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Mode 2 lithic technology is typified by the hand ax. While the primary stone tool of homo habilis was a chopper, it did not have a handhold. Homo erectus took the technology a step further to include a grip for his hand. While homo erectus spread over the same areas as had homo habilis, including as far as the North China plain, hand ax technology only reached India, never reaching south east Asia or subsequently China. While the hand ax gave an evolutionary advantage over the chopper, homo erectus dominated his ecosystem in a way that homo habilis didnÕt. While homo habilis concentrated primarily upon small animals, homo erectus went after big game. For instance ÒPeking man, [a form of homo erectus] succeeded in living largely on the flesh of his competitors in the animal world.Ó (Clark, p 37). Additionally Peking man probably practiced cannibalism, as did many primitive men.
The primates tend to protect their territory. The homo species extended that to include their eco territory. We will call their strategy ecoprotection. This is how it manifests.
It seems that in addition to manipulating his environment, that early humans were also manipulating their eco-system. While most primates are primarily vegetarian, the early humans are noteworthy in their taste for meat. Additionally these early humans did not just prey upon the smaller animals or herbivores, as do other predators; they preyed upon the predators themselves. While wolf packs will attack the larger elk, they did not hunt larger predators. While lions will attack baby cheetah, they do not attack or hunt the adult cats. These early humans were unique in the sense of preying upon the larger predators and upon themselves. It was as if they were protecting their ecological niche. We see this hunter mentality alive and well in 20th century civilization. The big game hunters have always had the most status. Nobody puts the head of a rabbit or raccoon on their fireplace no matter how difficult they were to kill. The success of the National Rifle Association has been based upon its association with hunters.
We see this trait continuously throughout human history. Many times the extinction of animals by humans was somewhat accidental. For instance these prehistoric humans systematically herded the woolly mammoths over cliffs as a hunting technique. However, at other times there seems to have been deliberate attempts to exterminate eco-competitors. In modern times we see the vilification and hunting of wolves to the verge of extinction, as an attempt by the European farmer, and subsequently the American, to protect their agricultural ecosystem. This is on the animal level. On the human level we see the American Indian treated in a similar manner. As a competitor for agricultural land, the American Indian was vilified, attacked and contained in vicious ways, which is only justified by his role as eco-competitor. The American black as a participant in the European Agricultural system was only discriminated against but not attacked and destroyed in the same way. The black slave was a useful beast of burden and only needed to be tamed, dominated, shown their place, but not destroyed. The female in a similar way was only dominated but not systematically destroyed. However when the female or black of the species entered the work force in a competitive fashion, these primal feeling of eco-protection arose again, giving rise to the vilification of the womenÕs, black, or any other minority movement by the white male ruling class.
The point made is that this ecological awareness manifesting as ecoprotection emerged at an early point in the homo species. He has applied these principles regularly to other animals, to other cultures, and to the other sex, throughout his violent history. Some scientists have even suggested that each successive phase has more or less actively exterminated the evolutionarily less fit subspecies that went before, through warfare, enslavement, or even cannibalism, in the style of Peking man. Because of the rapidity of extinction after millions of years of successful adaptation to a wide range of environmental changes, it is hard to think of another plausible solution.
While the evolutionary success of the early homo species, was based upon ecoprotection, it was also based upon cooperation through communication. The tools of early humans did not justify their success as hunters. We can only imagine that through cultural transmission were they able to accrue the knowledge of their environment that allowed them to kill the bigger game, especially predators. It is hard to imagine that a single human lifetime would be long enough to develop the sophisticated techniques necessary to kill big game used by these prehistoric hunters. Although no vegetal evidence remains one million years after the fact, we must imagine that the same cultural transmission must have included a sophisticated knowledge of the local flora of the ecosystem.
Hence the ability to transmit information of a cultural and environmental nature had to have conferred a premier evolutionary advantage to the early humans. The more specific the communication the better the advantage, hence the power of speech is selected for. The longer the memory the better the advantage, hence memory is selected for.
As animals have become more sophisticated, less genetic information is coded in and more adaptability is coded in. With the rise in adaptability and the fall in genetic coding, the need for the postnatal training increases. For most animals this training period is relatively short, less than a year. This short period of transmission allows for seasonal migrations. The more information that could be transmitted culturally, specific to environment, technology, and custom, to the homo, the more fit the early humans became. Hence the longer the time of cultural transmission before adulthood, the greater the advantage to the tribe.
This lengthening of the educational period led to a need for more permanent homes to raise the young. Thus in the human evolutionary mechanism, their is a built in need for stability. This stability is related to the amount of cultural transmission necessary for survival.
As we continue to examine the early human development we will see the increased advantages this extension of time cultural transmission confers to the subspecies or culture, i.e. the human sub-species or culture with the longest transmission time has the greatest advantage. We see this even unto modern times. At the end of the 20th century, the time of cultural transmission has been extended for most to the age of 18, when they graduate from high school, the age of 22 for those privileged enough to go to college, and then 26 or more for the leaders of our society, when they graduate from Medical, Law or some Professional school. We see that the length of time that one receives a cultural transmission is somewhat correlated with oneÕs status in society.
The importance of cultural transmission to the human species is seen clearly in its own internal evolution. Initially the family was sufficient for transmission; maybe the mother or father alone was sufficient. Next it included the whole tribe. Then the complexity of cultural transmission demanded specialists, i.e. teachers. Finally institutions, i.e. schools, were created to perform the education of the young. This led to specialty schools, colleges, and finally in modern times, to graduate and postgraduate colleges.
We must remember that homo habilis and erectus lived through many glaciations and interglacial periods through the early and middle Pleistocene, i.e. during and through many Ice Ages. Homo habilis and homo erectus shared the same geography, i.e. the temperate areas of the Eurasiafrica land mass. In many ways they were like any other wild animal staying close to habitable areas, which for them meant the temperate zones. As the Ice Age advanced they retreated, as the Ice Age retreated they advanced. Their numbers were determined environmentally like most animals. They had not yet evolved enough to develop coverings that would protect them from the cold. They were temperate zone creatures.
We will throw out some structural universals. Structurally Homo habilis and erectus needed the temperate zone to survive. Universally there is no evidence that they wore any coverings. If they did, they were not sophisticated enough to allow them to advance past the temperate zones.
The early humans settled in the savannah and presumably because of their taste for meat, they tended to settle around water at the edge of the forest where game was most plentiful. There is virtually no evidence of these early homos in the forest. It seems that they might not have been fit enough to survive the wilds of the forest. Another universal: these early humans did not live in the forest.