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ANTH 583.01: Theory and Concepts in Physical Anthropology

Population problems are closely interrelated with economics the environment and culture. The author presents and clarifies the most common myths on population encountered during his 30 years in the field. These myths are discussed: the human population grows exponentially; scientists can accurately project future population size; one factor limits how many people Earth can support; Earths population problems can be solved by colonizing outer space; technology can solve any population problem; the US has no population problem; the population problems of developing countries are not a problem for the US; the Roman Catholic Church is responsible for the population explosion; plagues famines and wars are natures way of solving population problems; and population is a womans issue which women will eventually resolve. One way or another human population growth must ultimately end.

Ten myths of population.

The morning sun shimmers above Tanzania's Gombe National Park, sending its parched breath across the October landscape. Dry summer months have left the vegetation wilted and many fruit trees bare. A group of 33 chimpanzees all members of the Gombe-based Kasakela community wends through woods and scattered clumps of trees searching for food, scanning the vicinity with a hungry urgency. Chattering and movement by red colobus monkeys in a nearby tree attract the chimps' attention. Several adult and adolescent males saunter to the base of the tree. Increasingly vocal colobus males form a protective wall in front of a cluster of young monkeys and adult females, some of which hold babies. The largest chimp pulls himself into the tree and heads toward the monkeys. Like heat-seeking missiles, colobus males launch themselves at the intruder and sink their teeth into his back and arms. Two monkeys go flying as the robust chimp thrusts them off his body and plunges forward. He rips a colobus infant from its mother's embrace and heads back to the ground. Over the next hour, chimps carry off a few more infants and kill them quickly with bites to the head and neck. Several adult monkeys put up fierce resistance and are flailed against tree branches or the ground until they hang limply from an attacker's powerful arms. Ihe chimps' series of assaults yields a total of seven colobus victims. For much of the remaining afternoon, the hunting party huddles around its kills and consumes virtually all traces of them flesh, internal organs, bones, and even hair. Male hunters eat 1 to 2 pounds of meat apiece and dole out smaller amounts to selected onlookers. Several females with swollen hind pouches, which signal their sexual readiness, copulate with male hunters before receiving a share of meat. Craig B. Stanford, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, watches this scene of unbridled carnivory from a safe distance. Scientists know relatively little about the extent to which wild chimpanzees engage in such hunts and why, at times, they ruthlessly sate a hunger for fresh meat. Thus, Stanford meticulously records how the hunt unfolds and who gets how much when it's over. Yet he also feels pangs of anguish and helplessness. "I was seeing some monkeys I had come to know well through years of fieldwork being ripped to pieces and eaten," Stanford points out, as he recalls the chimps' bloody midday repast.

ANTH 583.01: Theory and Concepts in Physical Anthropology

References

Ten myths of population.

Chimp the Hunter

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