with the discovery of fire about a million
years ago,
we were at last able to enter the epoch of the human chef.
We were able to prepare our meals instead of just bolting
them down.
We could cook and tenderize and savour the flavor by eating
them hot, as if fresh from the kill.
The hyena may have stronger jaws,
but we had better techniques.
Sliced and cooked, our meat
became as easy to consume
as a fruit or a berry.
Instead of adapting our teeth to our food,
we adapted the food to our teeth.
The very idea of mealtimes is linked to a carnivorous lifestyle.
Herbivores go munching monotonously
hour after hour.
The carnivores don't go for bulk.
They go for quality.
They only need to eat occasionally,
and when they do, they binge
and they eat together.
We humans too like to settle down
to big meals together.
Our meal times are social events.
Significantly, on the rare occasions when our relatives the
chimpanzees kill an animal and eat its flesh, their social
behaviour changes. Instead of
feeding independently of one another,
as they do when eating fruit, they feast together
as a group and share out the spoils. Watching these scenes,
it's easy to imagine the way in which our ancient ancestors
began on their long road towards a carnivorous diet.
When carnivores kill a large prey,
there's enough for all.
this isn't altruistic.
It's simply that there's
so much to eat all at once.
And for us, food sharing has become fundamental
to our social way of life.
When we take small sweet snacks, we're happy to do
so alone at anytime, anywhere,
but when we feast on meat,
we tend to gather together at a set time
and at a set place.
We sit down as a social group like lions around a kill.
The feast becomes a friendly event,
binding us together as a group
as we fill our bellies.
Everywhere. you look around the world
you find the same kind of human
feeding patterns. The menu may vary,
but the events are remarkably similar.
So powerful is this carnivorous urge to share food,
that occasionally, when we do have to dine alone,
we feel strangely uncomfortable.
The solitary diner exudes
the body language of unease.
Eating sweets alone in public
is pleasant enough,
but eating a full meal alone in public is not.
Ancient habits die hard.
The social aspect of feeding is taken to an extreme at the
typical cocktail party.
Here, people drink when they're
not thirsty and eat when they're not hungry.
Significantly, most of the food objects
on offer are savoury or meaty rather than sweet.
The food may only be a token,
but it retains the carnivorous
character that's in keeping
with the sociability of the occasion.
Here the feeding behaviour itself has become perfunctory.
The social element of feasting has become so important that
the feast itself is reduced to a mere accessory.
When we evolved from fruit-picking primates
into meat-eating carnivores,
we gained the huge advantage of being able to
consume almost any living thing.
By varying our diet.
We could spread out into almost every habitat on earth.
The Maasai of East africa survive largely on a diet of blood
and milk, both taken from their carefully tended cattle.
When the cattle are bled and bled but not killed,
the blood is collected
in long gourd. Milk is then mixed
with the blood and stirred to
coagulate it, producing a thick sticky liquid.
Some of it clings to the stirring sticks
and is eaten almost
as a solid food.
This is a favourite treat
for the young children of the tribe.
The rest is poured into drinking vessels.
The product of this process
provides an extremely high protein diet
without any loss of livestock.
Biologically, this could be described
as a predator of cattle,
becoming parasitic on them.
A highly efficient solution to life
in this particular environment.
We may find the idea
of drinking blood in this way repulsive,
but the Maasai undoubtedly feel the same way about some of
our feeding habits.
Every culture has its own food preferences and food taboos,
developed over many years.
These caterpillars
are another valuable source of protein.
Weight for weight,
they contain more protein than a sirloin steak.
Even if they lack what one might call barbecue appeal.
For these South Africans,
they also provide important phosphates,
minerals and vitamins.
In fact, insects are
an ideal source of food, much favoured by
tribal peoples all over the world.
Our modern preference for
attacking insect pests with chemicals rather than with our teeth,
is highly irrational.
Some cultures prefer
to keep animals out of their diet altogether.
The Toda tribes people of Southern India used to
slaughter their domestic stock,
but now refuse to eat meat
on religious grounds.
Here, they're consuming a mixture of rice, cane sugar and
salt wrapped in edible leaves.
But closer scrutiny reveals
that they're also adding
buffalo milk and honey to the mixture.
Despite the poor nutritional value of their main staple food,
the regular addition of the milk and honey ensures that they
remain fit and strong.
A fact which they're proud to demonstrate
with feats of strength.
One of the strangest of all human feeding patterns is this.
Earth eating.
Some clays taken from special sources
are rich in essential minerals.
In certain parts of Ghana
they're collected and moulded into egg shapes.
This is the ultimate exploitation of the environment.
Devouring the earth on which we stand.
But these clays, when chemically analysed,
were revealed to contain calcium, magnesium, potassium,
copper, zinc and iron.
Remarkably similar to the mineral supplements
recommended in Western society.
The never ending quest for food variety sometimes leads to danger.
The Japanese delicacy called fugu, a kind of puffer fish,
although much prized by gourmets,
contains lethal toxins.
If its toxic parts are not removed during gutting, they cause
death within a few hours.
200 Fugu diners die each year!
Clearly the human animal is the world's greatest omnivore.
Ready somewhere to eat almost anything.
And for many people it's not just a matter of eating anything,
but eating everything.
To see this in action, one need look
no further than the table of a French family about to tuck
in to a celebratory dinner.
Here, variety of edible life-forms
is the essence of the cuisine.
To start with cephalopods,
in this case squid, then amphibians
in the form of amputated frogs legs.
Then marine molluscs, some mussels.
Then reptiles, as turtle soup,
then gastropods, the inevitable snails.
Then crustaceans, more seafood.
Then echinoderm in the
shape of sea urchins,
followed by fish, birds, fermented fruit juice,
mammals,
with root vegetables, funghi, leaf vegetables,
decomposing animal fat
and finally fruits and nuts.
Given sufficient affluence,
we demonstrate with great panache the omnivory that has
made us great as a species.
No matter where we go,
now we can solve the problem.
Even in outer space we can find a way to nourish our bodies.
We've come a long way from the forest trees
of our remote ancestors and
our passionately varied diets have taken us
into every corner of the globe and beyond.
But how did we
start this amazing journey?
What were the formative stages
that were to take us
soaring up and away from our animal relatives,
leaving them gibbering
in the branches while we conquered
the stars?
Perhaps re-examining our evolutionary roots will help us
to understand.
This is where the human story began millions of years ago
in the heart of Africa.
But how it began remains something
of a mystery.
There's a gap in the fossil record when we can only guess
what was going on.
The gap in our knowledge lasts from roughly
4 million to 7 million years ago.
We know that apes went into it,
and ape men came out of it.
But that's all we do know.
Oh, and the ape men, of course when they came out of we
know what happened to them.
There aren't any missing links
in the popular sense.
We can trace our ancestry back for over three million years
and we can see how those ape men turned into modern men.
But back in that very early formative stage,
that's when the picture becomes vague.
Why did we shed
our coat of fur, stand up on our hind legs
and start to talk?
To understand why this took place,
we need to discover where it took place.
Perhaps it all happened here
on the open Savannah.
The traditional view, and it's only a guess,
is that our ancient ancestors
left the cover of the forests and moved
out onto the open plains in pursuit of large prey animals.
Once in open country, they had
to face a hot, dry exposed environment.
How did they adapt to it?
Other animals that live in hot dry environments have evolved
special survival mechanisms that reduce their water loss.
Surprisingly, we have none of these.
We have to drink more
than any other land mammal.
We sweat more than any other mammal,
and we die quickly
if we overheat. We have dilute
urine and moist dung.
These five qualities contrast strongly with the water economy
of the typical Savannah living animals.
The truth is that we're simply
not well adapted to Savannah living.
So what did we do when we left the protection of the undergrowth?
The traditional view of how ape became ape man has recently
been challenged.
It's thought that there might have been a vital
intermediate stage.
Instead of coming out of the forest
and straight onto the open grasslands,
the idea is that our remote ancestors
went instead to the water's edge.
There, they went more and more
into the water, becoming what you
might almost call an aquatic ape.
Newborn babies under careful supervision
can swim without any training.
Placed in a prone
position in warm water,
they show no panic, keep their eyes wide open and automatically
hold their breath.
Champion breath holders can hold their breath for up to three
and a half minutes underwater.
This and the swimming ability
of the newborn, are to say the least,
strange qualities for
a savannah-living animal.
There are a number of other aquatic features of our species.
We have an unusually strong diving reflex that slows down
our heartbeat when we put our face underwater.
Like other aquatic mammals, but no other primates,
we have a layer of blubber beneath our skin.
We've lost the long shaggy coat of other primates making
us more streamlined in the water.
We have a unique nose shape that shields our nostrils when
we dive below the surface.
We have more flexible spines than other apes,
enabling us to
swim more rapidly.
We have partial webbing between our fingers and toes.
Again, unlike any other primate.
We weep copious tears like other
marine animals, but unlike apes.
We can swim with great althleticism.
Apes cannot swim at all.
And the directions of
our hair tracks differ from those of other apes,
following the flow of the water.
Assembled in this way the evidence
for the aquatic origin of our species certainly looks impressive.
If this human baptism took place,
it probably occurred here,
on the esturies of the East African coast.
One of the effects
of moving into the water for these aquatic apes would have
been to find immediately a wonderfully nutritious source of food.
A new kind of food.
A change from the fruits of the forest
to the "fruits de mer".
These small boys in Kenya's rift valley
are behaving rather like otters,
catching fish without the aid of any weapons.
They're living today in the very region
where the human species evolved.
Could this have been the preferred way of life of
our early ancestors several million years ago?
A switch to an aquatic life style would suddenly have made
available
a high protein diet that would have reduced the amount of time
they had to spend finding food.
This would have given them
more opportunities for other activities.
Activities that could have led them
to develop important new skills.
The ancient ability to open tough nuts and fruits
would have made them immediately adept at cracking open the
hard shells of a great deal of easily collected seafood.
Marine molluscs and crustaceans would have had no protection from
the attacks of this new type of predator.
They were a plentiful food supply just waiting to be exploited.
Furthermore, a diet of fish and shellfish would have provided
the aquatic apes with an enriched source of the fatty acids
that are important for brain development.
An aquatic ape could easily have become a more brainy ape. These are the amazing
Moreauarmi divers of the Philippines.
Each member of a large
team of young male divers
lowers a rock attached to a long line down to the seabed.
Strips of white material scare the fish,
and as the lines are
moved along with their rocks repeatedly
banging on the reefs below,
they drive all the fish before them into an enormous net.
Once all the fish are in the net,
the young divers descend
without any breathing apparatus to a depth of 80 feet,
where they may stay for up to three minutes.
In the earliest days of the human story,
cooperative fishing
could easily have been the first step on the road towards
efficient pack hunting and
our eventual role as successful
land predators.
The aquatic ape theory of human origins remains unproven
because we still lack the fossil evidence to support it.
But whether we passed through an aquatic phase or not,
one thing is certain, our ancestors
did eventually move on to
the Savannah and start to hunt down large prey animals.
This was to become our new way of life
that was to sustain us for over a million years,
right up to the agricultural revolution a mere 10,000 years ago.
And even today in a few remote areas, the primeval hunt continues.
These are caribou, roaming the desolate lands of the far north
of Canada. For native Canadians,
these deer are an essential source of food.
For them, caribou hunting is a matter of survival.
`When the Dogrib people set off on the chase, the outcome
may make the difference between starvation and plenty.
The moment of departure is full of happy anticipation.
Anticipation of feasting to come.
The hunt goes through its characteristic stages.
There's the long journey to the hunting grounds.
Then the initial search for the herd.
The first sighting of them in the far distance is reassuring,
but they're in open country where they can't be approached.
Next there's the planning of the
strategy to be adopted.
Now there's more group cooperation
as the tactics of the
assault are put into action.
The hunt will be extremely physically demanding.
Weapons, as ever, are crucial to the success of the chase.
The women who accompany the hunters do not take an active part in
the kill.
While the men are stalking the herd,
they search for berries
in this desolate place,
following in the ancient footsteps
of the primeval food gatherers.
Like wolves encircling their prey,
the hunters move in close
in wooded territory for a clean kill.
But unlike wolves, their communication is complex,
and their strategy sophisticated.
As with all carnivorous hunters,
long distance vision is crucial to their success.
Their weapons may be modern, but the hunting pattern
these men are following is a million years old.
On this particular hunt
it took a week to make the kill.
And by this time, the group had been
almost without food for three days.
In the bitter cold of the northern landscape
starvation had been staring them in the face.
After the kill, the carcass is cut up and prepared
ready to be carried back to the community.
The intense relief that is felt when the feast finally comes
is something that is difficult
to appreciate for those who've never
experienced this ancient, uncertain
form of human food seeking.
It's easy to understand why
10,000 years ago we started to give up
this way of life
and turned instead to the security and
the predictability of farming.
Of controlling the wild animals
and making certain that
they were always around to provide
us with guaranteed regular meals.
But it has to be admitted,
there was something bravely hazardous about the hunt.
With the advent of agriculture, the drama of the chase was lost.
Only the Dogrib
and a few other remote hunting societies
remain to remind us of the earlier way of life.
For most of us today the rigours of the hunt,
its uncertainties
and dangers, are a thing of the past.
Nowadays, all we have to face
is a trip to the local supermarket.
So what happened to our inborn hunting urges?
Where did they go
in the modern world?
The primeval act of setting off
on the hunt has acquired a new name.
Now we call it going to work.
Modern hunters leave their home base,
not on a chase for large prey animals,
but in pursuit of contracts, deals and sales.
They'll make a killing in the city
and bring home the bacon
without ever setting eyes on wild game.
Each occupation has its own special kind
of substitute hunting elements.
For some, it's the comradeship of fellow hunters.
For a few, there remains the frison of
actual physical danger.
This was a key element in the original hunt.
But with modern substitute hunts,
it's now comparatively rare.
For some individuals though,
this danger element is crucial.
They need the adrenaline boost
that accompanied every dangerous
hunting trip.
For most, the risks have now become purely financial.
These are the typical hunters
of modern times, who have retained
the strategies and tactics,
the planning and the plotting
of the old hunting lifestyle,
but in a completely transformed state.
For some the pseudo hunt is a stalking, prowling affair
with the emphasis on the symbolic kill at the end.
The average traffic warden
has the immense satisfaction of
making many kills every day,
with from time to time the added excitement
of a little spirited, but futile resistance from
a squirming prey.
Each to their own kind of hunt.
Each to their own type of chase,
and each to their own form of kill.
The modern pseudo hunters are everywhere.
At the end of the hunt,
when the worker returns home, the spoils
of the chase, inside the pay packet
are handed over.
Those who are most engrossed in their work,
and find it particularly satisfying
are the ones whose activities contain most of
the old hunting habits.
For them, the symbolic hunt retains almost all its original excitement.
For some, the symbolism is very obvious,
with a specific and
visible prey to be pursued.
A Police chase brings out
all the old hunting skills.
Almost all the elements are still there.
The strategies and the tactics,
the cooperation and organization.
The concentration and the risk.
The arduous pursuit
and finally the climax of the kill.
A few people seem unable to make the symbolic
leap away from the primeval hunt
to one of its modern substitutes.
Trapped in the past,
they feel the urge to continue
needlessly to gun down
wild animals for sport.
These hunters are not starving
and their prey are not dangerous.
The animals have been
specially reared on game ranches
so that they can be shot at
by sporting gentlemen who don't
wish to suffer any undue discomfort in the process.
Thank you.
That's a long shot.
I'm glad I put two shells in there.
I was thinking about only putting one.
It was a good shot.
Killing these animals with high-powered weapons
is about as courageous
as shooting at a cow in a field.
But sport hunting which has
been going on ever since
the primeval hunt became obsolete
still manages to survive,
so deeply ingrained is
the predatory past of our species.
For most people today however,
the idea of killing animals for fun is repugnant.
Instead. when their hunting urges drive a man
to track down a wild beast and take a shot at it,
the loudest noise you hear
is the click of a camera.
These shots are all on target,
but no blood is spilled.
And the excitement of taking home
the pictures of these animals
provides a symbolic trophy more in keeping
with the modern environment
in which these symbolic hunters live today.
All over the world, the symbolic hunters are out stalking
their prey. And because they are symbolic,
the prey can take some rather odd forms.
As collectors, people
seem prepared to hunt down and carry almost anything.
Sometimes, at enormous cost.
For some collectors simply finding
the prey is sufficient reward.
For these trainspotters, the prey animal becomes the giant locomotive that glides into
their sight, giving them the hunter's thrill of discovery.
Like real prey,
each railway engine
is beyond their control. Only by being
in the right place, at the right moment,
can they add another exciting specimen
to their list of symbolic kills.
They can't eat these trains, but they can at least
feast their eyes on them.
Wherever today's pseudo hunters gather in small groups
there's a strong chance that some kind of symbolic prey
will be struck down. The nature of the prey can be reduced to the
simplest possible form.
In this case, a wooden skittle.
It's virtually impossible
to simplify the symbolic hunt further
than this, but the excitement is still there.
The human animal
can make a hunt out of almost anything,
and celebrate accordingly.
For many people,
the workplace is somewhat lacking in the more exciting elements
of the substitute hunt.
For them, special events outside
the working context are necessary to recreate the drama of the chase.
A solution for many millions
is professional sport.
Here on the football field, almost
all the stages of the primeval
hunt are displayed for the spectators.
There are the team tactics.
The group cooperation.
The long-distance communication.
The physical risks, the skills,
the stamina and the bravery. The stalking,
the cunning of the chase.
At last there's a moment of the kill as the tribal weapon
is driven into the mouth of the prey.
This act of aiming is common to most forms of modern sport.
With victory in sport,
as with victory in the hunt, there follows
triumphant celebration.
A moment of euphoria shared by all.
Sometimes the intensity of the moment becomes too great.
The passions of the primeval hunter
have been so aroused that
the symbolism is lost, and the violence of the hunt itself
is once again unleashed.
When a human being becomes the new prey
and the hunting pack turns on
one of its own kind, the savagery of the mob
knows no bounds. For the lynch mob,
the victim becomes effectively
a member of another species.
A prey to be destroyed.
This is not normal human aggression.
This is a corrupted hunting pack
on the prowl, looking for a kill.
In this case,
the victim was rescued.
Those who argue, through wishful thinking,
that the human animal
is essentially placid and docile,
is making a dangerous error.
They need look no further than the seemingly innocent games
of children to see the way the human mind works.
We're hunters through and through, always chasing something.
Always in pursuit of some goal,
whether abstract or real.
This human quality, this urge to meet a challenge,
to take a risk,
to track down a solution,
is one of our greatest attributes.
To say that man is a hunter is not to say
that man must be violent.
Far from it.
All it says is that he's not docile.
We're by nature go-getters,
but what we get is up to us.
All too often, the games
of childhood become corrupted
into the war games of adult life.
Instead of using our hunting
urges to chase wonderful ideals.
We use them to pursue a new kind of prey.
Human prey.
The hunting urge is a double-edged sword.
It can be used constructively to help us fulfill our greatest dreams,
or destructively to live out our greatest nightmares.
When the hunt became symbolic, it retained
its power, but lost its direction.
It's now up to us, to our intelligence,
not our instincts.
to determine that direction.
And it's a dark day whenever we fail.
In modern warfare, the combination
of the ancient hunting urge
and modern technology
has been deadly. Because the new
weapons act at a greater and greater distance,
the enemy is no longer identifiable
as a rival human being,
but a tiny speck in the distance.
There's no personal involvement.
The enemy soldiers are not people. They're prey.
If only hunting hadn't made us such a cooperative species,
it would be impossible for tyrants to form armies and set
them off on campaigns of mass destruction.
Warfare is the
darkest face of the human urge to hunt.
This all seems light years away from the quiet life
we left behind in the primeval forests.
When we gave up the
simple fruit picking existence and set ourselves the challenge
of a new way of obtaining our food by using tools and weapons,
we could never have guessed that far off in the future,
we'd be giving ourselves the possibility
of both a technological heaven,
and a technological hell on Earth.
Which of these two comes to dominate our lives in the future
remains the greatest of all human dilemmas.
And it's amazing to think that this whole story all began
with a small change in our diet millions of years ago.
One thing is certain.
When our ancient ancestors had passed
through the early phase of their evolution and had become
fully fledged hunters, their social way of life had to change.
When the males went off on the hunt,
they had to have somewhere to come back to with the spoils.
They had to have a home base.
A fixed home base. That meant
settlements and dwellings. And the way in which those early
dwellings grew and flourished and developed into our modern
megacities, is the subject of next week's program.
on the planet Earth?
What's the secret of our unparalleled success?
Could it have something to do with the way in which during the course of
our evolution,
we radically changed our social behaviour.
Becoming more cooperative
as we faced daunting new challenges.
In one important respect, we became unique among the primates. We became pack hunters.
Indeed hunting became a human obsession,
that went beyond mere feeding
to become a whole new way of life.
It was to transform us
and make us, not the lion,
the king of all the animals.
For millions of years,
our ancestors were hunter-gatherers.
Now all that has changed.
Now we gather everything.
We still eat meat, but we no longer
have to hunt it down.
Instead we encounter it
neatly cleaned and packaged
as we forage among the urban
branches of our supermarkets,
packing food from the shelves
Viewed as a pattern of human
feeding behaviour, a trip to the
supermarket is the remarkable
end point of a long journey
through evolutionary time.
A journey that started in a primeval forest,
and ended at a checkout counter.
To me, it's a story of an arboreal ape
which became a ground-dwelling predator,
which in turn became a credit card customer.
It was working at the zoo back in the 1960s that gave me
my unusual approach to the subject of human behaviour.
I'd started out my studies
looking at fish, then birds
then mammals and finally, chimpanzees.
It was as though, without planning it,
I was approaching the human animal
by climbing up its family tree.
This gave me a very different slant from people like
psychologists or psychoanalysts,
or anthropologists or sociologists.
During my position here,
I gave the human species an animal
name, the naked ape.
And I set about describing our behaviour in exactly the same
way as I'd used
when looking at all those other species
in my earlier research.
The more I studied chimpanzees,
the more I realised just how
intelligent they are.
But despite their intelligence,
wild chimpanzees have to spend
most of their time feeding.
This interminable food collecting is typical of animals
that depend largely on a vegetable diet.
Nutritionally inferior,
to meat, a great deal of vegetation has to be eaten
every day for survival. In the primeval forests,
this feeding process has been going on for millions of years
endlessly time-consuming and
monotonously repetitive.
And it's against this background
that our own story begins.
About 10 to 15 million years ago,
the early apes from which
we ourselves evolved must have looked rather like this.
In this series, we've reconstructed
and reanimated our earliest
forbears as a reminder that humans did not in fact descend from
chimpanzees, but from this common ancestor.
It probably had a similar lifestyle to modern chimps with fruits, berries
and nuts as its main source of food.
And like them, it will
occasionally have eaten a little animal food
as a valuable addition to its diet.
Although later this was to change,
its original herbivorous
lifestyle is one that's left
its mark upon us even today.
From our ancient primate ancestors
we've inherited a love of
ripe fruits, berries and nuts.
Food which they found in the treetops
and which we still consume
today in a hundred different forms.
One of the key qualities
of this kind of food is its sweet taste.
And this has left us for the decidedly sweet tooth.
In fact, we're so fond of sweet things, that we will search
for them everywhere.
Even at the risk of being stung
by angry bees. In some tribal cultures
the craving for honey is so strong that the tastes
of as many as ten different types are distinguished by the
expert honey seekers.
And it's no accident that the very first alcoholic drink
ever created by our species was mead.
Made, of course from honey.
Another continent, other insect.
This type of ant collects honey in its abdomen which becomes
massively swollen and distended, making it easy to catch.
For these native australians,
honey ants are a special delicacy,
collected and savoured like small ripe fruits.
Everywhere you look in the world you find evidence of this
human devotion to sweetness,
inherited from our primate ancestors.
And nowhere
is it stronger than among our children,
as a simple experiment will show.
Here, sweet foods are on the left,
non-sweet foods on the right.
When children are allowed to take anything
they want, they fall on the sweet foods and ignore the others.
And it's not only children who react like this.
It's worth asking why, if eating sweet things is so natural,
it should often be viewed as unhealthy.
The answer is that in nature,
nutritional value and palatability
go hand in hand.
Whereas in modern life,
any food can be made attractive.
Simply by artificially sweetening it.
It's intriguing that
whenever we feel like a small snack between meals,
we usually choose something sweet as though in these casual moments,
we're reverting to the primeval feeding behaviour
of the forest.
The fruit picking life in the treetops
must have been comfortable
and secure for our ancient ancestors.
But then something happened.
Perhaps there was a dramatic change in climate.
Perhaps the forest suddenly shrank.
We can't be sure. But whatever
it was, it set our ancestors off in a search for a new habitat.
They struck out into more open country away from the trees
and began to explore this new environment.
And as they did so, their diet began to change.
The fruit-eating
forest ape had to become a meat-eating plains ape.
So the evolving human animal was to acquire a split personality.
Part herbivore, and part carnivore.
When our ancient ancestors turned
to meat-eating, they faced
a daunting new challenge,
because now, they were in direct
competition with the well-established carnivores and with
his powerful bodies and strong jaws and teeth,
animals like this.
With our weaker jaws and smaller teeth,
we had to find an alternative solution.
We had to use brain instead of brawn.
With our efficient hands
we began to make weapons.
Wooden spears to kill our prey.
In our early days the simple act
of accurate throwing must have been one of
the most essential of all human skills.
Precise aiming became
nothing less than a matter of human survival.
And we soon found that we were
at our most efficient when we acted together
as a hunting pack.
Mutual aid on the hunt became another
essential feature of our emerging species.
Selfish, self feeding herbivore
had to become a helpful social carnivore.
Old primate competition had to be tempered by new
human cooperation.
In this way, we were able to turn our attention to bigger
and bigger prey,
making our hunts increasingly efficient
and giving us more and more spare time,
during which our early
technologies could develop and prosper.
Our problems didn't end when the prey
was finally caught and killed. The meat
was too tough for our small jaws.
Our answer was to attack it not
with our teeth but with sharp implements.
About 3 million years ago
we invented the flint knife
to slice the meat up into chewable pieces.
And then with the discovery of fire about a million
years ago,
we were at last able to enter the epoch of the human chef.
We were able to prepare our meals instead of just bolting
them down.
We could cook and tenderize and savour the flavor by eating
them hot, as if fresh from the kill.
The hyena may have stronger jaws,
but we had better techniques.
Sliced and cooked, our meat
became as easy to consume
as a fruit or a berry.
Instead of adapting our teeth to our food,
we adapted the food to our teeth.
The very idea of mealtimes is linked to a carnivorous lifestyle.
Herbivores go munching monotonously
hour after hour.
The carnivores don't go for bulk.
They go for quality.
They only need to eat occasionally,
and when they do, they binge
and they eat together.
We humans too like to settle down
to big meals together.
Our meal times are social events.
Significantly, on the rare occasions when our relatives the
chimpanzees kill an animal and eat its flesh, their social
behaviour changes. Instead of
feeding independently of one another,
as they do when eating fruit, they feast together
as a group and share out the spoils. Watching these scenes,
it's easy to imagine the way in which our ancient ancestors
began on their long road towards a carnivorous diet.
When carnivores kill a large prey,
there's enough for all.
this isn't altruistic.
It's simply that there's
so much to eat all at once.
And for us, food sharing has become fundamental
to our social way of life.
When we take small sweet snacks, we're happy to do
so alone at anytime, anywhere,
but when we feast on meat,
we tend to gather together at a set time
and at a set place.
We sit down as a social group like lions around a kill.
The feast becomes a friendly event,
binding us together as a group
as we fill our bellies.
Everywhere. you look around the world
you find the same kind of human
feeding patterns. The menu may vary,
but the events are remarkably similar.
So powerful is this carnivorous urge to share food,
that occasionally, when we do have to dine alone,
we feel strangely uncomfortable.
The solitary diner exudes
the body language of unease.
Eating sweets alone in public
is pleasant enough,
but eating a full meal alone in public is not.
Ancient habits die hard.
The social aspect of feeding is taken to an extreme at the
typical cocktail party.
Here, people drink when they're
not thirsty and eat when they're not hungry.
Significantly, most of the food objects
on offer are savoury or meaty rather than sweet.
The food may only be a token,
but it retains the carnivorous
character that's in keeping
with the sociability of the occasion.
Here the feeding behaviour itself has become perfunctory.
The social element of feasting has become so important that
the feast itself is reduced to a mere accessory.
When we evolved from fruit-picking primates
into meat-eating carnivores,
we gained the huge advantage of being able to
consume almost any living thing.
By varying our diet.
We could spread out into almost every habitat on earth.
The Maasai of East africa survive largely on a diet of blood
and milk, both taken from their carefully tended cattle.
When the cattle are bled and bled but not killed,
the blood is collected
in long gourd. Milk is then mixed
with the blood and stirred to
coagulate it, producing a thick sticky liquid.
Some of it clings to the stirring sticks
and is eaten almost
as a solid food.
This is a favourite treat
for the young children of the tribe.
The rest is poured into drinking vessels.
The product of this process
provides an extremely high protein diet
without any loss of livestock.
Biologically, this could be described
as a predator of cattle,
becoming parasitic on them.
A highly efficient solution to life
in this particular environment.
We may find the idea
of drinking blood in this way repulsive,
but the Maasai undoubtedly feel the same way about some of
our feeding habits.
Every culture has its own food preferences and food taboos,
developed over many years.
These caterpillars
are another valuable source of protein.
Weight for weight,
they contain more protein than a sirloin steak.
Even if they lack what one might call barbecue appeal.
For these South Africans,
they also provide important phosphates,
minerals and vitamins.
In fact, insects are
an ideal source of food, much favoured by
tribal peoples all over the world.
Our modern preference for
attacking insect pests with chemicals rather than with our teeth,
is highly irrational.
Some cultures prefer
to keep animals out of their diet altogether.
The Toda tribes people of Southern India used to
slaughter their domestic stock,
but now refuse to eat meat
on religious grounds.
Here, they're consuming a mixture of rice, cane sugar and
salt wrapped in edible leaves.
But closer scrutiny reveals
that they're also adding
buffalo milk and honey to the mixture.
Despite the poor nutritional value of their main staple food,
the regular addition of the milk and honey ensures that they
remain fit and strong.
A fact which they're proud to demonstrate
with feats of strength.
One of the strangest of all human feeding patterns is this.
Earth eating.
Some clays taken from special sources
are rich in essential minerals.
In certain parts of Ghana
they're collected and moulded into egg shapes.
This is the ultimate exploitation of the environment.
Devouring the earth on which we stand.
But these clays, when chemically analysed,
were revealed to contain calcium, magnesium, potassium,
copper, zinc and iron.
Remarkably similar to the mineral supplements
recommended in Western society.
The never ending quest for food variety sometimes leads to danger.
The Japanese delicacy called fugu, a kind of puffer fish,
although much prized by gourmets,
contains lethal toxins.
If its toxic parts are not removed during gutting, they cause
death within a few hours.
200 Fugu diners die each year!
Clearly the human animal is the world's greatest omnivore.
Ready somewhere to eat almost anything.
And for many people it's not just a matter of eating anything,
but eating everything.
To see this in action, one need look
no further than the table of a French family about to tuck
in to a celebratory dinner.
Here, variety of edible life-forms
is the essence of the cuisine.
To start with cephalopods,
in this case squid, then amphibians
in the form of amputated frogs legs.
Then marine molluscs, some mussels.
Then reptiles, as turtle soup,
then gastropods, the inevitable snails.
Then crustaceans, more seafood.
Then echinoderm in the
shape of sea urchins,
followed by fish, birds, fermented fruit juice,
mammals,
with root vegetables, funghi, leaf vegetables,
decomposing animal fat
and finally fruits and nuts.
Given sufficient affluence,
we demonstrate with great panache the omnivory that has
made us great as a species.
No matter where we go,
now we can solve the problem.
Even in outer space we can find a way to nourish our bodies.
We've come a long way from the forest trees
of our remote ancestors and
our passionately varied diets have taken us
into every corner of the globe and beyond.
But how did we
start this amazing journey?
What were the formative stages
that were to take us
soaring up and away from our animal relatives,
leaving them gibbering
in the branches while we conquered
the stars?
Perhaps re-examining our evolutionary roots will help us
to understand.
This is where the human story began millions of years ago
in the heart of Africa.
But how it began remains something
of a mystery.
There's a gap in the fossil record when we can only guess
what was going on.
The gap in our knowledge lasts from roughly
4 million to 7 million years ago.
We know that apes went into it,
and ape men came out of it.
But that's all we do know.
Oh, and the ape men, of course when they came out of we
know what happened to them.
There aren't any missing links
in the popular sense.
We can trace our ancestry back for over three million years
and we can see how those ape men turned into modern men.
But back in that very early formative stage,
that's when the picture becomes vague.
Why did we shed
our coat of fur, stand up on our hind legs
and start to talk?
To understand why this took place,
we need to discover where it took place.
Perhaps it all happened here
on the open Savannah.
The traditional view, and it's only a guess,
is that our ancient ancestors
left the cover of the forests and moved
out onto the open plains in pursuit of large prey animals.
Once in open country, they had
to face a hot, dry exposed environment.
How did they adapt to it?
Other animals that live in hot dry environments have evolved
special survival mechanisms that reduce their water loss.
Surprisingly, we have none of these.
We have to drink more
than any other land mammal.
We sweat more than any other mammal,
and we die quickly
if we overheat. We have dilute
urine and moist dung.
These five qualities contrast strongly with the water economy
of the typical Savannah living animals.
The truth is that we're simply
not well adapted to Savannah living.
So what did we do when we left the protection of the undergrowth?
The traditional view of how ape became ape man has recently
been challenged.
It's thought that there might have been a vital
intermediate stage.
Instead of coming out of the forest
and straight onto the open grasslands,
the idea is that our remote ancestors
went instead to the water's edge.
There, they went more and more
into the water, becoming what you
might almost call an aquatic ape.
Newborn babies under careful supervision
can swim without any training.
Placed in a prone
position in warm water,
they show no panic, keep their eyes wide open and automatically
hold their breath.
Champion breath holders can hold their breath for up to three
and a half minutes underwater.
This and the swimming ability
of the newborn, are to say the least,
strange qualities for
a savannah-living animal.
There are a number of other aquatic features of our species.
We have an unusually strong diving reflex that slows down
our heartbeat when we put our face underwater.
Like other aquatic mammals, but no other primates,
we have a layer of blubber beneath our skin.
We've lost the long shaggy coat of other primates making
us more streamlined in the water.
We have a unique nose shape that shields our nostrils when
we dive below the surface.
We have more flexible spines than other apes,
enabling us to
swim more rapidly.
We have partial webbing between our fingers and toes.
Again, unlike any other primate.
We weep copious tears like other
marine animals, but unlike apes.
We can swim with great althleticism.
Apes cannot swim at all.
And the directions of
our hair tracks differ from those of other apes,
following the flow of the water.
Assembled in this way the evidence
for the aquatic origin of our species certainly looks impressive.
If this human baptism took place,
it probably occurred here,
on the esturies of the East African coast.
One of the effects
of moving into the water for these aquatic apes would have
been to find immediately a wonderfully nutritious source of food.
A new kind of food.
A change from the fruits of the forest
to the "fruits de mer".
These small boys in Kenya's rift valley
are behaving rather like otters,
catching fish without the aid of any weapons.
They're living today in the very region
where the human species evolved.
Could this have been the preferred way of life of
our early ancestors several million years ago?
A switch to an aquatic life style would suddenly have made
available
a high protein diet that would have reduced the amount of time
they had to spend finding food.
This would have given them
more opportunities for other activities.
Activities that could have led them
to develop important new skills.
The ancient ability to open tough nuts and fruits
would have made them immediately adept at cracking open the
hard shells of a great deal of easily collected seafood.
Marine molluscs and crustaceans would have had no protection from
the attacks of this new type of predator.
They were a plentiful food supply just waiting to be exploited.
Furthermore, a diet of fish and shellfish would have provided
the aquatic apes with an enriched source of the fatty acids
that are important for brain development.
An aquatic ape could easily have become a more brainy ape. These are the amazing
Moreauarmi divers of the Philippines.
Each member of a large
team of young male divers
lowers a rock attached to a long line down to the seabed.
Strips of white material scare the fish,
and as the lines are
moved along with their rocks repeatedly
banging on the reefs below,
they drive all the fish before them into an enormous net.
Once all the fish are in the net,
the young divers descend
without any breathing apparatus to a depth of 80 feet,
where they may stay for up to three minutes.
In the earliest days of the human story,
cooperative fishing
could easily have been the first step on the road towards
efficient pack hunting and
our eventual role as successful
land predators.
The aquatic ape theory of human origins remains unproven
because we still lack the fossil evidence to support it.
But whether we passed through an aquatic phase or not,
one thing is certain, our ancestors
did eventually move on to
the Savannah and start to hunt down large prey animals.
This was to become our new way of life
that was to sustain us for over a million years,
right up to the agricultural revolution a mere 10,000 years ago.
And even today in a few remote areas, the primeval hunt continues.
These are caribou, roaming the desolate lands of the far north
of Canada. For native Canadians,
these deer are an essential source of food.
For them, caribou hunting is a matter of survival.
`When the Dogrib people set off on the chase, the outcome
may make the difference between starvation and plenty.
The moment of departure is full of happy anticipation.
Anticipation of feasting to come.
The hunt goes through its characteristic stages.
There's the long journey to the hunting grounds.
Then the initial search for the herd.
The first sighting of them in the far distance is reassuring,
but they're in open country where they can't be approached.
Next there's the planning of the
strategy to be adopted.
Now there's more group cooperation
as the tactics of the
assault are put into action.
The hunt will be extremely physically demanding.
Weapons, as ever, are crucial to the success of the chase.
The women who accompany the hunters do not take an active part in
the kill.
While the men are stalking the herd,
they search for berries
in this desolate place,
following in the ancient footsteps
of the primeval food gatherers.
Like wolves encircling their prey,
the hunters move in close
in wooded territory for a clean kill.
But unlike wolves, their communication is complex,
and their strategy sophisticated.
As with all carnivorous hunters,
long distance vision is crucial to their success.
Their weapons may be modern, but the hunting pattern
these men are following is a million years old.
On this particular hunt
it took a week to make the kill.
And by this time, the group had been
almost without food for three days.
In the bitter cold of the northern landscape
starvation had been staring them in the face.
After the kill, the carcass is cut up and prepared
ready to be carried back to the community.
The intense relief that is felt when the feast finally comes
is something that is difficult
to appreciate for those who've never
experienced this ancient, uncertain
form of human food seeking.
It's easy to understand why
10,000 years ago we started to give up
this way of life
and turned instead to the security and
the predictability of farming.
Of controlling the wild animals
and making certain that
they were always around to provide
us with guaranteed regular meals.
But it has to be admitted,
there was something bravely hazardous about the hunt.
With the advent of agriculture, the drama of the chase was lost.
Only the Dogrib
and a few other remote hunting societies
remain to remind us of the earlier way of life.
For most of us today the rigours of the hunt,
its uncertainties
and dangers, are a thing of the past.
Nowadays, all we have to face
is a trip to the local supermarket.
So what happened to our inborn hunting urges?
Where did they go
in the modern world?
The primeval act of setting off
on the hunt has acquired a new name.
Now we call it going to work.
Modern hunters leave their home base,
not on a chase for large prey animals,
but in pursuit of contracts, deals and sales.
They'll make a killing in the city
and bring home the bacon
without ever setting eyes on wild game.
Each occupation has its own special kind
of substitute hunting elements.
For some, it's the comradeship of fellow hunters.
For a few, there remains the frison of
actual physical danger.
This was a key element in the original hunt.
But with modern substitute hunts,
it's now comparatively rare.
For some individuals though,
this danger element is crucial.
They need the adrenaline boost
that accompanied every dangerous
hunting trip.
For most, the risks have now become purely financial.
These are the typical hunters
of modern times, who have retained
the strategies and tactics,
the planning and the plotting
of the old hunting lifestyle,
but in a completely transformed state.
For some the pseudo hunt is a stalking, prowling affair
with the emphasis on the symbolic kill at the end.
The average traffic warden
has the immense satisfaction of
making many kills every day,
with from time to time the added excitement
of a little spirited, but futile resistance from
a squirming prey.
Each to their own kind of hunt.
Each to their own type of chase,
and each to their own form of kill.
The modern pseudo hunters are everywhere.
At the end of the hunt,
when the worker returns home, the spoils
of the chase, inside the pay packet
are handed over.
Those who are most engrossed in their work,
and find it particularly satisfying
are the ones whose activities contain most of
the old hunting habits.
For them, the symbolic hunt retains almost all its original excitement.
For some, the symbolism is very obvious,
with a specific and
visible prey to be pursued.
A Police chase brings out
all the old hunting skills.
Almost all the elements are still there.
The strategies and the tactics,
the cooperation and organization.
The concentration and the risk.
The arduous pursuit
and finally the climax of the kill.
A few people seem unable to make the symbolic
leap away from the primeval hunt
to one of its modern substitutes.
Trapped in the past,
they feel the urge to continue
needlessly to gun down
wild animals for sport.
These hunters are not starving
and their prey are not dangerous.
The animals have been
specially reared on game ranches
so that they can be shot at
by sporting gentlemen who don't
wish to suffer any undue discomfort in the process.
Thank you.
That's a long shot.
I'm glad I put two shells in there.
I was thinking about only putting one.
It was a good shot.
Killing these animals with high-powered weapons
is about as courageous
as shooting at a cow in a field.
But sport hunting which has
been going on ever since
the primeval hunt became obsolete
still manages to survive,
so deeply ingrained is
the predatory past of our species.
For most people today however,
the idea of killing animals for fun is repugnant.
Instead. when their hunting urges drive a man
to track down a wild beast and take a shot at it,
the loudest noise you hear
is the click of a camera.
These shots are all on target,
but no blood is spilled.
And the excitement of taking home
the pictures of these animals
provides a symbolic trophy more in keeping
with the modern environment
in which these symbolic hunters live today.
All over the world, the symbolic hunters are out stalking
their prey. And because they are symbolic,
the prey can take some rather odd forms.
As collectors, people
seem prepared to hunt down and carry almost anything.
Sometimes, at enormous cost.
For some collectors simply finding
the prey is sufficient reward.
For these trainspotters, the prey animal becomes the giant locomotive that glides into
their sight, giving them the hunter's thrill of discovery.
Like real prey,
each railway engine
is beyond their control. Only by being
in the right place, at the right moment,
can they add another exciting specimen
to their list of symbolic kills.
They can't eat these trains, but they can at least
feast their eyes on them.
Wherever today's pseudo hunters gather in small groups
there's a strong chance that some kind of symbolic prey
will be struck down. The nature of the prey can be reduced to the
simplest possible form.
In this case, a wooden skittle.
It's virtually impossible
to simplify the symbolic hunt further
than this, but the excitement is still there.
The human animal
can make a hunt out of almost anything,
and celebrate accordingly.
For many people,
the workplace is somewhat lacking in the more exciting elements
of the substitute hunt.
For them, special events outside
the working context are necessary to recreate the drama of the chase.
A solution for many millions
is professional sport.
Here on the football field, almost
all the stages of the primeval
hunt are displayed for the spectators.
There are the team tactics.
The group cooperation.
The long-distance communication.
The physical risks, the skills,
the stamina and the bravery. The stalking,
the cunning of the chase.
At last there's a moment of the kill as the tribal weapon
is driven into the mouth of the prey.
This act of aiming is common to most forms of modern sport.
With victory in sport,
as with victory in the hunt, there follows
triumphant celebration.
A moment of euphoria shared by all.
Sometimes the intensity of the moment becomes too great.
The passions of the primeval hunter
have been so aroused that
the symbolism is lost, and the violence of the hunt itself
is once again unleashed.
When a human being becomes the new prey
and the hunting pack turns on
one of its own kind, the savagery of the mob
knows no bounds. For the lynch mob,
the victim becomes effectively
a member of another species.
A prey to be destroyed.
This is not normal human aggression.
This is a corrupted hunting pack
on the prowl, looking for a kill.
In this case,
the victim was rescued.
Those who argue, through wishful thinking,
that the human animal
is essentially placid and docile,
is making a dangerous error.
They need look no further than the seemingly innocent games
of children to see the way the human mind works.
We're hunters through and through, always chasing something.
Always in pursuit of some goal,
whether abstract or real.
This human quality, this urge to meet a challenge,
to take a risk,
to track down a solution,
is one of our greatest attributes.
To say that man is a hunter is not to say
that man must be violent.
Far from it.
All it says is that he's not docile.
We're by nature go-getters,
but what we get is up to us.
All too often, the games
of childhood become corrupted
into the war games of adult life.
Instead of using our hunting
urges to chase wonderful ideals.
We use them to pursue a new kind of prey.
Human prey.
The hunting urge is a double-edged sword.
It can be used constructively to help us fulfill our greatest dreams,
or destructively to live out our greatest nightmares.
When the hunt became symbolic, it retained
its power, but lost its direction.
It's now up to us, to our intelligence,
not our instincts.
to determine that direction.
And it's a dark day whenever we fail.
In modern warfare, the combination
of the ancient hunting urge
and modern technology
has been deadly. Because the new
weapons act at a greater and greater distance,
the enemy is no longer identifiable
as a rival human being,
but a tiny speck in the distance.
There's no personal involvement.
The enemy soldiers are not people. They're prey.
If only hunting hadn't made us such a cooperative species,
it would be impossible for tyrants to form armies and set
them off on campaigns of mass destruction.
Warfare is the
darkest face of the human urge to hunt.
This all seems light years away from the quiet life
we left behind in the primeval forests.
When we gave up the
simple fruit picking existence and set ourselves the challenge
of a new way of obtaining our food by using tools and weapons,
we could never have guessed that far off in the future,
we'd be giving ourselves the possibility
of both a technological heaven,
and a technological hell on Earth.
Which of these two comes to dominate our lives in the future
remains the greatest of all human dilemmas.
And it's amazing to think that this whole story all began
with a small change in our diet millions of years ago.
One thing is certain.
When our ancient ancestors had passed
through the early phase of their evolution and had become
fully fledged hunters, their social way of life had to change.
When the males went off on the hunt,
they had to have somewhere to come back to with the spoils.
They had to have a home base.
A fixed home base. That meant
settlements and dwellings. And the way in which those early
dwellings grew and flourished and developed into our modern
megacities, is the subject of next week's program.