Photo credit, BBC News
Warning: Some readers may find the details of this story disturbing.
A descendant of our distant ancestors, barely 3 years old and whose baby teeth were just beginning to grow, wandered 2.8 million years ago in the waving grass of the South African savannah.
The little Australopithecus africanus had no idea that someone was watching him from above.
Without warning, a huge bird of prey swooped down, grabbed the cub and killed it.
It's unclear what type of bird devoured this child – known as "Taung's Child" – but the puncture marks found under its eye sockets match those left by an eagle's claws; These birds usually hunt their prey in this way, then storing part of their catch in a tree or taking the rest to their nest.
The Stone Age was a dangerous time. Megafauna dominated the world.
Early humans lived alongside mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, and enormous birds that devoured children.
For tens of millions of years, between the disappearance of non-avian dinosaurs and the Great Ice Age, the skies were dominated by these giants.
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It is possible that their reign influenced the course of human evolution in profound ways that have often gone unnoticed.
Some of these creatures are thought to have left their mark in legends involving birds abducting children, tales that have persisted in various cultures around the world, long after these birds became extinct.
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The origin of giant birds
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When non-avian dinosaurs disappeared from the planet, the sky became covered with dust and most plants disappeared.
For the animals, there was practically nothing left to eat but seeds; a situation which, on the other hand, suited the birds perfectly.
In the absence of predators, some small land birds with beaks managed to evolve into giants.
Some were herbivores, such as the dromornithids of Australia – known as the “demon ducks of doom” – which resembled modern-day ducks but were 100 times larger and heavier than a cow.
Others roamed the skies and transformed into enormous ocean predators; this is the case of Pelagornis sandersi – discovered in South Carolina –, the largest known flying bird, with an impressive wingspan of 7 meters.
Still others occupied ecological niches left vacant by the extinction of large terrestrial predators, such as tyrannosaurs.
When large prey are available, even larger predators appear.
These were the monstrous birds that our ancestors had to face.
Photo credit, Getty Images
“As long as primates have existed, so have raptors,” says Scott McGraw, a primatologist at Ohio State University in the United States. “And raptors have always preyed on primates, including us and our close relatives. »
Even today, we can observe in nature echoes of this ancient conflict between our ancestors and these giant birds.
When McGraw examined the remains of more than 600 modern-day primates that had been killed by raptors – including the African crowned eagle – in Ivory Coast's Taï Forest, he discovered a surprising similarity to the claw marks found on the remains of the "Taung Child."
On several skulls, the primates showed lesions on the floor of the orbit, a bony surface located inside the eye socket.
“In other words, the eagle had taken out the eyes, either by pecking them or ripping them out with a claw,” McGraw explains.
“One of our researchers went to the fossil deposit, examined the 'Taung Child' and found that the lesion was identical. »
Changes in our evolution
McGraw argues that raptors would have regularly devoured our human ancestors, and that predation by these birds may have constituted one of the most important selective forces in the evolution of primates, the order to which human beings belong.
“If we go back and take a closer look at the collections of [human] fossils collected over the years, it is very likely that, now that we know what to look for, we will find more evidence of raptor injuries. If what we observe in Taï serves as a reference, then this is a common phenomenon. »
In the paleoanthropological record, there is little doubt that early humans were prey animals, says James Cole, an archaeologist and dean of the Faculty of Applied Science at the University of Brighton, UK.
“Particularly the oldest hominids, like this young specimen of Australopithecus africanus that was devoured by an eagle. »
Cole points out that our distant ancestors were food for many predatory species. “There is no doubt that we were prey to predators. »
Photo credit, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The need to escape predators – from birds to leopards, hyenas and giant crocodiles – may have been a significant evolutionary pressure on our ancestors.
Being preyed upon by giant birds is thought to have influenced the development of both our bodies and minds.
Our ability to stand on two legs, for example, would have made it easier to detect predators.
Cooperation and altruism, interdependence and mutual protection have also been of great help to us.
The size of the group took on great importance, Cole emphasizes: “There is strength in numbers” (or, literally, “there is safety in numbers”).
To escape birds of prey, the larger the social group, the better, McGraw adds.
Unlike predators that hunt their prey through active pursuit – such as lions or wolves – raptors are generally predators that hunt by ambush.
They are stealthy and, in the case of crowned eagles, remain hidden among trees until the right moment presents itself.
This suggests that the human tendency toward social living may have been motivated, in particular, by the need to escape birds of prey; thus, multiple people can remain vigilant in the face of a surprise attack, a phenomenon known as the “many eyes effect.”
The emergence of language
Cole adds that increasing group sizes may also have contributed to the emergence of language.
“[In a large group], individuals begin to specialize in different functions. When some people perform one task while others handle another, coordination is necessary. And, once [a group] begins to fragment in this way, coordination can no longer rely solely on eye contact. »
For simple communication – like using hand gestures – to be effective, people need to be able to see each other, Cole points out; However, when it is necessary to coordinate beyond the visual field – for example, to signal the approach of a predator – “this is where language really begins to play a fundamental role”.
McGraw suggests that pressure to avoid death from above might even have been the trigger for language evolution.
There is evidence that most primates use generic alarm signals when faced with various types of predators; for example, they emit the same cry for both a lion and a leopard.
On the other hand, faced with the presence of birds of prey, they react with specific cries. According to McGraw, this type of communicative behavior could be interpreted as a precursor to human language.
The culprits: eagles and theratornithids
The most significant encounter between giant predatory birds and our human ancestors is thought to have taken place in the Americas.
The first inhabitants of America rubbed shoulders with theatornithids. These were enormous carnivorous birds capable of swallowing their prey whole.
These birds, similar to condors, roamed the skies with a wingspan of up to 6 meters and fed on both carrion and live prey.
They were so large that they could fly away simply by spreading their wings and riding an updraft, says Joanne Cooper, chief curator of bird anatomical collections at the Natural History Museum in London.
Teratornithids dominated the skies for about 25 million years and became extinct about 10,000 years ago, long after the first humans arrived on the American continent.
According to Ms. Cooper, it is possible that teratornithids inspired the legends about the “Thunderbird”.
In the mythology of Native American peoples, this creature has a colossal wingspan and, according to belief, controls thunder and lightning.
The Aiolornis incredibilis – also known as the “incredible teratorn” – spread terror across southern California and Nevada, and could reach a wingspan of 5.5 meters.
Further north, in Oregon, Teratornis woodburnensis had a wingspan of 4 meters. This monster of the skies lived around 12,000 years ago. Its remains were discovered alongside those of mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths, as well as early humans.
Halfway around the world, in New Zealand, experts suggest that the Maori legend of Te Hokioi – a gigantic eagle that kidnapped children – could be inspired by a real species: the enormous, now extinct Haast's eagle.
Haast's eagle was, "in essence, a flying tiger," says Cooper. Its weight was about twice that of an adult harpy eagle, one of the largest living eagles in existence.
Haast's eagle hunted another giant bird, although terrestrial: the moa, which measured up to 4 meters high.
This gigantic bird swooped down – leveraging its weight to achieve considerable acceleration – and struck its prey in the back with its 10-centimeter-long claws, knocking it to the ground.
“We've seen huge claw marks on some moa basset hounds,” says Cooper, who adds that Haast's eagle would have been perfectly capable of attacking humans.
“The children would have been in obvious danger. It must have been both impressive and terrifying. »
Perhaps this is why legends about birds abducting children have endured, both in Maori and Native American cultures and in Greek mythology; in the case of Greek mythology, it was not the storks who brought the babies, but who stole them.
“When these birds fly over an area, they cast a shadow; and, culturally, they cast a very long shadow across the entire world,” says Cooper.
The end of the air threat
In total, giant predatory birds dominated the skies for almost 50 million years. Then, 2.6 million years ago, Earth experienced the great Pleistocene ice age.
The Pleistocene was a period marked by strong climatic fluctuations which, according to hypotheses, would have favored human evolution.
However, towards the end of this period, 11,700 years ago, giant mammals had virtually disappeared and the largest birds of prey had also disappeared.
Experts don't yet know for sure whether the disappearance of megafauna is due to climate change or human hunters. However, the expansion of humans and the changes we have made to the ecosystem have coincided with the disappearance of almost 95% of all megafauna.
“We were either trying to eat them or competing with them,” Cooper points out. Perhaps, he suggests, this explains the tension between humans and raptors that persists to this day.
“They fascinate us, we worship them, but we are not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of living with them. »
At the end of the Pleistocene, the climate began to stabilize. Glaciers retreated and humans began farming. It was the dawn of a new era: the era of humans.
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