MOST people would take considerable pride in being able to identify personages of eminence in their ancestral lines.
Some feel this so strongly they have invented new family trees for themselves, suitably decorated with luminaries.
Conversely, who would not be bothered if he found the perches on his ancestral tree bedecked with villains? Such personal feelings are cost evident when humanity reflects on its own ancestry.
About 130 years ago, Darwin and Wallace published their revolutionary theory of evolution.
One of its proposals is that mankind's immediate ancestor was an ape like creature.
While many biologists warmly welcomed the theory along with other scientists capable of reading and understanding the powerful evidence on which it stands, it also generated widespread controversy and opposition.
The opposition was engendered partly by the distasteful notion of being "descended from an ape".
The Bishop of Oxford must have felt he was scoring a point on behalf of many people when he asked Thomas Huxley (a staunch defender of Darwin's theory) in a famous public debate: "Is it through his grandfather or his grandmother that Dr Huxley claims descent from an ape?"
Nowadays, the general validity of Darwin's theory is accepted. Darwin envisaged hunting as a major activity engaged in by the male members of early man (hominids).
These men would leave their base camps and hunt, armed only with sharpened sticks and stone implements. They successfully competed for prey against other predators using their intelligence and speed.
After a successful hunt, the killed animals were dismembered and brought back for sharing with the main group.
The women of the group mostly stayed around base camp. Many would be pregnant, others nursing babies or minding small children.
The women also found time to gather a wide variety of nutritious berries, ground nuts and tubers that, by and large, formed the community's staple diet.
This concept of "man the hunter" has always exerted a powerful grip on the imagination.
The noble savage, taking from nature only as he needs and bravely using his wit and speed to compete with other predators is an attractive idea and easy to identify with. However, recent evidence paints a different picture of early man's lifestyle.
Recent criticism of man the hunter says details are too closely informed by the practices of present day hunter gatherer societies.
The habits of such present day tribes must surely differ considerably from those of early man.
Modern hunter gatherers are larger than early man, share their environments with fewer large competitors, know of and use fire, often keep domesticated animals such as dogs to help in hunting and generally display sophisticated ingenuity in coping with stark and primitive conditions.
The modern argument holds that it is wrong, indeed racist, to assume that modern "primitive" tribes, many of whom operate a hunter gatherer society similar to that previously described for man the hunter, are simply unaltered relics of the past.
The habits of early man were most likely very different. The first fossil evidence of early man was unearthed at Neander in Germany in 1856.
Neanderthal man lived 35,000 to 100,000 years ago and although generally considered to be a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis) from ourselves (Homo sapiens), nevertheless showed great similarities to modern humans.
Each subsequent major find of hominid fossils was of increasingly greater age - one of the latest in the 1970s in Ethiopia and Tanzania yielding remains of hominids who lived 3-4 million years ago and classed by many scientists as a species ancestral to all later hominids, including modern man.
That fossil remains have been discovered in order of increasing age and that the first remains found - Neanderthal man - were so similar to modern man, has biased anthropological research in favour of seeking similarities rather than differences between ourselves and our early ancestors.
Recent research by Prof Pat Shipman, Johns Hopkins University (and others), on fossil remains 1.5 to 2 million years old found in Tanzania, yields another picture.
Marks on fossilised animal bones found with the hominid bones have microscopic characteristics which allow them to be classified either as arising from the action of an animal carnivore, e.g. a tiger, or from the use of a sharp stone cutting tool used by early man.
Also, if both types of mark are present at the same spot, careful scrutiny can tell which mark was made first.
An analysis was made of the anatomical locations of stonetool marks on the animal bones. The distribution of the marks differed from the patterns found on bones of animals butchered by modern hunter gatherers.
Many of the marks were found in illogical places such as the lower parts of animals legs where there is little or no meat.
Few marks were found on bones near major joints where experience with modern tribes shows many marks made when the animal is dismembered before transportation.
IN MANY cases it was also seen that in places where carnivore teeth marks and stone cutting marks coincided, the teeth marks were made first.
This evidence is inconsistent with a hunting lifestyle but fits a scavenging habit. In other words, our earliest ancestors, instead of directly hunting their own prey, watched and waited on their chance to pick up scraps remaining after other hunting species were finished with their kill.
Many of these scraps would be the lean pickings on lower limb bones.
The upright stance of the early hominids may have been accelerated in its development by the scavenging lifestyle.
It is particularly suitable mechanically for covering wide areas efficiently while looking for opportunities, and is also particularly good for allowing careful and detailed searches of limited chosen areas.
People have become comfortable with the idea of man the hunter who seems brave and confident in dealing with his environment. At worst he could be identified with since "he was poor but he was honest". On the other hand, "man the scavenger" seems to lack confidence and to lead a fearful and furtive existence.
To many people man the scavenger is a difficult model to identify with not nearly macho enough. I have no difficulty in entertaining the warmest feelings towards the poor devil. Evidently the strategy was eminently successful.
The proof of this is that I am here writing about it and you are here reading about it.