Danger: Humans

[DShomshak]

On a more serious note, Scientific American several months back had an article laying out evidence that early humans spent an extended period living as shellfish-gatherers along the South African coast. In addition to the physical evidence, the author noted that this well explains humans' peculiar hypersociality and territoriality: Not many animals gather in large cooperative groups, which war on other large cooperative groups.

 

From an economic standpoint, human intragroup loyalty and intergroup hostility makes no sense if you're chasing antelope on the plains of Africa. You don't need dozens or hundreds of people working together to chase antelope; you don't declare that a patch of ground is yours, and nobody else's; you don't stand and fight to the last man to hold onto what is yours, or attack relentlessly to take what another group has. There are always more antelope, and they move.

 

Territorial and group loyalty only makes economic sense -- in the fundamental economy of obtaining food -- if the food source is immobile, and not only large enough to be worth protecting, it's large enough to require a cooperative group to patrol against poachers. And, conversely, large enough to make poaching attractive. A few thousand years of civilization have enabled us to form larger groups, but the primordial instincts remain strong.

 

So how might this affect human relations with aliens? It might be easier to get along with aliens who look less human. If the aliens look too human, they might trigger our instincts of defense and aggression against other tribes.

 

(We also might have trouble understanding aliens that achieved sapience under different ecological/economical conditions, such as a species that really did get its start chasing antelope. The underlying social assumptions and habits of thought might be quite different.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[megaplayboy]

What if other species view war as diplomacy? "We attack new species to see how they respond. If they unite and resist, even if ineffectually, we cease hostilities and establish diplomatic ties. If they capitulate quickly, we either subjugate them or we don't bother establishing relations."

[sinanju]

What if other species view war as diplomacy? "We attack new species to see how they respond. If they unite and resist, even if ineffectually, we cease hostilities and establish diplomatic ties. If they capitulate quickly, we either subjugate them or we don't bother establishing relations."

 

In FOOTFALL, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell, the aliens arrive in earth orbit--and immediately attack without responding to any of our attempts to communicate.

 

Why? Because, in their psychology, until you've established which group is dominant (i.e., who must surrender to whom) there's nothing to talk ABOUT. You are either the master or your are the subject. There is no middle ground. We, of course, find this unprovoked, unexplained, surprise attack absolutely unacceptable and start fighting back furiously.

 

Once both sides have drawn blood and the fight's gone on for a while...the aliens are just as angry and confused as we were because we--who couldn't wait to talk beforehand--now REFUSE to talk to them. We just keep attacking instead of sitting down to negotiate like civilized people now that we know our relative strengths. It's crazy!

[Vanguard]

Actually makes me wonder:

Was there ever a SciFy setting where humans were not special?

Where we had no special genetic/evolutionary advantage/disadvantage towards other species? Where there was no "indomitable spirit" or other trait that set us appart?

 

It's been a long, long time but if i remember correctly, Star Frontier.

 

In that game setting, humans were pretty much as unspecial as you could get.  No stat bonuses, no tech bonuses, nada.

[bigdamnhero]

A lot of SF settings (especially film & TV) have humanity as the "new kids" in space. Maybe partly because it's easier for us to relate to people who are "only" a few hundred years into the future than trying to imagine what we'll be like in thousands of years. So if most of the other space-faring races have been space-faring longer than us, it's to be assumed that their technology will be ahead of ours, making humanity the "scrappy underdog" as well as the "new kids."

 

Extrapolating from our one-planet-sample-size, it seems logical to me that alien evolution would result in technologically-advanced species who are selected for tool use, intelligence, and ability to work collaboratively, rather than physical toughness or natural weaponry. Tho obviously this will vary with environment: what seems bad-ass to us, might be barely enough to survive on Deathworld. But either way, by the time you get to space travel, your tech weapons are likely to be so far advanced of whatever nature gave you as to make it largely irrelevant. To put it in game terms, how much do I care that species X has 1/2d6K claws when I'm carrying a 3d6K blaster, or even a 1d6K sword? Let alone a spaceship with a 9d6K beam weapon. Other than the occasional unarmed arena death-match with a Gorn, it's just not going to be that important most of the time.

[bigdamnhero]

Also, there is no "mounting evidence" that our ancestors were "endurance hunters." Without going into an epic thread of a few years back, human hunter gatherers probably endurance hunted some animals, and used other strategies on others. The human evolutionary advantage is that we're tool users --not that we can run down horses. 

Yeah, that always seemed spectacularly unlikely to me. Walking burns 100 calories per mile, call it 300 calories per hour. So following something for 8 hours waiting for it to keel over would burn 2400 calories. You'd need to eat at least 2.5 lbs of meat per person just to break even, making it the most spectacularly inefficient form of hunting yet invented. Why bother when you can wait in ambush and throw sharp sticks at the animal?

[Old Man]

That said, endurance is surely on the list of advantageous human traits. Humans aren't at the top of the list by any means--I'd give that title to birds that migrate thousands of miles over the ocean--but there aren't that many creatures than can locomote at cruise speed for hours on end, either.

[bigdamnhero]

That said, endurance is surely on the list of advantageous human traits. Humans aren't at the top of the list by any means--I'd give that title to birds that migrate thousands of miles over the ocean--but there aren't that many creatures than can locomote at cruise speed for hours on end, either.

Hmm...honestly, I'm having trouble thinking of actual, concrete ways that long-range locomotion gives humans a genuine evolutionary advantage. I'm not saying it doesn't - we have it, so presumably there's a reason why - but I'm scratching my head.

[ghost-angel]

It gives by far the largest hunting range of any predator species. One of our actual evolutionary advantages is the ability to sweat - seems weird, but even other animals that can sweat like we do suffer massively for the effort (horses, for example, can sweat but it's very bad for them and horse trainers do everything they can to avoid prolonging the condition).

 

When your hunting range is potentially "I wonder what the other side of the continent looks like?" you're in a whole new ball game from most any other species. New climates? Thanks to tool use we can walk through a dozen climates in a few weeks by dramatically changing our covering to whatever we want (and can catch, skin, and wear). That's an advantage for sure, too.

 

In a Sci-Fi setting, Humans are basically the Orcs.

[bigdamnhero]

But as I noted above, chasing prey for miles is a spectacularly inefficient way to hunt. Having a long range doesn't help if you burn more calories hunting than you can recover from what you kill. There's a reason why most hunters, even today, operate from ambush, and that would've been even more true for early humans, whose hunting skills were more of a crap shoot - walk all day and fail to kill anything, and you're completely screwed.

 

And sure, tool use lets us adapt to a much wider variety of environments. But that's a separate issue from "can jog a long time."

[bigdamnhero]

No one's mentioned Poul Anderson's The High Crusade yet. A ship full of aliens tries to take over a medieval town, the local Lord and the townsfolk assume they aliens are some sort of demons and attack in a religious frenzy. Turns out the aliens' force fields don't work so good against wood arrows and metal swords, and they haven't actually done any hand-to-hand fighting in generations. They wind up taking the ship from one alien world to another, adding alien tech to their own, and defeating bigger and better armies because everyone keeps underestimating the damn humans in their silly metal coats.

 

That's one of the better examples I've seen of "humans as space orcs." Generally the trope only works if the aliens are really stupid and pathetic, which tends to limit the drama quotient. Or in the hands of lesser writers, the aliens just get improbably stupid - like the aliens in Signs who can travel across light years but can't get out of a locked pantry, and forgot to wear any sort of protective clothing even tho they're allergic to water and our planet has kindof a lot of the stuff...

[sinanju]

Hmm...honestly, I'm having trouble thinking of actual, concrete ways that long-range locomotion gives humans a genuine evolutionary advantage. I'm not saying it doesn't - we have it, so presumably there's a reason why - but I'm scratching my head.

 

Yes, jogging all day to run down a gazelle and kill it while it stands there too exhausted to move is an inefficient way to hunt--but it beats starving. Not by much (especially, as has been noted, if you fail in your hunt after all), but tiny improvements are all that's required for evolution to go to work.

 

Also, long-term endurance isn't only good for hunting. It also means humans can escape local conditions. Drought? Walk a few hundred miles to a better locale. Or, less dramatically but possibly more importantly, combine our ability to travel long distances with our ability to build fires and wear clothes, and humans can (and did) colonize pretty much every climate on the planet.

[ghost-angel]

But as I noted above, chasing prey for miles is a spectacularly inefficient way to hunt. Having a long range doesn't help if you burn more calories hunting than you can recover from what you kill. There's a reason why most hunters, even today, operate from ambush, and that would've been even more true for early humans, whose hunting skills were more of a crap shoot - walk all day and fail to kill anything, and you're completely screwed.

 

And sure, tool use lets us adapt to a much wider variety of environments. But that's a separate issue from "can jog a long time."

 

Yes, but I didn't say chase a single prey over a long range; I said we have the largest range of any animal. We hunt farther afield than just about anything, couple with nomadic attributes, and as Sinanju pointed out the ability to move outside disaster areas - that super long range is a massive evolutionary benefit.

 

Sure, it's stupid to hunt one animal into exhaustion. But we can hunt entire herds into exhaustion, or simply change locals on a whim. That's huge, most animals stay within a climate zone, we don't. We can hunt from mountain to savannah to jungle, and back up the mountain in a single week. Very few other things do that.

 

When you combine tool use and "can jog a very long time" we become a supreme predator. It's also good for getting away from predators (at least a group, we may lose one or two guys who aren't so in shape on the way out).

[ghost-angel]

Part of the problem is we like to think of evolutionary advantages as a one-on-one kind of thing; Long Distance Endurance helps us hunt animals; so we picture a hunter running down a gazelle.

 

It's more like long distance endurance allows large groups to hunt down even larger groups. One guy probably didn't chase down a gazelle. Ten guys probably got together and hunted down several of them using endurance & tacitcs & tools. Gazelle are great sprinters, not so great at even a 3 hour chase. Or 2 hour chase.

 

It also allows an entire pack of humans to migrate a great distance as a group and ensure pretty much every makes it to the other end of the journey, and pretty quickly when we really don't have to stop for anything but short rests.

[Old Man]

Siberian tigers, by comparison, have a territory of about 144 square miles at most--a square 12 miles on a side. That's considered huge for a range for a single apex predator. For a Kalahari bushman, that's nothing. That's a three hour walk. Kalahari hunts can last for days.

[bigbywolfe]

But as I noted above, chasing prey for miles is a spectacularly inefficient way to hunt. Having a long range doesn't help if you burn more calories hunting than you can recover from what you kill. There's a reason why most hunters, even today, operate from ambush, and that would've been even more true for early humans, whose hunting skills were more of a crap shoot - walk all day and fail to kill anything, and you're completely screwed.

 

And sure, tool use lets us adapt to a much wider variety of environments. But that's a separate issue from "can jog a long time."

Chasing prey is ineffective. Following a herd of prey animals that moves is not. The ability to get to a new water hole in a day or two when yours disappeared during the dry season is nothing to sneeze at.

[bigdamnhero]

Yes, but I didn't say chase a single prey over a long range; I said we have the largest range of any animal. We hunt farther afield than just about anything,

OK, that I'll buy.

 

...or simply change locals on a whim. That's huge, most animals stay within a climate zone, we don't. We can hunt from mountain to savannah to jungle, and back up the mountain in a single week. Very few other things do that.

I agree about the ability to change locales & climates, but I suspect that's due more to the whole clothes-&-fire thing. In other words, it's not that we can expand faster, it's that we adapt better.

 

Sure, it's stupid to hunt one animal into exhaustion. But we can hunt entire herds into exhaustion,

...

It's more like long distance endurance allows large groups to hunt down even larger groups. One guy probably didn't chase down a gazelle. Ten guys probably got together and hunted down several of them using endurance & tacitcs & tools. Gazelle are great sprinters, not so great at even a 3 hour chase. Or 2 hour chase.

Sorry, still not buying it. Having ten guys doing it just makes it worse, because now your clan has burned 10 times as many calories. Instead, just have two guys circle around to the other side and startle the herd so they run past us, we ambush and kill a couple, and are home by sundown. Not as easy as I'm making it sound, granted, but WAY better risk-vs-reward than walking for hours or days waiting for something to fall over. Anthropology isn't exactly my field, but from the little I've read about surviving (or survived-until-recently) hunter-gatherer tribes, it sure doesn't sound like any of them practice this kind of hunt-by-forced-march. Maybe someone can point me at some actual research suggesting differently, but until then I'm fairly certain any species that had to burn that many calories for even a shot at a meal would've been non-selected for survival eons ago.

 

When you combine tool use and "can jog a very long time" we become a supreme predator.

Maybe, but I'd still say the benefit is 90% from tools and 10% from endurance.

 

It's also good for getting away from predators (at least a group, we may lose one or two guys who aren't so in shape on the way out).

But getting away from predators is all about sprinting. Either you survive the first 10 seconds or you don't, but I don't see how being able to jog 10 miles afterwards is a benefit.

 

Following a herd of prey animals that moves is not. The ability to get to a new water hole in a day or two when yours disappeared during the dry season is nothing to sneeze at.

That does makes some sense.

[massey]

But as I noted above, chasing prey for miles is a spectacularly inefficient way to hunt. Having a long range doesn't help if you burn more calories hunting than you can recover from what you kill. There's a reason why most hunters, even today, operate from ambush, and that would've been even more true for early humans, whose hunting skills were more of a crap shoot - walk all day and fail to kill anything, and you're completely screwed.

 

And sure, tool use lets us adapt to a much wider variety of environments. But that's a separate issue from "can jog a long time."

 

You'd think, but people do, in fact, hunt that way.  Now personally, I much prefer hunting from ambush.  Sit on my butt vs walk all day?  No contest there.

[bigdamnhero]

You'd think, but people do, in fact, hunt that way.

Citation please? Not because I doubt you, but because I'm not aware of any and would like to educate myself.

[L. Marcus]

The Bush people of the Kalahari.

[L. Marcus]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

[bigdamnhero]

Thanks!

 

Reading through the references, it does sound like anthropologists are split on how common persistence hunting was among early hominids, and it even sounds like there's some debate as to how common it really is today among the Kalahari, and how much it's about sport rather than hunting per se. But it's clearly a thing.

 

One of the references points out the ability to carry food and water with you is an essential part of this type of hunting, which brings us back to tool use again. Another points out humans burn the same amount of energy running a mile as we do walking a mile (due partly to sweating, hairlessness, etc), which is not true of most animals, so we can force them to move at less-efficient speeds tiring them out more quickly.

 

They also referenced that Russian family, the Lykovs, that were found in Siberia in the 70s; I had actually read that article before, but had missed or forgotten the part about "pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion." Of course the fact that the Lykovs were constantly near starvation and only hunted that way out of desperation seems to confirm it's a very inefficient technique. But as sinanju said above: beats starving.

 

Anyway, can check the "learned something new" box for the day!

[massey]

[ghost-angel]

L. Marcus beat me to it.

 

Obviously Pursuit Predation is not the most efficient technique ever invented; but combined with some basic tool use & the way humans are built specifically for that kind of task, it is probably a major tool in our evolutionary path from then to now.

 

One of the things pointed out is that Humans can still operate at peak efficiency during the heat of the day; most animals cannot. 3 Hours in high heat at maximum performance is merely a reason for us to drink more water, and is nearly fatal to just about everything else.

[Nolgroth]

 

One of the things pointed out is that Humans can still operate at peak efficiency during the heat of the day; most animals cannot. 3 Hours in high heat at maximum performance is merely a reason for us to drink more water, and is nearly fatal to just about everything else.

 

Speak for yourself.

 

Nolgroth + Heat = Puddle of goo.