Have humans ever killed animals using just their bare hands (..and teeth)?

what the hell this got to do with humans eating meat, Bush, Capitalism,Goverment????

 

Yeah, sorry, we kind of sidetracked a bit, haha!

One thing leads to another, you know how it goes ...

 

well if you want to go back into time far enugh, say 2.5 million years. this is around the time stone tools start to show in the fossle records along side prehistoric homanids. id say thats a pretty freekin long time.

One could say that some 125000 generations of human ancestors have evolvded over a few million years to use tools to hunt

of thoes 2.5 million years, agriculture (plant and aminal) has only been around 11 000 years or so at most. people where likly killing horses for food long before they figured out how to use them, to plow feild crops.

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I'm getting my information from recent scientific amercan magazines, which I subscribe too.

 

And what did we do before we had tools? We were nomads.

We wandered around eating various berries and wild fruits, in a way that is very similar to monkies, apes, chimps, and various other humanoids. Back then, we couldn't really eat meat.

Primates don't eat meat (unless they are given it, and except for some small insects which they pick off eachother's backs), so I'm tending to think that we humans didn't either, until we achieved tools, that is.

 

did I mention noodling earlier?

 

Apes and Chimps do eat meat in the wild. Read up on Jane Goodalls research -

" This event encouraged Jane to keep trying to form a sense of deeper trust with the chimps. Everyday, Jane was allowed closer. It was just three months into the study before Jane made her first big discovery. She was observing a male chimp, (David Greybeard, she later determined) up a tree with something pinkish in his hands. Two smaller, female chimps were nearby with their hands stretched out, as if begging. Jane used her binoculars for a better look. David Greybeard was eating the pink object. He dropped the object, and it fell to the ground. Some bushpigs came screeching out of the greenery, attacking David Greybeard. The pinkish object was a baby bush pig. David Greybeard was eating meat. This astounded Jane; chimpanzees had been thought of as herbivores, who occasionally ate small bugs. Chimpanzees had never before been seen or recorded as eating meat. Like humans, chimps are omnivores (Goodall 1971)."

From: http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/janegoodall.html

 

Chimps are less "omnivores" then they are, like humans, "opportunivores."

Chimps eat meat, but only for survival reasons. CHIEFLY, their diets consist almost entirely of fruits, nuts, small insects, and perhaps the occasional vegetable or two.

But hey, if I was a chimp, and I caught a bushpig, I'd eat it too.

 

Hikaru,

Please do not take this the wrong way, but, I think you are a little confused. Unfortunately you can not separate tools from humans (or homo sapiens). The use of tools is an event that occurred before we came to be. Tool making is one of the key elements that separates our genus from other primate genus. It is true that if you go back far enough in evolutionary line there are species that did not eat meat in their diets, but they were far from human. Looking at their bones and other evidence of their lives these ancestors had very little in common with us. In other words they were much more like apes. The introduction of tools started to change this. The creatures that used tools were starting to show other signs of what it is to be human too. So it really is inappropriate to separate us from our tools, they in a way are part of us; they are what make us human. I hope I helped.

Eric

 

I'm pretty sure that humans eat meat for survival reasons as well....

 

No matter what our needs were in the past, the fact is that we do not need meat to survive now, we do not need to kill other animals and eat their flesh.

 

there is very little that humans actually need.

 

Don't worry, I welcome the conversation!

Let me correct you here for a second.

Humans are not characterized by their use of tools over other animals and species. Even some cows have been known to fabricate simple tools.

Tools used as part of the hunting-gathering process have been used not just by homo sapiens sapiens (humans), but also by homo sapiens neanderthalensis (neanderthals), as well as homo erectus and its predecessor, homo habilis.

Thus, humans specifically are quite separable from the tools they have developed.

The family hominidae (of which humans and great apes both belong) is known to have a diet consisting, as I said before, chiefly of fruits, nuts, grasses, and small insects, and although some species have been known to eat small animals on occasion (if they could catch them), many do not.

Homo sapiens sapiens (humans) are the only species in this family that is known to eat large amounts of meat. Even according to the Wikipedia entry for "human," humans are characterized by having reduced canine teeth (indicating that their diets up until they evolved had a major decline in meat consumption).

So, we have had tools for a relatively long time, but only began actually eating meat fairly recently as homo sapiens.

Regardless, as Clover said,

This is incredibly true. It doesn't matter if we ate meat or didn't eat meat in the past; we don't need to eat meat at all now, so we shouldn't.

 

humans have carnivor teeth as well as herbivore. only alot less. I think it's natural to eat small amounts. humans are survivors. naturally. So they would probably naturally eat anything they had to to stay alive. I know a guy who has tackled and killed with his bare hands, deer and wild turkeys. And another guy who will eat the raw fresh heart out of a deer just like in the movies. Humans have the choice. Naturally.

 

I was responding to your question of what did we do before tools. My reply should have been We, as Humans, have also was had tools ( instead of the way i wrote it) as you have pointed out. Also as you have pointed out it is the homo that is characterized as tool user starting with habilis. The tools used by habilis were a huge change over other animals. Most scientist do not use the term "tool use" when talking about cow, otters, or even gorillas. The type of tools first used by homo habilis are much more complicated. One of the primary uses of habilis' tools were to cut flesh and skin animals. As you move through homo ranks the tools become better at this. Now i am saying the the Homo line were just massive meat eater and that is all they did, but it is evident that meat was a significant part of their diets.

 

I don't quite agree. I understood that habilis didn't have many tools for killing animals, and rather it was erectus that used them a little more often, and then the other sapiens that began using them more often.

 

Alot of strict vegetarians forget that lots of people in the world don't have such freedoms as to be choosing wether or not they eat meat. Any area where starvation is an issue or any nomadic tribes would never make it without eating animals.

I don't eat meat for ethical\health reasons... But to ignore the food chain and suggest the rest of the world do the same is ridiculous.

 

Ahh That is one of the big questions for habilis: scavanger or hunter? What we do know is habilis did have tools for processing meat. What is debatable is that they are hunters or not. Personally i do not know and anyone who says so is just speculating with very little data.

Here is a web site with images of the type of tools they were using:

http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/oldowanstonetools.htm

With these tools habilis could get at part of a animal few other creatures could namely bone marrow. Marrow is extremely high in calories. It is usually left behind by carnivores so it would be rip picking for habilis. We do see some evidence of makings on animal bones that show these types of tools to be used.

eric

 

Aye, there is *very* little data about it, so I don't think we will be able to conclude either way. The truth is probably a mix of the two of some sort.