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Robert Ardrey's Nature of Man #4
The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man
“For millions of years we have survived as hunters. In the few short millennia since our divorce from that necessity there has been no time for significant biological change - anatomical, physiological, or behavioral. Today we have small hope of comprehending ourselves and our world unless we understand that man still, in his inmost being, remains a hunter.”
From this premise, supported by the accumulated research and observations of two decades of anthropological investigation, Robert Ardrey guides the reader on a remarkable journey of discovery through twenty million years of man’s prehistory: from the days when his ancestors first emerged from the forests of Africa during the benevolent warmth and rains of the Miocene, through the unremitting drought of the Pliocene, and the dramatic climactic shifts of the Pleistocene, down to those few thousand years past when man emerged at last onto the stage of recorded history, a fully evolved hunting animal.
In this, Ardrey’s fourth book on the subject of man’s origins and nature, the author addresses himself with bold logic and insights to that basic question that haunts the cellars of our conscious mind: Why is man man?
Praise for the 1976 edition:
“Ardrey is back, and even his most scandalized critics will once again find it hard to resist reading him. By sheer wit, audacity, and timing he will entertain a large audience… [He is] the lyric poet of evolution, a superb writer…”
- E O Wilson
“This is easily the best of Robert Ardrey’s books. It is brilliant in its summary of recent findings, it is wonderfully persuasive in its argument about our essential human nature, and it makes a satisfying unity out of Ardrey’s thinking in all his books.”
- Max Lerner
“If I believe that Robert Ardrey’s books are the most important to be written since WWII and arguably in the 20th century, it is because he has satisfied to a quite unbelievable degree the demands of the ignorant layman and the requirements of the responsible scientist. The Hunting Hypothesis is not so much a sequel to the three previous books as the culmination of them. He draws on twenty years of wide reading and deep thinking, of predictable objection and surprising corroboration, to produce a unique and beautiful account of the making of man.”
- Antony Jay
From this premise, supported by the accumulated research and observations of two decades of anthropological investigation, Robert Ardrey guides the reader on a remarkable journey of discovery through twenty million years of man’s prehistory: from the days when his ancestors first emerged from the forests of Africa during the benevolent warmth and rains of the Miocene, through the unremitting drought of the Pliocene, and the dramatic climactic shifts of the Pleistocene, down to those few thousand years past when man emerged at last onto the stage of recorded history, a fully evolved hunting animal.
In this, Ardrey’s fourth book on the subject of man’s origins and nature, the author addresses himself with bold logic and insights to that basic question that haunts the cellars of our conscious mind: Why is man man?
Praise for the 1976 edition:
“Ardrey is back, and even his most scandalized critics will once again find it hard to resist reading him. By sheer wit, audacity, and timing he will entertain a large audience… [He is] the lyric poet of evolution, a superb writer…”
- E O Wilson
“This is easily the best of Robert Ardrey’s books. It is brilliant in its summary of recent findings, it is wonderfully persuasive in its argument about our essential human nature, and it makes a satisfying unity out of Ardrey’s thinking in all his books.”
- Max Lerner
“If I believe that Robert Ardrey’s books are the most important to be written since WWII and arguably in the 20th century, it is because he has satisfied to a quite unbelievable degree the demands of the ignorant layman and the requirements of the responsible scientist. The Hunting Hypothesis is not so much a sequel to the three previous books as the culmination of them. He draws on twenty years of wide reading and deep thinking, of predictable objection and surprising corroboration, to produce a unique and beautiful account of the making of man.”
- Antony Jay
179 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 1976
17 people are currently reading
607 people want to read
About the author
Robert Ardrey
76 books40 followersRobert Ardrey was born in the South Side of Chicago in 1908. He attended the University of Chicago to study biology, but became the writing protegé of Thornton Wilder. He graduated in the midst of the Great Depression and supported himself with odd jobs while he wrote under Wilder's watchful eye. His first play, Star Spangled, opened on Broadway in 1935.
He continued to have plays produced on Broadway. His most famous, Thunder Rock, became a sensation in wartime London, and is now regarded as an international classic. Ardrey's plays caught the attention of MGM executive Samuel Goldwyn; in 1938 Ardrey moved to Hollywood, where he would become MGM's highest paid writer. He is credited with over a dozen films, including The Three Musketeers (1948, with Gene Kelly), The Wonderful Country (1959, with Robert Mitchum), and Khartoum (1966, directed by Basil Dearden, starring Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier) for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
In the 1950s, increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood, Ardrey travelled to Africa to write a series of articles. This trip renewed his interest in human origins, and he returned to his academic training in the sciences. In 1956 he moved with his wife and two sons to Geneva, and spent the next five years travelling and researching in Eastern and Southern Africa, conducting research for what would become his first scientific work, African Genesis (1961).
African Genesis and Ardrey's subsequent books were massively popular and deeply controversial. They overturned core assumptions of the social sciences and led to a revolution in thinking about human nature. Fundamentally Ardrey argued that human behavior was not entirely socially determined, rather evolutionarily inherited instincts help determine behavior and format large-scale social phenomena. Subsequent science has largely vindicated his hypotheses.
Robert Ardrey is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the inaugural Sidney Howard Memorial Award, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and received an Academy Award Nomination for best screenplay for his film Khartoum. Time magazine named African Genesis the most notable book of the 1960s.
For more see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
He continued to have plays produced on Broadway. His most famous, Thunder Rock, became a sensation in wartime London, and is now regarded as an international classic. Ardrey's plays caught the attention of MGM executive Samuel Goldwyn; in 1938 Ardrey moved to Hollywood, where he would become MGM's highest paid writer. He is credited with over a dozen films, including The Three Musketeers (1948, with Gene Kelly), The Wonderful Country (1959, with Robert Mitchum), and Khartoum (1966, directed by Basil Dearden, starring Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier) for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
In the 1950s, increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood, Ardrey travelled to Africa to write a series of articles. This trip renewed his interest in human origins, and he returned to his academic training in the sciences. In 1956 he moved with his wife and two sons to Geneva, and spent the next five years travelling and researching in Eastern and Southern Africa, conducting research for what would become his first scientific work, African Genesis (1961).
African Genesis and Ardrey's subsequent books were massively popular and deeply controversial. They overturned core assumptions of the social sciences and led to a revolution in thinking about human nature. Fundamentally Ardrey argued that human behavior was not entirely socially determined, rather evolutionarily inherited instincts help determine behavior and format large-scale social phenomena. Subsequent science has largely vindicated his hypotheses.
Robert Ardrey is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the inaugural Sidney Howard Memorial Award, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and received an Academy Award Nomination for best screenplay for his film Khartoum. Time magazine named African Genesis the most notable book of the 1960s.
For more see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 28, 2020
The Hunting Hypothesis is the capstone of Robert Ardrey's "nature of man" series of books: African Genesis 1961, The Territorial Imperative 1966, and The Social Contract 1970. Throughout these books Ardrey promoted a different view of human nature than the one reigning by the mid twentieth century. "Not in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born" is the first sentence of the series.
I thought The Hunting Hypothesis was quite good. The book is relatively short and very general, but full of informative speculations which go well with his other books. Robert Ardrey's influence is pretty widespread, which can unfortunately dull the impact of his ideas today. That humans came from Africa, weren't just peaceful vegans/scavengers, and evolutionary history still has an effect on us aren't as heterodox positions as they once were. The Neo-Darwinian paradigm was developing when he was writing his series, and the popularity of his works gave a ready audience for sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Director Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie with Arthur C Clark 2001: A Space Odyssey is influenced by Ardrey, most obviously the opening scene when the ape proto-men pick up bones as weapons, something actually mentioned in African Genesis. Another director of the same time period Sam Peckingpah read Ardrey; his controversial 1971 film Straw Dogs, which Peckingpah changed drastically from the book upon reading Ardrey, definitely exhibits the territorial imperative. In general his thesis of human evolution from apes as due to the hunting of meat seems widely accepted today, even by honest vegans who like the wisest of us recognize the incongruity between reality and human's desires. Robert Ardrey was a professional playwright before writing his series of books, and here he gave a popular audience his evolutionary tragedy of man.
I thought The Hunting Hypothesis was quite good. The book is relatively short and very general, but full of informative speculations which go well with his other books. Robert Ardrey's influence is pretty widespread, which can unfortunately dull the impact of his ideas today. That humans came from Africa, weren't just peaceful vegans/scavengers, and evolutionary history still has an effect on us aren't as heterodox positions as they once were. The Neo-Darwinian paradigm was developing when he was writing his series, and the popularity of his works gave a ready audience for sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Director Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie with Arthur C Clark 2001: A Space Odyssey is influenced by Ardrey, most obviously the opening scene when the ape proto-men pick up bones as weapons, something actually mentioned in African Genesis. Another director of the same time period Sam Peckingpah read Ardrey; his controversial 1971 film Straw Dogs, which Peckingpah changed drastically from the book upon reading Ardrey, definitely exhibits the territorial imperative. In general his thesis of human evolution from apes as due to the hunting of meat seems widely accepted today, even by honest vegans who like the wisest of us recognize the incongruity between reality and human's desires. Robert Ardrey was a professional playwright before writing his series of books, and here he gave a popular audience his evolutionary tragedy of man.
June 24, 2023
Much like Ardrey's other works in this series, this is a convincing argument released decades ago with sometimes flawed data. The overall thesis is sound, but these are topics we know much more about today than when this was written. Its not particularly bad until the final chapter, when he goes on to make an excellent point about anthropocentrism (central-positioning as he calls it, even hilariously and accurately stating it as a particularly Christian vice) but in the context of his belief in a coming global cooling and a return to ice age conditions for Earth. This book was published before knowledge of anthropogenic climate change was well known, so the author cannot be blamed for this, but it is a jarring read. However, his point still stands: Humanity is the slave of nature and responds to it far more than controls it. Even in the carbon hellscape we have come to reside, our own input into nature is often unintentional and cannot be self-controlled.
Goes to show you can be entirely wrong on the specifics but still get the central point correct philosophically.
Goes to show you can be entirely wrong on the specifics but still get the central point correct philosophically.
January 30, 2011
Ardrey writes a compelling story of what our pre-History 'may' have been.
He also makes a case about the coming Ice Age; in the millions of years of Earth's existence, never before have we gone for more than a 10,000 years between Ice Ages, until this time in History, our current reprieve. Evidence tells us that previous Ice Ages have been preceded by cataclysmic changes in our weather.
Food for thought. During our next Ice Age, it will not be possible to feed more than a small percentage of our current Earth's population.
He also makes a case about the coming Ice Age; in the millions of years of Earth's existence, never before have we gone for more than a 10,000 years between Ice Ages, until this time in History, our current reprieve. Evidence tells us that previous Ice Ages have been preceded by cataclysmic changes in our weather.
Food for thought. During our next Ice Age, it will not be possible to feed more than a small percentage of our current Earth's population.
March 27, 2024
IS OUR HUMANITY NOT THE CONSEQUENCE, BUT THE CAUSE, OF OUR HUMANITY?
Robert Ardrey (1908-1980) was an American playwright and screenwriter, who became disenchanted with the field in the 1950s, and returned to his earlier academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences, becoming a best-selling science writer.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1976 book, “Why is man man? What forces divine or mundane delivered to our natural world that remarkable creature, the human being?... the question inhabits us all, as universal in our species as the capacity for speech… Man is a marvel---yet nor so marvelous as to demand miraculous explanation… Man as a species is far too ancient, far too varied, and as an animal far too complex, to submit to individual comprehension. We shall never make even an entrance to the mystery if we do not accept man as a paradox.” (Pg. 1, 5)
He explains, “The hunting hypothesis may be stated like this: Man is man, and not a chimpanzee, because for millions upon millions of evolving years we killed for a living…. If among all the members of our primate family the human being is unique, even in our noblest aspirations, it is because we alone through untold millions of years were continuously dependent on killing to survive.” (Pg. 9)
He reprints a statement from British anthropologist Kenneth P. Oakley: “The fossil evidence … amounts to proof that hunting had been practiced systematically and successfully for unknown earlier periods of time by the evolving, small-brained ancestral hominid.” (Pg. 19) He comments, “The new view was being reinforced by other than physical anthropologists assessing the implications of recent fossil discoveries… So long as we were dependent on meat for survival, we were dependent on hunting. The scavenging hypothesis is ended. But the other alternative, the vegetarian hypothesis, is another matter.” (Pg. 19-21)
He asks, “what if the hunting way… had started millions of years BEFORE the advent of the human brain? Then our brain… is an evolutionary consequence of survival necessities that had come before… Are the qualities that we regard as uniquely human the consequence of being human beings, or have we evolved as human beings because of the earlier evolution of qualities that we regard as uniquely human?” (Pg. 22)
He argues, “We may, of course, turn our backs on science and … turn our meandering thought to the occult, to the conjoining of planets, to the splendid interventions of extraterrestrial beings. Yet… I find it difficult to believe that we can ever as a species return to the animism of Disneylike threatening trees, favorable omens, unfavorable ghosts, and far-placed stars influencing your life or mine. Perhaps all is a matter or preference. If so, science is mine. Never will it teach us all we need to know. Never will it provide us with final answers, and since none exist, then science’s weakness becomes science’s strength… And so I restate my original proposition: Our humanity is not the consequence but the cause of our becoming human beings.” (Pg. 71)
He suggests, “the nakedness of the human ape could not have been the consequence of the hunting life. It was a necessary consequence of sexual display on the part of the human female. Her frontal sexual enticements became openly displayed. No chest hair obscured her breasts, no beard the enticements of her mouth… So female invention went on. And the latest… was the female orgasm.” (Pg. 100)
He acknowledges, “The origin of sapiens sapiens is as vexing a question as exists in anthropology… Where we came from… must remain a mystery bequeathed to future anthropologists. What happened to Neanderthal, I find no mystery at al. We killed him off…. By means of a brain with superior organization… by means of superior weapons… we annihilated Neanderthal man… He had not only massacred fellow Neanderthalers but eaten them as well. But when he met us, the strangers, he met a different kind.” (Pg. 169-170)
He asserts, “As hunters, we were dangerous animals, led necessarily violent lives, and suffered natural selection against those individuals who failed to delight in the chase and the kill. If today we delight in violent action… the legacy seems a normal one. But again, the organized warfare of man against men fails of explanation.” (Pg. 171-172)
He contends, “The need to believe in omnipotent forces is a very old story. We have seen it formalized n Cro-Magnon times through paintings and totems and shamans… If any overwhelming conceptual difference exists between the skulls at Choukuotien and the more refined Christian communion, in which symbolically we partake of the flesh and blood of Christ, then the difference escapes me.” (Pg. 205-206)
He concludes, “Perhaps the death of the hunter will be the long monument to interglacial man. We denied a future to our successor beings. Evolution will tell us one day whether the balance of nature and evolving man---from the risen ape to the human being---will ever have been restored. I cannot know, nor can you, since we shall all have long been gone. All I can assert is that I was happy, even proud, to have been a member of interglacial man.” (Pg. 223)
Ardrey’s speculations are written in a very engaging and clear style; but I think that critics of his viewpoints (e.g. Richard Leakey) have much the stronger case.
Robert Ardrey (1908-1980) was an American playwright and screenwriter, who became disenchanted with the field in the 1950s, and returned to his earlier academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences, becoming a best-selling science writer.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1976 book, “Why is man man? What forces divine or mundane delivered to our natural world that remarkable creature, the human being?... the question inhabits us all, as universal in our species as the capacity for speech… Man is a marvel---yet nor so marvelous as to demand miraculous explanation… Man as a species is far too ancient, far too varied, and as an animal far too complex, to submit to individual comprehension. We shall never make even an entrance to the mystery if we do not accept man as a paradox.” (Pg. 1, 5)
He explains, “The hunting hypothesis may be stated like this: Man is man, and not a chimpanzee, because for millions upon millions of evolving years we killed for a living…. If among all the members of our primate family the human being is unique, even in our noblest aspirations, it is because we alone through untold millions of years were continuously dependent on killing to survive.” (Pg. 9)
He reprints a statement from British anthropologist Kenneth P. Oakley: “The fossil evidence … amounts to proof that hunting had been practiced systematically and successfully for unknown earlier periods of time by the evolving, small-brained ancestral hominid.” (Pg. 19) He comments, “The new view was being reinforced by other than physical anthropologists assessing the implications of recent fossil discoveries… So long as we were dependent on meat for survival, we were dependent on hunting. The scavenging hypothesis is ended. But the other alternative, the vegetarian hypothesis, is another matter.” (Pg. 19-21)
He asks, “what if the hunting way… had started millions of years BEFORE the advent of the human brain? Then our brain… is an evolutionary consequence of survival necessities that had come before… Are the qualities that we regard as uniquely human the consequence of being human beings, or have we evolved as human beings because of the earlier evolution of qualities that we regard as uniquely human?” (Pg. 22)
He argues, “We may, of course, turn our backs on science and … turn our meandering thought to the occult, to the conjoining of planets, to the splendid interventions of extraterrestrial beings. Yet… I find it difficult to believe that we can ever as a species return to the animism of Disneylike threatening trees, favorable omens, unfavorable ghosts, and far-placed stars influencing your life or mine. Perhaps all is a matter or preference. If so, science is mine. Never will it teach us all we need to know. Never will it provide us with final answers, and since none exist, then science’s weakness becomes science’s strength… And so I restate my original proposition: Our humanity is not the consequence but the cause of our becoming human beings.” (Pg. 71)
He suggests, “the nakedness of the human ape could not have been the consequence of the hunting life. It was a necessary consequence of sexual display on the part of the human female. Her frontal sexual enticements became openly displayed. No chest hair obscured her breasts, no beard the enticements of her mouth… So female invention went on. And the latest… was the female orgasm.” (Pg. 100)
He acknowledges, “The origin of sapiens sapiens is as vexing a question as exists in anthropology… Where we came from… must remain a mystery bequeathed to future anthropologists. What happened to Neanderthal, I find no mystery at al. We killed him off…. By means of a brain with superior organization… by means of superior weapons… we annihilated Neanderthal man… He had not only massacred fellow Neanderthalers but eaten them as well. But when he met us, the strangers, he met a different kind.” (Pg. 169-170)
He asserts, “As hunters, we were dangerous animals, led necessarily violent lives, and suffered natural selection against those individuals who failed to delight in the chase and the kill. If today we delight in violent action… the legacy seems a normal one. But again, the organized warfare of man against men fails of explanation.” (Pg. 171-172)
He contends, “The need to believe in omnipotent forces is a very old story. We have seen it formalized n Cro-Magnon times through paintings and totems and shamans… If any overwhelming conceptual difference exists between the skulls at Choukuotien and the more refined Christian communion, in which symbolically we partake of the flesh and blood of Christ, then the difference escapes me.” (Pg. 205-206)
He concludes, “Perhaps the death of the hunter will be the long monument to interglacial man. We denied a future to our successor beings. Evolution will tell us one day whether the balance of nature and evolving man---from the risen ape to the human being---will ever have been restored. I cannot know, nor can you, since we shall all have long been gone. All I can assert is that I was happy, even proud, to have been a member of interglacial man.” (Pg. 223)
Ardrey’s speculations are written in a very engaging and clear style; but I think that critics of his viewpoints (e.g. Richard Leakey) have much the stronger case.
September 12, 2017
Outdated but (for then) well informed proposal that the reason humans developed civilisation is due to their evolution as hunters. He had good information for a palaeoanthropologist from the 70's but the book draws shaky conclusions well beyond the evidence. Add in his personal peccadilloes of submissive gathering and sexually racy women, just waiting to taste the pleasures of their men, and his conclusion of the evidence of global warming being quite wrong, and you have a perfect storm of pomposity, unfortunate logic and failing prognostications. Still, if you like the history of a science and revel in gloriously failed hypotheses you may enjoy it anyway.
June 23, 2017
Ardrey makes what would otherwise be a boring anthropology study into a thrilling adventure. Like a detective he is chasing the true ancestry of Man, which keeps slipping away at every corner. I had great fun reading this stimulating and eye-opening book right up to the point when in turned to doom-and-gloom apocalyptic mad prophet ravings. Climate change is real, yes, but somehow I think we're gonna be fine. We watched The Walking Dead to prepare :D
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July 8, 2022A strong thesis on human origins and nature
June 6, 2023
Świetne, zrozumiały język, ciekawy przekaz
April 10, 2010
Robert Ardrey, a playwright, became interested in the evolutionary bases of animal and human behavior later in his life. This is one of the books that he penned (another well known book os his is The Territorial Imperative). He was an amateur student of the subject and sometimes this shows. If interested in a very readable account of how hunting may have shaped the evolution of human behavior, this does provoke some thinking. On the other hand, it remains an amateur's analysis of the subject with all that that entails.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews