00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, another episode of The Hunting Collective. I'm pretty excited about this one. It's another version of Candian Vegetables. We get real ridiculous and real damn silly and the opening segment and then we have a real deep dive discussion to follow, so hopefully you're getting to enjoy that pattern. We're gonna start out with the the th A C Top Fives, and that's because we're bored. It's summertime. We got nothing else to do, so we just picked five four topics and picked the top five things. Sitting in to help me with that was Sam Sohol, the public Land bus guy, Spencer new Hearth Honey editor here at Meat Eater, Maggie Smith from our production team, and Fill the engineer as always, and by the way, thanks for all the emails and the keep film movement that's still going on. Um. And after the Top Fives, which were was pretty fun, we get into a discussion on human evolution with William von Hippel. And William is a professor of psychology at the University of Queenland's down there in Australia. He's got a lot of interesting things to say. A book called The Social leap that helps who helps to describe who we are, where we come from, and even what makes us happy. So stick around for all that. But before we get to that, we're gonna talk about a little bit of First Light Nemo collection. This is something that just came out from the first Light team and they partnered up with Nemo, who makes lots of cool outdoor gear to put together collection that includes tents, sleeping bags, field blankets, chairs, all kinds of stuff pretty much anything you can think of in regards to going outside, sleeping comfortably or sitting comfortably. Um, I'm looking at that Nemo Endurance tent that they have with with sick first Light patterns. You can go to first Light dot com and look at that collection. It's on their homepage right now. As a matter of fact, it's that First Light Times Nemo collection at first Light dot com, So check it out there. Without further ado, episode numbers seventy. I guess I grew up on an older road. A bat'll do the meadals. I always did what I've told until I found out that my brand new close the games that can hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up baths, I guess I grew up me. There are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted through a real bad dream or being a like I'm coming a part of the seams. But thank you Jack Daniels. Oh hey everybody, and welcome to episode seventy two of The Hunting Collective and once again and Ben O'Brien, and today we're gonna have a bit of a round table, a round table discussion, probably one of the more important round tables discussion we've ever had. And we've just in the last two podcasts discussed for hours and hours, veganism, animal rights, species is um, we discussed public and private lands, and now we're gonna discuss things way more important than that. And this is our summertime. It's the end of July, right, Maggie, the end of July. We've had a great July. Do you have a good July, Maggie. It's been fantastic. What ald you do. I've done a lot of stuff. I've gotten a fly fishing, I'm learning how to fly fish, been paddleboarding, the tone Running up Baldy, the crew Running up Baldy with the crew check that. What's your Instagram handle at the Loan Loan. At the Loan Loan, that's good content. So look up at the Loan Loan. What have you been doing in July? There? Spencer enjoying the Montana Weather music kicks ass. It does kick ass way nice. I was just down in Salt Lake this weekend and it was like a hundred degrees all weekend and I forgot that some parts of the country are like that, and I was looking at my phone. I saw it was like seventy eight and I'm like, oh, it's perfect here. Everybody just and if you go, if you follow at the Loan Loan, which you should do, you'll see a lot of real good like Montana living content over there. It's a good time. So I'd like to add at least a thousand followers to at the Loan Loan. So please, if you're gonna do anything for me this podcast, get over there. Thanks Sam, Sam's got enough. You've got enough followers. But Sam, Soholtz here, I am here. He drove the bus into the Mediator parking lot. I think he parked it in the handicap zone. No, lie, I parked it behind a handicaps so God forbid in the hand to gif you want to back out of their spot? Well, yeah, it's it's probably not quite legal, but it's hard to find a tow truck that big in such a short times fan, So I'll be alright. The best they're gonna do was like fence it in. Yeah, that would be and then that would just found the problem. Yeah, I'm just back out. How was your July, sam My? July has been busy. I have been just driving the bus around a lot. So celebrate Fourth of July back in South Dakota and then flew out to Colorado, picked up the bus, drove to Park City, and then did a four day camping trip up to Big Skuy for the next Total Archery Challenge. And now I'm here. Wow, yeah, I gotta check out this buss. You never been the bus? Oh boy, Phil, have you ever been in the bus? I don't even know what bus you're referring to. Unbelievable, Phil is it's problematic. I can't fill around this never knows what's going on. You tell me you like a different perspectives here on the hunting collective. That's a lie. No, I've been telling myself that to make me feel better. So that's a lie. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. So Phil, what you've been doing July, You've you've been become a recurring guest on the Hunting Collective. That's changed your life. There's a movement a foot to keep Phil and I can't leave the house anymore. It's a problem. Yeah. Yeah, I've been trying to get out where I can do in some hikes here and there. I've got a one year old, so it's a little difficult to that'll stop it. Yeah, that'll stop him trying trying. Now you're doing good, thanks, Yeah, I mean this is You've five straight Hunting Collective episodes for you, Phil, that's a streak. I'm real proud of you. Man. I think we need to mention your terror of a two year old just completely ripping up his knee and elbow yesterday, the total Archery challenge yesterday, and my my on James is a bit. He's he's getting his feet under him, like his whole body is just at this point just basically scar tissue. Like he rides his bike, he gets on his jeep, he just does things and then falls off the things and then cries for a minute, and then we have a thing. I'm like say I'm tough, and then when he's done, I'm tough and then runs I'm tough and start running and then like run into a tree or something. That's a problem. But yesterday at the Total Archery Challenge, Sam's buss was there, of course, and Sam has thank god, had some band aids because James got into the bus, beat the horn very loudly to alert everyone to hit James's presence, ran out of the bus, fell down, ripped his knee open, led over all ever me and everybody else. Sam. Sam was nice enough to have a band aid to save the day. Yeah, he was off of the bus, so finally it was a thirty foot radius of the bus. Bus gave him that energy. It's possible. But then later on, yeah, then later on he was in the YETI booth and he like running around a corner and fell and ripped up both his elbows. So I had to go back to the bus a second time. I'd be like, hey, Sam, remember when you give me that one and I need at least two more. You might need to replenish your style. I need to go shopping. You need to have like a medical kit. Yeah, so for for the listeners and definitely not me. Can we explain what this bus is? Yeah, okay, thanks Phil, Yeah, we get we'll get back control aby show Phil, but yes please. So the public Land Bus has been a project over the last two years. I took an old school bus, converted it into my rolling hunting camper basically, and I've been traveling for two years and spending time on public lands all over the place and basically showcasing the experiences that people can have on those lands, raising awareness about public land issues, helping people get educated about conservation. Phil. Yeah, literally a school bus. This is awesome. It's a Bluebirds school of the conversion. So the initial build was about two I got an idea, Hey, yeah, why don't you give all the content to Maggie to post on at the Loan Loon and people could find it there. Sure air drop everything. I just did. Two weeks I did call at the Loan Loan for all Sam's bus continued. Uh no, that's pretty much. It been traveling for two years, and then my brother and I started an apparel company to go along with it, and then five yeah, five dollars from every single item we sell goes directly back to conservation organizations. Oh that's wonderful. Yeah, public land tease, yes, right, drs A big check to somebody, right yeah, just uh Friday night, we wrote a check to our Rocky Mountain Ook Foundation for five thousand dollars. That went to real really open up. Yeah it just like, yeah, I went to help with the Falls Creek project they're they're doing, which is purchasing an easement basically that opens up twenty six tho acres of public land. Unbelievable. Wow, well done, saying proud of you, thank you, um, thank you. We're going to get to the interview portion of this. Know this on this episode is Dr William von Hipple and he's Uh, I couldn't remember his name last time, Phil Well to help you remember it rhymes. That's how I was, like, what's his last name? Nipple? I asked you if I should cut that out and he said nope, No one's in there or off the rails. But William von Hipple is coming up. He's a human evolutionary biologist that's gonna get real serious during that conversation about like the origins of humanity and how we became who we are through hunting and things of that nature and what it means to us today. It's really it's really deep, very well thought out portion of the podcast. Before we get to that, we're gonna do something that's not either one of those things. Um, we're gonna we're gonna do top fives. We're gonna do some real important top fives. And we just happen to have five people here are top fives, Um, and we haven't really researched this. We're just gonna rip it off and this is These are important top fives and we're gonna put them out on the internet so people can vote on the top five. That's what we're gonna do. Okay, so don't say anything real stupid and you want will lose. All right? The first one, which is the first one, should we do Phil, let's start out with with with with the songs. Songs He's doing tops songs to get you fired up for a day. We'll just say for a day outside. So we keep it, Yeah, we keep it. Germine, Sam oh Man, I had one in mind because I listened to it almost every time I start a road trip with the bus. I'm just gonna do that one h d m x X go and give it to you starting off strong, you want to give us one one line from I'm just gonna bark X going to give it to you. You really gotta get down there to yeah, yeah, hey Phil. Maybe all the ones that people name you try to sing them. I'm sure there's a copyright thing that seconds. Dude, I've done that before the podcast. Mati was here. Last time we did the fashion thing. We didn't get suited for that, so we're still going, Okay, that's a good X gonna give it to you from d m X Spencer, I'm not really into like hard rock or white powdery substances. But Buck Cherry lit up, whoa really good choice. Get really excited. So you want to try to give us a line from that? So I have I've heard Buck Cherry. I I don't know what that song is. I can do the DMX one though. We do two verses from that. Then it's it isn't Buck Cherry. It's like southern. It's like southern hard rock, isn't it mm hmm. Buck Cherry's like modern like hard rock. Thing is something you got a good voice, Sarah Spencer, good low Okay, Maggie, I have like three I can't well currently, I like truth Shirts by Lizzo, and then I like the our what is It Bombie by The Cranberries, and then damn it feels good to be a gangster. I'm gonna go with that one. Do you like the new rock version of Zombie? Have you heard it? Yes? I don't. I really like the old school Yes I've heard it. No it's terrible. Yes, I don't like. Okay, Phil, what do you got? I mean this is probably like the ultimate middle class white boy answer, but I usually go for the killers. Mr Bratt said, it's a little disappointing. You'll do better on the next list. We'll see about that. Do you ever listen to this song? I'm about to play beat low? Yes, just take him on and take a quick break from the show. So listen to this song is actually eleven twelve minutes long. Oh my goodness, So that will get you in trouble with copyright. Yeah, as long as we talk over it and the algaby algorithms can't pick it up. Yeah, we do. The rest of the rest of the twelve minutes of song, he's not still not even singing. No, no, let's skip ten minutes ahead. Oh, here he comes. Nope. I think it's like a three minute intro. This is the one. I mean, this is it. This is the winner. This should be an ugly playlist we'd have put together. Right, It's like buck Cherry. It's very eclectic. We should, like you should offer playlists to people. We should put them together. Many people can tune in to a mediator Spotify accounts. One of those songs. Don't have to know the words, it's just that it's like the joke about early nineties music. Yep, there it is. All right, that's a top five. Okay, vote for your favorite somewhere. Go oh you know what we do? Go to the loan loontag? All right, Uh, what's the next film? Uh? Let's do um tree stands snacks? Because I am curious because I have no do I need to start again or I get do I to end? You're gonna end because I feel like you're My clothes are on this same Uh, Spencer, You're also have a lot of knowledge, Phil go ahead and give us a if you were in it. Just imagine you've never been in a tree. Have you ever been in a tree? Nope? I'm gonna you're sat in the tree for never. Let's say instead of tree stand snacks, I'm gonna say top Little League snacks for Phil Taylor when he was nine years old. Yeah, I gotta go for a classic. He had a Capri son and a chewy bar and maybe some gushers. If it's a special day, how's like it? How would that work? I like it? That's a bad answer for the there's no bad answer. Okay, cool, Maggie. Um, since I've never been in a tree stand either, you sat in a tree for a whole day? Right, Okay, gosh, that's only something that hunters do, apparently normal. I trail run though, so I'll give it my trail run secrets. I like to eat pickles and drink pickle juice when I've gone my race or doing a long trailer race. Well, I usually have people hand them to me. It's a really good hand off. You know. Here's some pickles I wish you like. I'm gonna get you some sort of Fannie pack that's big. Oh. I have a vest and I stuffed the pickles in the vest. It's a it's a great pickles. Do you like juice? Has a lot of electrolytes. Yeah, and a lot of salt pickles. I'm really stuck on this pickle vest idea. Seriously, if you're cramping pickle juice, all right, all right, I'm gonna go just I'm just gonna go really easy. I'm gonna get a real popular sour patch kids. Yeah, sour patch kids, spencer apples and beef jerky like apples a grave because no matter what the temperature is, you can eat an apple. It was like, if you take a banana with you and it gets below sixty degrees, it's a bad banana. It's a great point. Apples are a little bit loud, though, what about a banana vest? It would work functions? Can't like push your arms against it very hard? Oh yeah, any like oblong food could fit in a pickle vest You can fit beef turkey in there too. Yeah, okay, Sam, so I have to but um, I've started doing just a little bit different tree stand snacks the last couple of years. Um. But last year I did hot biscuits and gravy in a Yeti bottle. So that was yeah. And then if you really want to spice it up, you bake pizza rolls, put those in the yetti bottle and then have hot pizza roles in the tree. What's the best pizza roles? At it? Tortino, Yeah, sponsor us, Tortino, Yeah, come at us. Yeah, that has to cook those over the fire for my kids. That was my camp fire until I got in trouble for it because it wasn't like a real bagel does a piece of role will stay good for you, So they do get slightly soggy, but I've had like four hours later, nice and hot. Wow. Yeah. The gravy was way better though. I made like sausage gravy, put it in an eighteen ounce bottle with like the chug cap or the chuggler as Remy calls it. Yeah, uh yeah. And then I just had the biscuits in a like a zip block bagging and then I just like was either taking a bite and then drinking the gravy or porting it on top. Turkey hunting this year, Mike and Mike and legit, I'll put that as my second one. Yeah, Mike and Ikes horrible gold Bears. Like, I mean, I'm kind of a snack guy. Yeah, I'm snacking anybody, Everybody get on that one. What's X Phil? Uh? Wild game animals? Keep it in the from his top game animal traits that you would like to have? Is it's a kin to like superhero powers? Uh flight. That ends the discussion right there. I mean I want to say that's too easy. Sorry. What game animal can fly like? You? Would would you have to have? Would you like quail flight or turkey flight? I mean probably like duck flight I think would be the best. That would probably be the best. And at the end of this, we're gonna have a superhero built. Yes, oh yes, you want you want to have a Mallard Ducks Mallard duck flight spencer. I'm gonna take turkey vision. They can see in the UV light ring. Boy, they have incredible vision. So now our guy can or woman can fly like a duck see like a turkey. There we go. It's unbelievable. Mice told me that when we were turkey hunting, and I was just like mine block. Yeah, um, I want the stealth of a cougar. Stealth of a cougar. Right, so now, yeah, you can't see if we can see you, but we can fly over there and eat. Okay, Phil, what what game animal has has like the best hearing. You have to come up with it. So I'm not gonna tell you the answer. Well, i'm gonna say something stupid. I'm gonna be like they hearing of pheasant. Okay, we need some kryptonite. I can't hear totally down. I'm gonna go with the jaw strength of a crop or not a crack of an alligator. That all right, I put you down, Son. That was out of left field. Hopefully that wins. All gonna beat Phil. They're all they're all combined. They're all combined. Yeah, that's just one character. Like we're flying, but we can't hear anything. You can sneak up on stuff, but we can't hear. Yeah, you can see you, we can't hear you. Okay, that's we good top top game an there's other one you could use, like antalope speed, analope speed with longevity and top speed. Yeah, aren't they the fastest animal movement America? Yeah? Maybe like a badger's digging ability. That'd be a good one. I'm gonna stick with. I'm gonna sick with the alligator. Do you want to amenders, Phil? It was pretty bad. I admire that you're sticking with it, Phil, that's perfect. Okay. The last one, Phil, what is it? Top podcast guests that Ben should have on the Hunting Collective? Living or dead? We're dead, living or dead? I think the dead being impossible, but of course, I mean I think one correct answer is Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah. I was gonna say that something pretty easy, but sorry, really softball on that one. You know, I think you're being hard on Sam for just having the best answers. It's like the power of flight, Phil, give us a terrible answer. Go uh, Pablo Picasso. You said terrible answer. You have like ear fetish he had. Then he cut his Yeah, I got it perfect. Moving on, let's Spencer another obvious one. Louis and Clark. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's a that's a real obvious one. Okay, Maggie, this is heart it is John Muir, Oh nice one. Yeah, I'm gonna go meet Loaf because then you could sing the song. Yeah. Yeah, we could spend most of the time just ripping out this clock he did. Like a thirty minute podcast, you'd have eighteen minutes. Yea. Now give all these superpowers to meet though. Oh yeah, I tie it all together, all right, We're gonna put all these polls up and you gotta vote and see who won. Can we put them on the loan loan? Okay, we're gonna put them on at the loan. You go at the loon loan, and we're gonna when this podcast launches, we're gonna have all the polls up there to see who one. So you're gonna bracketed out. Then well there's only five of us. It's go somebody's gonna get to buy in the first round. We're gonna move on, move on. But now we have to move on to a real serious conversation about human evolution. You guys, is there any lists about like human evolution? Top moments that human evolution? I should have done that. The agricultural revolution. I'm reading a book about this right now. Actually, so it's funny that that's your next guess Sapiens highly recommend it. Uh, the invention of gunpowder. Oh yeah, industrial revolution, the printing press, fire fire. Sam always has the best answers that guy. Okay, Phil, you're always my clothes or what what do you want to what do you want to say before we get into the interview. Uh, top moment and evolution. Um, i'd say, I don't know. Probably like the peak peak TV. We get like Sopranos, Matt Man breaking bad peak TV. Perfect terrible answer. Phil, All right, now we're gonna now we're gonna go to uh, we're gonna transport all the way to Australia where Dr William von Hippile is. We're here in the studio. So this is a phone conversation, so um, please be mindful of that when you're listening to it. But it's a very enjoyable conversation. It's very serious. This wasn't I hope you enjoyed both. Hey Bill, hey man, how are you doing good? How are you doing? Sir? This is a very rare uh podcast for us for for a lot of different reasons, but we rarely do interviews over the phone, um, But in this case, we attempted a face to face it didn't work out. And you are in Australia at current, so it's about four o'clock our time here in Bosman. You're what eight am down there? Eight am? Absolutely well, thanks for joining us. UM. I want to learn that we got a lot to learn a lot to cup uh here in this conversation. But just start us off by, um, talking about your your book. I want people to first know about your book, and then we'll get into your history. But the social leap tell us about the social leap. Sure. So I'm a psychologist and my goal is to understand how people are. And so I've been spending a lot of my career just looking at running experiments and people that we are today. And I've actually came to realize that in order to properly understand people, I had to look into our past. So I spent the last dozen or years I'm working in anthropology and archaeology and all these other disciplines to try to build together a picture of the last six million years of our revolution, you know, around the time that we left our two Panzee cousins. And so the book is really about that. It's the first few chapters covered the last six million years, and then it spends the rest of the book I'm talking about the way we are today, trying to understand things like leadership, innovation, happiness, all that sort of business. Um, by looking at our past and seeing how that shaped are the way we are today. Yeah, it was really that second half the book that began to strike me as to as impactful in my own life and just kind of my understanding of my place and time and UM as a hunter, I felt more connected to the thing that I do after reading it. And it's not this book is not about hunting and has some three lines and some parallels to it. It's certainly UM is about more human characteristics and functions of who we are as a species and even as individuals. UM, but talk about how it might be you know, we've we've discussed this a little bit in the past, but how it might have three lines to those of us who are my we would call us those modern hunters. Yes, so the UM if you look at the history of humanity early on, we weren't really hunters. If anything, we were very rarely occasional hunters like chopanzees are. When an opportunity to arises, typically if there's monkeys nearby, UM, they'll try to hunt them. And then I think that, you know, our moved to the savannah, which I'm happy to talk about, led to us becoming far from hunters, much more hunted, and it was actually our efforts to protect ourselves from being hunted that led us to eventually turn into the hunters that we are today. And I would say that probably for the last I believe for the last three million years and certainly for the last million and a half, UM, hunting has been the primary way that we made a living. And so I do think it's something that UM, that's you know, natural, so to speak, that's very common for humans. That explains a lot about the way we are today and UM and the shape the way that we became human. So it certainly plays an enormously important role in our revolutionary history. Yeah, and sorry, you mentioned the movement to the Havanas to the grasslands and how that kind of required a shift from individualism to this new form of like collectivism as you describe it. UM, talk about that that shift where we were in time. I think we should properly put ourselves and where we are in time, so give us protective where we are as a species, and what in how long ago this was and then kind of what that event meant. Sure, so about thirty million years ago, uh, the Great African Roost Valley that runs from up north to the Red Sea all the way down to Mozambique, UM started to get the formation started to really get underway and what that is is the continent of Africa is tearing in two pieces. You've got the Somali plate this is moving off to the lower right, and then you've got the rest of Africa moving off to the upper left. And the consequence of that sort of tectonic activity where the continent is tearing apart, is all sorts of volcanism, you know, volcanoes forming, but also an upwelling on the east side of Africa, so Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, uh smaller, all those areas are getting pressed up into the air. And so you know Nairobi now sits at about a mile high. And that upwelling that started about thirty million years ago seemed to basically have finished its job, so to speak, as far as we're concerned, about six million years ago, which is when the last of the rainforest on the east side of the Roof Valley really pretty much disappeared. And so what you've got are basically are common answers to the chimpanzees, to the best of our knowledge, were pretty chimp like, and that means that they were kings of the canopy. They ran the rainforest. When they're in their grouping up in the trees together, but you put them down on the ground, and suddenly there are anybody's dinner. You know. They can't lock their knees, they can't um. They're not particularly quick on all fours either, and so uh, any large cats and dogs, you know, uh, lions, hyenas, any of those animals would have easily been able to hunt our chimpanzee ancestors on the savannah. And so, you know, how do they respond to this really difficult situation where here they've been kings of the canopy, they were really top of the food chain, and now suddenly they're thrust way back down to the bottom. And unfortunately for us, I mean, this could have easily just been a disaster. But unfortunately for us, somewhere along the way they figured out that they could work together much more effectively than they do in the trees, and that that sort of helps solve their problem. And I think that the and that this came about is bipedalism. So about three million years after we left the savanna, we were now walking upright, And I'd be happy to talk about how that came about, but for now, the point is is that, Okay, so for the moment, the point is just that we were walking upright, and walking up right completely changes our body. It allows our hips to rotate better and and lengthens amount it allows our shoulders to rotate better. Um, we become more laterally oriented to the world rather vertically oriented, which, of course, the chimp's muscles are all designed for going up a tree, and our muscles are designed for dealing with the world laterally, all of those things, um would have made our bodies much more effective at throwing. And so if you look at you know, throwing on the beach or among friends, it's typically the sort of small body movement, maybe your shoulders and arms. But if you look at throwing among hunter gatherers or throwing among proper athletes like baseball players or football players, you realize it's this full body motion that starts with the opposite leg from the arm you're gonna throw with, and then you spin through the hips, then you spin through the waist and chest, and then your arm and elbow and shoulder, and finally your risk comes through and there's a sort of snap at the end. That whole motion generates enormous elastic energy across your ligaments, your tenders, and your muscles, which is what allows throwing to be so effective. So if you look at chimpanzees, for example, they don't have any of that because of course they're still living in the trees. And as a consequence, they, even though they're much stronger than we are, they throw very poorly. How much you've ever seen um videos of you UM still so typically throw with both hands over the top of their head. Sometimes they chuck their crap at each other. UM. But you know, they don't do it nearly as well as human beings. And so the upshot of the upshot of that is that this change to our body, this this move to bipedalism, allowed us to basically create the most important invention in military history, which is the capacity to kill at a distance. And once you get that, suddenly that changes everything because now you're in a situation where a large force of weaker individuals can effectively attack a smaller force of stronger individuals or defend itself from such a force. So if you imagine going back several million years under Savannah, you and I are hanging out and upcome some lines or leopards or any of these large cats or dogs, and if there's enough of us. Let's say that there's thirty or forty in our group, we could probably effectively kill it, but we'd be in a huge argument about who attacks it first, because you know full well that whoever goes first into that line, you know it's going to end up in its mouth. Second, third, and fourth probably will as well. It's not until you've got enough of us crowded around it that you could probably survive that to the consequence that is, you know, it's just never gonna happen, right you and I we we may we may look at it, we may know that we could kill it, but we may know that we're going to die in the processes. So no one's ever going to go first. But if we could throw, if we can kill at a distance, now we can successfully attack a line without exposing ourselves to that enormous risk. And so is this process that changed everything for our incests? And you talk about you know, three point five million years ago. We say these numbers, and I we just want to address that. You know this, these are millions of years when we we think of our lives and these short snippets of time within generations, um so I as I, as we go through this, and listeners be thinking about how how long ago this is and how deep this is into the story of our humanity, and it's really the beginning of it. Um but three point five million years ago, if you talk about here, we are starting to use these defensive strategies and ways um never before seen. And those defensive strategies start to marry into throwing rocks and doing other things. And you made a point to me the last time we spoke about you know, when you're a little kid, you just want to throw. You pick up a rock, your first thing you think about is to throw it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so if you think about how evolution shapes our psychology, it works in the exact same ways that it shapes our biology. So if you look at our our chimpanzee ancestors, and you watched them for the first several million years after they leave the rainforest, there, you know, these sort of lower limbs that they have, which are basically l arms with hands at the end, slowly get shaped into the legs that we have today. And and that makes perfect sense. You can imagine that one animal that happened to have sort of straight or stronger legs that that seat were a little flatter would have an advantage over the other animals, and so that advantage would allow to have more children, and that advantageoud be carried on well. Attitudes work the exact same way, and so an animal that happened to enjoy throwing from when it was a little kid would grow up throwing more often. It would become a more effective thrower, and so now when it got attacked by leopards and lions, it would do a better job of defending itself. It would survive better, never to have more offspring. And so these random changes in our psychology or in our biology, evolution ensures that they're carried on if they're good ones, if they facilitate survival and reproduction, and so they don't come about in any kind of planful way, but they do come about just by random changes. And then those random changes that are useful end up just being swept swept throughout the species. And so the throwing when you're little a perfect point. You know, you and I when we're kids, we'd love to throw rocks. I mean I still enjoy storing rocks, and and why why would you? You know, what's so fun? About throwing a rock if you if you sit back and think about it, because it's not really that special in some ways, but other ways, it's just extraordinary thing to be able to have an impact on the world out a way from you. And of course what it really meant for our ancestors was survival. And now when they're attacked by a leopard or a lion or even saber tooth tigers in those days, they can defend themselves by throwing rocks at it. So, Bill, you're talking a lot about and it's very important to understand that. You know, we started to be able to, uh the affect the world at a distance. I think that's a very profound way to put it. And as we moved towards becoming hunters, we developed instead of these defensive strategies, are more offensive nature um to our interaction with with animals, and so talk about that very important part, and I think that will be very interesting to hunters to know kind of how we is a species discovered this activity. Yeah, I think that's a great question because that really is howeverythings changes. You know, here we are in a situation where first all we're trying to do is protect ourselves. You know, we've got these large animals attacking us in savannah. We have to find a way to defend ourselves, and that that method is to kill at a distance to throw. But of course, once you discover then you can defend yourself throwing, it's not a massive mental lead to realize that you can also use throwing offensively as well. And so this is really the beginning of effective hunting. It's a move away from the occasional, rather ineffective hunts of chepanzees towards reliable and effective hunting. And we can see that happening. The very beginnings of that would have been three and a half million years ago as australophistocenes, and then we can see that developing really nicely as we moved towards Homeorectus, where now we've got an animal whose brain has really developed in capacity. We've got this massive increase in brain power, and that suggests that we're bringing in much more calories, that we're finding a much better, much more effective way of feeding ourselves. Because of course we have to pay the rent on these huge brains. We have to find a way to bring in extra calories in order to afford that out of brain power. And so the advantage is that brain power and hunting kind of work hand in hand. On the one hand, as we get smarter, we become more effective hunters, and on the other hand, as we become more effective hunters, we gain the capacity to get even smarter still. And so by the time we get to home Rectus, we see our ancestors are bringing down really large animals like elephants, bringing down really fast animals like horses, and we're doing so. It's some very simple tools, which suggests that we're coordinating our activities together really well. And so we got signs of division of labor. We are signed a planning for the future, all sorts of things that um our other our ancestors province to that couldn't do. So. You know, chimpanzees, they can't ever imagine a world with unfelt needs. They can't if they're full now, they can't ever imagine being hungry again. If they're hungry, they can't ever imagine being Fullwar's bizarre to us. You know, we can easily realize, well, right now, I'm i'm I'm gonna be hungry again tomorrow. I need to plan for that. And we see the first signs of those planning in our homeorectous ancestors. So, for example, for the first time we see that the stone tools that they made are being carried great distances from where they were acquaried and made originally. And that tells you that once they made these stone tools and use them, they thought, well, I'm gonna want to use this again, I better bring it with me on my hunt, Whereas if you look at the prior stone tools, there's no their their acquary, they're made, they're used, and then their dropsite where they are is if the animal thinks, all, I'll never need this again. You know, I've used it once. And so all sorts of things change about our mental abilities, and they're tightly inter interweaved with hunting because on the one hand, we need the more calories in order to develop these big brings, and then the other hand, as we get these calories, we find even more effective ways to pursue these animals. Is there a way to unpack the causation there? Because I know, you know, like in the first half of the twenty century, there's a lot of folks that argued that our ancestors, like the urge to hunt and kill drove us to develop spears and axes, and that then allowed us to evolve bigger and bigger brains in order to handle these increasingly those weapons. And then I've seen other people say it the other way. You know, the fact that our brains were growing based on a lot of things you've already described, helped us be able to hunt. I imagine there's a little bit of both going on. But is there a way to explain that the kind of unpacks the way that went down. Yeah, I think that you're You're absolutely right. The way to think about that is that they both self perpetuate each other. It creates a virtuous cycle, so to speak. And so on the one hand, we if we're going to develop big brains, we need a way to feed them, and so we start to bring in you know, hunting gives you meat which is much higher calorie and and higher protein levels and more fats, so it's a it's a great source of calories for your brain. And then of course once you once you're effectively hunting, you can then develop a bigger brain to go back and hunt more effectively. And so if you if you go back way at the beginning when we're talking about earlier. So why did Austo epipa scene become by people in the first place. Well, remember, I just argued that they can't envision the world that where they have needs that they don't currently have. So people often say things like, well, maybe they would want to carry food or weapons in case they needed them. Well, that's an animal who can't think in case they're not capable of thinking. G I might want to keep this if they want to eat it now, they would. If they don't want to eat it now, they would just leave it. So why would they ever be motivated to stand up? Well, as soon as they set off across the savannah, they would have been scared. You know, here they are this animal that's the king of the canopy. But that's easy diner out on the ground. And so that feeling of fear I suspect made them want to have a weapon with them, want to have a stick or a stone in their hands to defend themselves. So there would have been a motivation to try to carry things in order to defend themselves every time they set across the grass. But that would have been it. They'd have no capacity to plan none of those kinds of things. So, but that alone would have made a big difference. Right, So, now you've got some kind of weapon and you're crossing the savannah, and then when you are attacked, got a chance to defend yourself. Now, over time that would have slowly led to bipedalism, as those animals who are more effective at carrying weapons were more successful. And then what you've got is now this animal that's got the capacity to kill at a distance, it starts to figure out that I can use it can use us for hunting, but it still can't plan and do things effectively together. That takes an enormous increase of brain power. And so where does that increase in brain power come from? Well, as a each time they become a little bit more effective hunting, they can afford to grow a slightly larger brain. And those animals who happen to do so would be the ones who are then the most successful. And they're going to be the ones who they had also have the greatest capacity to plan for the next time. And so these things would have cycled in on each other. Um perhaps one of the biggest key things was not only do you have straightforward evolutionary processes, but you also have what we call culture gene coevolution. And so by the time you get to Homeorectus now almost two million years ago, you've got an animal that starts to figure out how to control fire. And once you control fire, now you actually have an influence on your own evolutionary history and your own evolution, sorry, your own evolutionary path because you can now cook your food, release more nutrients from it, and grow an even larger brain from you know, the same amount of material that previously wouldn't have supported it. Yeah, and I think one I think fire is a great, you know, great turning point for this. But also thinking about how when these early humans started to hunt, how they how they did it, you know, the really the nuts and bolts of what they did, um, what they used, and there was I'm not sure how how familiar with a butcher site that was discovered in Tanzania. I think it was like where they were a lot of tools and things that were showing that these folks that the early humans were ambushing and killing antelope, gazelle will be some you know, like other large animals, you know, crouching in trees, throwing spears, those types of things. How do you find that in the development and know that's been proposed that that's the earliest that humans were hunting and that's some two million years ago. Yeah, So the it's tricky because if you look back at those distances, you have no evidence for anything except the stone tools that we use. And so the earliest effective stone tools with these are schooling tools. They're about one point seven million years old, maybe as old as one point nine and these are shooting tools. Um are these bifacial really well designed hand axes, but we don't there's no evidence that they designed them in any way to ever to it, like attached them to a spear or anything like that. But an animal that can have the cleverness to design these really lovely bifacial tools out of stone, you can almost guarantee that it's also designing tools out of wood, right, it's going to be making wooden spears. Chimpanzees even will bite the ends off um sticks and turn them into stabbing tools. UM, at least those who live on the Savannah and Senegal through that, and so we it's a guarantee that our homewright desands. It's just had tools that are also made out of wood, and tools were made out of animal hides and animal parts. But the problem is those don't survive the test of time, so we don't have any evidence for their wooden spears. We don't have any evidence for their animal products, because you know, two million years, it's a long time. It's just holding to rot. And and so the end result is that there's a lot of inference that we just have to make about well, what were they using. And it's a safe bet that they were using wooden spears, it's a safe bet that they were using lots of animal products in order to help themselves hunt. And of course it's also a safe bet that they're just using their cleverness and the exact way you describe where they'll say, all right, you wait here, all waight there, the animal run between us. You know, those sorts of plans that um that a chimpanzee can't do because it can't plan for the future in that way, but that humans are incredibly capable of doing. Yeah, And I think that's as hunters we often talk about and when we get in these more modern debates about is hunting as much human activity as any other or more so, um, I think this is where it starts. You know, we start to be able to explore that a little bit more and then and most modern hunters, I don't think are aware of the depth even as we articulated the depth of what hunting has done for our humanity. Um. And so do you have you thought about that for as you wrote the socially, even have you done your other your various works on this, if you thought about exactly, um, how to articulate what hunting has meant from this point forward, and what it how what it actually propelled in us um, and whether we could have the comet we are today without it. Yeah. So my one of my favorite examples to look at the power of hunting is to just look at our guts and our brains. And so if you look at the guts of any of the other great apes and their brains, what you see is they've got a lot of gut, a lot of intestine, supporting a very small brain. And then you look at humans, then you see a very small amount of gut supporting a very large brain. And then you you can march your way back in time and that shifting point from when we had a small gut and large brain over to large gut and small brain is prior to home orectus. So once you get to home Rectus, you can see the skeletal structure shows a very flat rib cage, suggesting a very small gut underneath it. When you go back to us epiphocenes, now you've got this rib cage that aims outward, which suggests a very large gut underneath it. And of course we've already discussed how ostopaths seems have a small brain, and home Wrectus has this very large one um you know, almost as we have another chimpanzee brain on top and a big step toward us. And so what enabled that, of course was eating meat. And so if you if you look at at any um you know animal on the planet aside from ourselves, who lives off only eating vegetables because human beats can now do that effectively because of farming. But if you look at any other animal, they can't support the kind of brain power that um you can support by eating meat. And so hunting is what allowed us to shift from these sort of large gut, small brain animals to these large, small gut, large brain animals, and and and the way hunting allowed us to do that was by shifting to you know, there's much more high calorie, high fat source of food. If you if you look at hunter gatherers anywhere on this planet, there's not a single one who's a vegetarian. Vegetarian is is something that we moved toward where we could afford to do so when mean, we're now so well fed that we could make choices about what it is that we wanted to eat. Prior to that, every single hunt to gather loves meat. When there's an effective kill, it's an enormously important day for the whole group because of course it gets shared out among everybody. And so it's this really big shift that we've got from a world where we had to hunt and we're hunting was kind of the most important thing that happened to a world where now, well, you know, hunting is something you could do or you or you don't need to do. You don't need ever need to be again if you don't want to them. Lots of people, of course have shifted to vegetarianism as a consequence. Yeah, and how do you think about that? Just from a very tangible, very pragmatic view, of what you know about our history species and what you know about uh, what you might posit or think of about where we might be heading. How do you think of that at people's the modern luxury of choosing to do It's a great question because, on the one hand, especially if you look at things like factory farming and these horrible ways that they treat animals, you think, how could I be part of that? I don't. I don't want to, you know, be torturing animals in order to support my dining habits. On the other hand, personally, UM, I really love meat, I really dislike vegetables, and so I'm in a situation where I feel like, you know, self interest to living dictates that I'm just not going to be a vegetarian. I'm not going to do that. And I think the good news is that because people are very aware of this, and because our world is now so wealthy, that we're actually moving to a world where we can both treat animals well and where you can not have to be a vegetarian. And so you know, all sorts of free range farming moves. Um, of course, hunting is an animal where assuming that you're eating it and not just mounting it on your wall. Hunting is something where you can also have an animal that lived a perfectly good life and then eventually became somebody's dinner. And so in my mind, there's there's more ethical ways of doing that as less ethical ways. But the other side of the corn, of course, is that you know, we're the only speeches on the planet that even has this notion of ethical and what's right and what's wrong. Other animals just do what works. And so you watch Hyena's hunt and and they'll tear an animal shreads, not even bothering to kill it first, because that's largely irrelevant to them. They're focused on their dinner. They're not focused on how the zebra feels who they're eating, and so it's really a human luxury, and an important one. I think that we start to think about, well, what's it like being on the other side, And so I think that we went through you know, almost all of our human history was one of hunting. Suddenly we're in a world where it's it's now past time rather than necessity. And then the question is where is it going to go in the future. And I think some people arguable is going to completely disappear. I suspect not for two reasons. One, you know, as we've discussed, it's in our d n A. But too it's also the case that human populations are now projected to level off around and then they're gonna probably start going back down, and it kind of happens. It opens up all sorts of scope for you know, they're being more nature out there. It's more original state and something that we can interact with more effectively. You know, what do you think? You know, as we we we discussed all the time, UM, and I want to eventually get back to the timeline of our revolution, but I like this topic. Um, what do you think about these urges that we have, whether they're genetic or biological or however, or they're really evolutionary in there? We have these we these certain type of I think of when I kill something and I know I'm going to eat it, the rush of endorphins I get from that feeling. Not it's not the killing of the animal that I think brings me some sort of joy or satisfaction. It's not it's death, but it's what it's death means to me that brings me this joy and satisfaction. And so I often as a modey that that luxurious modern hunter, as we discussed, try to go through those two I he isn't unpack them. Oh, well, when this thing is dead, I know it's going to bring this additive measure to my life, this five brutes of my life, through its meat, through the experience of going and getting it, through telling the story. So at its death I feel joy. But many people that are against Sonny would say that you should not feel joy at the death of another sentient being. So how do you see that? Just from from where you said and what you know, Yeah, I would have to say that I agree with you. I think that there's so many generations where, you know, all of our generations, until very recently, we were food stressed all the time. We just didn't know where tomorrow's meal was going to come from. Now we may not be literally starving, because most of the time we weren't. We're just literally a little bit hungry and a little bit concerned because each day we have to go out and find tonight's meal. And so what that means is for literally thousands of generations, when we made a kill, we felt joy for the exact reason that you mentioned not necessarily because we had snuffed out this life, but because we had now um guarantee eat our own and our family's survival and our groups survival for another day. And so the I think that's inside all of us, that that's inherent to us. That we can move away from that and we can, like anything else, we can evaluate and decide, well, I don't want to feel that way, and I don't like that because I don't like hunting or whatever my story is. But I still think that's this very natural, underlying feeling that we have. And so you know, people go in a million different directions, there's a million different types of personalities, but underlying all of those personalities is this enormously long evolutionary history where hunting was a joyous occasion when it was a success and it it um it gave us that positive feeling. And so even today when you think, well, I could go to the grocery store and achieved the same thing, but there were no grocery stores in our ancestral past, and so it's not like I go to the checkout counter and when I put my credit card on the machine, I get this rush of endorphins because I know I can feed my family, because that's not how it worked. The way it worked was I made a kill, and that's what enabled me to feel my family feed my family. And so it's the the positive feeling we got from that. It's something that we just evolved to appreciate. Our ancestors didn't feel positive when they successfully hunted, were a lot less successful hunters, and so they ended up not being our ancestors at all. So see this exact process that we're discussing, your attitudes get shaped in. One of those is an attitude of a feeling of joy when you have that accomplishment. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And it's one thing that one of the reasons why I became interested in this subject so intensely, is it just because of some of the feelings that I have that I don't know that I could explain to someone has not experienced those feelings. You know, this is one of the ways and folks that are new hunters in this modern sense or have it hunt their whole life and are looking for a way to explain that joy that they feel that maybe they don't they don't understand. It's not about the animals it's just about that. And to another point that I think you could probably help us explain. When we look at subsistence hunting cultures and we look at a lot of UM more traditional hunting cultures, the hunter is exalted in the community. Hunter is UM many times the leader of the community, because without the hunter, UM, you know, people don't live and they don't they don't and they do not survive. So hunters, and we've we've discussed this on our podcast recently, in many of those societies were UM figureheads, UM and and leaders, and so can you discuss that kind of through time and how how that correlates to where we are. Yeah, it's a super interesting history because you know, if you go back to all the way back to chimpanzees, they're very hierarchical and they throw their weight around and however strong, it's just constantly beating up on over's next. And so they that's just how they live and they tolerate because they have no choice. And then you move to us, and we have these enormous abilities to communicate what's going on, and that allows us to form coalitions and create what are called antihierarchical attitude. So if someone's throwing their weight around in our community. And let's say you are, and you're much stronger than I am, so I can't stop you myself, but I can go to my friends and we can all agree that you're being in total pain. And so one night, would Bet goes to sleep, he never wakes up again the next morning, because we've all created a plan where we're gonna offer you in your sleep because we're scared of you when you're a late And so it sets up a world where the even the strongest members of our group couldn't lord it over everybody else because the collective is always more powerful than the individual, and so in that context, hunting is also super important. But what it created is a really interesting circumstance where the best hunters also become the most modest because they know everybody in my group knows I'm the best hunter. As a consequence, everybody knows that I'm gonna have this tendency to kind of lord it over them because they really need me, so I need to show them that I'm very modest about my abilities. And there's this fascinating book, Hierarchy in the Forest by Christopher Boom, and if you read that book. You see how he talks about when the best hunters come home and they've made a kill, they're super proud of themselves. You can tell it instantly that they talk about it in these really modest ways. So they it's really almost entertaining. They'll say, um, so they'll come home. You know, everybody knows they're great hunter. They're really key to learn how that they went. And let's say, say, how'd you go today? And so let's say it to me, and I've killed the giraffe, it's a really big day. I'll say, oh, yeah, I was okay, I um, I actually got something that's out but I left it out there. And then you'll neediately, don't I wonder why he left it out there? Like, well, well, do you need help going to get it? Is it worth going out to get? And I'll say, well, you know, it's so sickly and week I'm gonna be embarrassed if we go out there and you decide to leave it there. And that's my way of telling you, I got something sticking, humongous out there and this is a really big occasion. So I it creates this extra modest and modesty me which is actually evidence of how important it is. And so you have this world where the best hunters are really appreciated, they're really looked up to, and they have this extra social pressure on them to be doubly modest, to act like it's all a matter of luck to do all the kinds of things that takes. So the people will worry that they're going to start loaded learning it over them and becoming, you know, the sort of despotic member of their group. Yeah, I mean, I think that gets into you know, how how we built kind of tribes, how we how eventually there was tribal separation, and how eventually there there became different ways to do things, and um, we talk about tribal separation a good bit. Yeah, absolutely, So the the this would have been the norm for many, many thousands of years while what we call immediate return on to gathers where we lived near the equator and where we are eating today what we killed today. But once we move into a world where we can start to store food, then everything changes again. And now those who are in favor of a hierarchy have new tools at their disposal in order to rise to the top. So, you know, if you look for example, it at the Pacific northwestern United States. The Native Americans have lived there quickly realized though there's a really reliable salmon runs. They had come in at certain places at certain times and um, and you can store these salmon, you can drive them out and eat of all winter. And so now we have ways of storing food, we have ways of paying off our allies, and so in situations like that, hierarchy re emerged, and now you start to get traditional leadership again. And then it comes right back to what you were talking about, were those leaders in the group. The way to establish your effectiveness is by hunting and by warfare, showing that I'm one of the top most dangerous and effective members of my group. And then not only do you does everybody revere you like they always had, but now you can actually rise up in this sort of stable hierarchical structure and eventually become one of the leaders of the group. And hunting was a key way to do that. In warfare, which is a related activity, was another key way to do that. Yeah, we've talked about kind of the leadership that hunting allowed us to understand, and some of the hierarchical structures We've talked about a little bit of what the protein did for us, but there's a something I've always been interested in. We haven't talked about this before, but conservation as a modern construct. It's kind of like when we decided we had to eliminate the prevention or prevent the wasteful use of a resource. And I wonder in your your study of of our hunting history and human history, when we started to see these things as a resource and when we started to evolve into a being that knew it had to some sort of dominion over how many of these things there were in relationship our consumption of them. Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And unfortunately the notions of conservation are are really quite modern. Um. There's two reasons for that, and and the first is that in the past, we never had weapons that were so effective that we could literally kill at will and have more than enough to eat, and so our ancestors were always in really what what I would say is a close competition with the animals that they're trying to capture and kill. UM, So sometimes they couldn't find them, or they couldn't catch up to them, and sometimes they had plenty and something maybe even occasionally too much, but it was never a situation when they're reliably could over um call the animals where they could kill more than they really needed, and so as a consequence, um conservation really wasn't relevant to their lives until the invention of these modern weapons. And then the second problem, of course, is that if whenever we're in competition with each other and we're not member is the same group, I might say, well, I'll try to conserve these animals and I won't overkill them, but I don't know that you're going to follow that rule as well, and it creates what we call the tragedy of the commons, which is that you can see today, for example, and overfishing of the seats, I say to myself, well, I don't want to fish anymore now because there won't be fishing next year. But I'm worried you're not going to follow that rule because you're from a different country or a different group inside of our own country. And so because I can't trust you, I kind of have no choice but to overfish so that at least I'll get as much as I possibly can before the resource collapses. And so what we end up with the situations where when there's not one group in control of the resource, it almost always ends up collapsing because we can't trust each other. And those two rules would have held in a big way for our ancestors. And so the main advantage that we have in that regard is it was rarely the case that our ancestors could over exploit resources. Now, the one exception to that is every time human beings moved into a new continent or a new island, if there was a a resource that was large, really valuable, especially one that wasn't used to humans, we quickly overexploited it and caused it to go extinct. And you can see that over and over again as we moved into these new environments, as human beings left Africa and expanded across the globe, with the most recent example being you know we call human beings arrived in New Zealand shore Is only seven hundred years ago, and at that time there was this very large flightless bird, this moa bird that was very easy to kill because it wasn't scared of us, lots of great protein, and we quickly caused those to go extinct. So we had no sense in the past of our enormous capacity to destroy the local uh, you know, fauna, and and so we had no real sense that we ought to be conserving. And it's only now, after having seen enormous devastation that we could cause, that it's become really obvious to us. Boy, if we don't want this to happen over and over again, we have to be much better about it. And I think that's a big part of the reason that hunters lead a lot of these conservation movements, because they see the costs of you know, the prior hunting of bison and all sorts of things, and how they don't want that sort of thing to happen in in Yeah, that's a great point. It's good to hear from that perspective, because a lot of things we fall into in our modern you know, I keep saying modern hunting, in our hunting community right now, is that we have these ideals and we we know they're deep rooted, but we're just not sure where they might have started or exactly, um, how to relay them past. You know, we know at the turn of the century in this country that that we've had a large push towards conservation, but beyond that, we really don't know. We just know there was a lot of pillaging of resources of all kinds and in uh in centuries prior to that. Yeah, it's an unfortunate part of human nature that we really are evolved to worry much more about tomorrow than to worry about now. And it's only when we can really stop and reflect and look over long periods of time to see how things have changed the beginning that capacity to also look for longer as a time forward, and that's really the modern world. Because our ancestors had no clear capacity to quantify, well, how many of those animals used to run through this area and how many do now. They just wasn't They just weren't able to do that. And so we also think of our distant ancestors as being very conservation minded because they cared a lot, but they didn't know how to execute. They are far more likely to know pray to the local gods for a good harvest, or are good hunt next year than they were to say, well, we've hunted this area a little bit too much, let's move on, because they knew full well that if they moved on, someone else might move in and just finished the job for them, So there's really little that they could do. Yeah, And you know, in this day and age, we we do think of that we have some dominion over wildlife, we have this need to manage them, and and that that colors our relationship with wildlife in in in a pretty deep way, um in the modern sense. But that that just wasn't the way back in those in our as we evolved as humans, there wasn't that relationship. It was it was a pure opportunistic or was there some other ritualistic way that it was expressed it? It was it was ritualistic, it was tied up in local beliefs, but it was also like an ongoing competition where you know, it's it's me against the line, it's me against the will the beast. It's I don't feel like I have any dominionment over it and any need to protect it. Rather, I feel entirely the opposite, that I'm in competition with it. And one of the things that anthropologists will tell you when they go out and work with these um small scale societies is that the people who live in them can be incredibly cruel to the animals that um that they're interacting with. They just they don't have the same sense of responsibility over them, and so the anthropologists can often get sucked into these games where the locals will say, well, if you don't give the acts, I'm gonna torture this animal to death. And I know it sounds horrible, but for them, it's not a church, and the animal that death doesn't have any moral implications, and they just see that the anthropologists is so squeamish about it that they start to take advantage of that. Now, of course, slowly, over time that changes as people start to realize population density goes up and they do have dominion over these things, but it takes a long time to get there. It's a very modern concept. Yeah, And and can you give some some we talk about these comparisons. I mean, we're traveling, like I said earlier, over millions of years here, can you give some And I've seen this expressed a few places, But do you have anything in your you know, in your vocabulary or in the ways you like to use analogies to this how much time we were hunter gatherers to the amount of time that we have not been hunter gatherers. Yeah, that's a great question. So basically the when I think about the origin of a species, it's very close to us. Homeorectus is really that one. Prior to that, we're really much more chimps than we are human. And after that we're really much more human than we are chimped. And so that's about one point seven to one point nine million years ago. So from that time forward, we're slowly becoming us and we have and and so when you've got a little over one and a half million years and and almost that entire history, all we are every day is hunter, gathers and media returned togethers killing today and then eating today. And if we don't kill today, we don't eat. We only what somebody dug up, which is an inferior food. And so got almost two million years of that history. And then agriculture was invented about twelve thousand years ago, and not everywhere. In some spots they're really suitable for agriculture, and so people got you know, the Middle East and China for example, um and other spots were less suitable for agriculture, and so in fact, in some places agriculture was never invented, it was never used. So basically you've got a uh, the sort of last couple of versions of our species for almost two million years, and for a little less than ten thousand of that we've been growing food on our own. Now that's not to say that we haven't been gathering that whole time, because of course human beings are omnivorous, and so it was one of the very standard divisions of labor. By effect is females tended to go gather men, males tended to hunt large animals. So we've been eating lots of plant life for a very long time, but we've been always going back and forth between eating the plants we could gather and the animals that we could hunt. And it's only just this last blink of time, this last ten thousand years, which know, it's just a very small window compared to the two million years prior, where we've been relying much more heavily on the things that we can grow and moving away from the things that we can hunt. And even then in the last ten thousand years, lots of society shifted to the agriculture, but lots of You can look at the history of Europe and you can see that hunter gatherers were coexisting with farmers, you know, for most of that time. It wasn't until very recently that basically hunter gathering has disappeared from the planet, and that's the last few hundred years. Prior to that, hunter gathering was still existing all over the planet. Yeah. We had a podcast earlier in this summer and discussing the Lama Layrans, which are assistants whaling tribe and an island off the coast of Indonesia, And in that discussion we talked about the the not eradication, it's probably not the right word, but the elimination of some of these hunter gatherer cultures, these subsistence cultures, and over time, the percentage we have cut off although different types of culture there went from thousands and thousands of cultures to relatively few based on the comparative number. Have you studied and looked at that over the time. Yeah. The downside is that so if you look at the history of agriculture, first of all, as we just discussed, it's only one percent of our sort of history is kind of human like animals. So of our human like history is hunter gathering, one percent is agriculture. And now you take that one percent of the time and what you realize is that. Actually, it's a really bad deal for any of the individual farmers once we switched over. So they went from this diet that admittedly wasn't very balanced on any one day because it's whatever you killed, you ate, but was very balanced over time. And so they've got this really balanced diet. They've got this really active lifestyle where they are out for a few hours each day hunting, and then they've got leisure to spend time with each other, but they're always moving around their nomadic and now you become sententary and you become heavily reliant on the start diet. And so for the individual farmers it was a terrible deal. They worked harder to get less there. They were shorter than their ancestors, they were they were less healthy than their ancestors because they introduced all sorts of diseases from the animals that they're now living by job with all sorts of problems like that. But the carrying capacity of the land is so much greater for agriculture than it is the hunter gathering, and so slowly over time you've got um agriculturals are displacing hunter gatherers everywhere, even though the agriculturalists themselves until very recently we're less healthy specimens. They're simply more of them. And so over time, if you look at the we can now do this lovely genetics to look at human movements over the last several thousand years, and you can just see um all sorts of incursions by hunter gather populations. But then they always get assimilated, They get brought into the agricultural populations because they're simply more of them. It's impossible to win that fight, so to speak, and so Brazilian cultures get slowly with the way until there's only a few left. Now, admittedly, all of our genes are still in the gene pool. You know, it's rare that people get wiped out entirely. It's much more common that they get assimilated. But so genetically we're all still there. But linguistically and and in different cultural habits they're gone. Yeah. Now, do you do you feel that technology is is kind of the same a similar or the same force to agriculture, Like it will have the same effect. Yeah, I will, because if you if you think about technology, you know it it makes everything super duper easy. Although it makes all of us stuck at our computers all day long, and so we again become less healthy, all pastures worse, all sorts of things. You know, we're not. We didn't evolve to sit on our rear ends all day. You can. You're telling me, here's actually get longer. The longer you sit and are shorter. I'm sorry, the shorter, the longer you sit, and and that's the sign that you're shortening your life. So it's it's not cludes for any individual, but of course it's super effective for society. Ideas pass instantaneously. Um, there's this sort of cultural soup that all gets it shifts quickly, but but all everyone gets assimilated to it. And so you can easily imagine a world if you and I were having this conversation two and it is from now. I have to believe there's going to be very few languages that are left armants is just gonna be a few dominant languages that everybody see. They'll be everybody will know all the same stuff because it will be instantly accessible on the internet. I mean, it'll be great in some ways, because we still have lots of disease and lots of starvation and all that, and that will be eliminated, but it'll be a cost to that, right, there be lots of interesting human differences will be lost. Yeah, Now that something just strikes me now that as we're going through this conversation that there are these forces that that we stumble upon or we create, however we get there as humans. However, we evolved too to these abilities that while they are advantageous in the moment and maybe, as you say, advantageous for our overall society, they start to eat away at from the core of these humanity, these aspects of community that we're talking about, which is movement, which is hunting, which is that? And I wonder how, you know, if I would just say personally, as a hunter, I feel this calmness when I'm hunting, I feel this this urge to go there. And when I don't, it's like medicine. If I don't have that medicine, Um, I feel certain things. I feel depressed when I'm sitting in traffic, or maybe depressed when I'm eating uh, you know, some sort of fast food and and and huntings. It's kind of weird medicine. And again, much like we were talking about earlier, it's hard to articulate what that really means. It is super interesting and there's there's more and more data now the show that when you get out in nature, it's actually good for your mental health. It's good for your brain functioning. The it's a it's an early area of this research. We don't know exactly why, but I think that, of course, it comes back to the fact that when we're out hunting, when we're in charge, so to speak, when we're out seeking game, when we're out exploring nature, we are in an element that's very natural for us and that we understand intuitively, and so it doesn't you know, if I'm walking through a city, there's those sorts of potential threats and opportunities, but none of them are naturally connect to my psychology. I have to literally figure them out. Oh do I want that pizza? Oh? Should I avoid that car? Whereas when you're in the woods, you know that your mind is a tune to what's going on around you, and you know that if there's dangers you'll be your attention will be automatically drawn to it, and so that you can kind of rely on the way your brain has worked for you know, many millennia, UM you know, hundreds of thousands of years, you can rely on the fact that that's going to guide you well, whereas in the in the city you need this constant alertness and attention, and of course sitting in traffic is ghastly because you need it all and nothing's happening. And so the it is the case that the psychology is showing that being out a nature is super important to us. Now, will it always be? I don't know, but it certainly is now given this long evolutionary history we evolved in of being in nature and being successful out there. Yeah, I mean, is there ever a time where you imagine that these things aren't kind of underpinnings of who we are, That that that we have kind of technology and agriculture and process of foods and and the availability of shelter and just the way that we live kind of a race is completely these urges or will do you feel like, just based on millions of years, that will always be there? I will always is a very long word, right, So it's super hard to know what our speecies is like in a hundred thousand years or two hundred thousand years, but you know, our speacies is about two hundred fifty thousand years old. It's a blend. There's no defining line where if you and I walk back through time and go, Okay, that guy's I'm home wrecks and that guy's Homo sapiens. So there's not a cut point. So but nonetheless, if you if you look at this continuous evolution of the last few million years, it's always been in nature, and so in my mind, it would take a few million years to erase it. But I don't see. I don't see our progeny is being desirous of erasing it, especially if if these current population models are accurate, and that we tend to live in cities, we tend to live, our families get smaller, their world population decreases. There's always gonna be lots of nature out there. You know. You can sort of feel like it under threat when you look at the last hundred years. But I suspected if you look at the next hundred years, we're going to do a much better job with a decrease in population and a greater sensitivity to the problem. And so my guess is it will always be important to us, and it will always be something that human being seen and the you know, just walking in the woods and and I was just in Alaska last time we chatted. And you know, we're walking along with my brothers and I and and up comes this bull moose on the on the trail ahead of us, and so you know, it's this exciting moment where you you're negotiating with a relatively large animal. You both want to go your separate ways, and you're not quite sure I was going to end up. And that's that's how we evolved doing those kinds of things all the time. We didn't evolve to be trying to get it across walk and wait across the street when all the traffic settles down, and the kinds of things that we spend most of our lives doing. Now, yeah, now I feel like there is there is that. And the people ask me, or we get in these conversations of what is the future hunting and and how will it change? How will the demographics of hunting change, how can it shift? And kind of generationally remain relevant? And I often say that I see in people that live in in predominantly urban settings, in suburban settings, I see in them the urge to go and explore these things, the urge to get outside, the urge to escape, um, you know, I don't want to say a concrete prison, but to escape that urban environment thing that isn't so natural to them. So I've seen even though urbanization in the short term here in this last thirty years span has kind of killed hunting in a way, or at least stopped its growth in the modern sense, it might eventually be an outlet for for this urge that we're going to increasingly feel its technology and kind of urban landscapes just continue to grow. Yeah, I think so. And so with the question that that's interesting to me and I don't know the answer is will this be something where people slowly shift away from hunting and they become campers, for example, where they go out into it but they don't hunting it, or will be something where we're always hunting. If I had to bet, I would say that hunting is not going to disappear, because it played so much of an important role in our in our ancestry, that it is in our DNA like throwing rocks. And so there's always going to be people who are keen to go out and hunt, and enough of them that the laws are unlikely to be changed. So there's something you just can't do, especially since it would be a certain degree of hypocrisy to saying, well, you can't go hunted deer, but I can kill this cow and eat it. Right, So you know that as long as we're doing one, we're going to be doing the other. Now you've probably seen this work where they're growing meat and peatra dishes, and eventually we may get so good at that that then nobody's animal farming anymore. And if nobody's animal farms, you could imagine the world where people who are against it start changing the laws and so you can't hunt. But I'm not even sure about that. I I don't know that that, you know, especially since the responsible hunting doesn't there's no threat of extinction. It can keep the balance between different animals together. It's not clear to me that that would have disappear. Yeah, And I think as long as we're articulating the benefits and in society understands those things, then yeah, I I can agree with that. I think being in the community and seeing and shrink and understanding, like just from my father's generation to mine, there's been such this, you know, tectonic shift and who is doing it, and how many folks are doing and how accepted it is or not. I think those of us, and now that our hunters are get a little bit worried, they continue this way for very long, then this thing will will be over. But it's nice to hear you say that. I guess it feels good. Yeah, I mean, I'm not very good at predicting the future. I'm must be looking at the past. But it seems to me that hunters are also very sensitive to where it's going. And so if you look at some of the strongest conservations since Daies world are hunters because they're very concerned about the future of it. And that's the kind of thing, of course, that keeps it going. Yeah, it's these kind of conversations that really understand where we've we've been to understand where we're going. Um, you know, it's it seems sometimes, you know, a little bit silly to speaking like oh that two million years, three million years formulas and in those terms, but it is it is because that's just not how we our minds work. That's that we can't conceive of that. I wouldn't think remembers that are so ridiculous. You can't really imagine them, and so we can say them, but to feel what it's like is absurved. I mean, in just a few generations, no one will ever know that I even existed, much less in a million years, when none of us will ever know anyone, you know, it's just the world changes so dramatically. Well, that's that's, uh, the task you've taken on in the human evolutionary biology. I don't know what you do is is to understand the scope of our humanity and give us a little bit of information and are very brief pinprick time of existency here to kind of do it a little bit better. And and that's what I hoped out of this conversation. And I just like I said earlier, become interested in this just because one because you were on with my friend Joe Rogan, but less that, it's it's more just as you talk about, you know, the relevancy of the things we feel and the thing as we're grappling with right now as hunters. It's it's very relevant to our history and it is colored and painted by our past and is many millions of years that are there to to explore. So I mean, it just seems endless, uh and and endless subject is it is? It is? It's super interesting and I wish I'm more expert in the more hottern side of it, but because there's there's lots of very interesting questions of how it all changed just in the last m bousing years, just the last hundred years, and those questions I'm less I'm aware of. I don't know as much of that anthropological work, but it is it's all tightly tied to the same basic questions, which is how did our species evolved and what role did hunting play in it? And then how can we use that now it's going forward to do it better? Yeah, that's perfect. And we always say you can't if you're not going to continue doing things because they were done in the past. There's a lot of horrors in our past that we've raised, but we certainly can learn from something that is part of who we are and continue to push forward and preserve the things that are um you know, that need to be preserved. Absolutely we can. Yeah, do you use history to benefit tomorrow? Is the exact reason why we remember in the first place. There's zero point in remembering our past if we can't use it to make a better future. Beautiful. That's a great place to end. Um. Dr Frone people, thank you so much for um coming on and having this conversation. I want to do it again because I think we can probably start from a million years ago and continue to work. But until that time, everyone go out and pick up the social leap. Like I said, it's not a way. Often on this podcast talk about hunting books and books about turkey hunting and how to talk to it turkey. This is not that. What it is is a primer to everything you think about when you're out hunting, and it is. It's fascinating and a wonderful read. Thanks man. I really enjoyed chatting with you. It's a super interesting topic, and I do hope we get a chance to talk again, hopefully in person next time. Yeah. Yeah. For those who don't, you wouldn't know the backstory. I tried to fly to Alaska, couldn't make it. We tried to set this up over phone a couple of times, and and Bill has been very patient with me and very kind to to spend the time pleasure. All right, Thanks Bill, thank you. That's it. That's all. Another episode in the books. Thank you. So much to William von Hipple. I apologize for saying William von Nipple that, but you know, maybe he'll stick and maybe it'll somehow and enhance your public persona. But I need to apologist. William was very cool and very helpful with us. We actually Phil, and I feels like Phil's first day here. He probably doesn't like that I'm saying this now, but his one of the first days here. We set up a phone call podcast with William von Hipple and then couldn't make it work, so he sat there for like five minutes while we jangled around with phones and things. And then prior to that, I was supposed to go meet him in Anchorage and I did not get that done. So he was very very gracious in his time. So thank you for that, William, and thanks for the great conversation. I hope we can do more of that because it is absolutely critical to the way we think about hunting. And thanks to our team, including Sam Solholt, who drove the bus over here after the Total Archery Challenge to get silly with us about top five. I will say that meat Loaf, that meat Low song may become the new th a C theme song. It might. I don't know. Old Number seven is great, but a lot of you guys right in and label that as a hipster song, which I don't agree with. Do you think that's a hipster song? Phil? Old number seven? He doesn't think, so he says no. Um. And so that's that for this episode. The last three episodes I really enjoyed. We're gonna continue that. Next week. We had Keith Balford from Boone and Crockett in the studio to talk about the history of the Boon and Cracker Club and get into some of their fair Chase statement public statements and some of their Hunt Right campaign and went deep on fair Chase and what it means for us. Hopefully you're still willing to have that conversation with us, because we're gonna keep keep chugging on it as long as we can. Uh what else? What else? What else? Oh Um? Th h C at the meat Eator dot com th HC at the Metator dot com. I will admit to having so many emails from these last two vegan animal rights episodes. All a lot of you guys were fired up, you were thinking hard, you were writing me very long emails. Many of you very long emails, and I did my very best to read every single one of them. In fact, for the first time ever, th h C at the metator dot Com was getting three times the emails that my actual work email is getting. So I don't know what that means, but I enjoy enjoy all the messages, so please keep them coming. Th HD at the meetator dot com. Please keep sending me your audio clips and reviews of the show. Take out your phone, hit the notes, hit record, and then email it to me. Th HD at the meetor dot com. We love to hear him, love the feedback. That's what we do so that we'll leave us some old number seven and we'll see you next. We thanked Jack Daniels. Oh I'm seven, Tennessee. Who whiskey got me drinking in heaven and uh and just stopped. It looks good to me. They're gonna have to department to the fire redeed. Oh on the fire redeed, drinking in the fide Oh on the finery, d drinking in heaven.

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