When Humans Were Prey

part1, In 1924, a worker at a limestone quarry in the town of Taung, South. Africa made an incredible, discovery. It was the fossilized skull of a juvenile hominin, a. member of the human lineage that includes, us and all of our ancestors that came. after our split with chimpanzees and bonobos. This partial cranium belonged to. a young member of Paranthropus robustus dating to between 1.8, and 1.5 million years ago. Its discovery revolutionized. our, thinking about our past for a number of reasons. For one thing, at about. 2.8 million years old,, it was the first fossil evidence that our early human ancestors. originated in Africa. But there was something, else. The skull had been found among lots. of bones from other, mostly small animals, and many of, them had been badly damaged,. as if the animals had been butchered. The child’s skull was labelled SK 54,. and, it had suffered two punctures at the back of the head. And the bone. on the inside of, the cap, where those punctures were, flaked upward - indicating that. the victim was probably alive, or only, very recently dead, when it was attacked.. The notion that our ancestors were once hunted by other animals would have come as. a, surprise to the anthropologist who first studied the TaunG Child. His name was Raymond. Dart, and he proposed, that one of the driving forces of human evolution was what. he called “the thirst for blood.” To, Dart and many anthropologists of his time, the. impulse to kill prey was seen as a deeply ingrained, part of our heritage.. We may be who we are today, because of the time when we, were prey. And, it turns out that this difficult chapter in. our history may be responsible for the adaptations that allowed, us to become so successful. That little skull, became the type specimen for. Australopithecus africanus, a species of australopithecines that came from the same lineage as our ancestors.. It was found alongside other fossil mammals, like antelope and baboons, many of them, which were. also damaged or had only their skulls preserved. Dart. observed baboons that appeared to “spontaneously” hunt down prey, when they were. young, and, he noted that, living hunter-gatherers. seemed to be hunters first and gatherers second. So, Dart built the case that australopsines. were, ravenous carnivores, as more and more fossils emerged that seemed to support his model.. One such fossil was, unearthed in a South African cave in 1949: the bony skull cap,. of a young hominine. Raymond Dart described the remains as “a fragment of a human skull” and he described the cranium as a “young member of a large ape-man lineage,” which he called big ape. At. the time, a science writer named Robert Ardrey took this, fossil as evidence of interpersonal. violence: SK 54 was the victim of “two blows to the head, by another ape-men.“ It would be more than 80 years before scientists would realize that,. in fact, this, site was not proof that the hominins themselves were, being hunted. So for decades, these fossils were, read by. experts as evidence that hyinins like australapithecus weren’t fruit-eating apes -- they were carnivorous hunters,. so-called, “predatory ape- men. “Ardrey would go on to study the remains of other hominines that were found in South Africa, as well as, other fossils from other parts of the world, including South Africa. Soon, Ardrey would come to view the skull of SK 54 as evidence, that, not too long ago, our early people were under. constant threat of attack from predators.. Soon, he would be able to point to another, fossil from South Africa that he said, was evidence of the same. violence. This time, he pointed to the skull cap of. a juvenile human, made. by another. member. of. the ape lineage. That skull was known as SK 54. And it would become one of, the most important fossils in, the study. of the evolution..The Killer, that our evolution, shaped. South. African cave. site was. filled this site with most of the bones of other animals, including this site was more than 100,000 years old, and it was filled with this site seemed to have been attacked. The only thing that was missing, was two blows at. two blows “to the head.