# Can humans live without fire, tools, technology? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 23, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993 "2015-07-23T20:00:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tylerrp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c6cbf5/32.png) [@tylerrp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tylerrp)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/1 "2015-07-23T20:00:30Z")
I know humans can live without clothes. But can humans live without all other types of stone-age technologies that we have including fire, spears, daggers, traps. Can we live without tools, hand-made shelter, clothes, fire? If so, what is the perfect climate for a completely naked human being (let’s assume that the whole earth were pristine wilderness and that there was no water or air pollution and such)? How would naked man acquire food? The reason why I ask is I want to know how our ancestors BEFORE hunter-gatherers lived and I want to know if it’s possible for modern man to adapt to living in the wild like the other apes if we had the chance. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/2 "2015-07-23T20:45:13Z")
Been watching Naked and Afraid? ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/3 "2015-07-23T20:50:54Z")
> [@tylerrp](#): > > The reason why I ask is I want to know how our ancestors BEFORE hunter-gatherers lived and I want to know if it’s possible for modern man to adapt to living in the wild like the other apes if we had the chance. If you want to go back to before humans were hunter-gatherers, you can’t go back that far. Humans evolved as savannah hunter-gatherers. Someplace like Kenya would be a good place, if you wanted to give it a try. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/4 "2015-07-23T20:59:05Z")
Good luck boiling questionable water without fire. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/5 "2015-07-23T21:01:21Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > Good luck boiling questionable water without fire. You just drink it and die, like they used to do. And that’s another thing: humans have _always_ had controlled use of fire. It was developed by our predecessor _Homo Erectus_, or maybe even earlier. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/6 "2015-07-23T21:38:38Z")
If a kid like [Victor de l’Aveyron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_of_Aveyron) could survive this way by himself, surely we could. But I can’t see a human, even a wild child like him not using any tool at all. At the very least, even lacking any education or culture, I’m pretty convinced we would use pieces of wood, stones, etc… ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/7 "2015-07-23T22:08:45Z")
Other primates survive with fire, tools, and technology. Humans could do the same if necessary. At least the species could. A lot of individuals would die. ---
**Author:** ![Ornery\_Bob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/da6949/32.png) [@Ornery\_Bob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ornery_Bob)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/8 "2015-07-23T22:19:06Z")
The only thing “early” humans had that “modern” humans don’t have is a different set of skills and knowledge - both of which can be acquired. If they could do it, we can do it. Whatever they did back then to survive, we could do the same thing now. Let’s not forget that “technology” is an invention. You don’t get spears until you have people to invent them. If people couldn’t live without spears in the first place, then no people would ever be around to eventually invent them. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/9 "2015-07-23T23:13:08Z")
Language is also a tool. A band of humans can take out a wooly mammoth not because we have spears (the mammoth does, too), but because we can coordinate with each other in great detail. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what language gets us. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/10 "2015-07-24T02:48:32Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > If a kid like [Victor de l’Aveyron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_of_Aveyron) could survive this way by himself, surely we could. > . Unless we were born with diabetes. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/11 "2015-07-24T04:48:47Z")
I’d pick the Papua New Guinea Highlands instead of Kenya as the best place to try this. One of the most fertile and biodiverse places on the planet. Huge amounts of bird species with edible eggs and many many type of edible plants and fruits. Plus no large predators unlike Kenya, although you would have to watch out for Snakes and Spiders. Also regarded as being one of the places where agriculture was independently developed. > **[New Guinea Highlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Guinea_Highlands)** > > The New Guinea Highlands, also known as the Central Range or Central Cordillera, is a long chain of mountain ranges on the island of New Guinea, including the island's tallest peak, Puncak Jaya, Indonesia, 16,024 ft (4,884 m), the highest mountain in Oceania. The range is home to many intermountain river valleys, many of which support thriving agricultural communities. The highlands run generally east-west the length of the island, which is divided politically between Indonesia in the west and Pa... Although saying no tools at all even puts us at disadvantage over apes and monkeys, since they are known to use sticks to extract honey for example. Are we allowed to pick up sticks and rocks and use them as they as long as we don’t do any work on them, or is it purely bare hands and teeth only? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/12 "2015-07-24T05:00:28Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Although saying no tools at all even puts us at disadvantage over apes and monkeys, since they are known to use sticks to extract honey for example. Are we allowed to pick up sticks and rocks and use them as they as long as we don’t do any work on them, or is it purely bare hands and teeth only? Ruling out tools is rather excessive, since it’s tool-making is one of our basic adaptations as a species. It’s like not allowing beavers to build dams or bees not to make honeycombs. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/13 "2015-07-24T05:46:41Z")
Indeed, so lets say the premise is that using one of Skald’s devices we drop say 40 humans chosen at random from all over the planet completely naked in the New Guinea Highlands 60,000 years ago (before any Human’s made it there). They start naked but are allowed to create tools using their hands. I believe that over half of them would survive more than five years and if you came back and visited in 30 years you’d find a viable ongoing population with cultivated gardens and apart from high infant mortality they’d be generally healthy. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/14 "2015-07-24T06:21:51Z")
> [@tylerrp](#): > > How would naked man acquire food? [Persistence hunting.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting) When you catch up to the animal you’d still stab it or hit it with a rock, though. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/15 "2015-07-24T06:56:49Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > [Persistence hunting.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting) On the planes of Kenya yes, but in the New Guinea Highlands you wouldn’t need to do this. You could easily scavenge with bare hands bird eggs, lizards, beetles etc for protein and plenty of native edible plants. Not to mention possums move pretty slow and could probably be taken down with bare hands as well. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/16 "2015-07-24T07:41:18Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > I’d pick the Papua New Guinea Highlands instead of Kenya as the best place to try this. > One of the most fertile and biodiverse places on the planet. Huge amounts of bird species with edible eggs and many many type of edible plants and fruits. Plus no large predators unlike Kenya, although you would have to watch out for Snakes and Spiders. Also regarded as being one of the places where agriculture was independently developed. The New Guinea highlands are mostly either rainforest or alpine heathland/grassland mosaic. It’s highly questionable whether humans can find enough food to survive live in rainforests at all. A group of humans with no tools would be dead of starvation within a month. The alpine heathlands would better, but only marginally. There’s virtually no large animal life, and the plants are not especially edible at the best of times, and almost entirely inedible and unobtainable with no fire and no digging implements. If our group landed at the right time they might survive two months in the grasslands. > [@](#): > > Indeed, so lets say the premise is that… we drop say 40 humans chosen at random from all over the planet completely naked in the New Guinea Highlands 60,000 years ago (before any Human’s made it there). They start naked but are allowed to create tools using their hands. 60, 000 years ago New Guinea was inhabited by a plethora of utterly naive large animals including diprotodontids, tree kangaroos, goannas, echidnas and flightless birds. People would have been able to walk up to them and hit them over the head with a rock. So of course they would survive. But they would survive much better in New Zealand, Madagascar or mainland Australia, which have just as many naive animals and much more hospitable terrain in terms of plant life. > [@](#): > > You could easily scavenge with bare hands bird eggs, lizards, beetles etc for protein Birds eggs are rare. Finding them in rainforest is effectively impossible. Finding them in heathland would be marginally easier but still require far more energy than it would ever return. Catching lizards in a rainforests makes a wild goose chase look like a sure bet, and they are thin on the ground in alpine heath. Most beetles are poisonous. Nobody trying to get enough protein by eating beetles in a region the are unfamiliar with wouldn’t last real long. Seriously, if any of these food sources were so easily obtained that an untrained human could get their protein from them, then other species would have evolved to make them so uncommon that we couldn’t. > [@](#): > > … and plenty of native edible plants. Do you have a cite that there are plenty of edible native plants in this region? Because everything I have read says the opposite: the highlands were largely uninhabited before agriculture because it’s such a tough place to find food. > [@](#): > > Not to mention possums move pretty slow and could probably be taken down with bare hands as well. I am guessing you have never actually seen a possum. Slow is not a word to describe them, not is “easily taken down”. You’d have abetter chance of catching and killing a wildcat bare handed. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/17 "2015-07-24T07:51:29Z")
> [@tylerrp](#): > > But can humans live without all other types of stone-age technologies that we have including fire, spears, daggers, traps. Probably not. But then a bear can’t live if you prevent it from making a den, either. So i can’t quite understand what the question is asking. If you prevent any animal from engaging in its normal behaviour, it will die. Humans are no different. But humans under such restrictions will at least last longer than any other species. > [@](#): > > If so, what is the perfect climate for a completely naked human being (let’s assume that the whole earth were pristine wilderness and that there was no water or air pollution and such)? Define “pristine”? As i noted above, animals that are naive of humans will allow themselves to be clubbed to death by the dozen and won;t even run away. Almost any truly pristine environment would be a smorgasboard for humans without tools. We don’t look, move, smell or act like predators. Animals don’t naturally avoid us, that’s something they need to learn. So any tropical or subtropical climate with adequate water where the daily temperature doesn’t fall below 5oC for more than a few hours a day will be fine. > [@](#): > > How would naked man acquire food? In a pristine environment, you can stand still and the birds will land on your arm and let you throttle them. In a world where animals have learned to avoid people, it’s quite easy to catch shellfish, crayfish etc. > [@](#): > > The reason why I ask is I want to know how our ancestors BEFORE hunter-gatherers lived… Before we were hunter-gatherers we were literal monkeys. All our ape ancestors have been hunter gatherers. > [@](#): > > and I want to know if it’s possible for modern man to adapt to living in the wild like the other apes if we had the chance. Like other apes? You mean using stone tools, spears and digging sticks? I don’t think you understand how natural tool use is for humans and that we have been doing i since before we were humans. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/18 "2015-07-24T08:02:44Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > We don’t look, move, smell or act like predators. I’m curious about this one. In what way(s) do we not look, move smell and act like predators? How come we don’t, given that we still are predators? Are we the Ted Bundys of nature? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/19 "2015-07-24T08:36:22Z")
> [@tylerrp](#): > > If so, what is the perfect climate for a completely naked human being (let’s assume that the whole earth were pristine wilderness and that there was no water or air pollution and such)? Despite what seems intuitive, I’d rule out the tropics as ideal. Instead, subtropic-temperate coastline ( Köppen _Cfb_) is what you want. It’s[the kind of climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave) where our ancestors _became_ behaviourly modern human beings. > [@](#): > > How would naked man acquire food? He’d [pick it off rocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussel_Point). ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993/20 "2015-07-24T08:50:18Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > I’m curious about this one. In what way(s) do we not look, move smell and act like predators? Humans are noisy. We talk, we stomp our feet, we break vegetation. Predators are generally silent, even when moving casually Humans have a lot of “peripheral movement”, ie our arms and legs swing a lot, our head pivots sharply and so forth. We can be spotted a mile off. Predators, with few exceptions, have very discrete movement patterns and special adaptations for concealing their movements, even down to where they are facing. Humans make no attempt at all blend in with our surroundings. We are one of the few predators stupid enough to silhouette ourselves against the skyline, although that is just one example of how we make ourselves conspicuous. Humans have an odour quite different from other predators. How can’t be described in simple terms. We just smell more like pigs than lions. > [@](#): > > How come we don’t, given that we still are predators? 1. We are omnivorous and deliberate predators. When humans move, we are mostly either travelling, or foraging, not hunting. So our movement patterns are optimised for that. We look around a lot seeking small game, tracks or fruit, so we don’t pay attention to where we place our feet. When we do decide to hunt it is deliberate, and we enter stealth mode which is a lot more like other predators. But in our default mode we look like browers. Other predators generally don’t move much unless they are hunting, so they are basically always on. Humans only move into stealth mode after we have seen prey, then we start stalking it. But we have such exceptional eyesight and lousy hearing and smell that we actually want prey to be flushed so we can see it and then follow it visually. If we had to sneak around until we saw hiding prey then we’d starve to death. 2. We fear nothing. Humans are the top of he food chain. nothing hunts us. Nothig scares us. Most other predators are preyed on by something so they need to stay hidden, so they always move stealthily. Even lions will be attacked by hyaenas if they are detected. But humans act like elephants: we crash through the scrub oblivious to danger because we never are in danger. > [@](#): > > Are we the Ted Bundys of nature? Basically, yeah. We evolved recently from herbivores. We became hunters after we evolved tools so we act like no other predator on the planet. Eurafrican species have been exposed to humanoid hunters for so long that they have evolved to cope. Prey elsewhere have struggled, and continue to struggle. We scan like an elephant… until we whip out a spear. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-live-without-fire-tools-technology/725993.md?page=2)