Predators drove human evolution

[bascule]

Although I don't see why anyone would really suspect otherwise...

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4729050.stm

[herpguy]

Isn't that one of the main reasons why evolution even happens? For example, many elephants are no longer growing ivory tusks because that's why many elephants are killed by humans, for their ivory. And why cane toads are mutating.

[silkworm]

Don't forget that women also drive our evolution. IDers don't find Evolution so offensive just because they think they're unique and beautiful snowflakes blessed with life by the glowing hand of God and not some damned dirty ape, but also because they don't believe in a woman's right to choose, anything.

[Edtharan]

The strongest evolutionary pressure comes not from preditor (directly) but from other members of the same spiecies (or other animals that share the same niche).

 

For example. As implied in the article in the OP, humans developed group behaviors as a defence against preditors. but a group that manages to avoid preditors (or even fight back against them) will eventually force others of its spiecies to become extinct as the group manages to have more members survive while the others loose more to the predators. The first group's genes will then propagate through the gene pool of that spiecies.

 

This may initially look as though the spiecies is evolving to be more effective against the predator, but the predator is just the means that the "unfit" are selected out. It is the competition between the more social (for example) or less social groups where the evolution is taking place.

 

Therefore we didn't evolve to escape predators, we evolved to be less succeptable to predators than other early homonids.