Man the Hunted

Did social connections evolve to protect us from being on somebody's menu? A panel session at the St. Louis American Association for the Advancement of Science going on in St. Louis today would have us believe that. The lead paper by Robert Sussman is from his new book "Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution," argues that early hominids were prey, not predators, of wild dogs and cats, hyenas, eagles and crocodiles. It was only after we developed social systems, allowing us to work in groups, says Sussman, that we arrived at the top of the food chain.

I always wondered why I felt the need to bond with that mixed bag of souls that makes up my family....

Early humans on the menu, from EurekAlert news service