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Monday, October 24, 2011

International The Human Brain and the Beasts of Africa

Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 8:19 AM

Twenty years ago there were 120,000 lions in Africa. Today, there are 25,000 and that number is falling fast - all because of the eternal conflict between man and beast.

But in the Chuylu Hills in southern Kenya, numbers are actually increasing. And it is thanks chiefly to one of the lions' oldest enemies - the Maasai people. And this is a tribe for whom killing lions has always been a rite of passage.

My cameraman, Ben Mitchell, and I were flying low over iconic Africa in a tin-pot but trusty 40-year-old Cessna, its speeding shadow spooking herds of zebra and wildebeest. The great bulk of Mount Kilimanjaro loomed in the cloud.

After leaving the safety of the jungle, the proto-humans entered a savanna ruled by ten types of big cats and packs of hyenas. This, I believe, was the first step toward our big brains. The other step was cooking, which, as the primatologist Richard Wrangham has pointed out, facilitated the shift of resources from guts (smaller) to the brain (bigger). Last was something like Robin Dunbar's social brain and grooming hypothesis. So this Maasai business of hunting and killing lions possibly celebrates an ancient and decisive victory in the development of mind, human mind.

Comments (3) RSS

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I always felt it was learning the ways of all animals, whether predator or prey, that developed our frontal lobes. Did you know that the injuries seen on the bones of ancient humans are similar to the injuries suffered in rodeos and bullfighting rings?

Posted by Vince on October 24, 2011 at 9:00 AM

The link to Al Jazeera is broken. It goes to the place you use to make a post to Slog, which we commenters cannot access.

Posted by I have always been... east coaster on October 24, 2011 at 9:33 AM

Aren't you supposed to be using the Muede decoder symbols from now on?

Posted by abbot312 on October 24, 2011 at 10:25 AM