Before humans?

Question

Before humans learned to use weapons how did we fight predators or catch prey? Did we kill prey with our hands as well as fight predators the same way?

Answer 1

Chimps kill small prey animals by picking them up and smacking them repeatedly into tree trunks or rocks until they are dead.

Prior to that we seem to have eaten a lot of carrion (left over from kills or acidental deaths) and small creatures like frogs and snails that could be killed without weapons.

Answer 2

Stick's and Stone's can and will break your bones.

Trap's[holds in the ground] is another way of hunting.

They fought with HANDS and not weapons in warfare

during the first conflicts of humankind.

Also,they had no need of much meat.Seeing that,

Fruit's,green's and things of the earth was a substitute

for food, more than meat.

What's your next question?

Answer 3

They always had weapons. They just didn't have modern weapons. They could throw rocks and other things. They also had more strength than people do now because they <i>did</i> have to walk everywhere. So, it was kinda like chuck norris and his roundhouse kick. No, I'm just kidding. Maybe you should do some research?

Answer 4

Chimpanzees give a suggestion of what our ancestors might have done.

They work in groups and amid yelling and postering make dashes to strike there opponent. The will pick up sticks and swing them. It suggests shock weapons (things you hold and hit with) were developed very early on.

Mostly it appears our ancestor were gatherers and scavengers. They searched for plant food or insects and when they came on a kill site tried to get some of the meat.

Answer 5

To take your question literally. Before humans! : we were not around to learn how to use weapons so we could not hunt or kill or throw spears or even kill prey with our bare hands.

Answer 6

Homo hablis was a scavenger. He'd find some lions munching on a kill and wait until they were finished. Then he'd climb down from his tree and pick the meat off the bones. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd toss sticks or rocks down at the lions to make to go away sooner, so there would be more meat left.

Homo erectus was, or eventually became, a weapon-using hunter. Homo sapiens was an even better one, expanding his hunting repertoire to include such dirty tricks as pit traps, brush fire herding, box canyon ambushes, corral traps, etc.

Answer 7

Hominids used sharpened sticks or stones and they preceded us so humans  have always been using weapons. There was no "before".

As to whether early humans or hominids used their physical strength in some kind of primitive martial arts well that's a interesting questions but judging from surviving hunter gatherer cultures the answer is probably no since unarmed combat skills seem to have been developed by peasants and slaves who were banned from bearing weapons.

Answer 8

I assume you are meaning for evolution.  In the theory of creation, God provided food through vegetation.  When humans fell from grace and into sin, they learned a rock hurts when you smash it on something; and that was the first weapon.

My guess would be it happened in a similar fashion to humans in the idea of evolution.  They foraged for vegetation until someone put together that a rock hurts things if used properly, and it just went from there.  Someone put together a sharpened branch can cut skin (probably by walking across one and getting cut), and broke it off to use in hunting.  Eventually they started making their own spears.

It just goes on from there.

Answer 9

Baser instincts of survival. Think about the Donner Family, we will do anything to survive. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in that period. If you had no weapons and felt a deep gnawing hunger you would do anything to eat. Anything around you could become a weapon: Rocks, sticks, your own uncut finger nails. They were more animal than human then anyway.

Answer 10

We would hunt in groups, and try to corner or trap larger animals, perhaps by throwing stones, using fire, or with early spears and arrows!

Native Americans were at times able to drive herds of buffalo off of cliffs, probably by driving them off at night, using fire!