Discuss the viability of scavenging as a subsistence strategy for

hunting gathering communities.

Subsistence strategies are a set of actions and measures chosen by

organisms in a specific place and at a specific time to obtain the means
necessary to survive and reproduce as individuals and as a group.
Choosing successful actions and measures increases the group's
means of survival, which in turn gives rise to an increase in population,
thereby ensuring the continuity of the group.

Broadly dividing the subsistence strategies we have scavenging,

foraging which includes both hunting and gathering and farming or
agriculture. The economy of early humans remains more a matter of
speculation than hard evidence and continues to be the source of
sharply different interpretations. Some think Homo erectus was primarily
a hunter and that the demands of the hunting way of life partially “drove”
human evolution toward ourselves; others doubt Homo erectus did much
more than scavenging and opportunistic hunting.

Scavenging has been suggested, often as a behavioural transition

between foraging for plant foods and hunting, To understand the viability
of scavenging as a subsistence activity we first need to understand what
all scavenging actually included. Scavenging could have taken a number
of forms. It could involve discovery of a carcass prior to its exploitation
by other carnivore, or discovery of the abandoned remains of a predator
kill; these methods are collectively called passive scavenging.
Alternatively, scavenging could have involved driving away predators at
their kills and exploiting the remains of the carcass; a method generally
called active scavenging.

The importance of active scavenging has been questioned by those who

argue that it would require sophisticated teamwork and weaponry for
early humans to displace predators such as lions or spotted hyenas from
a kill, because the predators would be reluctant to relinquish the carcass
(DominguezRodrigo and Pickering 2003). It has been further argued that
it would be easier and safer for hominins to hunt prey themselves.
As regards passive scavenging on the remains of kills that predators
voluntarily leave after they have consumed all that they want or are able
to eat, it has been argued that this would provide a poor source of meat
because the primary predators can effectively consume much of the
valuable parts of the flesh prior to abandonment. Scavenging
supplemented plant food foraging and did not provide the major portion
of dietary intake, since such a situation is unknown among living
mammals (Houston 1979)

Some microscopic evidence from very early archaeological sites at

Olduvai Gorge suggests that scavenging may have been much more
important than hunting. Both disarticulation and butchery were,
surprisingly, uncommon at Olduvai, so it seems doubtful that the
hominins were butchering and disjointing large animals and carrying
them back to base. They seem to have obtained meat without cutting up
very many carcasses. It is possible that they scavenged it from predator
kills.

An interesting site for example is Olorgesailie, near Nairobi, Kenya Here

many small concentrations of stone tools and bones are spread out
along a peninsula in an extinct lake. Most of the tools are cleavers and
hand-axes, and some show considerable chipping and blunting wear.
Mixed in with them are bones from several species of large mammals,
including a hippopotamus and, curiously, 63 individuals of an extinct
species of baboon. Glyn Isaac suggested that ancient hominins
encircled a troop of baboons here, perhaps at night, spooked them by
making a lot of noise, and then systematically clubbed them to death as
they tried to escape. Pat Shipman, too, has interpreted this site as the
result of a hunting episode. But Lewis Binford has questioned whether
Olorgesailie—and most other early hominin sites—were places where
hominins killed and butchered animals. He suggests that the evidence
from Olduvai and Olorgesailie may well be remains left by hominins who
scavenged the kills of other animals, mainly for bone marrow, which they
obtained by smashing bones with stone tools.
To understand the viability and importance of scavenging as a
subsistence strategy for early hunting gathering societies, we could look
at it through a variety of lenses highlighting different aspects that were
required and that affect the process of scavenging.

To begin with, the landscape or the ecological setting of the place affects
the nature of subsistence activity in that place. About 1.8 million years
ago, when early forms of Homo were radiating from Africa, climates
began fluctuating, with long periods of intense cold followed by periods
that were nearly as warm as climates of today. This period of climatic
fluctuation during the past 1.8 million years is known as the Pleistocene
epoch. The great climatic changes of the Pleistocene occasionally
changed large areas of formerly habitable land into vast deserts, and
then later changed them back to forests and grassland.

Speaking of plio-pleistocene Africa, contemporary environments in

eastern and southern Africa display marked seasonality (in rainfall) that
produces periods of resource stress. Most plant species were seasonal
and of low productivity. faunal remains from Plio-Pleistocene rainy
season sites are likely to reflect hominid procurement of meat (by either
scavenging or hunting), and hence should provide clear insights into the
role of animal protein in early hominid diet. Studies of African savanna
ecology suggest that scavenging could have been a significant part of
early hominin subsistence strategy. African savannas would seem to
reward organisms who are opportunists and generalists when it comes
to food.

Also in extreme cold situations most of the plants suitable for human
consumption die, and an animal like ourselves has only two ways to get
food: store it—or hunt, fish, or scavenge other animals who can find
suitable nutrition.

Subsequently, demography or the labour required in scavenging was

constant as compared to agriculture where labour is required only for
some intervals and the planters are free for the rest of the time. Hunter-
gatherer population densities are directly determined by resource
availability. Adding to this is the risk factor. Endurance running may have
given hominins an enhanced ability to scavenge by allowing them to
reach carcasses before other large scavengers. But even if hominins
arrived first at the carcass, in open savannah ecosystems they would
have ultimately faced confrontation by later-arriving scavengers.
hominins would have avoided the dangers of such confrontation by
searching for carcasses in riparian woodlands rather than open habitats.

However O’Connell and his colleagues have shown that the Hadza,
hunter-gatherers who live in northern Tanzania, sometimes scavenge
simply by scaring lions away from kills by making a lot of noise. These
forms of small-game hunting and scavenging would have rewarded
group cooperation, reduced dominance hierarchies, improved
communication systems, and encouraged the development of stone
tools for processing meat and vegetable foods.

The first hominin to make and use stone tools was probably one of the
australopith species or early Homo, but the species of the first tool-
makers remains a matter of doubt and dispute. The stone tools of two
million years ago include a diversity of forms, but most sharp-edged
pieces are simple flakes. They certainly are adequate for butchering
animals, whether hunted or scavenged. The absence of “spear-points” or
anything resembling them during the initial phase of tool making
strongly suggests that these early hominins had no means of killing large
animals.

Necessary set of skills for a successful scavenger:

1. mode of locomotion- speed is a trade-off for cost and endurance;
the former is more important to predators or hunters, the latter to
scavengers. Bipedal walking is also more efficient than
quadrupedal walking. Thus, bipedal walking fulfils the locomotor
needs of a scavenger.
2. adaptation for locating carcasses- combined with keen eyesight,
following vultures, Bipedalism inevitably raised the horninid’s head
and markedly improved its ability to spot items on the ground, such
as carcasses.
 3. a means of dealing with interference/competition - The two
strategies can be simply characterised as being either a “bully” or
a “sneak.” sneaking approach according to size. Retaining
arboreal adaptations enabled Oldowans to lessen competition
further by retreating into the trees to consume scavenged bits. the
use of stone tools can be viewed as a direct adaptation to speedy
removal of substances from carcasses
4. utilizing a reliable, alternative food source - The most probable
alternative food source for Oldowans was fruit, judging from dental
microwear data
5. physiological or behavioral adaptations for dealing with rotten food

Reasons for shift:

Among the first hypotheses about agricultural origins was the so-called
Oasis Hypothesis,
an idea associated with the Australian archaeologist V. Gordon
Childe,16 who attempted to
explain the origins of agriculture in terms of the climate changes
associated with the end
of the Pleistocene some 10,000 years ago. Childe and other advocates
of this idea suggested
that as the world became warmer and drier, people, animals, and plants
would be forced
into close conjunction and human communities would be under stress to
find new food
sources, and out of this propinquity and need would arise animal
domestication and then
farming.17

Population growth has also been an important element in most accounts

of agricultural origins. Mark Cohen, for example, argues that “the nearly
simultaneous adoption of agricultural economies throughout the world
could only be accounted for by assuming that hunting and gathering
populations had saturated the world approximately 10,000 years ago
and had exhausted all possible (or palatable) strategies for increasing
their food supply within the constraints of the hunting-gathering life-style.
The only possible reaction to further growth in population, worldwide,
was to begin artificial augmentation of the food supply.”22

Conclusion:

Hart and Sussman argue that prey species like humans did not owe their
survival to hunting or scavenging skills, but to their wits and social skills
to survive.
scavenging and foraging went hand in hand, each complementing the
other at different times of the year.
From a certain perspective, we really are what we eat, and not only that,
as modern humans we are very much a product of the natural selective
forces that applied over the millions of years of our past and especially to
such basic matters as to how we and our ancestors got our food.