Do you picture our hominin ancestors as hunters? I did. Not so much. โThey were the hunted,โ [paleoanthropologist Jeremy] DeSilva writes. Letโs take another look.
…
[De Silva:] Imagine youโre just about the slowest animal in your environment. Youโre small. Lucy was about three and a half feet tall, a full grown adult Australopithecus… And sheโs sharing the landscape with a Homotherium, a large saber tooth cat. They were ancestors of hyenas and were enormous. Some were ancestors of leopards and lions. All of these things would have gladly eaten an Australopithecus.ย
…
Baby chimpanzees and baboons cling to the fronts or wide backs of their mothers. Being upright means we have to physically carry our kids. So now Lucy is physically carrying her kid. Now, in her arms, sheโs got this little fleshy meal for any carnivore, and she needs to go find food for herself in an environment littered with predators.ย
Share this article
An ape thatโs bipedal and isnโt nimble in trees is a recipe for extinction. But here we are. Something allowed us to pass through those rigors of natural selection. And itโs cooperation.ย
