Little Difference Between ATT and Conventional Vagueness
claudi...@sbcglobal.net
CHECK OUT THE WHOLE THREAD:
http://tinyurl.com/3cfymm
spiznet wrote:
> Jim McGinn wrote:
<snip>
> > . . . these defenders of conventional vagueness haven't
> > figured out much but they have figured out that hominids are have
> > always been terrestrial. That much they know.
> > Jim
> I guess the most humorous thing about this 10 year massive attack
> by AAXers is that they are not claiming that people ever lived in the
> water, as the original theory proposed. They are merely begging us
> to believe that camps and caves and habitat and resources were
> largely waterside, which is in NO WAY claiming Aquatic anything,
> whether it is Homo or hominid or whatever.
For you to suggest that there is much of any difference between
AAT theorists and conventional theorists is rather naive IMO.
Just as AAT theorists are too dimwitted to figure out how dumb
it is to suggest aquatic origins of a species that is not aquatic,
conventional theorists are too dimwitted to realize the social
origins of a species whose social adaptations are dramatically
distinct from its ancestral chimpanzee-like ancestors. In terms
of how conventional theorists actually approach evolutionary
theory (progressivistic, just-so-story) there is hardly any
difference
between them and AAT. I mean, let's face it Spiznet. Disproving
AAT is no replacement for the fact that conventional theorists have
no hypothesis that is even as bad as AAT.
<snip>
Jim
Lee Olsen
1 Nobody lived on the savanna until the advent of jeeps and guns.
2 Lions evolved from saber-tooth cats.
3 Apiths never ventured more than 50/100 yds away from a tree.
4 Climate change is not happening presently.
5 Agriculture probably stretches back hundreds
of thousand if not millions of years.
6 Genetic drift is a pseudo-scientific notion.
7 Spears are useless against hyena and lions.
8 ..then what purpose do the stone weapons (spears, bow and
arrow) serve that show up in the fossil record starting about 2.5
mya?
Message-ID: <376ED09C.69A21...@thegrid.net>#1/1
Niccolo Caldararo: " It is embarrassing to you (or should be) for you
to continually make
statements which most of us know are unsupported by the data."
Dan Barnes: "..a number of people have suggested that the best thing
you can do is do
substantial background reading, reframe your arguement and come back
again."
Greg Laden: "Read the stuff. If you have a vague memory
of it, that is not good enough." "Hit the books, kid!"
Su Solomon: "I did take the trouble to read your five thousand four
hundred words of
your latest manifesto. From my reading of this, I gathered that in
the
intevening 11 months you have not appeared to have read any of the
comments or advice that were given to you last time you posted an
extermely similiar 'unsubstantiated idea re evolution'. If you had
taken onboard any of the advised literature that was given at that
time,
then if is not evident in this latest of postings."
Marc Verhaegen
AAT. FYI, my little boys, this is what AAT is about:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT
* Comparative & fossil information on human & ape evolution.
* Waterside diaspora of Homo after Homo & Pan split ~5 Ma.
AAT s.s. is based on comparisons of the behavior/anatomy/physiology/DNA of
living humans with chimps & other living animals.
Collecting waterside foods (eg, drowned herbivores, stranded whales etc.)
explains unique Homo traits (not seen in apes & australopiths) better than
dwelling in forests or dry plains: huge brain, slow-diving skills, breath
control, vocality, small mouth+chewing muscles, tongue bone descent, longer
airway, projecting nose, poor sense of smell, handiness & tool use, late
puberty, long legs, alined body, poor climbing, flat feet, fur loss,
fatness, profuse sweating, high needs of water, sodium, iodine,
poly-unsat.fatty acids (DHA), etc. All these features are absent in savanna
dwelling anmials, but are typically seen in different combinations in
waterside & aquatic animals.
Homo & Pan separated ~64 Ma. Homo populations dispersed along
lakes/shores/rivers in savannas & elsewhere, eg, crossed 18 km sea to reach
Flores 0.8 Ma etc.
Homo tools/fossils 2.50.1 Ma are found near Rift valley lakes & even (sea
level fluctuations hindered fossilisation) Indian Ocean & African coasts,
often amid seashells (Mojokerto, Dungo V Baia Farta, Terra Amata, Table Bay,
Eritrea etc.).
* Max Westenhöfer 1942. Der Eigenweg des Menschen. Mannstaede
* Alister Hardy 1960. Was Man more aquatic in the past? NS 7:624
* Maggie Roede etc.1991. The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction? Souvenir
* Elaine Morgan 1997. The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. Souvenir London
* Marc Verhaegen etc.2002. Aquarboreal ancestors? TREE 17:212
* Stephen Cunnane 2005. Survival of the Fattest. World Scientific
* Phillip Tobias http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm
* Symposium 1999. Water & Human Evolution
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
http://users.ugent.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm
http://users.ugent.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
______
Op 02-02-2008 20:40, in artikel
0157bbad-1f69-4983...@e10g2000prf.googlegroups.com, Lee Olsen
<pale...@hotmail.com> schreef:
Lee Olsen
> A few netloons are "discussing"(??):
http://www.aquaticape.org/whataat.html
Jim Moore:
"Marc Verhaegen now also often takes umbrage if you critique an AAT/H
claim that
he doesn't make himself. But then taking umbrage seems to be a
specialty with him;
his online method tends toward gratuitous insults, often as the sole
content of his
newsgroup posts, and continually reposting the same, non-responsive,
paragraphs
(earning him the nickname "macro-man" after the usual technique for
doing that),
and, starting from his very first online post in 1998, comparing his
position to Wegener,
Galileo, etc. These methods certainly don't help his argument,
instead placing his online
newsgroup contributions in the realm of the netloon."
FYI:
Aquatic Ape (non)Theory: Comments on a Recent Guest Lecture
by
Cameron M. Smith
PhD, Department of Archaeology
"If you were among the unfortunate crowd who spent a good amount of
time listening to visiting lecturer Elaine Morgan recently,
regarding the 'Aquatic Ape Theory', be advised of the following
points.
1. Aquatic Ape Theory has been scientifically reviewed, and, despite
what was presented at this lecture, it has been found to be severely
wanting. AAT is not a 'credible alternative theory'; it is what is
known as a post-hoc accommodative argument. Strictly speaking AAT does
not really have a coherent body of theory, only a few disassociated
(non)explanations for a few biological characteristics of the genus
Homo. People should be aware that AAT is NOT 'mainstream' or 'a viable
alternative' as claimed at the lecture.
2. AAT is poorly regarded because it is a poor explanatory device. It
is poorly regarded because it has been examined and found to be
invalid. It is not poorly regarded because of some scientific cover-up
or paranoia. It is not poorly regarded because scientists cannot
accept change. Scientific knowledge does change, all the time, and it
has been pointed out that science is the worst place to try to hide
anything because fraud will be exposed through experiment. AAT is
simply a theory that has been evaluated (and ditched) by most serious
anthropologists.
3. The presentation on 14 October is an embarrassment to Simon Fraser
University, and the sponsoring hosts. How this pop/crypto/science
'theory' was given equal billing with real research efforts is beyond
me. The fact that the 'theory' was included in a series of lectures
dealing with darwinian processes (The Institute of Humanities' 'Old
Minds and Bodies in New Worlds: A Darwinian Perspective on Our Past,
Present and Future' lectures) is a travesty, as AAT crumbles when
examined for internal darwinian logic. Unfortunately, having the
speaker lecture on AAT was akin to having SFU sponsor Erich von
Daniken to speak about spaceship depictions in Maya tombs.
Here's a point to consider when evaluating AAT. I did not learn this
point from some academic overlord with an anti-AAT agenda; I learned
it while trying to avoid becoming crocodile food in Africa. When I
spent several months with a team at Lake Turkana, Kenya, investigating
some of the most important early hominid sites in the world, one of
our overriding concerns -- while swimming, bathing, or catching fish
with a net -- was to watch out for crocodiles in the shallows. A croc
can be on you, crush your legs in its jaws, and drag you under to
drown before you have time to screech for help.
The fact that crocodiles co-existed in time and space with early
hominids is a colossal blow to AAT, which does not explain what
advantages early humans would have gained by spending time in
crocodile-populated waters; an environment where they could not make
fires, throw stones or sticks, use other tools, or have any hope
whatever of escaping the most common predator. A troop of early
hominids wading in a lakeshore or swampy forest would best be
described as a crocodile banquet. The cute, feel-good images of babies
swimming freely in a pool, shown in the AAT video, have nothing to do
with the real situation of predator avoidance in Africa. Ask the
Dasenich or Turkana people who live around Lake Turkana: only visiting
maniacs swim in that lake.
There's much else to say, but I have a 650-word limit. Please keep in
mind, the 'savanna hypothesis' has indeed been largely abandoned, but
that does NOT validate AAT a priori. Neither is AAT validated because
of the common sentiment that 'it is someone's opinion, and everyone is
entitled to an opinion'. Opinion is not the same thing as scientific
theory.
The damage of this lecture was to those who came to the lecture
expecting, and possibly believing, that AAT was a viable body of
theory. It is not, and it does not deserve that label."
Cheers,
Cameron M. Smith
Marc Verhaegen
Op 03-02-2008 02:01, in artikel
fb341f2a-a80a-46d3...@m34g2000hsf.googlegroups.com, Lee Olsen
<pale...@hotmail.com> schreef:
> On Feb 2, 4:07 pm, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@skynet.be> wrote:
>> A few netloons are "discussing"(??):
> Jim Moore
Who is that netloon?
Why not quote PAs?
Tobias 1995 łWe were all profoundly and unutterably wrong! Š All the
former savannah supporters (including myself) must now swallow our earlier
words Š˛
Wood 1996 łthe Śsavannahą hypothesis of human origins, in which the
cooling begat the savannah and the savannah begat humanity, is now
discredited˛
Stringer 1997 łOne of the strong points about the aquatic theory is in
explaining the origin of bipedality. If our ancestors did go into the water,
that would forced them to walk upright Š˛
Tobias 1998 łBamford identified fossil vines or lianas of Dichapetalum
in the same Member 4: such vines hang from forest trees and would not be
expected in open savannah. The team at Makapansgat found floral and faunal
evidence that the layers containing Australopithecus reflected forest or
forest margin conditions. From Hadar, in Ethiopia, where ŚLucyą was found,
and from Aramis in Ethiopia, where Tim Whiteąs team found Ardipithecus
ramidus Š well-wooded and even forested conditions were inferred from the
fauna accompanying the hominid fossils. All the fossil evidence adds up to
the small-brained, bipedal hominids of four to 2.5 Ma having lived in a
woodland or forest niche, not savannah.˛ łŠ if ever our earliest ancestors
were savannah dwellers, we must have been the worst, the most profligate
urinators there˛
Stringer 2001 łIn the past I have agreed that we lack plausible models
for the origins of bipedalism and have agreed that wading in water can
facilitate bipedal locomotion (as observed in other normally quadrupedal
primates). I have never said that this must have been the forcing mechanism
in hominids, but I do consider it plausible. As for coastal colonisation, I
argued in my Nature News & Views last year that this was an event in the
late Pleistocene that may have facilitated the spread of modern humans.˛
Groves & Cameron 2004 łNor can we exclude the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis.
Elaine Morgan has long argued that many aspects of human anatomy are best
explained as a legacy of a semiaquatic phase in the proto-human trajectory,
and this includes upright posture to cope with increased water depth as our
ancestors foraged farther and further from the lake or seashore.˛
Wrangham 2005 łHere I follow the conventional assumption that hominins
began in the savanna.˛ łŠ the composition of the Okavango as a network of
islands could favor the evolution of bipedalism. For those who envisage
bipedalism as facilitated by the need to traverse or exploit aquatic
environments, an inland delta that generates low islands termitogenically or
hydrodynamically offers rich scenarios.˛
Alemseged 2006 łI believe we should just put the savannah theory aside.
I think they basically became biped while they were living in a wooded,
covered environment Š˛
Thorpe et al. 2007 łŠ early hominins occupied woodland environments, not
open or even bush-savannah environments (such as sites including Allia Bay,
Aramis, Assa Issie and now Laetoli) ... they retained long grasping
forelimbs, which are more obviously relevant in an arboreal contextŠ˛
Lee Olsen
>
> Why not quote PAs?
Did you miss it? Nothing but savanna:
"However, the tortoise bones and ostrich-egg fragments are more
closely associated with the
lithic artifacts; their systematic presents in both Lokalalie sites
may show a possible hominid
collecting strategy (Roche 1999)."
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/hominid_journey/pottsclimate.html
"Our own genus, Homo, was a founding member of the new savanna biota.
Stone toolmaking and the dental machinery of the robust australopiths
evolved as adaptations oriented to the resources of the drying,
opening landscape, evolutionary events that centered around the global
climatic change 2.4 to 2.5 million years ago.
The turnover-pulse idea proposes, first, that global temperature fell
precipitously. Second, that this event caused the spread of arid
grasslands within the savanna patchwork of Africa. And, third, that
the growth of these grasslands prompted synchronized change in
hominids and other animal populations. The regional division of
populations led new species to arise, while the force of natural
selection caused new adaptations to evolve. The hominids were
converted to live in open terrain."
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2001/december/hominids.htm
None of the hominids analysed so far ate a diet like that of the
modern chimpanzee, gorilla, or even orangutan, all of which eat nearly
100% C3 foods. This is not to say that they did not eat fruits and
leaves - they most probably did. But they also ate quantities of
actual grasses, or animals that ate the grasses, or both. Grass itself
is difficult to process and to extract the nutrients (unless one is
well-equipped to do so, like a cow), so it's difficult to visualise
how such a large ''grass" signature could occur unless the hominids
ate some animal foods. C4 -consuming invertebrate and vertebrate
animals were abundant and easily collected by hominids. Raymond Dart
was on the right track all those years ago, even if his environmental
scenario was not quite right!
M Dominguez-Rodrigo et al.
New estimates of tooth mark and percussion mark frequencies at the FLK
Zinj site
J Hum Evol. 2005 Dec 30
"Traditional interpretations of hominid carcass acquisition strategies
revolve around the debate over whether early hominids hunted or
scavenged. A popular version of the scavenging scenario is the
carnivore-hominid-carnivore hypothesis, which argues that hominids
acquired animal resources primarily through passive opportunistic
scavenging from felid-defleshed carcasses. Its main empirical support
comes from the analysis of tooth mark frequency and distribution at
the FLK Zinj site reported by Blumenschine (Blumenschine, 1995, J.
Hum. Evol. 29, 21-51), in which it was shown that long bone mid-shafts
exhibited a high frequency of tooth marks, only explainable if felids
had preceded hominids in carcass defleshing. The present work shows
that previous estimates of tooth marks on the FLK Zinj assemblage were
artificially high, since natural biochemical marks were mistaken for
tooth marks. Revised estimates are similar to those obtained in
experiments in which hyenas intervene after humans in bone
modification. Furthermore, analyses of percussion marks, notches, and
breakage patterns provide data which are best interpreted as the
results of hominid activity (hammerstone percussion and marrow
extraction), based on experimentally-derived referential frameworks.
These multiple lines of evidence support previous analyses of cut
marks and their anatomical distribution; all indicate that hominids
had early access to fleshed carcasses that were transported,
processed, and accumulated at the FLK Zinj site."
Jean de Heinzelin J. Desmond Clark Tim White,
William Hart, Paul Renne, Giday WoldeGabriel,
Yonas Beyene, Elisabeth Vrba
Environment and Behavior of
2.5-Million-Year-Old Bouri
Hominids
SCIENCE VOL 284 23 APRIL 1999
Abstract:
"The Hata Member of the Bouri Formation is deÞned for Pliocene
sedimentary
outcrops in the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia. The Hata Member is
dated to
2.5 million years ago and has produced a new species of
Australopithecus and
hominid postcranial remains not currently assigned to species.
Spatially associated
zooarchaeological remains show that hominids acquired meat and marrow
by 2.5 million years ago and that they are the near contemporary of
Oldowan artifacts at nearby Gona. The combined evidence suggests that
behavioral
changes associated with lithic technology and enhanced carnivory may
have been coincident with the emergence of the Homo clade from
Australopithecus
afarensis in eastern Africa."
Matt Sponheimer and Julia A. Lee-Thorp
Isotopic Evidence for the Diet
of an Early Hominid,
Australopithecus africanus
SCIENCE VOL 284 23 APRIL 1999
"Current consensus holds that the 3-million-year-old hominid
Australopithecus
africanus subsisted on fruits and leaves, much as the modern
chimpanzee does.
Stable carbon isotope analysis of A. africanus from Makapansgat
Limeworks,
South Africa, demonstrates that this early hominid ate not only fruits
and leaves
but also large quantities of carbon-13Ð enriched foods such as grasses
and
sedges or animals that ate these plants, or both. The results suggest
that early
hominids regularly exploited relatively open environments such as
woodlands
or grasslands for food. They may also suggest that hominids consumed
highquality
animal foods before the development of stone tools and the origin of
the genus Homo."
>
> Tobias 1995
ROFL, 1995???
Marc Verhaegen
Op 03-02-2008 03:03, in artikel
80651eb5-7bb6-4004...@v67g2000hse.googlegroups.com, Lee Olsen
<pale...@hotmail.com> schreef:
> On Feb 2, 5:34 pm, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@skynet.be> wrote:
>
>>
>> Why not quote PAs?
>
> Did you miss it?
Lee Olsen
>
> Tobias 1995..
Silly Marc still thinks it's 1926.
Up-to-date savanna evidence:
Marc Verhaegen
Op 03-02-2008 14:12, in artikel
ca9649c8-cd4a-42ed...@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com, Lee Olsen
<pale...@hotmail.com> schreef:
> On Feb 3, 2:43 am, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@skynet.be> wrote:
>
>>
>> Tobias 1995..
Netloon Olson still thinks it's 1926:
Inform, my little boy:
ŚOpen Plainą Hypotheses in Anthropology
łŠ It will appear to many a remarkable fact that an ultra-simian and
pre-human stock should be discovered, in the first place, at this extreme
southern point in Africa, and, secondly, in Bechuanaland, for one does not
associate with the present fringe of the Kalahari desert an environment
favourable to higher primate life. It is generally believed by geologists
(vide A. W. Rogers, ŚPost-Cretaceous Climates of South Africa,ą African
Journal of Science, vol. xix., 1922) that the climate has fluctuated within
exceedingly narrow limits in this country since Cretaceous times. Š For the
production of man a different apprenticeship was needed to sharpen the wits
and quicken the higher manifestations of intellect a more open veldt
country where competition was keener between swiftness and stealth, and
where adroitness of thinking and movement played a preponderating role in
the preservation of the species. Darwin has said, no other country in the
world abounds in a greater degree with dangerous beasts than Southern
Africa, and, in my opinion, South Africa, by providing a vast open country
with occasional wooded belts and a relative scarcity of water, together with
a fierce and bitter mammalian competition, furnished a laboratory such as
was essential to this penultimate phase of human evolution. Š˛
This is an extract from Professor Raymond Dartąs (1925) famous paper,
ŚAustralopithecus africanus: the man-ape of South Africaą, published in
Nature shortly after the discovery of the first australopithecine fossil,
the ŚTaung childą. Following the geological view of his time, Dart argued
that the ancestors of man, for Dart saw the Taung child as a representative
of early human ancestors, must have lived in treeless grasslands similar to
the habitat in which the Taung skull was discovered. There is good evidence
today, however, that the South African climate has changed drastically over
time, and that the Taung child probably inhabited not treeless grasslands,
but wet, tropical forests (e.g., Partridge 1985).
Dart was merely following the Śopen plainą ideas that were particularly
popular in the early 1900s (ŚFreilandhypotheseną, see Bender 1999), and
which go back almost two hundred years (e.g., Lamarck 1990: 261, Reinhardt
1906: 6, and Arldt 1907: 606). These hypotheses were based upon two facts
and one subjective interpretation of these facts (see Figure 1).
The differences between humans and apes, the traditional story suggests,
came about because humans left the forests and adapted to living on open
plains (Bender and Oser 1997). The first primates were quadrupedal arboreals
living in forests (most primates), and later they evolved into bipedal
terrestrials living outside forests (humans), so therefore bipedalism must
have evolved because human ancestors left the forests. But while this might
seem an obvious conclusion, it is in fact a logical fallacy of the type:
post hoc, ergo propter hoc (Śafter that, therefore because of thatą), and
our comparative research suggests to the contrary that there is no evidence
that the two (leaving the trees and becoming bipedal) are causally related:
in fact, ground-dwelling and savannah primates such as patas monkeys and
hamadryas baboons are more quadrupedal than forest and arboreal primates
such as indris, tarsiers, proboscis monkeys and gibbons.
ŚOut of Edeną hypotheses, which dominated thinking in the early 20th
century, contrasted luxurious tropical forest econiches characterised by
easy fruit-picking with a tough hunting life on open plains outside the
forest, which required large brains, speech, and bipedality to Śfree the
handsą so that they could be used for holding tools and weapons. As Abel
(1931: 369) pointed out, these early Śopen plainą hypotheses were situated
in many different locations, including India, Indonesia, Australia, Africa
and Europe, and occurred anywhere between thirty million years ago to only a
few hundred thousand years ago. As an historical analysis showed, the same
sequence of events was always emphasised: the transition from a Ślowerą
apelike animal lifestyle towards the Śhigherą human lifestyle characterised
by mastering of the environment, whereever or whenever they were situated
(Bender 1999: 75-79).
Figure 1. Origin of the Śopen plainą hypotheses. Early scientists speculated
from Fact 1 (łmost primates live in forests˛) and Fact 2 (łmost humans do
not live in forests˛) that a transition from life in the woods to life on
open plains was essential to the evolution of human characteristics such as
bipedalism (adapted from Bender-Oser 2004).
Table 1. Four main episodes included in orthodox human evolutionary models
(Landau 1984)
Episode Description
Terrestriality A shift from the trees to the ground
Bipedalism The development of upright posture
Encephalisation The development of the brain, intelligence, and language
Civilization The development of technology, morals and society
Landau (1984), after studying texts on human evolution written by early 20th
century scientists Arthur Keith, Grafton Elliot Smith, Frederick Wood Jones,
Henry Fairfield Osborn, and William King Gregory, concluded that, łthere
appears to be some underlying agreement about what happens in human
evolution. In constructing their theories, most anthropologists seem to have
in mind a similar narrative pattern.˛ These narratives had four main
episodes (Table 1), one of which was ła shift from the trees to the ground
(terrestriality)˛ (1984: 264, see also Landau 1991).
The narrative style, Landau discovered, was overall most similar to popular
folk-tales in which heroic characters, when faced with adversity, overcame
great odds to prevail. While there was room within these narratives for
different chronologies (bipedalism might have occurred before or after
terrestriality, for example), the four key episodes were always included,
thus forming a somewhat predictable framework. Perhaps this is why waterside
models never made an impression in the minds of most anthropologists. In
waterside models, there is no shift from the trees to the ground (episode of
terrestriality), these models therefore fail to conform to the prevailing
narrative framework, and are consequently considered unorthodox and
Śimpossibleą.
Later in the 20th century, scenarios no longer based solely on the courage
or initiative of early human ancestors were proposed, and these stressed
instead the importance of external factors such as climatic changes, which
led to shrinking forests and expanding open plains, notably, the dry and hot
East-African savannahs (see especially Dart 1925, and for more recent
discussion deMenocal 2004). This process of aridification more or less
Śforcedą our arboreal ancestors to leave the forests and expand into more
open, arid habitats (discussion in Bender 1999: 56-59, see Figure 2).
Anthropologists often assume that this shift from Śinternalą factors (human
courage, curiosity, intelligence) to Śexternalą factors (climatic or
geological changes which caused aridification and/or deforestation) came
about because of the discovery of fossils and artefacts in areas that could
only have been open savannah, but a survey of the literature shows that Homo
sites are typically found near large water bodies including rivers, lakes,
swamps and coasts, and not necessarily in open savannahs (see below).
Dartąs version of the Śopen plainą hypothesis eventually became widely
accepted, mostly after the Piltdown debacle had been uncovered. The
Piltdown hoax, in which an orangutan mandible and a modern human cranium
were fraudulently buried and altered so that they appeared to belong to the
same fossil species, was accepted as a genuine human ancestor for a number
of years (19121940). Schematically, therefore, the consensus view at the
time of Piltdown was that human ancestors had large canines and a large
brain. When the hoax was becoming apparent, it also became clear that a new
scheme was required, and eventually scientists supported the opposite view
(Lewin 1987: 60-84, Le Gros Clark 1955), accepting Dartąs Taung skull (small
canines, small brain) as the intermediate step between apes (large canines,
small brain) and humans (small canines, large brain).
In the view of three of us (for the view of RB and NB, see Bender 1999), the
Taung skull is not an intermediary between an ancestral apelike and an
extant humanlike skull (the view that many palaeoanthropologists today
tend to adopt). Instead, we prefer the more parsi-monious views that
evolutionary changes happened in both lineages (Homo as well as Pan) rather
than that nearly all evolutionary changes happened in one lineage (Homo) and
that the older skull is nearer to the ancestors of the living species (Fox
et al. 1999), so that both chimpanzees and humans had more
australopithecine-like ancestors (for detailed arguments, see Verhaegen
1994, 1996) (Figure 3).
Significantly, when, in the 1940s and 1950s, most palaeoanthropologists
rejected Piltdown, not only did they accept Dartąs ideas on Taung being
ancestral to humans, but also his views on where it might have lived (ła
vast open country with Š a relative scarcity of water˛), which we now know
(e.g., Partridge 1985) were based on incorrect conclusions.
A Diversity of ŚOpen Plainsą Ideas
The original Śopen plainą ideas were obviously hypothetical, but soon the
general impression of human ancestors coming out of the trees and colonizing
the vast plains became set in the minds of most anthropologists, and
different ideas some more improbable than others were put forward to
explain how savannah-dwelling ancestors might have found enough food and
water to survive on the open plains as if the hypothesis had already been
proven. Human characteristics were discussed in an evolutionary setting
that involved a movement from the forests to the open plains, and reasons
for these characteristics always tended to revolve around the Śopen plainą
theme (see Table 2). Even the most far-fetched of these ideas (for example,
honey collection, liver consumption, or food collection at noon on open
plains) have been seriously considered and published in scientific journals.
Such ad hoc explanations are comparable to the hypothetical Śland bridgesą
between Africa and South-America that were popular in geology before the
theory of Plate Tectonics became accepted.
What is striking about these hypotheses is their combined diversity. Some
rely on hunting large game, others on small game, some on scavenging bone
marrow, or brains, or livers, or collecting seeds, or tubers, or honey.
Some of these Śopen plainą models are more typical of slow-moving animals
(feeding on belowground resources), others of fast-moving mammals (łbouts of
strenuous activity˛), and others rely on endurance (following migrating
ungulates, or the dogged pursuit of prey). This diversity of theoretical
models suggests that the Śopen plainą scenarios are not the result of usual
biological thinking. In evolutionary biology, hypotheses are not just
Śpossible scenariosą, but normally the result of solid analyses of
relationships between form and function. Biologists usually do not propose
a scenario to explain the evolution of an animal without a careful
comparison of different features of this animal with similar features
(convergences) of other, not closely related species.
Lee Olsen
Nothing as usual:
Here are the facts:
http://www.aquaticape.org/whataat.html
Jim Moore:
"Marc Verhaegen now also often takes umbrage if you critique an AAT/H
claim that
he doesn't make himself. But then taking umbrage seems to be a
specialty with him;
his online method tends toward gratuitous insults, often as the sole
content of his
newsgroup posts, and continually reposting the same, non-responsive,
paragraphs
(earning him the nickname "macro-man" after the usual technique for
doing that),
and, starting from his very first online post in 1998, comparing his
position to Wegener,
Galileo, etc. These methods certainly don't help his argument,
instead placing his online
newsgroup contributions in the realm of the netloon."
http://users.ugent.be/~mvaneech/Report.html
Mario Vaneechoutte: "Verhaegen's reasoning was considered as
idiosyncratic by most of the participants."
Lee Olsen
both parents at the time of the drowning and 75 percent are missing
from sight for five minutes or less."
Orange County, CA, Fire Authority
Marc Verhaegen
Nobody is interested in what netloons like this Jason or Mr.Smith think of
me...
Op 03-02-2008 14:35, in artikel
e81132af-0d57-444e...@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com, Lee Olsen
<pale...@hotmail.com> schreef:
Makouli
counterpoint to your endless drone of non-sequiturs
in support of your wet fantasies. Neither is a "netloon"
incidentally, which makes their observations even more
awkward for you. Finally, their arguments are valid which
is beyond awkward for the AAR.
[This is called top-posting, Marco. Can you guess why?]
"Marc Verhaegen" <m_ver...@skynet.be> wrote in message
news:C3CBAB54.CDBF%m_ver...@skynet.be...
> My little boy, perhaps you could try to let us hear something relevant...
> Nobody is interested in what netloons like this Jason or Mr.Smith think of
> me...
[standard boilerplate rebuttal to Marco's repeated assertion
that he has a legitimate argument]
=========================================
"Only fools talk about something they don't
inform about." Marco --01/22/2004
claudi...@sbcglobal.net
AAT draws attention away from the fact that you have no hypothesis
that is better than AAT.
On Feb 3, 8:55 am, "Makouli" <m...@work.com> wrote:
> Oh, but they are, Marco. They provide an interesting
> counterpoint to your endless drone of non-sequiturs
> in support of your wet fantasies. Neither is a "netloon"
> incidentally, which makes their observations even more
> awkward for you. Finally, their arguments are valid which
> is beyond awkward for the AAR.
>
> [This is called top-posting, Marco. Can you guess why?]
>
> "Marc Verhaegen" <m_verhae...@skynet.be> wrote in message
Makouli
news:bf0ef388-212f-403d...@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> AAT draws attention away from the fact that you have no hypothesis
> that is better than AAT.
Learning to top post now, Dimmy?
You may as well --that will make your crap
even ~more~ annoying.
[post aimed at Marco]
==========================
"PA is full of whack jobs like Leakey."
Dimmy --01/20/08
claudi...@sbcglobal.net
Go ahead. Present your hypothesis. What are you waiting for?
On Feb 3, 1:18 pm, "Makouli" <m...@work.com> wrote:
> <claudiusd...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
Lee Olsen
> Go ahead. Present your hypothesis. What are you waiting for?
What was yours again? Be specific: