Page 22 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

CULTURE OF THE MIND

The predator–prey paradigm
The predator–prey paradigm is the origin of human sacri fices, of warfare, and
of conflict as a way of life. The paradigm also establishes certain forms of social
relations between predator and prey, among predators, and among prey. When
human–predator relations first evolved in the Ice Age, humans were much
weaker than the powerful elephants, lions, and leopards. But what humans
lacked in strength, swiftness, claws and teeth, they made up for with intelli-
gence, manual skills, and language. Their specialties allowed them to develop
technologies of weapons and tools, and to create social relations among
members of the band that were intended to equalize, and then to give the edge
in encounters with the beast. 1
Around 10,000  human communities turned to agriculture. As hunting
animals gave way to war as a way of life, people from other tribes replaced
animals as prey, and human beings took the place of animals in sacri fices. In
some cultures, the Aztec for example, war and human sacrifice were practiced
institutionally right up until the civilization ended. In the cultures of Europe
and Asia Minor, humans switched from preying on wild animals to preying
on domesticated herds. Hunting became a sophisticated sport for kings and
other royalty. The killing of animals perpetuated cultural blood rites. In
all these cases of killing and sacrifice, in hunting and in war, of humans and
of animals, the blood rites reassured humans that they were no longer the
prey, but the predators. Man’s life-driving force during the glacial period
thus found behavioral expression in the aggressive pursuit of becoming a
predator and attempting to escape the vulnerability of being a prey. The shift
from prey to predator involved adopting both the behavior and the relations
of a predator.
Cognitive archaeologists have reconstructed the primal scenes of Paleo-
lithic people’s procedures for obtaining food during the last Ice Age, begin-
ning around 125,000 . Not only did early humans drive herds of animals
over cliffs or into ambuscades, they also scavenged for the meat of animals
killed by the large carnivores. For self-protection against the more powerful
predators, early humans banded together in small hunting parties to launch
scavenging expeditions. Because a carnivore typically leaves behind some of
the prey’s flesh, the carnivore could be forced to abandon the carcass, thereby
allowing human scavengers to feast on choice pieces of meat. Small bands of
prehistoric men apparently approached carnivorous hunters – such as a tiger
devouring a stag – and would try to frighten the predator away with noise,
fire, or rocks.
In a world dominated by large predators on the prowl, the great carnivores
and man selectively became both predator and prey, both with and against each
other. The fear that humans were the prey and would be killed and eaten
became implanted in circuits of the brain. The human nature that was activated
by the circuits was the anguished struggle of humans convincing themselves

11