The Hunting Hypothesis
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| Author | Robert Ardrey |
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| Language | English |
| Series | Nature of Man Series |
| Subject | Paleoanthropology, Human evolution |
| Genre | Science |
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| Pages | 231 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Social Contract |
The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (commonly known as The Hunting Hypothesis) is a 1976 work of paleoanthropology by Robert Ardrey. It is the final book in his widely read Nature of Man Series, which also includes African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative.
The work deals with the ramifications of evolutionarily inherited traits in man, particularly those that developed through hunting. It was also one of the earliest books to warn about the possible dangers of climate change.
Ardrey's main focus in The Hunting Hypothesis was to examine the ways in which human evolution developed with and because of hunting behavior, and the effects on modern man of inherited traits related to this evolution.
At the time of the publication of The Hunting Hypothesis there was still significant controversy surrounding the thesis that early man hunted for food. Ardrey's work was often attacked for its focus on human aggression. In particular, Ashley Montagu, representing a camp known as the "Blank State" theorists, who believed that man's behavior was entirely socially determined, marshaled fourteen scientists to refute Ardrey and his predecessors (chiefly Konrad Lorenz) in two volumes.
Though now generally accepted, the hypothesis that hunting behavior influenced the evolution of early man continued to inspire controversy. As late as 1997 PBS, in its series In Search of Human Origins cast aspersion on the notion that hunting was common in early man, asserting instead that early man was primarily a "highly successful scavenger."
Today, the theories propounded in The Hunting Hypothesis have come to be commonly accepted in the scientific community. In 2011 PBS reversed its earlier position. The special Becoming Human asserted:
Homo erectus probably hunted with close-quarters weapons, with spears that were thrown at animals from a short distance, clubs, thrown rocks, weapons like that. They weren’t using long distance projectile weapons that we know of. The Homo erectus hunt was simple but effective. It fed not just their larger brains, but the growing complexity of that early human society.
Scientific American wrote about the controversy:
For decades researchers have been locked in debate over how and when hunting began and how big a role it played in human evolution. Recent analyses of human anatomy, stone tools and animal bones are helping to fill in the details of this game-changing shift in subsistence strategy. This evidence indicates that hunting evolved far earlier than some scholars had envisioned – and profoundly impacted subsequent human evolution.
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