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“One does not hunt to kill. One kills in order to have hunted.” - Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1883-1955
HUNTING laid the foundation for all social development as well as for art, science and religion. Without hunting we would have none of these achievements, and hence no civilisation!
Early man was a gatherer. He lived literally from hand to mouth. Gradually some tools were adopted: bones, rocks, pieces of wood. With these some of the smaller animals could be killed and processed. But life remained a constant struggle, and man was almost perpetually hungry.
Primitive ‘weapons’ required communal hunting: the animal had to be surrounded and pelted with stones from all sides. We can see the beginnings of communal hunting in some of today’s primates, such as baboons and chimpanzees, both of which already use some tools!{footnote}Tool use among chimpanzees has been much documented. For tool use among baboons see Eugene N. Marais, The Soul of the Ape, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town & Pretoria, 1969.{/footnote} So this early, primitive form of hunting must go back to the time when man first climbed down out of the trees. This was a tentative process, which, according to some estimates, took place between 15 and 10 million years ago. By three million years ago, our ancestors were walking fully upright and were definitely hunters.
And hunting remained primitive for a very long time: the first sharpened, chipped stone tools – hand tools – put the beginning of the Palaeolithic Age (Old Stone Age) as far back as 3 Ma (million years). The fist sharpened poles – spears – found in Europe, date back only 500.000 years, though they may have been in use much longer than that. It takes a very special set of circumstances to preserve such organic artefacts!{footnote} Shaped stone axes appeared in Africa, Asia and Europe around 250.000 years ago; lances with stone heads from the Still Bay culture of South Africa date back about 70.000 years. These lance heads were made from silcrete (flint and obsidian not being available in SA's coastal regions) and the stone was heat-treated prior to knapping, to obtain a much higher quality tool, than is possible from the raw silcrete! Spears with stone heads in Europe go back only 45.000 years. This is the time our own species (Homo sapiens) first appeared in Europe. At that time there was an explosion of creativity: sophisticated (flint and obsidian) tools in the shape of knives, adzes, chisels; also barbed bone harpoons and bone spears and bone needles appeared, as did the spear launcher (atlatl) – a stick used as a lever to launch a spear with more force than can be done with the plain hand and arm.{/footnote}
When men first banded together to hunt larger game, they took the first step in our social development: communal hunting required rules! A bushbuck or pig could be very dangerous when attacked at short range with primitive weapons. Such hunting, therefore, required organisation. There had to be a leader, and there had to be others who came to his aid when a wounded animal turned on him. This led to each member of a group of hunters acquiring some status, based on his hunting prowess. And this hunting status was carried over into clan life as a whole and became the basis of social development: you could not ask someone to risk his life for you on the hunt, and then go home and rape his wife! Hunting status gave rise to social rights and obligations. And these have been developing ever since.
But this was not the only way, in which hunting shaped man’s development. After a successful hunt the clan now had food for several days. There was no longer a need for the endless daily scrabbling for food. Suddenly, there was leisure time! And this time was used to repair and improve weapons and tools, which, in turn, led to the improvement of the required skills, which, in their turn, led to further development and improvement of man’s armoury.
For instance, one cannot throw a spear very far. A spear or an axe required close and usually dangerous contact with the hunted animal. What to do? A smaller spear could be thrown further, but did not pack the wallop required to kill. And then someone realised that the power of his arm could be stored in a bent branch and that, if one tied a length of sinew between the two ends of this stick, it could be used to launch a small spear. And what is an arrow, but a light, high-velocity spear?{footnote} Bows and arrows found in the peat bogs of Northern Europe, date back only about 10.000 years! However, stone and bone arrow heads, found in South Africa, go back a little beyond 60.000 years!{/footnote} Such discoveries set man on the road to technological development, science and engineering.
Leisure time also gave man the opportunity to embellish his possessions. This probably began with ritual markings and developed into the decoration and beautification of tools, weapons, clothes. And yes, ultimately to an artist’s rendition of wild horses, deer, aurochs and wisent (European bison) on the cave walls of Lascaux.{footnote}The first European cave paintings date back about 40.000 years. Bushman paintings in Southern Africa are probably much younger: they are more exposed to the influence of weather, which causes the organic binders used in the pigments to decay. The famous Brandberg site in SWA (Namibia) is thought to have been occupied since about 5000 BP, while the age of the 'White Lady' painting is put at a tentative 2000 years. Paintings in South Africa are probably of similar age, even though there is an unbroken line of Bushman art going back some 27.000 years!{/footnote} Leisure also allowed time for such pursuits as singing and dancing. So hunting gave rise to the arts.
Cave paintings were often surrounded by geometric symbols, such as dots, thought to represent numbers, and other shapes, the meaning of which is not understood, but which clearly had some meaning to the artist. These, therefore, are the earliest forms of writing - of expressing ideas by symbols on a permanent surface, to store these ideas and preserve them for future generations to learn from. So hunting also led man to the first forms of recording ideas, experience and history by writing.
Free time started man on yet another path: instead of crashing at the end of a man-killing day, there was now time to lie on one’s back and contemplate moon and stars and wonder about them. What were they, and who had made them? So hunting also led directly to philosophy and religion.
A protein-rich diet (i.e. meat) is essential to human physical development: growing of body, nerves, brain. One fifth of the proteins we consume goes to building, maintaining and feeding the brain. Hunting made this available, enabling humans to grow ever-larger brains, and thereby sped mankind’s development.
To raise domesticated animals and later, to grow crops, man needed a stable social environment, which was achieved only in relatively recent times. So, for more than three million years, man was a hunter and gatherer. Domestication of animals came as late as 10.000 BC,{footnote} The first tame dogs made their appearance about 10.000 BC. The goat was domesticated about 8.000 BC and cattle followed in about 5.500 BC, sheep came about 500 years later, and domesticated horses, donkeys and pigs showed up as recently as 3.000 BC. Cats? In about 2.000 BC, cats strolled into Egyptian temples and homes and took over!{/footnote} while cultivated cereals and other edible seeds have been with us since about 8000 BC.{footnote} Wheat, probably the earliest grain to be cultivated, was grown in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East as early as 8.000 BC. Beans, in Europe and Asia, 6.000 BC; barley, Egypt, 4.000 BC; rice, India, 3.000 BC; sorghum, Africa 3.000 BC; millet, China, 2.700 BC; rye, SW Asia, 1.000 BC and oats, Asia and Europe, as late as 500 BC. Potatoes were first cultivated in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes as late as 200 AD, and reached Europe only in the 16th century. But maize was grown in Mexico as early as 5.000 BC, again only reaching Europe in the 16th century, spreading from there to Africa and Asia later. (Many of the dates given in the five notes above were taken from the Reader’s Digest Book of Facts, fifth amended edition, 1989. Much data was also extracted from the internet.){/footnote} {footnote} A recent discovery of some carbonised figs among a store of grains and acorns in a Neolithic village in Israel, shows that these figs, a variety, which can only be propagated by cuttings, were cultivated there as early as 9.300 BC. This pushes the earliest known fruit cultivation back some 5000 years! If the grain in that store was cultivated grain, it would push known grain cultivation back another 1.000 years. (National Geographic, Nov. ’06, p 32.){/footnote}
Farming and agriculture, therefore, represent a mere blink of an eye in man’s development. But hunting has been with us for more than three million years! No wonder it is in our genes! And in our souls, which often still seem to float in the ethereal, eldritch, murky mists of the Stone Age!
Hunting is today under threat due to overpopulation: the growing human tide and along with it the inevitable shrinking of the natural environment. It is also attacked by people, who consider hunting cruel, inhumane and barbarous. Here I would like to quote Denis Lyell, who felt compelled to take up this issue more than 80 years ago, and whose words are as valid today, as they were when he wrote them in 1923:
“Many people say that shooting is cruel, and so it is; but not nearly so brutal as the atrocities perpetrated in dispatching domestic stock for human consumption. A hunted animal, when fairly stalked and killed, suffers infinitely less than an ox or sheep led to its death through the blood-reek of an abattoir. Therefore, those who decry what they call ‘blood sports’ {footnote} Hunting is not a ‘sport’! Sport is about competition, and competition degrades hunting to a boardroom game! Hunting is about going back to our roots, being one with nature, living in harmony with nature, and recharging our soul. {/footnote} are canters so long as they continue to practise carnivorous habits.”{footnote} Denis D. Lyell, in Preface to Memories of an African Hunter, reprinted from Peter Capstick’s Library, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1987, p 8. {/footnote}
I challenge anyone who condemns hunting to visit an abattoir and see the terrified animals - tame animals that considered man to be their friend - awaiting their destruction amidst the horrific bawling and the stench of blood and fear! Abattoirs are needed to feed our teeming masses; we could not exist without them. But they have to operate at very small margins: the same lady, who crusades against hunting, will herself hunt around the supermarkets and butcheries for the best quality meat at the lowest possible price. This curtails the abattoirs’ leeway to operate humanely: financial restraints combined with the very nature of abattoirs, make them far more cruel than hunting. By the nature of hunting, the hunter only gets a chance to shoot, when he can approach unobserved. Mostly, the animal dies without prior fear or suffering.
Credo
We believe that hunting is our heritage. We believe in ethical behaviour. We do not believe that the awarding of medals for hunting advances this cause. We believe in fair chase on the animal’s ground and terms. Culling and biltong shooting are necessary tools in game management, but are not compatible with our definition of hunting. We further believe in looking after the game and the environment. And, in the final analysis, it is the hunter who pays for conservation.
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