Medium Rare

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE HUNTING HYPOTHESIS: A PERSONAL

CONCLUSION CONCERNING THE

EVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF MAN

by ROBERT ARDREY 242 pages. Atheneum. $10.

In his evolution from the proscenium arch of the playwright to the zygomatic arch of the popular anthropologist, Robert Ardrey, 63, has never lost his instinct for drama. African Genesis, The Territorial Imperative and The Social Contract swept through millions of years, the disappearance of continents and the draining of oceans. Entrances and exits involved crushes of phyla and species. The first ape man dropped from the trees to begin his long journey toward sapience.

Original Sin. Perhaps this approach is needed in an age when the universe is seen as a determinist switchboard and man keeps getting a recorded announcement saying the nirvana he has dialed is not a working nirvana. But a little bit of evolution as theater goes a long way. The Hunting Hypothesis is essentially a restaging of one of Ardrey's basic themes: "Man is man, and not a chimpanzee, because for millions upon millions of evolving years we killed for a living." It is a perfectly plausible statement but one that is likely to annoy those who prefer their original sin with religion, and psychologists who hold that aggression is mainly learned, not instinctual. Ardrey carefully avoids the word instinct, preferring the suggestion that as direct descendants of Cro-Magnon hunters, we retain "certain human propensities for the chase."

Many of Ardrey's conclusions about man arise from his readings of recent primate studies. The chimpanzee, for example, turns out to be more than a mischievous vegetarian. Bands of male chimps have been observed hunting small game, not primarily for food but for entertainment. One adult male was even seen eating its own young. Associating freely in the ethological record, Ardrey reasons that as long as primates remained treed, where food and safety were readily available, meat eating could be a sometime thing. He goes on to extrapolate that the earliest manlike creature made its appearance in rather barren areas. Few or no trees meant foraging and hunting on the ground. With the passage of eons, the foot flattened, the leg and back straightened, and the chase was on.

Ice Age. Hunting, runs this hypothesis, laid down the foundations of human institutions: the development of weapons, cooperative action, the need to share food and the division of labor into hunting males and child-rearing females. The nonhunting female, Ardrey believes, contributed vitamins to the diet by foraging for plants. But it was man's bringing home the meat that provided the proteins needed for the evolution of complex nerve and brain cells.

Vegetarians and feminists will not be pleased. Neither will readers who, while granting Ardrey the run of his special territory, require more rigor with their speculation. He frequently exhibits what might be called the rhetorical imperative. For example: "Are the qualities that we regard as uniquely human the consequences of being human beings, or have we evolved as human beings because of the earlier evolution of qualities that we regard as uniquely human?" This need to impose a dramatic unity on unimaginable lengths of time can also lead to inconsistencies. Ardrey says at one point that science has failed to advance our knowledge of ourselves, and elsewhere discusses the value of carbon dating, molecular genetics and the study of coprolites--fossilized feces--in revealing our prehistoric past. He asserts that the fate of Neanderthal man is unknown, and two pages later says with equal certainty that Cro-Magnon man killed him off. Finally, he notes dourly the prevalence of a current "doomsday attitude," yet closes with the specter of a new Ice Age that could end modern civilization.

A touch of apocalypticism is an appropriate conclusion to this idiosyncratic book. The accompanying nostalgia is something else. It is generally agreed that the human animal appears to have evolved because of hardship, not in spite of it, but Ardrey seems almost too wistful for the times when we survived by the skin of our fangs. R.Z. Sheppard

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