Primitive Hunting Research Articles

Identification and quantification of 11 airborne biochemicals emitted by the brown recluse and another primitive hunting spider using headspace solid-phase microextraction-GC/MS.

Loxosceles reclusa, or brown recluse spider, is a harmful household spider whose habitat extends throughout the Midwest in the USA and other regions in the world. The pheromones and other biomolecules that facilitate signaling for brown recluses and other spider species are poorly understood. A rapid and sensitive method is needed to analyze airborne spider signaling biomolecules to better understand the structure and function of these biochemicals in order to control the population of the spiders. In this study, we developed a novel headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME)-GC/MS method to analyze potential pheromones and biomolecules emitted by the brown recluse spider. The method is highly selective and sensitive for biomolecule identification and quantification from a single live spider. Using this novel non-destructive HS-SPME-GC/MS technique, we identified 11 airborne biomolecules, including 4-methylquinazoline, dimethyl sulfone, 2-methylpropanoic acid, butanoic acid, hexanal, 3-methylbutanoic acid, 2-methylbutanoic acid, 2,4-dimethylbenzaldehyde, 2-phenoxyethanol, and citral (contains both isomers of neral and geranial). Some of these airborne biomolecules were also reported as semiochemicals associated with biological functions of other spiders and insects. The method was also applied to study the airborne biochemicals of Plectreurys tristis, another primitive hunting spider with a poor web, enabling quantitation of the same compounds and demonstrating a difference in signaling molecule concentrations between the two species. This method has potential application in the study of pheromones and biological signaling in other species, which allows for the possibility of utilizing attractant or deterrent functions to limit household populations of harmful species.

The wave II

The wave II

The wave I

The wave I

Сравнительный анализ стереотипного поведения на примере процесса охоты у мелких млекопитающих

Comparative analysis of stereotypical behavioral patterns including elements of flexible behavior is presented, with hunting behavior of small mammals as an example. Reactions towards live prey (cockroaches) were investigated in rodents possessing different feeding specialization, in comparison with the insectivorous common shrew. Quantitative analysis was used, and Markov chains were constructed to generate schemes of stereotypes of hunting behavior in different species. The characteristic feature of hunting stereotypes in rodents is that after seizing an insect with teeth, they seize and hold it with their forepaws. This is the more evolutionary progressive feature than seizing the prey with teeth only, like shrews do. As schemes of stereotypes and tactics of hunting appeared to be similar in herbivorous narrow-headed voles and granivorous striped field mice, one can assume that these rodents possess specific adaptations to carnivorous life style. Norway rats display the less specialized hunting stereotypes. The studied rodent species demonstrate more primitive hunting stereotypes than specialized hunting rodents; however, their hunting stereotype is rather specific, and this can be considered behavioral adaptation allowing rodents to broaden feeding resources by the use of active hunting towards insects. A suggested scheme of comparative analysis of stereotypical behavior can be used in ethological and psychological studies. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant No. 14-14-00603).

Making subaltern shikaris: histories of the hunted in colonial central India

Academic histories of hunting or shikar in India have almost entirely focused on the sports hunting of British colonists and Indian royalty. This article attempts to balance this elite bias by focusing on the meaning of shikar in the construction of the Gond ‘tribal’ identity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial central India. Coining the term ‘subaltern shikaris’ to refer to the class of poor, rural hunters, typically ignored in this historiography, the article explores how the British managed to use hunting as a means of state penetration into central India’s forest interior, where they came to regard their Gond forest-dwelling subjects as essentially and eternally primitive hunting tribes. Subaltern shikaris were employed by elite sportsmen and were also paid to hunt in the colonial regime’s vermin eradication programme, which targeted tigers, wolves, bears and other species identified by the state as ‘dangerous beasts’. When offered economic incentives, forest dwellers usually willingly participated in new modes of hunting, even as impact on wildlife rapidly accelerated and became unsustainable. Yet as non-indigenous approaches to nature became normative, there was sometimes also resistance from Gond communities. As overkill accelerated, this led to exclusion of local peoples from natural resources, to their increasing incorporation into dominant political and economic systems, and to the eventual collapse of hunting as a livelihood. All of this raises the question: To what extent were subaltern subjects, like wildlife, ‘the hunted’ in colonial India?

On the Evolution of Sport

Sports have received little attention from evolutionary biologists. I argue that sport began as a way for men to develop the skills needed in primitive hunting and warfare, then developed to act primarily as a lek where athletes display and male spectators evaluate the qualities of potential allies and rivals. This hypothesis predicts that (1) the most popular modern male sports require the skills needed for success in male-male physical competition and primitive hunting and warfare; (2) champion male athletes obtain high status and thereby reproductive opportunities in ways that parallel those gained by successful primitive hunters and warriors; (3) men pay closer attention than do women to male sports so they can evaluate potential allies and rivals; and (4) male sports became culturally more important when opportunities to evaluate potential allies and rivals declined as both the survival importance of hunting and the proportion of men who experience combat decreased. The characteristics of primitive and modern sports are more consistent with these predictions than those generated by intersexual sexual selection theories of sport.

Study on the Origin of Textile Technology in Ancient China

Some researchers use the drawing about primitive hunting with stone balls in order to explain the origin of textile technology in ancient China. However, the description in the drawing is inconsistent with the historical facts and lead to a wrong conclusion drawn by the researchers. We aimed to explain objectively the origin of the textile technology in ancient China. We have had some queries for the authenticity of the drawing after we made some archaeological and folk-custom investigations on the application of primitive stone balls. It is concluded that the origin of spinning in ancient China dated back to the upper Palaeolithic period and was an indispensable link of human evolution from ape man to human, but the origin of weaving in ancient China dated back to the Neolithic period. Only when the primitive farming became the main production department and the explosion of population required the substitute of clothes made of hide, did the spinning, weaving and textile design merged together and finally resulted in the formation of the textile technology system.

Archaeological records of Dadiwan in the past 60 ka and the origin of millet agriculture

This paper reports the recent excavation of Unit Dadiwan06 at the Dadiwan site in Qin’an County, Gansu. A 65 ka chronological framework is established for Dadiwan06 on the basis of absolute dating (AMS 14C and OSL), stratigraphy, climate change events and archaeology. Artifact distributions reveal patterns of human behavioral variation and adaptation over the past 60 ka, from primitive hunting and gathering to advanced hunting and gathering, to primitive Neolithic agriculture, and finally to advanced Neolithic agriculture.

Characterization of insecticidal peptides from venom Australian funnel-web spiders

Australian funnel-web spiders are relatively large primitive hunting spiders. Male Atrax robustus spiders have been responsible for a number of human deaths. Venom was collected from the species Hadronyche infensa (Hickman) [female], H. formidabilis [male and female], H. versuta [female], and A. robustus (Cambridge) [male] and was fractionated by high performance liquid chromatography. This resulted in the isolation and purification of a homologous series of 7 insecticidal peptides of relatively low molecular mass (approximately 4kDa). The amino acid sequences of these toxins consisted of 36 or 37 amino acids and were named atracotoxins. For the major bioassay of these toxins, we used the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner), due to the great damage it causes to crops worldwide. These toxins, when injected subcutaneously into fifth or sixth instar larvae of Helicoverpa armigera,were lethal or caused an apparently irreversible writhing. The toxin from H. versuta venom showed no significant toxicity when subcutaneously injected into newborn mice. One of the toxins was found to have a free acid carboxyl terminus. These toxins have great potential as lead compounds for insecticide design or for incorporation in recombinant baculovirus insecticides.

GUTI: a measure of urgent task involvement among adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been proposed to represent adaptive responding to highly urgent situations as in primitive hunting. In the present study, 31 adults with self-reported ADHD were compared with 33 normal adults on a newly developed, 10-item measure of urgent task involvement. The internal consistency of the scale was suitable, and the group with ADHD scored significantly higher than the control group, as predicted. Validation and further development of this scale is required for it to become a tool for the study of performance of highly urgent tasks.

GUTI: A MEASURE OF URGENT TASK INVOLVEMENT AMONG ADULTS WITH ATTENTION-DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been proposed to represent adaptive responding to highly urgent situations as in primitive hunting. In the present study, 31 adults with self-reported ADHD were compared with 33 normal adults on a newly developed, 10-item measure of urgent task involvement. The internal consistency of the scale was suitable, and the group with ADHD scored significantly higher than the control group, as predicted. Validation and further development of this scale is required for it to become a tool for the study of performance of highly urgent tasks.

Devolution by revolution: Selective genocide ensuing from the French and Russian revolutions

Robert K. Graham^1 Foundation for Human Advancement, Escondido, California With the rise of social stratification, Humankind has developed class warfare to heavily dysgenic proportions. The author here provides historic examples of genocide which targetted the mor successful members of society. His examples are primarily drawn from the French and Russian revolutions. Key Words: French revolution, Russian revolution, Russian revolution, Marxism, genocide, dysgenics Throughout the course of half a million years of hominid evolution there is evidence that our ancestors often killed or otherwise supplanted their rivals for control over resources necessary for survival and procreation. Since hominid intelligence rose dramatically during this period it can only be assumed that in general the more intelligent tended to survive in the struggle to survive and procreate. If the mitochondrial DNA theory of human evolution is correct, the ancestors of the living varieties of man practiced a strict racist creed, supplanting these without interbreeding with them. However, whatever treatment was extended to other sub-species (and there is evidence that cannibalism may have been practiced as early as a quarter of a million year ago) it is generally assumed that with rise of in-group altruism, the members of the same human social group only seldom killed each other. In-group altruism promoted group survival, and groups which were less inclined to be supportive of their own members competed less effectively against rival populations, and in the long run would be less likely to survive.2 In small inbreeding human groups, we might expect a heavily homogenized genetic pattern to have existed. Only when mankind progressed to the level of cultivating or advanced herding or fishing societies did the more successful groups expand and incorporated less successful populations, for agriculture made captive labor useful. Territorial expansion and the incorporation of less successful populations as serfs or slaves led to greater genetic diversity within territorial areas. This meant that the less competent and less intelligent populations were able to procreate under the protection of the more competent rather than be supplanted by them. More of the less competitive thus survived and reproduce alongside the more competitive, the rate of evolution effectively slowed down. If this hypothesis is correct, it is reasonable to suspect that the rise of empires and slave-holding made possible by agricultural economies resulted in a significant modification of the reproductive patterns normally associated with the evolutionary process. A markedly greater proportion of the less competitive would have begun to survive and propagate. In primitive hunting societies, competition placed a survival value on intelligence, but in agricultural societies, the more intelligent could utilize the labor of the less intelligent to till the ground and harvest crops, and engage in the physical labor of erecting fine buildings designed by the more intelligent. The utility of cheap labor inclined the more intelligent to encourage the reproduction of the less intelligent and to protect them at the same time. Today, technologically-advanced societies have fewer simple agricultural tasks to give to the less intelligent, and as technology advances more positions call for a higher level of intelligent. The complex and genetically heterogeneous modern Western societies face another problem. Not only have they for generations promoted the reproduction of the less intelligent, who in under evolutionary selective processes would have been less inclined to leave progeny behind them, but factors discouraging the reproductive activities of the more intelligent have emerged. The liberation of women from their traditional role of motherhood and child-rearing has enabled the more intelligent to devote their interests to professional careers, with the result that they marry late, if at all, and have fewer children. …

Molecular cloning and sequencing of cDNAs encoding insecticidal peptides from the primitive hunting spider, Plectreurys tristis (Simon)

Plectreurys tristis cephalothorax mRNA was isolated and amplified by PCR using degenerate primers corresponding to reverse translated mature Plt-VI toxin. An oligonucleotide corresponding to a portion of the amplified product was then used to screen a P. tristis cDNA library. The cDNAs from 10 positive clones were sequenced. Eight of these cDNAs corresponded to Plt-VI toxin, one to Plt-XI toxin, and one was very similar to Plt-VIII toxin, with the exception of a single amino acid substitution. Analysis of these cDNAs indicated that these toxins are initially synthesized as prepro-forms which undergo signal cleavage followed by additional processing at both their N- and C-termini to produce the mature products.

Isolation and sequencing of insecticidal peptides from the primitive hunting spider, Plectreurys tristis (Simon)

About 50 peptide toxins were purified from venom of the primitive hunting spider, Plectreurys tristis. Bioassay by injection into larval Heliothis virescens (tobacco budworm) allowed selection of nine toxins for analysis of amino acid sequences. Total sequences were determined for six of the more insecticidal peptides (46-49 amino acids) and three contained free carboxyl-terminal amino acids. These toxins (plectoxins) are paralytic and/or lethal when injected into insect pests such as the lepidopterous larvae H. virescens, Spodoptera exigua (beet armyworm), and Manduca sexta (tobacco hornworm). We expect these plectoxins to be useful in insect control after delivery by a suitable agent such as a recombinant baculovirus.

Identification of bis(agmatine)oxalamide in venom from the primitive hunting spider, Plectreurys tristis (Simon)

N, N′-bis(4-guanidinobutyl)oxalamide, a novel bis(agmatine)oxalamide, is identified as a major component (8 μg/μl) and the predominant acylpolyamine in venom from the primitive hunting spider, Plectreurys tristis. The function of this compound is unknown since it does not confer insecticidal or fungicidal activity in the systems examined.

Hominid brain evolution: Two conceptions of science

This paper re-examines the repeatedly-offered hypothesis (Fialkowski 1978, 1986, 1987, 1988) that hominid brain expansion was largely a side effect of evolutionary response to increased heat stress under conditions of primitive hunting, and resulted in a preadaptation to enhanced cognitive abilities. Fialkowski's hypothesis, previously shown to be based on data that are seriously inaccurate, continues to be presented in a manner that precludes testing. Consequently, however interesting these ideas may be, they are beyond the conventional domain of anthropology as a legitimate subdiscipline of modern science.

Was plio-pleistocene hominid brain expansion a pleiotropic effect of adaptation for heat stress?

This paper examines the hypothesis (Fiałkowski 1978, 1986) that hominid brain expansion was largely a side effect of an evolutionary response to increased heat stress under conditions of primitive hunting, with reduction in reliability of brain components due to a rise in temperature having been offset by increases in the number of cerebral sub-units and interconnections among them. Fiałkowski's hypothesis is shown here to be based on measurements that are seriously inaccurate, and the explanatory mechanism to be contradicted by existing data on response to heat stress by smaller-brained nonhuman primates.

Jægerkulturer og fænomenet skyld

This article is a slightly edited Danish version of the opening Fulbright address given at the Department of the History of Religions, Aarhus University. The article introduces definitions of religion, guilt, and religious behaviour, and then introduces a means by which the history of religion can be applied to the evolution of humankind and culture in a timeframe of several thousand years. The theme of guilt in the history of religious humanity is then discussed in three subsections. The first subsection concerns guilt, tools and divine predators, the goal of which is to illuminate the two major forms of guilt-and reconciliation bonding in the course of hominid evolution. This is reconstructed on the basis of recent anthropological theories of cultural evolution and the reshaping of the hominid family tree, from suspected similarities at pre-hominid levels of primate behaviour, as well as from extant Stone Age hunter traditions which, to this day, still contain soteriological solutions to problems of long ago. The second subsection concerns guilt, hunting and healing, the goal of which is to fill the scholastic lacuna concerning primitive hunters’ religious practices especially in relation to the entire primitive hunter-gatherer ethos. The bitter fact of the primitive hunter life, that trickery is a hunter’s actual guilt-producing lifestyle, has never dawned on educated connoisseurs of trickster tales. Primitive folks are portrayed, in spite of what they say or do, as though they face their gods with the same indifference as do their learned visitors. Data which I collected on Navajo hunter traditions substantiate the points in this subsection; while, on the one hand, a healing ceremonial can be understood as a delayed conciliatory hunting rite, it can also be seen, on the other hand, in its restorative function, as a reconciliation ceremony or peace treaty that is performed – on account of human guilt – in accordance with divinely ordained protocol. The third subsection concerns modern versus primitive hunting, the goal of which is to bridge the misunderstanding which academic studies reveal by underlining the extreme pre-suppositional differences between the two forms of hunting.

Bagor ‐A late mesolithic settlement in north‐west India

Abstract The paper reviews the results of recent excavations at Bagor, a late mesolithic settlement in south Rajasthan which was occupied regularly for a period of five millennia immediately before Christ. The earliest settlers at the site had a highly evolved geometric microlithic industry and an economy based on hunting and stock‐raising. About the middle of the third millennium B.c. they acquired the knowledge of copper or bronze tools and of making hand‐made pottery. At this stage contacts developed with the earliest village farming cultures in Mewar and Malwa and with the urban Harappa Culture of north‐west India. Finally in the middle of the first millennium b.c. iron and wheel‐made pottery were introduced. Although stone tools continued in use their place in technology declined, as did the role of hunting in favour of animal husbandry. Bagor provides important evidence of the process whereby primitive hunting and stone‐using cultures were slowly incorporated into metal‐using and food producing econ...

Blood-group investigation on Central Kalahari Bushmen.

DURING August–September 1958, an expedition organized by the Kalahari Committee of the University of the Witwatersrand (in which the Anthropology Laboratory of the Department of Human Anatomy, Oxford, participated) carried out anthropological, medical, dental and other investigations on Bushmen in the Central Kalahari. The anthropological interest of this study lies in the following: (a) two communities examined, some 70 miles south of Ghanzi, were living a primitive hunting and food-gathering existence and could be compared with a third group of Bushmen living on farms in the Ghanzi district; (b) the blood of Bushmen from the Kalahari region has not previously been grouped; hitherto all such data have been obtained from Bushmen of South-West Africa; (c) the antigens tested included the recently discovered Diego (the serum was kindly supplied by Dr. Layrisse) and also V and Js (sera kindly supplied by Dr. Eloise Giblett). Tests with anti-Diego sera were particularly apposite since some anthropologists have considered it possible that the Bushmen (and Hottentots), on account of their skin colour and frequent possession of an internal epicanthic fold, incorporate a Mongoloid component of distant or even recent derivation. There also is still uncertainty on the exact affinity of the Bushmen to existing Negroid populations. The V and Js antigens are common in Negro populations and therefore supplement information on Negro affinities afforded by other blood-group systems.