to change the climate from dense jungle to drier savannas; and continuing, for some human groups, until the memorable past, we have lived in small groups of a few dozen at least to a couple thousand at most. Living as peaceful hunter/gatherer/ scavengers, it was natural and ecologically economical for us to live in small tribes lest we over consume and deplete the plant and animal resources of our local environment.
Like other animals in nature there existed competition between males for mating privileges and between groups for control of optimal hunting or gathering territories. Within groups of social animals there is always a pecking order, with some members dominant over others when there were scarce resources to compete for. Natural selection endows each species hoof, claw, beak, horn or some other weapon for defense or to kill its prey. Few species actually battle “to the death” over breeding rights, food or territory. Usually, in short order, a winner is determined and a loser retreats to lick his wounds and await future opportunities. To do otherwise would severely limit the species’ ability to survive.
Before the development of hand held weapons, sometime in our ancient primate past, a common ancestor what would eventually evolve into humans and Chimpanzees fought mostly with its only natural weapon, its teeth. Primates had long since evolved fingernails that replaced claws, because these were superior in the task of separating small items they manipulated, like to separate a handful of dirt and foodstuffs, or to pick insects off of themselves or each other. Nails, while useful for some new abilities such as tying knots and other precision tasks, were ineffective for self-defense and only the teeth remained as a weapon. Probably near this point in evolution male pattern balding developed in our Human and Chimpanzee ancestors. The survival advantage offered by male pattern balding became apparent to me as I raised a pet spider monkey as a family member from 1992 to 1995 while living in Mexico. Spider monkeys, and I am sure all monkeys, love to pull hair. I know from almost 40 years of studying and practicing martial arts, especially kung-fu, that by closely grabbing someone’s hair, you can control their head and greatly influence their balance. Biting is also a powerful self defense weapon, as a human can generate 1500 pounds of pressure per square inch by biting, it can inflict serious pain and tissue damage.
Spider monkeys have a small tuft of hair, like a Mohawk, on the crest of their head. I noticed that when I would grab my pet monkey by this scalp hair, try as he did, he was unable to maneuver into a position where he could bite my hand or arm to defend himself. If I were to grasp him by hair on the sides or back of his head, he could and would twist around to bite me. This effect was crystallized for me one day when a friend of mine arrived at my home wearing a baseball cap. In his typically simian way, my monkey came to play with this friend and knocked his hat off so he could grab a hold of some hair; however, when his cap was removed, it revealed a freshly shaved head. My monkey went ape shit and literally screamed in frustration that, try as he might, he could not grasp a handful of hair from this “bald” man. At this moment it dawned on me that this was the biological mechanism underlying the evolutionary significance of male pattern balding in primates. Let’s call it the “bold-bald fighting ape hypothesis”.
Simple observation had revealed to me the advantage conferred by lacking hair on the top of the head. Notably, in male pattern balding, the hair on the sides and back of the head grow normally, as they do not allow the attacker to immobilize the biting apparatus. Furthermore, the pattern balding only typically occurs in males who have reached sexual maturity, when this would prove most advantageous in procuring a mate. The first primate male who possessed this trait could attack with teeth that could not be controlled by his normally haired rivals, while he could still negate their ability to defend with their teeth by grabbing their full head of hair. He would have been the “superhero” fighter of his era. As he procured mates and passed on this new trait, it became more and more frequent in human and primate populations until today where about two thirds of human males exhibit pattern balding owing to this ancient advantage.
This “bald advantage” lost its original significance as ancient primates began using “fighting tools” of wood or stone. Modern Chimpanzees make a great display of screaming, pounding, or throwing objects when they are threatened. Modern human children, including my own, are often amazingly adept at accurately throwing objects, a trait quite unique among animals.
Because hominins have used weapons for over six million years, there would almost surely be more evidence in the archaeological record if humans had engaged in large scale killing within our own species. Other than a few skeletons of Neanderthals in current day Spain, there is scant evidence of systematic human cannibalism. Conversely, there is prolific evidence of distinct butchering marks on the bones of almost every conceivable species of animal that shared a home range with humans in excavations of ancient human settlements.
If we, very logically, conclude that humans have existed for 10,000 years as hunter/gatherer/scavengers out of the known 6,200,000 years since our species has walked upright, used tools, and had brains at least the size of chimpanzees, that would mean that we have lived as hunter/gatherers for 98.489% of our evolution in that sort of cultural state and only 1.511% of our existence has been as agriculturalists. Most people would agree that roughly 98.5% of our existence could be considered as the natural human state. So what exactly is the natural, normal cultural conditions or our species, Homo Sapiens?
By studying archaeological evidence we can gain some limited insight on human cultural evolution, but in reality much of this is purely speculative. Because time machines have not yet been invented that could send cultural anthropologists back into human prehistory to study the intricacies of their society, observations of a historical nature of our more recent ancestors from say, the last five hundred years might lend some insight. Although enlightening and valuable, older reports of first contacts with these types of cultures lack the scientific methodology of our present generation. Today, true hunter/gatherer societies that have had very little contact or influence from our current modern society, are vanishingly few. In the last one hundred years there have been a few contacts with isolated groups in remote regions of the earth, the last remnants of indigenous peoples living a literal stone-age existence on this planet. Fortunately, dedicated cultural anthropologists embedded themselves into these “primitive” cultures and meticulously detailed the intricate features of their social structures. Having read many of these reports myself, I can summarize that stone-age cultures, in general, exhibit a radically different social structure than our current western society.
For Example Marshall Sahlins in 1966 at a symposium in Chicago entitled “Man the Hunter” presented his theory derived from his ethnographic study of the !Kung tribes people of South Africa “…they all had what they needed or could make what they needed, for every man can and does make the things that men make and every woman the things that women make... They lived in a kind of material plenty because they adapted the tools of their living to materials which lay in abundance around them and which were free for anyone to take (wood, reeds, bone for weapons and implements, fibres for cordage, grass for shelters). or to materials which were at least sufficient for the needs of the population...In the non subsistence sphere, the people's wants are generally easily satisfied. Such "material plenty" depends partly upon the simplicity of technology and democracy of property. Products are homespun: of stone, bone, wood, skin-materials such as "lay in abundance around them". As a rule, neither extraction of the raw material nor its working up take strenuous effort. Access to natural resources is typically direct- "free for anyone to take"- even as possession of the necessary tools is general and knowledge of the required skills common. The division of labour is likewise simple, predominantly a division of labour by sex. Add in the liberal customs of sharing, for which hunters are properly famous, and all the people can usually participate in the going prosperity, such as it is.”
Sahlin pointed out emphatically that hunter gatherer societies typically need invest only about 20 hours work each week to procure all that they need for their existence, and that the majority of their time is spent at leisure. Although I envision a far more productive use of leisure time, this illustrates the amount of time that would be freed for human productivity by eliminating all the extraneous babble that absorbs most waking moments in our current
