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    portion.  Such is the power of chimpanzee lust for a decent serving of

    steak tartare.42

    Like chimpanzees, we started out as involuntary herbivores.

    And like the chimps, we must have craved those rich, red, high-protein

    treats.  But we are far luckier than our simian cousins.  Chimps

    occasionally pick up a heavy stick and slam it to the ground.  But

    hurling a stone more than a few yards is beyond their power.  And aim

    is out of the question.43  We, on the other hand, eventually managed to

    stand on two legs instead of four, so we could see the browsing brutes

    about us from a distance.  And our hands lost the clumsiness that had

    dogged our knuckle-walking relatives.

    Let's try to imagine the consequences of that newfound dexterity

    for our primordial ancestors.  One day some pre-human, licking his

    lips at the sight of a passing antelope and dreaming of a solid meal,

    gets an idea.  Instead of picking up a stick and pounding the ground as

    chimps do to frighten a predator, he'll throw the branch with all his

    might at the grass-nibbling beast.  The fast-moving length of wood

    knocks out the antelope and opens a whole new meat locker to a

    hungry mankind.

    As the man who brings home the bacon, the early-human with

    the bright idea experiences a sudden fame.  When he comes back to

    camp, the folks crowd around him, bowing and begging, showing

    great deference.  Soon his regular habit of showing up with slabs of

    meat gives the man authority.44

    The stick-throwing hunter becomes a leader.  A vast number of

    ethological and psychological studies have shown that social

    animals--from birds to humans--imitate their leaders' behavior.  Soon,

    all the young men are throwing sticks and stones, dreaming of

    becoming the chief to whom all bow and beg, the trend-setter at whom

    the girls want to fling their bodies.

      ap of flesh.  The ritual continues until every chimp has had its

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