Before we picked rocks up?

Question

what do you think we used for tools and defence. how did we aviod extinction, as evidence of our present day form begins to appear millions of years before the known date?

Answer 1

Simple, the environment where our ancestor were used to lived, were up in the trees... Then when grassland began to appear, they were forced down the trees in order to cross to other forest patch. So to avoid getting eaten by predator, they began to walk upright, so to see above grass and farther away to look for predator in the area. Our stereoscopic view has helped to detect distances and planned our movements.

So all in all, those newly acquired skills, have helped the early humans to have precautionary habits before commiting into a move that was making them vulnerable to predators. Then we become slowly, but surely the top predator...

Answer 2

That's like assuming that while we had hands and opposable thumbs, we didn't know how to use them until another 40,000 years or so.

Go and watch a 4 month old baby breast feed. Those buggers grab whatever they can see and reach. We have body parts and those body parts have an innate ability to KNOW what to do.

The first humans grabbed rocks becasue they had hands, just like chimps grab sticks because they hands.

Avoiding extinction may have been a matter of developing tools and language and living in groups. It also may have been a matter of being in the right place at the right time. If a band of people survives some natural disaster and can continue to reproduce, then there is survival.

Answer 3

We survived by not being very palatable.

If a T Rex were to make a choice between a scrawny human and a buff wildebeaste. Which would he choose?

Answer 4

Lucy was around 3 million YA I think maybe

before that we were in trees to some extent for protection

th eprocess of standing upright took a long time and isn't complete yet, and that explains why so many us have back problems

Answer 5

We avoided extinction by climbing trees and feeding in the open areas, having a "look-out" having the intelligence, how ever simple and basic and very small, to avoid animals that wanted to eat us, that were using their intelligence for just finding food, smelling, etc.

   We were probably one step above them, enough to keep out of their way.

Answer 6

That's like asking.... how do baboons or chimpanzees survive?... we were diferent creatures back then!

PS our "present day form" did not appear until at the earliest 200,000 years ago, but more likely 150,000 years ago.  By that time we already had an advanced stone tool and fire use culture that we evolved directly into thanks to heidelbergensis, are predecessor species, having that culture already!

Answer 7

Even chimps use tools so before we used tools we'd basically have been monkeys, and probably lived about the way modern monkeys live.

Early hominids like Lucy were probably gatherer-scavengers that lived off plants and carrion and dealt with predators by the same way most animals do - avoiding them.

Answer 8

Assuming you are asking about pre palo-lithic man when they were utilizing stone tipped weapons and tools, the most obvious answer would be a stick - probably pointed, and more than likely heat treated in a fire over a period of time to temper and strengthen the end of it, so it would do more damage to prey.  Before that, there was always the same thing anything else has - teeth and claws - ours are just always trimmed now, but a good strong set of fingernails can be amazingly useful tools in thier own right., and staying out of a fight always helped.

Answer 9

Since chimps use stone tools, we were not even human 'before we picked up rocks'.  I think rocks or sticks were first weapons, so before that we, whatever ape-like animal 'we' were, used our teeth.