And what evidence do you have Stu to state that "hunting" was the primary drive?

Between your early date of 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 years ago our species and those we evolved from were scavenging omnivores. We are not, nor have we ever been apex predators, certainly not in the period you indicate, you've even said it yourself in your reference to our position in the food chain if we happened to find ourselves in Yellowstone Park armed only with a pointy stick and bag of butties. The fight for mankind throughout that period was the one for survival. Before I mentioned that "Fortunately, homo sapiens sapiens is an omnivore" - we could survive without having to be great hunters, we did not and never have relied on one food source. Throughout the period you mention are you trying to say that competing groups of humans did not fight over territory? They did not attempt to defend what they had or what they had acquired?

As the subject of the San has been raised - one of the hunter/gatherer groups still in sort of semi-existence - before they were directed towards farming in the Government programmes of the 1950s to 1990s I can remember watching a documentary on them shown on the BBC which predicted that they would be extinct as a race before the end of the century unless something was done.