Ecology and the Protohominids*

Abstract

LTHOUGN the word ecology is used in both the biological and the social A sciences, attempts to bring the biologist and students of human society together by analogical reasoning are beset with traps for the unwary. The biological world lies primarily within genetic and physiological limits while that of the social sciences lies within cultural limits. However, whatever else man is, he is first an animal and hence subject, although usually indirectly, to environmental and biological factors. It is generally agreed that the ecological generalizations and points of view which have proved helpful in interpreting the natural history of most mam--mals can be applied virtually intact to all primates except man. It should, therefore, be possible to extrapolate upward from ecological data on other mammals and suggest the biological attributes of the protohominids and to extrapolate downward from ethnological data on hunting and collecting peoples and suggest the minimal cultural attributes of the protohominids. We propose first to discuss in general terms some aspects of mammalian ecology which appear to be applicable to the protohominids; second, to apply these ideas to the available data on the australopithecines; and third, to dis-cuss the application of a few ecological ideas to preagricultural humans. A history of the development of ecology and suggestions for its applications to anthropology which has recently been published by Bates (1953) provides basic historical orientation and perspective for such an effort. Protohomilaids and tools. In retrospect, the vast sweep of evolution appears to lead inevitably to the appearance of man, but a rational interpretation of the evidence refutes this. During the Cenozoic there have been three separate mammalian evolutionary complexes, one in Australia, one in South America, and one in Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Of these complexes, only the last has produced organisms of the hominid level. Further, since the major orders of mammals were already distinct in the Eocene, each has had a sepa-rate genetic history for approximately 70,000,000 years, and only one, pri-mates, has produced a n organism a t the hominid level of organization. Since a number of mammalian orders have shown a strong independent evolutionary trend toward a large brain size, this trend is by no means peculiar to the order primates (Edinger 1948). This striking parallelism is presumably related to the fact that large brain size favors varied behavior and learning as supplements to genetically fixed responses. Why then did not the primates, ~~