Mountain Sheep and Man in the Northern Wilds

Publication Year: 1976.

Mountain Sheep and Man in the Northern Wilds, by Valerius Geist, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. 248 pages, black and white photos, charts. Price: $10.00

Why review a book on sheep in an alpine journal? Because the author has something very unique and controversial to say that resulted from his experiences living in the mountains studying wildlife. After several introductory chapters on sheep behavior in the Cassiar Mountains and human behavior on the Alaska Highway, Geist comes to the point. He postulates that man acquired his humanity, not from easy living in the tropics where food sources were relatively abundant, but from the northern latitudes, especially during the ice ages, when he was forced to become a hunter and, more importantly, to cooperate to survive. He doubts that pre-men were hunters, and considers current ‘evidence’ of early hunters in Africa to be a distortion of the evidence. He thinks that some hunting did occur, but it was not a predominant way of life. Only later, in the colder latitudes, did cooperative hunters of big game develop “not only the tools and skills but the human attributes, of loyalty, altruism, and discipline.”

How nice to think that human character was built at some sort of Pleistocene Outward Bound. Geist never mentions climbing directly, but he presents much for the mountaineer to ponder. He spent seasons living off the land in northern Canada while studying sheep behavior and he came to the conclusion that many human emotions have their basis as “old adaptations or means of survival in a distant … physical and social milieu. We are, after all, creatures shaped by past environments and we have lived in the present one only a very short time. We should not be surprised if our present way of life strains and dissatisfies in a nebulous, unfathomable manner, or if it hurts without knowing just where the pain originates.”

Geist likens these things to “behavioral appendixes.” One of these cravings, inherited from eons of early hunters of big game, is for a set of conditions that closely parallel those of the modern mountaineers: “Picture a man with a short flint-tipped throwing spear four paces from a mammoth. It took no small amount of courage to get that close and go through with the task … the foolish would hardly live to tell his tale; the coward would hardly venture within spear throwing distance, nor would he respond to the urgent need, should it arise, of distracting the quarry’s attention from his endangered hunting companion. Such an act requires self-discipline and the ability to calculate one’s moves, as well as the need to keep a very level head while only inches from possible death. These requirements had to be met, not once in a lifetime, but on every hunt, and every week, month, year of a man’s life span.”

No wonder we have a restless urge to climb. If Geist’s theory is right, then we should finally understand why we grow neurotic if we don’t see a snowy peak or a cliff for a month. His logic is impeccable. If cold climates made man human, then lack of them should make man as ornery as a polar bear in Florida, and it may accomplish exactly that with Geist’s colleagues. He has joined company with Lorenz, Ardrey, and Morris in extrapolating human behavior from animal research. He’s on risky ground, but if he’s right, that’s what made us the way we are.

Galen Rowell