Yep. People underestimate just how easy it is to catch shellfish.
However we need to throw in the caveat that tools are need to either open or winkle most of them. A truly toolless person could get food from bivalves, like the mussels Mussel Point, provided she could figure out to leave them in the sun until they open.
But really, positing humans without the ability to break a twig off a tree or crack a limpet with a rock is positing a human that is *severely *mentally retarded.
I think he/she may be confusing possums with the NA opossums (the ones that play dead when threatened)
Yes. Although, assuming this naturist can swim, there’s always abalone and, like you said, crayfish.
Definitely. I don’t think people actually are understanding that we’ve been tool-users longer than we’ve been hominids. I blame the glut of “X-Treem Survival” reality shows.
Scavenging … looking for the leopard’s kill up in a tree the next morning. Here the evolutionary advance is an up-right gait, leaving proto-human forelimbs available to carry the dead half eaten antelope back to camp.
Most primates are vegetarians I do believe. It’s not a particularly long reach to assume our forebears were also, living in the extensive rainforests of Africa. I’m speculating the contemporary lowland gorilla as the model for our typical proto-human, not much need for fire, hunting, tools, atomic bombs or electricity.
We could not live in cities, and some say this is the definition of civilization … so civilization would collapse.
I don’t think we’d have the hands that we do without some tool use. Clubs and digging sticks might be all that’s necessary for thumbs to evolve, but simply climbing and carrying things don’t seem to need opposable thumbs. But it depends on what you consider human, and I don’t know if thumbs didn’t develop into their modern form until tool use became prevalent.
We tend to attack in packs.
We never tire (as far as an animal is concerned. To avoid a predator, one of the best ways is to get him tired)
We can kill from a distance using pretty much any thing which is handy. Never mind spears. A human child can use a rock or even a pebble and make it into a weapon by simply throwing it and we can thrown hard, fast and accurately.
I would say we are the ultimate predator.
Nope. I think you’ll find most are omnivores, with some being obligate carnivores.
Except we know they weren’t (either vegetarian or living in rainforests).
Naah, we’re chimps not gorillas. Gorillas are the pandas of the ape world, a behavioural cul de sac (and they’re not strict vegetarians, anyway)
“[Tree Shrews] are omnivorous, feeding on insects, small vertebrates, fruit, and seeds.”
meh … why do facts always interfere …
Do you have a citation for this handy, strictly for my own curiosity … if not don’t bother chasing it down.
I’m not getting why you’re setting this up as no tools?
It’s not like we’re the only species to use tools. It’s not like we’re the only species to make tools.
So why would you take something away from your humans in this scenario that chimpanzees and rooks do?
But as to how we’d acquire food. How do other primates acquire food? They hunt and gather even if you don’t want to use the term.
The gatherer part can be done without tools for some food items.
And indigenous Americans (who had tools), still used to just chase a herd of something over a cliff to their death.
Insects can be caught barehanded. So can fish and shellfish. Probably small mammals. Larger mammals that are sick/wounded.
Yeah its a pretty pointless discussion. Sure we could, in in ideal environment where it never falls below 10 degrees celsius but why would we?
I should have clarified that by tools I meant stone-age tools. Tools that other apes use like sticks to gather termites is acceptable in this ideal.
I just realized that what I really want to know is if homo sapiens can go back into a wild environment and live like the other apes even without the sophisticated language that we use.
I want to know the best latitudinal zone and biome to live naked like this, and how homo sapiens would go about acquiring their food.
Another question: is there a name for the species that humans evolved from that lived according to these restrictions?
Great discussion so far. Scavenging for insects, animal corpses, chasing prey to exhaustion, gathering sedentary marine animals are all suggestions that make me think.
I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, since we have a number of research projects here in Panama that are based on finding significant numbers of them. It is time-consuming, however, and since the eggs are generally small it definitely isn’t something you could depend on as a reliable source of food.
Duck eggs can be found near lakes, ponds, marshes, etc. Still doesn’t seem like a steady supply of food though.
I think we’d be better to blame cave man stereotypes. If all you have is a tree-branch club, an untailored bearskin thrown over your back and fire (as often portrayed in media), you have fewer tools than Homo sapiens ever had in reality. You’re back to about 4 million years pre-human.
Cave man is a ridiculously broad concept, but you’ll find “cave men” who can make spears and bows, sew clothing and shelters, craft specialized types of knives, etc. They’ll have the ability to make representative drawings and sculpture, which is no small feat on an intellectual level. They styled their hair and painted their bodies.
I think the ultra-primitive fiction may also be favored by some of the “technology is bad” crowd. They want to think of us living peaceful, idyllic vegan lifestyles with no tools and no environmental impact. That was never us.
Ted Kaczynski, a huge player in the “technology is bad” crowd, was never so idealistic, though many anti-technology people are.
We are not our ancestors. For one thing our brains are several times the size of those of any other ape. And brains require a lot of fuel. Our ancestors started using tools millions of years before our brains started growing and they used fire for at least a million years before the growth of brains. Cooking food, especially vegetable foods increases substantially the amount of calories available. It has been conjectured that it was cooking that allowed the evolution of our brains. You cannot take it away and expect humans to survive. Yes, there a raw foodies, but they live in a modern society and can afford to waste most of their food. And no, humans did not evolve as vegans. Our ancestors have long been omnivores.
Insects, mollusks, bird’s eggs, lizards, fish, fresh carcass liver/heart. All of these can be eaten raw.
I don’t understand why people are assuming that anyone thinks our ancestors were vegans. Our teeth make it obvious we’re omnivores.
Also, related to another comment, I don’t think hermit crabs and beavers and other animals besides humans (even the other apes) that use tools are capable of making technology that can destroy whole ecosystems and possibly even destroy the world. We replace forest with pavement. We made nuclear reactors which can really fuck things up. Technology keeps expanding by taking things that were once alive and turning them into dead things for humans to use.
And of course surviving in the wild for any animal is no cake-walk. Being exposed to the weather, having to be very vigilant for predators, having to always be on the lookout for food, having to dig up roots and skin/tear through the flesh of an animal, then (concerning hunter-gatherers) having to prepare the food which sometimes includes cracking hard-to-crack nuts with very little meat in them, etc. Hunter-gatherers have to carry wood back to camp which can take a while depending on the climate. There’s always work to do for hunter-gatherers and all the four legged animals, hard work.
Looking harmless does seem to have helped us tame animals for work, food or materials.
Are dogs not also omnivorous and deliberate social predators? Aside from tool use, higher intelligence, better cooling, worse nose and worse ears, how do we differ from them?
When was the earliest time that we weren’t at the top of the food chain?
Cooking vegetables increases calories available? How does that work? I thought it was eating meat that increased calories substantially.
Dogs used to be wolves before humans domesticated them. Wolves are not omnivorous. So it’s not a fair example.
You’re right.