Here’s an interesting piece in The Chronicle Review by anthropologist Donna Hart, who surveys the evidence and makes the claim that early man was mostly prey, not predator. She writes:

Large-scale, systematic hunting of big herbivores for meat may not have occurred any earlier than 60,000 years ago — over six million years after the first hominids evolved.

Meanwhile, we were being hunted by a variety of toothy critters.

My study of predation found that 178 species of predatory animals included primates in their diets. The predators ranged from tiny but fierce birds to 500-pound crocodiles, with a little of almost everything in between: tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars, jackals, hyenas, genets, civets, mongooses, Komodo dragons, pythons, eagles, hawks, owls, and even toucans.

Toucans. Our ancestors were eaten by toucans. I’ll never look at Froot Loops the same way again . . .