Conference Proposal: Man the Hunted: The Origins and Nature of Human Sociality

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

All diurnal primates live in social groups. This is widely recognized as a predator protection mechanism. The more eyes and ears to detect predators and the more animals to mob them, the better the group is protected. Early humans have traditionally been thought of as hunters. However, because of their relatively small size, dentition, lack of hunting tools, and a number of other factors, it is more likely that the earliest humans, like most other primates, were prey species rather than predators. Sociality, cooperation, inter-individual dependency, and mutual protection are all part of the toolkit of social-living prey. In this symposium, the participants will explore this hypothesis and many of the mechanisms nonhuman primates and humans may have evolved as protection against predators,including cooperation and sociality. Further, the participants explore how behavioral, hormonal, and neuron-psychiatric mechanisms related to our evolution as a prey species might be affecting modern human behavior.