Other articles by Anne Minard:

Global warming's sea-level rise would doom cities, 2 studies say UA soil expert warns of dangers At pollution site here, scientists hope bacteria are doing the dirty work Titan-storm-cloud theories divide scientists Scientists may soon 'see' Milky Way's coreAstronomers nearly ready to peer into Milky Way's 'eye' UA retiree's dream of big beasts' return gains notice at last UA space scientists hail Mars launch Artisan a glowing success Oro Valley resort is a paradise for both rattlesnakes, golfers

General
Chapel Haven West
Program Staff Health Care
Mountain View Retirement Village
LPN Education
Indian Oasis Baboquivari Unified School District
Teachers / Principals Dental
Dr. John Carson, DDS, PC
Dental Asst/Treatment Coordinator Driver/Transportation
Allied Building Products
Driver / Rooftop Loader Trades/Construction
Paragon Electric
Electricians Health Care
Visiting Angels
Caregivers

ST. LOUIS — Prehistoric people were talkers, not fighters — and that helped us boom while other prey species busted millions of years ago.

These findings were unveiled by five U.S. researchers, including one from the University of Arizona, last weekend at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A scientific talk Sunday, "Man the Hunted," aimed to debunk what the researchers called a long-dominant view that early man was warlike.

"I think this very much affects politics and the way we look at the world today. It inhibits us in trying to find solutions to war," said Douglas Fry, a professor at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and researcher in the UA's Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology.

He and the other researchers argue that early man had more in common with other prey animals than with predators. Our early ancestors likely out-competed other humanlike primates because of unique abilities to cooperate and communicate so they could escape being eaten.

Fry has also published a book this year, "The Human Potential for Peace," which proposes that early studies that defined man by his capacity for killing are flawed. There's just as much evidence that man has an established track record in peaceful conflict resolution, Fry and the other researchers argue.

"Humanity evolved much more by helping each other rather than by fighting with each other," said Agustin Fuentes, a Notre Dame University researcher and a co-presenter at the talk.

Teasing out the advantages that allowed early humans to o ut-survive other prey species has proved difficult, partly because several characteristics that seem most important are shared by other primates. Those shared traits include communal attention to children and the grooming and nurturing behaviors that reinforce parental bonds with their kids and each other.

Fuentes argues that even before the development of language, humans were uniquely able to share the kind of second-hand information that could, for example, warn others where predators had been lurking.

The researchers say early humans deflected the risk of being eaten. Other nearby prey species became more vulnerable because the early humans helped each other become harder to catch.

The edge was critical about 2 million years ago. when predatory cats and dogs were up to 10 times as plentiful as they are today and much larger, said Robert Sussman, author of a 2005 book titled "Man the Hunted." At that time, he said, we suffered the same predation rates as other primates: About 6 percent of most primates, then and now, are killed and eaten.

Then a change occurred in the fossil record, Fuentes said: Predation rates on other species went up while ours declined.

The UA's Fry said the notion that early man relied on cooperation rather than aggression changes the widespread image of a single, club-wielding early man ready for a fight. It also alters scientists' image of prehistoric people organized in battling bands of hunter-gatherers.

"There's a myth out there. . . . You have a series of little bands that are fighting with each other," he said. "If you actually look at the data sets of these bands studies, you do not find that they are conducting much warfare."