Overview

What makes humans unique? What makes us the most successful animal species inhabiting the Earth today? Most scientist agree that the key to our success is the unusually large size of our brains. Our large brains gave us our exceptional thinking capacity and led to humans' other distinctive characteristics, including advanced communication, tool use, and walking on two legs. Or was it the other way around? Did the challenges faced by early humans push the species toward communication, tool use and walking and, in doing so, drive the evolutionary engine toward a large brain? In this text, author Craig Stanford presents an alternative to this puzzling question. According to him, what make humans unique is meat. Or, rather, the desire for meat, the eating of meat, the hunting of meat and the sharing of meat. Stanford argues that the skills developed and required for successful hunting and especially the sharing of meat spurred the explosion of human brain size over the past 200,000 years.He then turns his attention to the ways meat is shared within primate and human societies to argue that this all-important activity has had profound effects on basic social structures that are still f

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Reviews

A provocative, eminently digestible book... Stanford writes clearly and often deftly, and with admirable concision... [A] marvelous exploration of evolutionary hypotheses ... fascinating stuff. -- Michael Pakenham The Baltimore Sun Anyone who would like to review all of the arguments on human origins should read The Hunting Apes... This book will go a long way in explaining why physical anthropologists and their colleagues fight so much. -- Deborah L. Manzolillo Times Literary Supplement A brave academic endeavour and a fine piece of popular science writing... Stanford's book summarises a huge body of evidence in a pleasing, coherent and non-polemic way. You'll feel that you're talking with a learned ... dinner companion, rather than enduring a lecture or hectoring sermon from an academic pulpit. -- Adrian Barnett New Scientist Stanford's ideas, while controversial, are amply documented by behavioral studies of nonhuman primates, anthropological studies of a number of human societies and archeological studies of early and pre-humans. Publishers Weekly [A] provocative new look at what made people so smart... This is a fascinating book, written for the nonspecialist. Booklist An unabashed celebration of the carnivorous tendencies of early humankind. Virtually every aspect of Stanford's thesis about the importance of meat acquisition and sharing among early humans is steeped in controversy. Kirkus Reviews [An] admirable little book... [Stanford's] meticulously constructed study is both readable and thought-provoking and gives fascinating insights into the behaviour of our species. The Tablet The Hunting Apes is a very enjoyable and quick read, written for a broad audience... These are well-written synopses--good for students, the general informed public, and those in anthropology and other sub-disciplines who want to keep up on these topics. -- M. Tappen Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

The Hunting Apes is a very enjoyable and quick read, written for a broad audience. . . . These are well-written synopses--good for students, the general informed public, and those in anthropology and other sub-disciplines who want to keep up on these topics. --M. Tappen, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute [An] admirable little book. . . . [Stanford's] meticulously constructed study is both readable and thought-provoking and gives fascinating insights into the behaviour of our species. --The Tablet An unabashed celebration of the carnivorous tendencies of early humankind. Virtually every aspect of Stanford's thesis about the importance of meat acquisition and sharing among early humans is steeped in controversy. --Kirkus Reviews [A] provocative new look at what made people so smart. . . . This is a fascinating book, written for the nonspecialist. --Booklist Stanford's ideas, while controversial, are amply documented by behavioral studies of nonhuman primates, anthropological studies of a number of human societies and archeological studies of early and pre-humans. --Publishers Weekly A brave academic endeavour and a fine piece of popular science writing. . . . Stanford's book summarises a huge body of evidence in a pleasing, coherent and non-polemic way. You'll feel that you're talking with a learned . . . dinner companion, rather than enduring a lecture or hectoring sermon from an academic pulpit. --Adrian Barnett, New Scientist Anyone who would like to review all of the arguments on human origins should read The Hunting Apes. . . . This book will go a long way in explaining why physical anthropologists and their colleagues fight so much. --Deborah L. Manzolillo, Times Literary Supplement A provocative, eminently digestible book. . . . Stanford writes clearly and often deftly, and with admirable concision. . . . [A] marvelous exploration of evolutionary hypotheses . . . fascinating stuff. --Michael Pakenham, The Baltimore Sun

An unabashed celebration of the carnivorous tendencies of early humankind. Virtually every aspect of Stanford's thesis about the importance of meat acquisition and sharing among early humans is steeped in controversy. Early evolutionary models of Man the Hunter were largely dismissed in the 1970s due to the tendency of these theories to focus on male-dominated activities while ignoring the important nutritional contributions of women in hunter-gatherer societies. Stanford (Anthropology/Univ. of Southern Calif.) attempts to sidestep this issue by focusing on the social, rather than nutritional, value of meat, which is acquired primarily by males and then used to manipulate and coerce females into sexual relations. He bases his theory primarily on the hunting activities of large apes, such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and bonobos, but includes modern hunter-gatherer societies in his survey of higher-primate hunting practices. His casual association between chimp and human hunting practices is certain to enrage ethnographers who have been attempting for several decades to dismiss the notion that modern hunter-gatherer societies can serve as a model for understanding early human activities. The absolute lack of fossil evidence to support the idea that an increased desire for meat in the diet was related to, or affected by, the explosion in intelligence and brain size in early man is also certain to keep Stanford's critics from readily accepting his findings. Perhaps the most provocative aspect of Stanford's argument is the notion that meat-sharing rituals may lie at the heart of the origins of patriarchal society. The gender-specific nature of hunting and the social elevation of meat-sharing activities may, he claims, provide the original basis for male dominance in human culture. The biological essentialism and mechanistic view of cultural activities propounded by Stanford here is not likely to sway many of the critics who wished to discredit the Man the Hunter model in the first place, but may find favor with those inclined toward sociobiology. (Kirkus Reviews)

In 68 days in the Gombe National Forest in Tanzania, anthropologist Craig Stanford watched chimpanzees, once thought to be vegetarians, kill and eat 71 colobus monkeys. An average chimpanzee community, in fact, consumes a ton of meat each year, and meat is sometimes traded for sex and power. These and other startling observations which appear to link humans and various primates are helping to illuminate the search for a biological basis for certain human behaviour. Blending his own observations of primates from three continents, plus an examination of fossil evidence and anthropological studies of hunter-gatherer societies, Stanford argues that meat may well have been the key to the expansion of the human brain. This is not meant to be the definitive text on the issue but an exploration of one scientist's informed yet provocative view. As such, it is well written and presented in seven closely linked essays. Highly recommended. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Craig B. Stanford, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California, has conducted field studies of apes and monkeys in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He is the author of the recent book Chimpanzee and Red Colobus.

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