The dawn of civilization

[T0 Th3 M4X]

There's scant indication of human beings having been on the menu.  What few animal marks we find suggest post mortem scavenging, instead.  It's assumed that most large predators could have eaten us...but that's been true for all of history, as well..and yet such incidents are rare.   Then there's the issue of why some intelligent fully modern human would go out picking fights with bears or tigers.  

Your idea of what Real Men™ were up to is an artifact of cartoons and adventure flicks combined with a thoroughly modern fixation on a specific sort of masculinity, not a comment on the reality of the lithic period.  The truth of the matter is that it was less he-man wrestling the mammoths and more long distance walker grazing while he strolled.  Human beings had more to worry about by stepping on an acorn and getting tetanus than from being eaten by a sabretooth cat..mostly owing to the fact that they had largely gone extinct by the time we really came into our own..having been replaced by smaller cats....which would also go extinct in short order.

One of the only hard cases of contact known to us, when it comes to that, comes from schonigen(sp?)....it's a young latidens surrounded by spears.  Less a duel between equals, and more an execution by mob.

Large predators don't typically go after humans because they don't view us as prey.  Just like if you go to the buffet and you see some strange food on the buffet, you are less likely to slap it on your plate.  Aggressive behavior is more defensive than not.  Although on occasion, there might be a rogue animal that acts otherwise.  As far as the acorn bit, somewhat but not entirely.  Typically the problem is when something foreign is introduced.  For example, the Native Americans were healthy people until others came over from across the pond and introduced foreign disease, then it was like a plague to them as they started dying off from sickness.  But then again, it all depends on the sickness because the human body is designed (if you will) to give designations to cells for fighting particular diseases.  That's the whole point of getting inoculated for something.  It's not the shot that does it.  It's your body's reaction to the shot.  The strain is weakened significantly or dead so that the body can use it to create a defensive mechanism against it in case the "real deal" shows up.  Despite all that, I still believe men need to be men.  So if the sabertooth tiger or modern day predator, such as a lion shows up, you're not running and screaming, but rather willing to take action to beat the beast senseless.