Animal Connection: New Hypothesis for Human Evolution and Human Nature

ScienceDaily (July 20, 2010) — It's no secret to any dog-lover or cat-lover that humans have a special connection with animals. But in a new journal article and forthcoming book, paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman of Penn State University argues that this human-animal connection goes well beyond simple affection. Shipman proposes that the interdependency of ancestral humans with other animal species -- "the animal connection" -- played a crucial and beneficial role in human evolution over the last 2.6 million years.

"Establishing an intimate connection to other animals is unique and universal to our species," said Shipman, a professor of biological anthropology. Her paper describing the new hypothesis for human evolution based on the tendency to nurture members of other species will be published in the August 2010 issue of the journal Current Anthropology.

In addition to describing her theory in the scientific paper, Shipman has authored a book for the general public, now in press with W. W. Norton, titled The Animal Connection. "No other mammal routinely adopts other species in the wild -- no gazelles take in baby cheetahs, no mountain lions raise baby deer," Shipman said. "Every mouthful you feed to another species is one that your own children do not eat. On the face of it, caring for another species is maladaptive, so why do we humans do this?"

Shipman suggests that the animal connection was prompted by the invention of stone tools 2.6-million years ago. "Having sharp tools transformed wimpy human ancestors into effective predators who left many cut marks on the fossilized bones of their prey," Shipman said. Becoming a predator also put our ancestors into direct competition with other carnivores for carcasses and prey. As Shipman explains, the human ancestors who learned to observe and understand the behavior of potential prey obtained more meat. "Those who also focused on the behavior of potential competitors reaped a double evolutionary advantage for natural selection," she said.

Over time, Shipman explains, the volume of information about animals increased, the evolutionary benefits of communicating this knowledge to others increased, and language evolved as an external means of handling and communicating information through symbols. "Though we cannot discover the earliest use of language itself, we can learn something from the earliest prehistoric art with unambiguous content. Nearly all of these artworks depict animals. Other potentially vital topics -- edible plants, water, tools or weapons, or relationships among humans -- are rarely if ever shown," Shipman said. She sees this disproportion as evidence that the evolutionary pressure to develop an external means of storing and transmitting information -- symbolic language -- came primarily from the animal connection.

Shipman concludes that detailed information about animals became so advantageous that our ancestors began to nurture wild animals -- a practice that led to the domestication of the dog about 32,000 years ago. She argues that, if insuring a steady supply of meat was the point of domesticating animals, as traditionally has been assumed, then dogs would be a very poor choice as an early domesticated species. "Why would you take a ferocious animal like a wolf, bring it into your family and home, and think this was advantageous?" Shipman asks. "Wolves eat so much meat themselves that raising them for food would be a losing proposition."

Shipman suggests, instead, that the primary impetus for domestication was to transform animals we had been observing intently for millennia into living tools during their peak years, then only later using their meat as food. "As living tools, different domestic animals offer immense renewable resources for tasks such as tracking game, destroying rodents, protecting kin and goods, providing wool for warmth, moving humans and goods over long distances, and providing milk to human infants" she said.

Domestication, she explained, is a process that takes generations and puts selective pressure on abilities to observe, empathize, and communicate across species barriers. Once accomplished, the domestication of animals offers numerous advantages to those with these attributes. "The animal connection is an ancient and fundamentally human characteristic that has brought our lineage huge benefits over time," Shipman said. "Our connection with animals has been intimately involved with the evolution of two key human attributes -- tool making and language -- and with constructing the powerful ecological niche now held by modern humans."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100720123639.htm

Researchers Find the First Horse Whisperers

Sandra Olsen , Carnegie Museum of Natural History, LiveScience.com
This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Paleolithic hunters in Europe and Asia began exploiting horses for meat thousands of years ago when the last continental glaciers disappeared, yet the origin of horse domestication long has eluded archaeologists - for some captivating reasons.

One of the biggest reasons is that for many centuries, horse skeletons did not significantly differ in size or physical structure from those of their wild ancestors, making early taming and use of the animal more difficult to identify.

But as part of an international team of archaeologists, my colleagues and I may be getting closer to the beginnings as we look for clues in Kazakhstan.

Our team conducted extensive research at three sites belonging to the Botai culture in the northern part of the country, at locations dated to the Copper Age around 3,500 B.C.

We selected the region because it was here in the heart of the Eurasian steppe where the tarpan, a small wild horse, thrived after they had vanished from most parts of the world. It was estimated that the tarpan lived successfully in the area through most of the Holocene, beginning about 11,700 years ago, before going extinct in the early 20th century.

Upon examining the sites, we found evidence that could point to the early phases of horse domestication and help explain its initial impacts on society. We found that early domesticated horses were eaten, milked and ridden.

More than 90 percent of the animal bones from the main site of Botai, a vast collection estimated at around 300,000, were from horses. Stone-tool butchering marks on the bones indicated a community whose diet consisted primarily of horsemeat. In addition, there was evidence that horses were sacrificed for religious purposes.

Some of the most common artifacts in all Botai settlements are tools made from horse mandibles that were used to prepare rawhide thongs necessary for equipment such as bridles, hobbles and whips. This supported the idea that the Botai horses were ridden.

To me, the most compelling evidence that the Botai kept horses was the fact that they suddenly appeared in large, permanent settlements.

The main site of Botai had over 160 houses, which raises a question: If the people were still just pedestrian hunters with no form of livestock or agriculture, how could they sustain large communities for years without soon depleting the wild horses? And why would they focus so heavily on just one species of large game?

Still, this array of evidence was not sufficient to convince many scholars that the Botai were some of the earliest horse herders in the world, so we kept searching for more definitive proof.

With the assistance of geologists Michael Rosenmeier and Rosemary Capo, we collected soil samples from inside suspected corrals. The samples contained high levels of phosphorus and sodium, as well as traces of lipids that signal the presence of manure. Corrals would have been essential for keeping herds of horses on the open steppe.

Finally, after more than a decade of research, our team discovered residues of mare's milk in pottery. One of our team members, Alan Outram, collected modern samples of horsemeat and milk from Kazakhstan for comparison and brought some of our potsherds to Richard Evershed and Natalie Stear, at Bristol University, for biochemical analysis.

Lipids in the sherds signaled the presence of either horsemeat or milk, but only after years of research did these dedicated chemists discover that a deuterium (hydrogen isotope) marker indicated that the fats from horses in some sherds were collected during the summer - the main season when mare's milk is available.

With the identification of this by-product of domestication, we have compelling evidence that the Botai were indeed horse herders, since milking wild mares would be incredibly difficult.

Finding these early beginnings of modern horse domestication was akin to discovering a watershed moment. Few would dispute the fact that horse domestication was pivotal in human history. Since they were first domesticated, their cultural value has grown and their roles diversified to include transportation, herding, haulage, plowing, dairy production, warfare, sports, and many other functions.

Moreover, no other animal has had such a tremendous impact on geopolitics, chiefly through the successes of imperial cavalries, and no other beast has had so many occupations. Horse domestication certainly has changed the course of human culture as we know it.

10 Events That Changed History

Domestic Horse Riden Further Back in Time

The Surprising History of America's Wild Horses

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20091128/sc_livescience/researchersfindthefirsthorsewhisperers;_ylt=AhVyGTJhME5lXZCy90PMvFkbr7sF