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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Natural Insurrection: The Predatory Legacy of Man by Wilfred Nieman traces predation as a fundamental force shaping life from microbes to humans. He argues that early bipedal hominids, like Orrorin and Ardipithecus, combined climbing and walking, enabling survival amid changing climates. He documents predators’ influence on evolution, citing fish, reptiles, mammals, and primates, highlighting hunting, scavenging, and niche exploitation. Nieman details chimpanzee coordinated hunting, gorilla infanticide, and early human tool use, including Australopithecus manipulating bones and stones for meat acquisition. He extensively reports prehistoric and historic cannibalism, describing methods, social rules, and ritual contexts, showing humans repeatedly preyed on their own species. He explains how tribal markers, rituals, and selective killings structured societies, linking predation, social hierarchy, warfare, and survival, illustrating a persistent, systematic integration of violence and consumption in human evolution.
Wilfred Nieman’s Natural Insurrection delivers an extraordinary examination of human behavior that is both daring and fascinating. The book meticulously documents historical and prehistoric practices of intra-species predation, demonstrating how human aggression, hunting, and cannibalism shaped social hierarchies and survival strategies across cultures and eras. Nieman draws on a remarkable range of evidence, from archival missionary accounts to classical sources, showing how structured rituals, codified rules, and ceremonial practices guided these behaviors. The connections he makes between early hominids, great apes, and later human societies highlight the adaptive and strategic aspects of predation, warfare, and resource utilization. As uncomfortable as it may sound, I found this entire book to be a spectacularly thought-provoking and surprisingly interesting alternative view of the ways human behavior has historically intersected with survival, ritual, and societal organization.
