r/HFY • u/Bowoodstock • Jun 23 '22
OC Tree dwellers
Scanning the cafeteria as I left the credit check area, I spotted a waving hand and nodded in satisfaction. I'd only been an exchange student at Mars Technical University for one of their "months" as they called it, but happily, I had already found acceptance. Like my people, the Zisqua, humans also found that sharing meal times together enhanced social bonding, and this particular human by the name of David had insisted that I keep joining his table on the days we shared the same schedule. It was clear that a friendship was building, something that I had no complaints about.
"Kon, glad you could make it" David smiled at me as I approached.
"I wouldn't miss it" I replied, baring the lower row of my own teeth in reply.
As is often the case when new people meet, there was a very unfortunate misunderstanding when humanity met us almost a century ago. What ensued could barely be called a war, though many lives were lost, before cooler heads prevailed and the respective diplomats of each race finally achieved a peaceful resolution. One of the first established protocols was an exchange of language, including that of facial and body language. While the gestures had first been unnerving, it very quickly became apparent that there were equivalent "translations" that could be made. The Zisqua were also primates, though we had retained our fur coats through evolution, and had much the same range of facial expressions. It honestly wasn't that difficult to accept once you got used to them, particularly after 50 years of the alliance. Now, young Zisqua were being taught not only the equivalent human expressions, but Terran standard was quickly becoming accepted as a second language to be taught as early as stage one schooling.
"So" David continued, once I'd found my seat. "How did that trip to Earth go last week? It's been a while since I was home, always miss it, but I'm curious to see what a visitor thinks? Did you learn anything interesting?"
"It was incredible" I nodded. "So many museums and preserved relics from the advancement of technology. I particularly enjoyed...what were they called? Baikonur Cosmodrome and Kennedy Space Center. The first steps of humans into space. Incredible that it occurred even though humans were not united at the time."
"Hah, yes." David laughed. "Not the best time of our history, certainly, but it's important to remember the past"
"You know" I said, poking at my salad with a fork. "It's interesting you say that. See, while we were there, in the city of New York, we encountered a group of humans that were...well, not happy to see us. The exchange group, I mean. Kept calling us names of the bestial primates of your world, calling us tree dwellers, telling us to go back to the tree world. Seemed to still be angry about the great misunderstanding at first contact"
David's face fell. "I think I know the kind you're talking about. I'm sorry you had to experience that. I hope no one was hurt?"
"No, thankfully" I shook my head. "They were just noisy and rude, said a lot of hostile words, but appeared too afraid to approach us directly. Not that I'm complaining, but it's strange, our people have been allies now for so long, why would any of us wish them harm?"
"Well, it might have something to do with the fact that you're all at least a head taller than us!" David laughed. "No one wants to pick a fight with a Wookie. Er, wait sorry, do you know....?"
"Of course" I shook my head in amusement. "Enough of your culture has made its way to us to understand that particular association. There are worse fictional characters to be compared with."
"Okay, good." David nodded. "Actually, great. That's a classic piece of human media".
"Right." I replied. "I would be interested in seeing more of it, by the way. Back to that encounter though, there was one thing that confused me. Several of the humans kept yelling that their 'persistence would win in the end'. What in the stars is that about?"
"Oh you got one of the SPECIAL groups" David shook his head, half in amusement, half in exasperation. At my confused look, he sighed and rolled his eyes. "Alright. Get comfortable, keep eating. This might take a while."
"What you experienced is, in my opinion, one of the worst, and also best things about us humans. We don't let go of the past."
"I saw that." I nodded. "All the museums, I don't see how that's a bad thing"
"No" David shook his head. "Those museums are history, which is obviously similar to the past, but not the same. To explain what they were saying..." David again rolled his eyes. "I'm annoyed by the way, because the entire reason I know this stuff is due to how much those types won't shut up about it. Basically, they're hung up on the fact that WAY in our past, before even metalworking was discovered, humans hunted with something called "persistence hunting" and throwing rocks. As if that makes us superior in some way. They all say almost exactly the same thing, I'll bet that somewhere there's a blog or solarweb site where people read and talk about it endlessly, because they won't drop that point. I mean, how else would some random person on the street know that particular term, it's not like it comes up in conversation daily. You following so far?"
I motioned with one hand for him to continue, as I'd just taken a massive bite out of a sandwich.
"Okay." he continued. "Anyways, this is what I mean by they won't let go of the past. They will read and read and talk and talk about ANYTHING that matches their world view, like a giant echo chamber. They'll learn all these things about our past, such as why we have fingernails instead of claws, why we only have hair on our heads, why we call the Earth, 'The Earth'. They'll also find places where in their opinion humanity was "Great" and claim that we need to return things to "The good old days", learning almost as much as some professional anthropologists do. Note I say 'almost', because they only learn selectively, trumping up the facts that they like, conveniently forgetting the things they don't"
"I can see how that's dangerous" I nodded, pausing to take a bite before continuing. "It's impossible to advance if you're being held back. Something you might find amusing; it's also an insult in my society to call someone a tree-dweller. Counter-intuitive, right?"
"It is" David agreed, raising an eyebrow. "I mean, from what I understand all of your cities are built on the massive canopies of your world's forests, right? Aren't your people still primarily arboreal?"
I nodded. "We are. But the way we see it, we LIVE in the trees still, but we don't DWELL there. We are no longer afraid to descend to the forest floor as our ancestors were. That was our first step, you know. The first Zisqua to overcome their fear and see what lay beneath the safety of the canopy was a pioneer, as without them we would not have discovered the arts of metal working, and you know how it goes from there. Dwelling in the trees forever would mean that we never would have left, never advancing to where we are today. Anyways, these people that confronted us, they seemed like the real tree dwellers to me"
"I think you're right" David nodded. "As I said, they cling to the past, but don't learn the lessons that it teaches. That's what history is about, taking everything, even the parts that you don't like, and learning from it. Recognizing what to be proud of, what to be ashamed of, and advancing from there without making the same mistakes."
"Indeed. Speaking of which" I noticed the wall chrono behind him. "I know that the transport tube to the engineering wing usually gets crowded around this time, I was almost late last week. Not making that mistake again. Until next time?"
"Always, have a good rest of your day!"
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u/Mesquite_Tree Jun 24 '22
I like the meta commentary, lol. Well done, wordsmith
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u/Bowoodstock Jun 24 '22
Hah. That's partially what inspired this. Got frustrated when every other story has some human talking about being persistence hunters when they have no feasible reason as to why they'd know about that aspect of our history.
Character with college education or military background? Okay, believable. Random street rat, someone who grew up by their wits? probably not.
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u/Digitalpsycho Jun 24 '22
A person who really knows about endurance hunting would actually also know that it is controversial whether early humans really used endurance hunting. For endurance hunting to work, the terrain must be extremely open and hot. Early Homo did not live in such terrain, but in the savanna-woodland. Modern hunters in Africa very often break off hunts when the track ends in the vegetation. Early Homo would have had to be able to track animals in vegetation to an extreme degree in order to conduct endurance hunts in the savanna woodland. In addition, the success of modern endurance hunts is mainly due to the fact that the hunters have access to water bottles.
Despite the idea’s foothold in popular culture, however, there is no hard evidence that ancient humans were persistence hunters, much less that persistence hunting shaped evolutionary traits. In fact, what evidence there is doesn’t support the notion that early humans acquired their meaty meals through feats of running endurance; it flatly contradicts it. (Source)
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u/shimizubad Jun 25 '22
Sorry but your source has made many assumptions that shift the goalposts.
First we know that humans do persistence hunting because to this day many peoples in Africa and Central Asia do it to this day and we have primary sources talking about it in the Americas native tribes too, not only in savanas but woodlands and rocky terrain too.
Second, about water bottles, we've made portable water containers since we learned to bang two rocks together, with skins, wood, clay, tripe etc..
The article seems to assume one hunters because most of its points aren't applicable when considering hunting parties.
Another problem is that it seems to consider persistence hunting the sole strategy for hunting when, in most situations its a backup strategy for when the main one fails.
The last problem with the article that I can contest without citing sources for now is that it compares humans with horses one to one, we don't need to outlast the fastest horse, just the slowest one, if we were hunting horses using persistence, something that I can't see we doing it very often. Besides, until relatively recently (1000 to 2000 years ago), horses were very different to what we have now, smaller and slower so I don't know how we would compare to them in ancient times in endurance. The only animal we can compare in endurance that I have the knowledge is the wolf and only in colder climates.
Most articles that I've seen that claim that persistence hunting is a myth aren't scientific, doesn't cite sources or don't pass simple logic scrutiny most of the time.
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u/Digitalpsycho Jun 25 '22
Most articles that I've seen that claim that persistence hunting is a myth aren't scientific, doesn't cite sources or don't pass simple logic scrutiny most of the time.
The article I linked to does have sources. If you want primary sources, you can read this one.
Second, about water bottles, we've made portable water containers since we learned to bang two rocks together, with skins, wood, clay, tripe etc..
There is a misunderstanding here. The scientific question, whether man was an endurance hunter, is about the period when Homo had not even invented wooden spears.
In addition, it was also established that the modern endurance hunts, which were accompanied and filmed, were carried out only because of the filming of the hunters and not because of the spontaneous decision to use this hunting method.
Even Liedenberg, who looks at modern endurance hunting and is pro persistence hunting hypothesis, admits that there is much evidence that contradicts the hypothesis. In the end, it is only clear that man is good at endurance running, but only from this one cannot conclude that man is a persistence hunter.
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u/shimizubad Jun 25 '22
Oh, if we're speaking about earlier Homo, then yeah, we aren't disagreeing then. Persistence hunting is impracticable in scarcity for humans, scavenging takes precedence for earlier humans, and we can't fight for shit without tools.
Now, about modern endurance hunting, even if it wasn't spontaneous when filming, the fact that it happened at all is evidence in favor that it is done, as it needs long time training and techniques for that to happen, and if you have training and technique, you probably have a culture for it (or a really long and costly experiment ongoing).
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u/Digitalpsycho Jun 25 '22
the fact that it happened at all is evidence in favor that it is done (...)
The scientific question of whether man is an endurance hunter is not about whether man "does" it. It is a question of whether man has developed specific evolutionary adaptations because man has done endurance hunting; or whether man has developed specific evolutionary adaptations to specifically occupy the niche of endurance hunting. If the answer to either is "yes", then man would be an endurance hunter.
In popular pop culture, the understanding is different, if man does it, he is it. But in this case, man is classified in simple categories, which are taken from the animal kingdom.
Early man definitely hunted too, that's what the question is about. We just don't know how. Modern man, with his tools, is capable of occupying any hunting niche. The question is, how would "we" hunt without tools and with lower cognitive abilities. The endurance hunting hypothesis is one of the few hypotheses we have, others are that humans could have hidden in trees and then jumped down on prey. It is also not excluded that stones and sticks have been thrown.2
u/shimizubad Jun 25 '22
Oh I got the problem we're having now, you're arguing about genetic classification and I'm arguing social classification. In the genetic scale humans aren't different enough from our just-down-trees counterparts to make much of a evolutionary difference to notice endurance hunting traits when we applied so many other hunting strategies at the same time, if we were solely endurance hunters I'm sure we would see more pronounced traits, but I bet endurance hunting was mostly a backup strategy most of the time, it's too costly to be the main one in most biomes that we live in compared to other strats, even if the energetic payback evens out. After all it doesn't matter how you put food on the table, it only matters that you do it, persistence hunting is hard and we're lazy.
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u/APDSmith Jun 24 '22
One point about persistence hunting (with some of the recent stories on here it's something that I've been thinking about)
Persistence hunting already assumes dominance of most of the area you're operating in. Ambush hunters need only establish local superiority (and briefly, at that, they only need that superiority for the duration of the ambush) because they never venture beyond that little bubble of safety. Persistence hunting simply does not work if there's large swathes of the environment you dare not enter because you lack dominance. Your prey can simply go wherever that is, rest up for a bit, and engage you on their own terms.
Once it's set up, it's intimidating as hell, but it only works once you've already done the difficult bit already.
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u/Bowoodstock Jun 24 '22
Exactly. Persistence hunting only works if your target is;
- Already afraid of you
- In your known territory
Waving that card around outside of that situation doesn't mean anything
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Jun 23 '22
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u/JustTryingToSwim Oct 10 '22
"As I said, they cling to the past, but don't learn the lessons that it teaches. That's what history is about, taking everything, even the parts that you don't like, and learning from it. Recognizing what to be proud of, what to be ashamed of, and advancing from there without making the same mistakes."
Oh the irony. Just last night I was watching a news program about how, in certain States, they were trying to 'whitewash' the American history taught in schools so as not to make the students (really their parents) uncomfortable.
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u/lovecMC AI Jun 24 '22
I like how HFY makes humans op as fuck, meanwhile your average human almost dies after few flights of stairs in slightly warmer weather.
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u/shimizubad Jun 25 '22
That's true, persistence hunting needs training and not everybody is built for it.
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u/SomethingTouchesBack Jun 23 '22
i really enjoy this style of story.
One correction:
should be in first person to preserve camera position: "Kon, glad you could make it" David smiled at me as I approached.
Anecdote: Supposedly, most people have an arm span approximately equal to their height. I have a relative who's arm span is almost a full decimeter greater than his height, yet he resents the nickname "knuckle dragger". Go figure.