The Evolution of Hunting Strategies – Were We Born to Run?

Please note:  This is a discussion about how ancient humans hunted and killed animals.  If you find these ideas disturbing, it is probably a good idea to skip this post.   

Last week I exchanged several comments with my friend Sean at Prague Stepchild about his post The Myth of Persistence Hunting.  Persistence hunting is a strategy where an animal is chased (hunted) until it collapses from heat exhaustion.  Let’s just say that there is a good bit of debate about the relative importance of persistence hunting as a survival strategy for our earliest human ancestors (2.5 million years ago until the invention of stone weapons).

Tangible Connections to our Hunter-Gatherer Ancestors

As a kid I enjoyed searching for and finding arrowheads.  Directly across the street from my boyhood home was a farm field that was plowed every spring.  After a hard rain the dust would be washed off any overturned rocks making it easy to find the ones altered by humans. 

The arrowheads I found there were fairly recent (in the grand scheme of things), having come from the Woodland period (about 1000-2000 years ago).  These people were in the process of losing their hunter-gatherer ways and adopting permanent settlements as well as agriculture.