Any good books?
Acacia
if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
human evolution or anything relating?
I'm 16 and I've always been fascinated with human evolution, especially
with the Neanderthals.
So far the only information I have I got from National Geographic
magazines, Discovery, TLC, and History channel programs.
Thanks...
*~Acacia~*
Lorenzo L. Love
Acacia wrote:
Try the FAQ:
http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/anthropology/sci.anthropology.paleo/FAQ.html
Also try Jim Foley's Fossil Hominid FAQ:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fossil-hominids.html
and it's 'Futher Reading' link.
And John Wikins link page:
http://www.wehi.edu.au/~wilkins/evolinks.html
Watch out for the crackpots and pseudo-scientists. There's tons of them out
there quite willing to fill you full of nonsense.
Lorenzo
Gerrit Hanenburg
>Hello, I'm really interested in paleo-anthropology and I was wondering
>if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
>human evolution or anything relating?
>I'm 16 and I've always been fascinated with human evolution, especially
>with the Neanderthals.
In that case you should read "In Search of the Neanderthals" by Chris
Stringer and Clive Gamble (published by Thames and Hudson, 1993) and
"The Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind" by Erik Trinkaus and
Pat Shipman (Knopf, 1993).
For human evolution in general the following are good textbooks:
"Reconstructing Human Origins. A Modern Synthesis" by Glenn C. Conroy
(W.W. Norton, 1997. 557 pages).
"Principles of Human Evolution" by Roger Lewin (Blackwell Science,
1998. 420 pages). This one I particularly recommend as an introductory
text.
All of the above are available in paperback.
Should paleoanthropology turn out to be much more than a passing
interest, and you want to go for the academic level, then you should
get a copy of Milford Wolpoff's 2nd edition of "Paleoanthropology"
(McGraw-Hill, June 1998. 936 pages).
Gerrit
Anne Gilbert
In a previous article, thef...@erols.com (Acacia) says:
>Hello, I'm really interested in paleo-anthropology and I was wondering
>if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
>human evolution or anything relating?
>
>I'm 16 and I've always been fascinated with human evolution, especially
>with the Neanderthals.
>
>So far the only information I have I got from National Geographic
>magazines, Discovery, TLC, and History channel programs.
>
>Thanks...
>
>*~Acacia~*
>
>
YOu might want to try a book whose title is "Fairweather Eden". I have
it, although not handy, so I can't tell you who the authors are. It's
not about human evolution as a whole, just the phase of it that
encompassed the hominids that lived at Boxgrove, England, about 500 kyr
ago. If you want more information, I can get back to you in a day or two
with more. . .
Anne Gilbert
--
Anne Gilbert
keb...@scn.org, avgi...@hotmail.com
Visit my website at http://members.tripod.com/~kebara and read about my
Great Science Fiction Masterpiece
Marc Verhaegen
Acacia heeft geschreven in bericht <35FDA22F...@erols.com>...
>Hello, I'm really interested in paleo-anthropology and I was wondering
>if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
>human evolution or anything relating?
>
E Morgan 1997 The aquatic ape hypothesis. Souvenir London,
M Roede ed.1991 The aquatic ape: fact or fiction. ibid.
For general information on hominid fossils, eg,
GC Conroy 1990 Primate evolution. Norton NY
L Aiello & C Dean 1990 An introduction to human evol.anatomy. Academic Press
London
Marc
Maryellen1934
is good for people who don't have any real training in science, but who
are interested in evolution.(me)
There are many books by Johanson, Leakey, Walker,
and Schick(on tools) that are easy to come by. I found 2 college text
books that were very helpful
for someone new to the subject.(me, again)
One was an intro. to physical anthropology, and the other is on
principles of human evolution.
There's lots of duplication, but I liked both.
You can get them (I try to get used copies)
at a college or university, after the students have bought theirs.
I'm amazed at how many books on the subject
are published. (lots on evolutionary theory)
"Science" is a good publication for up-to-date
reports.
Have fun!
Surf Usenet at home, on the road, and by email -- always at Talkway.
http://www.talkway.com
Jason Eshleman
>Acacia <thef...@erols.com> wrote:
>>Hello, I'm really interested in paleo-anthropology and I was wondering
>>if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
>>human evolution or anything relating?
>>I'm 16 and I've always been fascinated with human evolution, especially
>>with the Neanderthals.
>In that case you should read "In Search of the Neanderthals" by Chris
>Stringer and Clive Gamble (published by Thames and Hudson, 1993) and
>"The Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind" by Erik Trinkaus and
>Pat Shipman (Knopf, 1993).
Both a good reads and still largely up to date.
>For human evolution in general the following are good textbooks:
>"Reconstructing Human Origins. A Modern Synthesis" by Glenn C. Conroy
>(W.W. Norton, 1997. 557 pages).
>
>"Principles of Human Evolution" by Roger Lewin (Blackwell Science,
>1998. 420 pages). This one I particularly recommend as an introductory
>text.
>
>All of the above are available in paperback.
>
>Should paleoanthropology turn out to be much more than a passing
>interest, and you want to go for the academic level, then you should
>get a copy of Milford Wolpoff's 2nd edition of "Paleoanthropology"
>(McGraw-Hill, June 1998. 936 pages).
Or Richard Klein's *The Human Career* (sorry, no publisher info of the top
of my head). The first edition was published in 1989, but when I saw
Klein in Feb, he mentioned the second edition was coming around the corner
perhaps in time for 1999.
-Jason
Maryellen1934
I have Lewin's textbook,
and was wondering about Wolpoff's. At $96,
I hesitate to buy it. Really worth the $$ ?
Any suggestions for self-study? Thanks.
keith
>Hello, I'm really interested in paleo-anthropology and I was wondering
>if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
>human evolution or anything relating?
>I'm 16 and I've always been fascinated with human evolution, especially
>with the Neanderthals.
>So far the only information I have I got from National Geographic
>magazines, Discovery, TLC, and History channel programs.
I believe "The Sixth Exrinction" by Richard Leakey is good. I'm not a
human evo fundie myself, so I'm not too sure. But, certainly you
should go for general evolution texts too. Anything by Richard
Dawkins is an excellent start, preferrably the earlier stuff, the more
recent works are a litte stale. Try "The Blind Watchmaker". I know
this isn't human evo, but you need the principles as well as the
history.
Keith
Don't knock at Death's door. Ring the bell and run away.
He hates that.
(remove 'nzibar' from the end of address at top to reply by
e-mail)
Floyd Code: v1.2a n TW 0/0/ FD 2? 0 ATD 2 0 17.0% <13jun98>
a.a #1202
distal
>Gerrit Hanenburg <G.Han...@inter.nl.nomail.net> wrote:
>
>>Acacia <thef...@erols.com> wrote:
>
>>>Hello, I'm really interested in paleo-anthropology and I was wondering
>>>if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
>>>human evolution or anything relating?
>
>>>I'm 16 and I've always been fascinated with human evolution, especially
>>>with the Neanderthals.
>
University Press. It's $14.95 for the paperback. The Lewin book is also
excellent. In fact the two really compliment each other, giving a very
balanced overview of the theories and history of the science of PA.
Leakey's "Origin of Humankind" is designed for beginners and would make an
excellent introduction to the field.
Angel Garcia
All these books are slaves of Darwin's idea of human ancestors
in Eocene and cradle in Africa.
All such ideology is faulty and missleading. In fact has been exposed
as contemptuous and arrogant since it despises the 'billions' of
believers in a Creator of mankind who lives in Earth and elsewhere
(in heaven, meaning other planets).
The correct theory has to include some extraterrestrial input for
terrestrial animals, apes and hominids; and now has been put forward
in every essential detail (like TIME-frame and location) in the
set of books TETET-xx.
The TETET-98: Generacion del Hombre en Marte is going to appear,
Deo volente, by december-1998. It is in juicy Spanish by a
Spaniard-Canadian Dr. who has written 20 books and 13 of them dealing
with ETI. Such extraterrestrial origin of Homo Sapiens is well
established already. The book TETET-98 is finished and definitive;
expensive due to graphics (26 plates of very good photocopies with
all relevant images from Cydonia by NASA (1976, 1998).
--
Angel, secretary of Universitas Americae (UNIAM). His proof of ETI at
Cydonia and complete Index of new "TETET-97: Creatoris Digitus.." by Prof.
Dr. D.G. Lahoz (leader on ETI and Cosmogony) can be studied at URL:
http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~bp887 ***************************
Lorenzo L. Love
Angel Garcia wrote:
I believe that when this thead started, I mentioned something about
crackpots...
Angel Garcia
an old C. Darwin. Darwin said "ARROGANT FOREFATHERS who put
their descent in demi-gods"; a very arrogant and stupid statement, indeed.
From where did he get such insight ?
And there are many cracpots at present who BELIEVE in such idiocy
as a DOGMA of the church of Darwin: they take all honest believers
in God, miracles, prophecies... as lunatics and crackpots without
havin studied a bit of the vast body of knowledge on which God's believers
base their arguments; they take the Pope as either an idiot or a
maquiavelic liar (whatever fits best their atheistic idiocy).
It is just a matter of trivial artistic analysis to see that these images
are not random play of shadows:
http://www.interlog.com/~uniam/MAROR.GIF
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Concourse/9460/parlis.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Concourse/9460/ojo.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Concourse/9460/scho.gif
http://www.interlog.com/~uniam/FAES.GIF
http://www.interlog.com/~uniam/MMG4.GIF
etc., etc., etc. up to 70 Monuments with artistic content !!!.
One has to be very, very brutish and absolutely negated as
Art critic to confuse these with machine-paintings or faces in the clouds.
Gerrit Hanenburg
>I've been trying to study human origins on my own for a year (or so).
>I have Lewin's textbook, and was wondering about Wolpoff's. At $96,
>I hesitate to buy it. Really worth the $$ ?
I think it's worth the money (otherwise I wouldn't have bought my own
copy). Wolpoff pays much attention to the fossils, with lots of
illustrations of specimens, suggestions for further reading and
references, a glossary of anatomical and other technical terms
frequently used in paleoanthropology. The book has separate detailed
chapters dedicted to gracile and robust australopithecines, early
Homo, European Neandertals, etc.
However, you should realize that Wolpoff has a somewhat unusual view
of the evolution of Homo sapiens. He is one of foremost proponents of
multiregional evolution. As a result he considers well known specimens
such as the "Turkana Boy" as early Homo sapiens. Despite his emphasis
on that theory, I think the book has it's value as one of the most
comprehensive sources on human evolution in its field (and despite a
few errors I've discovered).
Unfortunately the book is probably too specialised and too expensive
for most public libraries.
>Any suggestions for self-study? Thanks.
I you have Lewin's book you already have a good introduction. Follow
his suggestions for further reading.
Gerrit
Btw, Wolpoff's book doesn't make a single mention of the AAT ;-)
S. J. Fedos
Steve Fedos
Northern Virginia Community College
S. J. Fedos
As for Scientific Creationism, Faces on Mars, UFO's, ET's, Space seeding, alien intervention, etc. etc. etc... well let's just say that stuff's better left for the SCI-FI channel, than sci.anthropology.paleo.
Good Luck.
Steve Fedos
Northern Virginia Community College
Angel Garcia wrote:
Marc Verhaegen
>
>Gerrit
>
>Btw, Wolpoff's book doesn't make a single mention of the AAT ;-)
Therefore, if you want to understand something on human evolution read also,
eg,
E Morgan 1997 The aquatic ape hypothesis. Souvenir London,
M Roede ed.1991 The aquatic ape: fact or fiction. ibid.
The "old" books (Aiella & Dean, Wolpoff, Conroy...) give a lot of excellent
information on the fossils, but their interpretations are terribly biased.
Marc
Lorenzo L. Love
Marc Verhaegen wrote:
You might as well read von Däniken's books and all the recent faces on Mars
nonsense. It all has about the same basis in reality.
Lorenzo
Anne Gilbert
In a previous article, Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be ("Marc Verhaegen") says:
>
>>
>>Gerrit
>>
>>Btw, Wolpoff's book doesn't make a single mention of the AAT ;-)
>
>Therefore, if you want to understand something on human evolution read also,
>eg,
>E Morgan 1997 The aquatic ape hypothesis. Souvenir London,
>M Roede ed.1991 The aquatic ape: fact or fiction. ibid.
>
>The "old" books (Aiella & Dean, Wolpoff, Conroy...) give a lot of excellent
>information on the fossils, but their interpretations are terribly biased.
>
>Marc
>
>
>
>
I found some of these books to be quite good. Why do *you* think they
are biased?
Anne Gilbert
Organization: Seattle Community Network
In a previous article, lll...@thegrid.net ("Lorenzo L. Love") says:
>
>
>Marc Verhaegen wrote:
>
>> >
>> >Gerrit
>>
>> Marc
>
> You might as well read von Däniken's books and all the recent faces on Mars
>nonsense. It all has about the same basis in reality.
>
>Lorenzo
>
>
>
Well, there are a lot of AAT theorists hanging around here. . .They might
as well read AAT books. . .
Roger Taylor
>
>>Hello, I'm really interested in paleo-anthropology and I was wondering
>>if anyone could recommend some good up to date non-fiction books about
>>human evolution or anything relating?
>
>>I'm 16 and I've always been fascinated with human evolution, especially
>>with the Neanderthals.
>
>>magazines, Discovery, TLC, and History channel programs.
A lot of the books which have been reccommended to you will be very
heavy for a 16 year old. To get a good initial view and where you can
choose your subjects as you wish, you might try:
The Cambridge Encylopedia of Human Evolution
Edited by Jones, Martin and Pilbeam.
Forword by Richard Dawkins.
Cambridge University Press
ISBN 0-521-46786-1
From this you will be able to choose any particular area of interest to
go on to later.
Best of luck with the subject, but beware of conventional wisdom from
strongly opinionated people who talk a lot but will not listen.
--
Roger Taylor
Marc Verhaegen
Anne Gilbert >>>Btw, Wolpoff's book doesn't make a single mention of the AAT
;-)
>>
>>Therefore, if you want to understand something on human evolution read
also, eg,
>>E Morgan 1997 The aquatic ape hypothesis. Souvenir London,
>>M Roede ed.1991 The aquatic ape: fact or fiction. ibid.
>>
excellent
>>information on the fossils, but their interpretations are terribly biased.
>>
biased?
Yes, excellent information. But no mentioning of AAT.
Marc
Lorenzo L. Love
Marc Verhaegen wrote:
I don't think that they mention ancient astronauts, alien abductions,
scientology, Atlantis, the face on Mars or any of a hundred other crack pot
theories either. I guess that makes them biased.
Lorenzo
alg...@my-dejanews.com
> I don't think that they mention ancient astronauts, alien abductions,
> scientology, Atlantis, the face on Mars or any of a hundred other crack pot
> theories either. I guess that makes them biased.
>
To bracket the AAT with these "other crack pot theories" is being very
ignorant.
Don't you think the theory deserves any discussion at all? The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (one Richard Dawkins states he would take to a
desert island if he had to take just a handful of books) obviously doesn't.
There is literally no mention of it at all.
But then again the 200 page volume has just one sentence on a possible guess
for why we lost our hair and four or five confused and contradictory theories
on why we started walking.
The AAT is only a model, but it can explain these two human attributes and
many more.
The thing I don't understand is why are the so-called scientists so against
it? I can only imagine it is because they have publicly dismissed the idea
for so long, they will look kind-of ridiculous when it turns out that they
never spotted something this obvious that was right in front of their
collective noses. You would think they'd apply scientific principles to the
debate and, if the model is so weak, knock it down with something logical.
Instead most antagonists of AAT seem only able to resort to childish
fun-poking and patronising, sneering jibes at its supporters.
Algis Kuliukas
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Nick Maclaren
In article <71c7ra$5c1$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, alg...@my-dejanews.com writes:
|> I have to chip in here...
|>
|> > I don't think that they mention ancient astronauts, alien abductions,
|> > scientology, Atlantis, the face on Mars or any of a hundred other crack pot
|> > theories either. I guess that makes them biased.
|>
|> To bracket the AAT with these "other crack pot theories" is being very
|> ignorant.
Part of the trouble is that many protagonists on both sides have
started to regard anything that the other side says as being
necessarily nonsense, and have therefore ended up in extreme
(and probably untenable) positions. This isn't an unusual
problem :-)
At its weakest, the aquatic theory claims that a lot of our
characteristics came from a time when we foraged in swamps and
shallow water, and spent most of the DAY wet and quite a lot
actually underwater. That may be right or wrong, but there are
plenty of plausible locations, foods and so on - and lots of
evidence that mammals can move from a dry lifestyle to that and
back again.
At its strongest, it claims that we became a fully marine mammal
(rather like a dugong or sea otter) and then came back onto
land. This theory is considerably less plausible, and it is
quite reasonable to regard it with suspicion in the absence of
very good evidence.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
Email: nm...@cam.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679
rwa...@junctionnet.com
Isn't this the problem with the AAT. We have the AAT in, ahem, full
flood and also the dried out fallback position when the incoming
becomes too hot and heavy. A recent poster to this NG put it very well
when he said that genuine scientific theory has a pretty clear idea
what it's about. Lacking any credible evidence the AAT can't set any
bounds around itself and is a morass of unsupported speculation.
rwa...@junctionnet.com
alg...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> I have to chip in here...
>
> > I don't think that they mention ancient astronauts, alien abductions,
> > scientology, Atlantis, the face on Mars or any of a hundred other crack pot
> > theories either. I guess that makes them biased.
> >
>
> To bracket the AAT with these "other crack pot theories" is being very
> ignorant.
>
> Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (one Richard Dawkins states he would take to a
> desert island if he had to take just a handful of books) obviously doesn't.
> There is literally no mention of it at all.
> But then again the 200 page volume has just one sentence on a possible guess
> for why we lost our hair and four or five confused and contradictory theories
> on why we started walking.
>
> The AAT is only a model, but it can explain these two human attributes and
> many more.
>
> The thing I don't understand is why are the so-called scientists so against
> it? I can only imagine it is because they have publicly dismissed the idea
> for so long, they will look kind-of ridiculous when it turns out that they
> never spotted something this obvious that was right in front of their
> collective noses. You would think they'd apply scientific principles to the
> debate and, if the model is so weak, knock it down with something logical.
> Instead most antagonists of AAT seem only able to resort to childish
> fun-poking and patronising, sneering jibes at its supporters.
>
> Algis Kuliukas
>
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
>
It has been looked at and dismissed. The Internet is a godsend to
fringers of every possible stripe. Publishing books and magazines,
operating organizations etc etc is much more expensive and less
effective in spreading the word than is running a website and writing
to a newsgroup. Which is fine. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
The AAT proposes a history of human evolution which is quite simply
spectacularly at odds with what we know about evolution and its
mechanisms. Consider. The Last Common Ancestor to apes and man at
some point in the last five to ten million years takes to the
water where it evolves a whole host of aquatic features - bipedality,
hairlessness, descended larynxes, singing (!) etc etc. Then for
some reason this aquatic ape abandons the water to such a degree
that no aquatic apes or men survive or have left any remains.
Lucky devils that these beached aquatic apes are they find that
their aquatic adaptations not only allow them to survive on land
but they are so wonderfully useful that we, Homo sapiens, were
able to become the most phenomenally successful terrestrial ver-
tebrate ever. We dominate every terrestrial habitat there is with
the exception of the polar icecaps (and given sufficient reason
we could extensively colonize them too).
AAT proposes this as an explanation for various anatomical features
rather than the straight forward position of features so obviously
of great use in terrestrial environments of every kind evolving
as a result of adaptive pressures imposed by terrestrial life.
Until and unless the AAT comes up with solid evidence to support
its claims paleoanthropolgy is quite right to ignore a 'theory'
which at its heart contains such a massive absurdity. Resources
are scarce and life is short.
Nick Maclaren
>
> Isn't this the problem with the AAT. We have the AAT in, ahem, full
> flood and also the dried out fallback position when the incoming
> becomes too hot and heavy. A recent poster to this NG put it very well
> when he said that genuine scientific theory has a pretty clear idea
> what it's about. Lacking any credible evidence the AAT can't set any
> bounds around itself and is a morass of unsupported speculation.
Perhaps. Now exactly how does that differ from the savanna theory?
Also, you are claiming that the aquatic ape theory started out in
its strong form and has since been weakened. But is that actually
true? It is certainly claimed, by its opponents, but hard evidence
of that hypothesis hasn't been produced.
One of the standard "dirty tricks" in so-called scientific debate is
to choose the most extreme form of your opponent's theory, laugh it
out of court, and them claim that ALL of your opponents have been
defeated. It quite often works, too.
[ For one really good example of this, take a look at the medical
attitudes to psychosomatic diseases over the past century or so.
But there are dozens of others. ]
Marc Verhaegen
Nick Maclaren
>
>Part of the trouble is that many protagonists on both sides have
>started to regard anything that the other side says as being
>necessarily nonsense, and have therefore ended up in extreme
>(and probably untenable) positions. This isn't an unusual
>problem :-)
>
forgotten as soon as possible, as most anthropologists seem to confirm by
now (though most of them still don't accept any "aquatic" theory):
The savanna hypothesis of human evolution was strongly promoted by Professor
Dart in 1924 after the discovery of the skull of Taung in South Africa’s
treeless grasslands. He wrote (1925): ‘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, "Post-Cretaceous
Climates of South Africa," African Journal of Science, vol. xix., 1922) that
the climate has fluctuated within exceedingly narrow limits in this country
since Cretaceous times’ and ‘South Africa, by providing a vast open country
with occasional wooded belts and a relatively 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”.
While we now known that the climate did change since the time of Taung
(Partridge, 1985), Dart was thus convinced that the present and the ancient
environment did not differ significantly and that the Taung child had lived
in such open grasslands. Dart only got recognition a few decades later when
Piltdown Man (rather big brain and big teeth) had been unmasked as a fraud,
and anthropologists accepted the Taung fossil (small brain, small teeth) as
a more likely link between apes (small brain, big teeth) and humans (big
brain, small teeth). However, they not only accepted Dart’s view on Taung’s
affinity, but also his view on Taung’s lifestyle in a dry and open country.
Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that a savanna past of humans is
comparatively and physiologically extremely unlikely, since humans are in
almost every respect very different from savanna-dwellers (e.g.,
Schmidt-Nielsen, 1979; Morgan, 1982, 1990; Verhaegen, 1991, 1997). In a
comparison of humans with apes, arboreal, semi-aquatic, fully aquatic and
savanna mammals (Verhaegen, 1993), not one single feature distinguishing the
savanna mammals was found in humans. Mammals of dry, warm and open
landscapes are relative independent of drinking-water and water-containing
nourishment, have a high tolerance of dehydration and radiation heat, have
high diurnal body temperatures and high daily temperature fluctuations, and
high renal concentration power. They usually have very large external ears,
a slender build, and running velocities of 30 miles per hour and more. They
are not plantigrade like bears, eared seals or African hominoids. Most of
them do not have dextrous hands like racoons, many otters and primates. They
never have abundant fat tissues under the skin, but protect themselves from
the sun with short, light-reflecting fur (or with dust coverings in
elephants or rhinoceroses). Their vocalisations are less varied than those
of dolphins, otters or primates are. They never copulate face to face like
some slow branch-hangers (sloths, pottos, orang-utans), marine mammals
(cetaceans, sirenians) and humans. All have an excellent sense of smell, as
opposed to many marine mammals and humans. Most of them grow up fast and
reach adulthood in less than three years, unlike hominoids, walruses,
cetaceans or sirenians. They often sustain body temperatures of more than
40°C (Grant’s gazelle can maintain 46°C for many hours) and show temperature
fluctuations of more than 6° between day and night. Their urine
concentration can be twice that of humans. They can bear a dehydration of 20
per cent and more, whereas in humans a dehydration of more than 10 per cent
is fatal without medical intervention. They are very conservative with salt
and water (many savanna mammals, even carnivores like the fennec fox, do not
need drinking-water), and never sweat ten to fifteen litres a day as humans
can do in hot environments (hunting-dogs and many other savanna-dwellers do
not sweat at all).
These data are recently being appreciated by anthropologists:
‘physiologically, biochemically and histologically, we should be hopeless as
savanna-dwellers. All of the former savanna supporters must swallow our
earlier words’ (Tobias, 1995).
IOW, it's only because Dart found his Taung fossil in a dry & open country,
that two generations of anthroplogists were fabricating data to make human
ancestors fit in a savanna milieu.
>At its weakest, the aquatic theory claims that a lot of our
>characteristics came from a time when we foraged in swamps and
>shallow water, and spent most of the DAY wet and quite a lot
>actually underwater. That may be right or wrong, but there are
>plenty of plausible locations, foods and so on - and lots of
>evidence that mammals can move from a dry lifestyle to that and
>back again.
>
>At its strongest, it claims that we became a fully marine mammal
>(rather like a dugong or sea otter) and then came back onto
>land...
I don't think anybody claims that we were ever fully aquatic. Humans can't
produce their own vitamin C, and AFAIK vitamin C is absent from marire food
(except beluga skin).
(But I do think that humans, at least in some seasons & at least the adult
males, once dived frequently for shellfish, perhaps a bit like sea otters
(eg, using stones & floating on the back to crack shellfish).)
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
rwa...@junctionnet.com
>
> Until and unless the AAT comes up with solid evidence to support
> its claims paleoanthropolgy is quite right to ignore a 'theory'
> which at its heart contains such a massive absurdity. Resources
> are scarce and life is short.
>
? Lukeino KNM-LU 335 ‘pre-australopithecine’: ‘The red beds seems to contain
marginal lacustrine deposits as indicated by the presence of algal mats and
lacustrine bivalves (including complete specimens with valves in the closed
position)’ (Pickford, 1975).
? Tabarin KNM-TH 13150 ‘pre-australopithecine’: ‘The fauna includes aquatic
animals such as molluscs, fish, turtles, crocodiles, and hippotami, along
with others that might be found in the vicinity of a lake of river’ (Ward &
Hill, 1987).
? Ardipithecus ramidus: ‘Sedimentological, botanical and faunal evidence
suggests a wooded habitat for the Aramis hominids […] Aquatic elements
(turtle, fish, crocodile) are rare. Large mammals (hippopotamus,
proboscideans, rhinos, equids, giraffids, bovines) are rare. Primates are
very abundant’ (WoldeGabriel et al., 1994).
? Kanapoi KNM-KP 29281 Australopithecus anamensis: Fish, aquatic reptiles,
kudus and monkeys are prevalent. ‘A wide gallery forest would have almost
certainly been present on the large river that brought in the sediments’
(Leakey et al., 1995).
? Chad KT 12 A. cf. afarensis: ‘The non-hominid fauna contains aquatic taxa
(such as Siluridae, Trionyx, cf. Tomistoma), taxa adapted to wooded habitats
(such as Loxodonta, Kobus, Kolpochoerus) and to more open areas (such as
Ceratotherium, Hipparion) […] compatible with a lakeside environment’
(Brunet et al., 1995).
? Garusi-Laetoli L.H. A. anamensis or afarensis: Teeth and mandible
fragments, the hardest skeletal parts which are frequently left over by
carnivores (Morden, 1988), come from wind-blown and air-fall tuffs, but
always near watercourses at the time (Leakey et al., 1976). Cercopithecine
and colobine monkeys are present (Westenhöfer, M. (1924)., 1981; Leakey et
al., 1976).
? Hadar, Afar Locality: ‘Generally, the sediments represent lacustrine, lake
margin, and associated fluvial deposits related to an extensive lake that
periodically filled the entire basin’ (Johanson et al., 1982)
? Hadar AL.333 A. afarensis: ‘The bones were found in swale-like features
[…] it is very likely that they died and partially rotted at or very near
this site […] this group of hominids was buried in streamside gallery
woodland’ (Radosevich et al., 1992).
? Hadar AL.288 gracile A. cf. afarensis: Lucy lay in a small, slow-moving
stream. ‘Fossil preservation at this locality is excellent, remains of
delicate items such as crocodile and turtle eggs and crab claws being found’
(Johanson & Taieb, 1976).
? Makapan A. africanus: ‘[…] very different conditions from those prevailing
today. Higher rainfall, fertile, alkaline soils and moderate relief
supported significant patches of sub-tropical forest and thick bush, rather
than savannah. Taphonomic considerations […] suggest that sub-tropical
forest was the hominins’ preferred habitat rather than grassland or
bushveld, and the adaptations of these animals was therefore fitted to a
forest habitat’ (Rayner et al., 1993; see also Reed, 1993; and Wood, 1993).
? Taung australopithecine: ‘the clayey matrix from which the Taung cranium
was extracted, and the frequent occurrence of calcite veins and void
fillings within it (Butzer 1974, 1980) do suggest a more humid environment
during its accumulation’ (Partridge, 1985).
? Sterkfontein A. africanus & Swartkrans A. robustus: Many South African
australopithecines are discovered in riverside caves, presumably often
filled with the remainders of the consumption process of large felids
(Brain, 1981).
? Kromdraai: A. robustus was found near grassveld and streamside or marsh
vegetation, in the vicinity of quail, pipits, starlings, swallows, and
parrots, lovebirds and similar psittacine birds (T.N. Pocock in Brain,
1981).
? Turkana KNM-ER 17000 & 16005: A. aethiopicus was found near the boundary
between overbank deposits of large perennial river and alluvial fan
deposits, amid water- and reedbucks (Walker et al., 1986).
? Lake Turkana: ‘The lake margins were generally swampy, with extensive
areas of mudflats […] Australopithecus boisei was more abundant in fluvial
environments, whereas Homo habilis was rare in such environments […]
Australopithecus fossils are more common than Homo both in channel and
floodplain deposits. The gracile hominids […] seem to be more restricted
ecologically to the lake margin than are the robust forms’ (Conroy, 1990).
? Ileret A. boisei: ‘the fossil sample reflects climatic and ecological
environmental conditions differing significantly from those of the present
day. At Ilerat, 1.5 Myr ago, climatic conditions must have been cooler and
more humid than today, and more favourable to extensive forests […] The
prominence of montane forest is particularly striking […] dominated by
Gramineae and Chenopodiaceae appropriate to the margins of a slightly saline
or alkaline lake’ (Bonnefille, 1976).
? Konso A. boisei: ‘The highly fossiliferous sands at the mid-section of
KGA10 are interpreted to be the middle to distal portions of an alluvial
fan, deposited adjacent to, and extending into, a lake. Fossils and
artefacts deriving from horizons of sands and silts are not abraded and show
evidence of minimal transport. A large mammalian assemblage has been
collected from the deposits, showing a striking dominance of Alcelaphini […]
to indicate the presence of extensive dry grasslands at KGA10’ (Suwa et al.,
1997).
? Chesowanja A. boisei: ‘The fossiliferous sediments were deposited in a
lagoon […] Abundant root casts […] suggest that the embayment was flanked by
reeds and the presence of calcareous algae indicates that the lagoon was
warm and shallow. Bellamya and catfish are animals tolerant of relatively
stagnant water, and such situation would also be suitable for turtles and
crocodiles’ (Carney et al., 1971).
? Olduvai middle Bed I: A. boisei O.H.5 as well as habilis O.H.7 and O.H.62
were found in the most densely vegetated, wettest condition, with the
highest lake levels (Walter et al., 1991), near ostracods, freshwater
snails, fish, and aquatic birds (Conroy, 1990); ‘[…] the middle Bed-I faunas
indicate a very rich closed woodland environment, richer than any part of
the present-day savanna biome in Africa […] (Fernández-Jalvo et al., 1998).
Fossilized leaves and pollen are rare in the sediments of Beds I and II, but
swamp vegetation is indicated by abundant vertical roots channels and casts
possibly made by some kind of reed. Fossil rhizomes of papyrus also suggest
the presence of marshland and/or shallow water’ (Conroy, 1990). ‘[…]
Cyperaceae fruits were common in H. habilis habitat (Bonnefille, 1984).
Ancient Egyptians ate Cyperus papyrus root which was also present at Olduvai
in swamp-margins and river banks’ (Puech, 1992).
? Olduvai O.H.24 habilis: ‘Crocodile remains predominate among the faunal
material from this site and more than 2,000 teeth were found. Tortoise
plates, shells of Urocyclid slugs, fish vertebrae and scales, bird bones and
pieces of ostrich eggshell were also relatively common (Leakey et al.,
1971).
? Malawi UR 501 early Homo: ‘The Plio-Pleistocene Chiwondo Beds of Northern
Malawi have yielded molluscs and fragmented remains of fish, turtles,
crocodiles and large mammals […] Microvertebrates and carnivores are
virtually unrepresented in the assemblage […] The general ecological setting
of the Malawi Rift during the Late Pliocene was a mosaic environment
including open and closed, dry and wet habitats, and which harbored a small
and ecologically unstable paleolake Malawi’ (Schrenk et al., 1995).
? Chemeron KNM-BC1 early Homo: ‘The Fish Beds […] seem to be almost entirely
lacustrine and fluviatile; fish remains are abundant […] Molluscs also lived
in the lake, and locally their remains accumulate to form shelly limestones’
(Martyn & Tobias, 1967).
? Turkana Boy KNM-WT 15000 H. erectus: ‘Mammalian fossils are rare at this
locality, the most abundant vertebrate fossils being parts of small and
large fish. The depositional environment was evidently an alluvial plain of
low relief […] Typical lacustrine forms (for example, ostracods, molluscs)
could invade the area […] The only other fauna found so far in the
fossiliferous bed are many opercula of the swamp snail Pila, a few bones of
the catfish Synodontis and two fragments of indeterminate large mammal bone
[…]’ (Brown et al., 1985).
? Mojokerto H. erectus: ‘The basal part of the Putjangan Beds is composed of
volcanic breccias containing marine and freshwater molluscs. The rest of the
Putjangan Beds is composed of black clays of lacustrine origin’ (Ninkovich &
Burckle, 1987).
? Peking H. erectus: ‘A big river and possibly a lake were located to the
east and contained various water species; along the shorelines grew reeds
and plants, which were home for buffalo, deer, otters, beavers and other
animals’ (Poirier, 1978); ‘[…] accumulation in quiet water. The cave at this
time was probably the locus of ponded water and was probably more open to
the athmophere’ (Weiner et al., 1998).
? Hopefield, Rabat & Terra Amata: H. erectus fossils came from sandstone
made up from dune sand resting upon a former sea beach (DeLumley 1990). In
Terra Amata, ‘there are also indications that the inhabitants ate oysters,
mussels and limpets – shells of which are present. The presence of fish
bones and fish vertebrae indicate that the population also fished’ (Poirier,
1987).
rwa...@junctionnet.com
nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
> In article <71db7f$pi4$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <rwa...@junctionnet.com>
wrote:
> >
> > Isn't this the problem with the AAT. We have the AAT in, ahem, full
> > flood and also the dried out fallback position when the incoming
> > becomes too hot and heavy. A recent poster to this NG put it very well
> > when he said that genuine scientific theory has a pretty clear idea
> > what it's about. Lacking any credible evidence the AAT can't set any
> > bounds around itself and is a morass of unsupported speculation.
>
> Perhaps. Now exactly how does that differ from the savanna theory?
>
How? In this. When new evidence indicated that hominid evolution
occurred in a wetter, more wooded habitat that became the new 'theory'.
In other words science goes where the evidence takes it.
> Also, you are claiming that the aquatic ape theory started out in
> its strong form and has since been weakened. But is that actually
> true? It is certainly claimed, by its opponents, but hard evidence
> of that hypothesis hasn't been produced.
>
The claim is that it's not easy to figure out exactly what the AAT
is at any given point in time. Either they are claiming that hominids
had an aquatic phase in their evolution substantial enough to pro-
duce profound morphological and metabolic changes or they're not. The
fall back position - ancient hominids exploited resources that were
to be found in swamps, along shorelines etc - is perfectly fine. Why
on earth wouldn't they? But such a commonsensical conjecture hardly
justifies the status of a theory, especially one with a name that
implies so much more.
> One of the standard "dirty tricks" in so-called scientific debate is
> to choose the most extreme form of your opponent's theory, laugh it
> out of court, and them claim that ALL of your opponents have been
> defeated. It quite often works, too.
>
> [ For one really good example of this, take a look at the medical
> attitudes to psychosomatic diseases over the past century or so.
> But there are dozens of others. ]
>
You're right. Tne construction of strawmen pollutes far too many
discussions of the type found in this group. However I must say
that Marc's vision of aquatic ape infants sleeping the night away
while bobbing around on the waves, their upper lips clamped firmly
over their nostrils tops anything I could come up with in the way
of a parody!
With regards to your point about psychosomatic diseases coming to
be seen as real let me state my basic point. The demonstrating of
the psychosomatic component of illnesses does not give status to
iris analysis and therapeutic touch; the discovery of the Kraken/Giant
Squid does not give status to Nessie and the Sasquatch; the
triumph of Wegener and plate tectonics does not give status to the
Flat Earthers. They only establish the tests that alternative
'theories' have to pass. A hound, set to the task of tracking a fox,
which takes off after every hare that crosses its path quite quickly
becomes a useless mutt. Science is no different.
Regards,
Rick Wagler
rwa...@junctionnet.com
"Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> wrote:
>
> rwa...@junctionnet.com
> >
> > Until and unless the AAT comes up with solid evidence to support
> > its claims paleoanthropolgy is quite right to ignore a 'theory'
> > which at its heart contains such a massive absurdity. Resources
> > are scarce and life is short.
> >
> It seems that you are unaware of a few facts. For instance:
>
> ? Lukeino KNM-LU 335 ‘pre-australopithecine’: ‘The red beds seems to contain
> marginal lacustrine deposits as indicated by the presence of algal mats and
> lacustrine bivalves (including complete specimens with valves in the closed
> position)’ (Pickford, 1975).
>
>
to Marc's original post]
This is an interesting list and I thank you for it but just what
do you propose I should conclude from it?
A} That various fossil hominids inhabited or at least ventured
into swamps, lagoons etc. Fine. Why not?
B} That conditions in South and East Africa were wetter and the
forest cover more extensive than Raymond Dart thought they
were when writing 75 years ago? Sure, okay. Even silly old
paleoanthropologists learn a thing or two in 75 years.
A lot of this list looks like it tells us where _fossils_ are created
rather than where hominids were living. I'm sure I wouldn't be telling
you something you don't know if I were to say that fossilization is
vanishingly rare when considering the total number of individuals of
extinct species that existed and that being buried quickly by flood
waters is about the best way there is to accomplish the task.
My qustion for you or anyone else is this. Given what we know or can
confidently hypothesize about the life histories of the various hominid
species in your list are their fossils abundant, rare or somewhere in
between when compared to the fossils of unambiguously aquatic animals
such as crocodiles, hippos, turtles etc?
And if I may, ask how many of the authors you cited in this list and
did the field work which provided the data which you seem to think
provides support for the AAT support you in this?
rossmacf
Marc Verhaegen wrote in message <71fu6o$pbg$1...@xenon.inbe.net>...
Marc,
You undersell yourself. AFAIR, the last time you posted all of this material
in an effort to shut an opposing view (mine) up, you included reference to
the South African caves (I think at Sterkfontein) having molluscs in them.
I never did get around to asking how a limestone cave containing the remains
of leopard or hyena (both noted aquatic predators) kills could represent
support the AAT?
rossmacf
Nick Maclaren wrote in message <71casg$kjv$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>...writes:
>|> To bracket the AAT with these "other crack pot theories" is being very
>|> ignorant.
>
>started to regard anything that the other side says as being
>necessarily nonsense, and have therefore ended up in extreme
>(and probably untenable) positions. This isn't an unusual
>problem :-)
>
>characteristics came from a time when we foraged in swamps and
>shallow water, and spent most of the DAY wet and quite a lot
>actually underwater. That may be right or wrong, but there are
>plenty of plausible locations, foods and so on - and lots of
>evidence that mammals can move from a dry lifestyle to that and
>back again.
>
>At its strongest, it claims that we became a fully marine mammal
>(rather like a dugong or sea otter) and then came back onto
>quite reasonable to regard it with suspicion in the absence of
>very good evidence.
>Email: nm...@cam.ac.uk
>
G'day Nick...
This is a reasonable and moderate view of the AAT / anti-AAT debate. However
I find that since tuning into this NG I have become a strong anti-AAT
advocate, because of the nature of the AAT proponents' arguments. I cannot
but agree with those who find that the AAT ground is continually shifting,
from the early '70's position of a primarily marine aquatic niche to the
minimalist forest paddler position, but always supported by the most dubious
of scientific theorising.
Recent posts from Elaine Morgan indicate that much of the theory used to
support her original AAT speculations, such as salt cravings, tearing and
breath-holding in neonates, can no longer be seen as evidence of AAT;
however I struggle to understand what are the remaining cornerstones of her
version of AAT.
As regards Marc Verhaegen's version, it seems to rely on (a) support from a
very narrow group of scientists - i.e. himself & Norman McPhail & their
joint writings, (b) impossibly convoluted speculations about gorillas &
chimps evolving from bipeds, (c) out of context references to molluscs found
around fossils, without any reference to the detail of the research of the
paleontologists whose work is being cited, and (d), as he is again at it
this week, attacking straw man versions of the "savanna ape theory" (how
many times do the references to the savanna as not being a treeless plain
have to be posted??).
I really wish, as you do, that the arguments didn't have to rely on
personalised attacks on people's belief systems, but if the people in
question could rely more on science and less on belief systems, the
arguments wouldn't run this way.
I still can't discern a well thought out Aquatic Ape Theory which references
exactly which lines of evidence support it and which don't, what type of
aquatic niche was occupied, or what tests can be applied to prove or
disprove the theory.
Any takers on a response (who am I kidding??)
Marc Verhaegen
>>
>> ? Lukeino KNM-LU 335 ‘pre-australopithecine’: ‘The red beds seems to
contain
>> marginal lacustrine deposits as indicated by the presence of algal mats
and
>> lacustrine bivalves (including complete specimens with valves in the
closed
>> position)’ (Pickford, 1975).
>>
>>
> to Marc's original post]
>
> This is an interesting list and I thank you for it but just what do you
propose I should conclude from it?
The literature shows that not only the Taung cranium, but most hominid
fossils - from a time span covering at least the last six million years -
have been discovered in varied, but consistently wet environments: in humid
forested areas or/and in the immediate proximity of abundant water
collections at the time. However, there are the well-known difficulties of
paleo-ecological reconstructions (Shipman & Harris, 1988): ‘taphonomic
events […] may selectively destroy or distort the fossil record and the
association among species’; animals ‘may stray out of their preferred
habitats into other areas’; ‘habitats are often complex and mosaic’;
‘ecological zones or habitats [migrate] across basins in response to
climatic and other fluctuations’; and, most importantly, ‘depositional
variables […] bias the fossil record by sampling a disproportionate number
of habitats related to water (e.g., lake margins, streams, channels, deltas)
and by failing to sample many open-country habitats farther away from water
sources’. Indeed, that many hominid fossils have been discovered in such
places by no means proves that they actually lived there. However, it
certainly does not exclude it.
The list shows that some very early hominids, as opposed to later
australopithecines, have been found near lacustrine molluscs (Lukeino and
Tabarin ca. 6.5 and 5 Ma). But later, Ardipithecus ramidus, supposedly
another early hominid, must have lived in a wooded habitat, amid
predominantly colobine monkeys (Aramis ca. 4.5 Ma). Pliocene
australopithecines ca. 4-3 Ma apparently frequently dwelt in warm and humid,
more or less closed environments (gallery forest or wooded habitat in
Kanapoi, Chad, Hadar, Makapansgat, but inconclusive for Garusi-Laetoli).
Pleistocene robust australopithecines since 2.5 Ma probably lived in
generally dryer and more open landscapes (grassland in Kromdraai and Konso),
but their remains lay in riverbanks, lagoons, marshes, lake-margins, near
papyrus (Olduvai) and reed (Kromdraai, Olduvai, Chesowanja). All Homo
species, in contrast with the australopiths, are found near molluscs.
Conclusions:
- no evidence of savanna,
- earliest hominids 6-5 Ma near molluscs,
- early australopiths 4-3 MA in gallery forests,
- robust australopiths in reed & papyrus beds,
- Homo species near molluscs.
What is interesting in this list is
(1) the apparent difference between the Australopith. & Homo species,
(2) the confirmation by dental & microwear & other data:
Wetland apes: hominid palaeo-environment and diet
Marc Verhaegen & Pierre-François Puech - UMR 6569 du CNRS - Faculté d’
Odontologie de Marseille - France 1998 Abstracts Dual Congress
The combination of the available evidence from different anthropological
researches makes it clear that hominid evolution did not begin in warm and
dry but in warm and wet conditions.
a. No feature typical of savannah mammals is found in humans: low need of
drinking-water or succulent food; concentrated urine; tolerance of
dehydration and radiation heat; high diurnal body temperatures and daily
temperature fluctuations; high velocities; digiti/unguligrady; poorly
developed vocalisations and dexterity...
b. Comparative studies of cheekteeth microwear suggest that the australopith
diet included marshland plants (PF Puech). In afarensis, the enamel has a
polished surface (cf. mountain beaver, capybara: sappy aquatic herbs and
grasses, buds and bark of young trees). In boisei, it displays more pits,
wide parallel striations and deep recessed dentine (cf. beaver: aquatic
plants, bark, more woody parts). In habilis, the margins of the striae have
been polished and slightly etched (cf. coypu: reed, sedges, marsh plants,
fruits, molluscs).
c. Robust australopiths resemble reed/bamboo-eaters in front teeth reduction
and cheekteeth broadening (cf. gentle lemurs, giant panda, EL DuBrul), and
estimates of the robusts’ bite force also suggest “low-energy food… to be
processed in large quantities… hard and round in shape” (B Demes & N Creel).
d. The low Sr/Ca ratios in Swartkrans robusts have been explained by partial
carnivory (unlikely with their herbivorous dentition), eating leaves and
shoots of forbs and woody plants (cf. kudu) and eating food from wet,
well-drained streamside soils (A Sillen).
e. Palaeo-ecology indicates that early australopithecines lived in warm,
humid and often forested landscapes. Robust australopiths dwelt near more
open environments like grasslands, marshlands and lagoons. Homo species are
frequently found near ancient lakes, seas and rivers where molluscs were
abundant.
It seems that early australopiths were bipedal frugi/herbivores in forest
clearings (cf. western gorillas eat sedges, wading in shallow waters, D
Chadwik). The robusts later ate marshland plants like papyrus, reed, nuts
etc. Early Homo used stones to crack nuts and shellfish (cf. mangrove
capuchins, M Fernandes). This would explain stone tool use for other
purposes, the rapid spread to SE Asia, and the increase in brain size (SC
Cunnane).
Marc Verhaegen
>Marc,
>You undersell yourself. AFAIR, the last time you posted all of this
material
>in an effort to shut an opposing view (mine) up, you included reference to
>the South African caves (I think at Sterkfontein) having molluscs in them.
No, never molluscs near A.africanus AFAIK:
- Makapan A. africanus: ‘[…] very different conditions from those prevailing
today. Higher rainfall, fertile, alkaline soils and moderate relief
supported significant patches of sub-tropical forest and thick bush, rather
than savannah. Taphonomic considerations […] suggest that sub-tropical
forest was the hominins’ preferred habitat rather than grassland or
bushveld, and the adaptations of these animals was therefore fitted to a
forest habitat’ (Rayner et al., 1993; see also Reed, 1993; and Wood, 1993).
- Taung australopithecine: ‘the clayey matrix from which the Taung cranium
was extracted, and the frequent occurrence of calcite veins and void
fillings within it (Butzer 1974, 1980) do suggest a more humid environment
during its accumulation’ (Partridge, 1985).
- Sterkfontein A. africanus & Swartkrans A. robustus: Many South African
australopithecines are discovered in riverside caves, presumably often
filled with the remainders of the consumption process of large felids
(Brain, 1981).
>I never did get around to asking how a limestone cave containing the
remains
>of leopard or hyena (both noted aquatic predators) kills could represent
support the AAT?
What "AAT" do you think I'm supporting?
The available data suggest the australopiths were bipedally wading
herbivores, at first in gallery forests (graciles), later also in reedbeds
etc. (robusts). They seem to have lived +- like the lowland gorillas when
they wade in forest swamps & eat aquatic herbaceous vegetation. One of the
differences IMO is that lowland gorillas are known to feed only marginally
on this AHV (some 2%), but the australopiths much more frequently.
(Our thick enamel & tool use suggest our ancestors at that time lived near
the seacoasts & partly consumed shellfish. Fossilisation is very unlikely in
mangrove areas. Tidal water movements spread the bones over a vast area, and
the high acidity dissolves the bony remains. In mangrove areas the sea floor
is plain, so there is virtually no chance for a landslide to cover any
remains. The australopiths are of course not our ancestors but sidebranches.
The inland offshoots of the Australopith. & Homo species are more likely to
be discovered than mangrove dwelling hominids & the most important predators
of these hominids were probably large felids. At that time our ancestors IMO
lived at the Indian Ocean seacoasts. See the finds of erectus-like fossils
(much more humanlike than the australopiths), possibly in India 3.4 mya
(M.P.Singh 1998 Dual Congress 1998), & in Java probably almost 2 mya.)
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
>As regards Marc Verhaegen's version, it seems to rely on
>(a) support from a very narrow group of scientists - i.e. himself & Norman
McPhail & their joint writings,
Is that an argument?
(P-F.Puech has personally studied the enamel microwear of most hominid
species under the electrone microscope. He & his group is one of the few
that have compared the australopith.teeth teeth with mammals feeding on
aquatic herbaceous vegetation (AHV) & discovered striking resemblances.
Because these facts are not well-known that does not mean that they don't
exist.)
>(b) impossibly convoluted speculations about gorillas & chimps evolving
from bipeds,
The last common ancestor of humans & chimps lived 6-4 mya. Most if not all
traditional anthropologists accept that at that time there existed bipedal
hominids. So you must conclude that the LCA, ie, the ancestor of both chimps
& humans, was bipedal. What's your problem? Be logical.
>(c) out of context references to molluscs found
>around fossils, without any reference to the detail of the research of the
>paleontologists whose work is being cited,
I've given the refs several times. What refs do you need?
(You have to see the facts. It's not because you believe that australopiths
did not eat AHV that they didn't. I know this view is opposite to what most
anthropologists used to believe. So what? Open your eyes.)
>(d), as he is again at it
>this week, attacking straw man versions of the "savanna ape theory" (how
>many times do the references to the savanna as not being a treeless plain
>have to be posted??).
What's the alternative? What alternative do you provide, Ross?? Please give
your view.
......
I'm well aware that several details in my views might eventually appear to
be wrong & I know that there is a lot of speculation in these view, I have
no problem with that, but not one single hypothesis in my work is not
supported by the (paleontol., physiol., comparative etc.) data.
Marc
rossmacf
South African limestone caves were there. I still don't see anything in your
references which necessarily must be viewed as support for AAT. I mean,
doesn't the "savanna" have lakes & streams in it? And BTW, if homininds are
so badly adapted to "savanna", how is it that Khoi San and desert aborigines
in Australia survive so well?
Also, you never replied to my inquiry in reference to panda's thumbs being a
response to an aquatic panda phase. Do polar bears & grizzlies have
oversized metatarsals as do pandas?
Marc Verhaegen wrote in message <71ifi8$5qe$1...@xenon.inbe.net>...
Marc Verhaegen
>I do apologise Marc, I have undersold you. Of course the references to the
>South African limestone caves were there. I still don't see anything in
your
>references which necessarily must be viewed as support for AAT. I mean,
>doesn't the "savanna" have lakes & streams in it? And BTW, if homininds are
>so badly adapted to "savanna", how is it that Khoi San and desert
aborigines
>in Australia survive so well?
("so well" seems to be an overstatement: see maps of population densities)
Yes, they're adapted to savannas, but IMO this is a "recent" adaptation
(<<100,000 years in the Khoi-San & <<50,000 in the Austr.aborigines), just
as Eskimos are adapted to polar environments (<<30,000), thanks to our large
brains (primates, seals, dolphins...) & dexterity (racoons, primates...) &
technology (beginning with stone tools: sea-otter, chimp, capuchin) etc.
Most humans are not adapted to polar nor to savanna milieus. People on
vacation prefer to go to the beach, not to the savanna.
And indeed, my refs (alone) are not enough to accept any AAT. As far as they
are reliable (see problems of fossilisation) they seem to suggest that the
early australopiths lived in gallery & swamp forests, the robusts in more
open milieus near marshes (though always near trees). In combination with
dental & microwear data, they suggest that the australopiths (bipedal +
curved phalanges, ie, wading + climbing) fed more on aquatic than on
terrestrial herbaceous vegetation, ie, AHV>THV (whereas in lowland gorillas
THV>>AHV).
(As you know, western lowland gorillas regularly wade bipedally in shallow
forest swamps feeding on AHV. This is not our ancestral lifestyle, yet it's
easily derivable from what I think to be the lifestyle of the LCA of humans,
chimps & gorillas: wading, climbing, stone using, fruit+shellfish eating
(see our "Chimp & gorilla forebears walked on 2 legs"). The australopiths &
Afr.apes became more herbivorous IMO (at first AHV, later THV), whereas Homo
evolved a more diving lifestyle & colonised the Indian Ocean shores & only
much later re-invaded the land following the rivers.
From M.A.Raath etc.ed.1998 "Abstracts of the Dual Congress" Wit
Univ.Johannesburg p.47 & 128-9:
Wetland apes: hominid palaeo-environment and diet
Marc Verhaegen & Pierre-François Puech - UMR 6569 du CNRS - Faculté d’
Odontologie de Marseille - France
The combination of the available evidence from different anthropological
Australopithecine ancestors of African apes?
Palaeo-anthropological data do not exclude the possibility that not only
humans but also chimpanzees and gorillas could have had
australopithecine-like ancestors. In fact, the traditional hypothesis – that
all australopithecines are closer relatives of humans than of chimps or
gorillas – has serious difficulties:
a. The apparent absence or extreme rarity of fossil ancestors or relatives
of any African ape is puzzling.
b. Various australopith-like features are present in premature but not in
adult African apes (e.g. relative orthognathy, less dorsal foramen magnum,
more orthogrady).
c. Australopiths lack the uniquely derived features that set Homo, at least
since erectus, apart from nonhuman primates (e.g. external nose, very large
brain, very long legs), and generally resemble the apes.
d. At the time of the robust australopiths there already lived more
humanlike creatures like KNM-ER 1470.
The Laetoli footprints A and G suggest that australopithecines were partly
or fully bipedal. Bipedalism is generally considered to be the defining
feature of the hominids, which links australopiths with humans. But the
African apes’ locomotion is unique - plantigrady plus knuckle-walking - and
is easily derivable from the kind of “short”-legged plantigrade bipedalism
that is frequently seen in lowland gorillas wading in shallow waters and
occasionally in all African apes. If the African apes had more bipedal
ancestors, there is every reason to include them into the hominids – in
agreement with the comparative molecular evidence of DNA and proteins.
>Also, you never replied to my inquiry in reference to panda's thumbs being
a
>response to an aquatic panda phase.
Romer: surnumerary digits are only seen in the hands of ichthyosaurs (not in
other vertebrates, swimming or climbing or cursorial or whatever).
>Do polar bears & grizzlies have oversized metatarsals as do pandas?
If they had, Gould would have told us, wouldn't he?
(Pandas & other bears split ca.15 mya AFAIR.)
Marc
alg...@my-dejanews.com
> I still can't discern a well thought out Aquatic Ape Theory which references
> exactly which lines of evidence support it and which don't, what type of
> aquatic niche was occupied, or what tests can be applied to prove or
> disprove the theory.
>
> Any takers on a response
Hi Ross
I'm sorry to hear you've been put off the AAT because of fluctuating theories.
Presumably this hasn't led you to give up on human evolution and start
believing the book of genesis' explanation, which hasn't varied for thousands
of years.
Let's just focus in one aspect of humans and pose the question which model of
human evolution best explains it.
Why did apes become bipedal?
The aquatic explanation suggests that it was an advantage to an ape living in
waist-high water. If the ape could not get up on two legs and wade it would
drown. AATers are all united on this.
What are the traditional explanations?
Well, of course there are many explanations and there is far from unanimity.
Was it
a) To help us to use tools?
b) To cool us down, standing in hot grasslands?
c) To peer over the horizon to look for prey/predators?
d) Pick your own.
Why is the AAT position on this so fantastic?
Algis
Elaine Morgan
writes
>In article <71eldr$e3p$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
> nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
>> In article <71db7f$pi4$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <rwa...@junctionnet.com>
>wrote:
>> >
>> > Isn't this the problem with the AAT. We have the AAT in, ahem, full
>> > flood and also the dried out fallback position when the incoming
>> > becomes too hot and heavy. A recent poster to this NG put it very well
>> > when he said that genuine scientific theory has a pretty clear idea
>> > what it's about. Lacking any credible evidence the AAT can't set any
>> > bounds around itself and is a morass of unsupported speculation.
>>
>> Perhaps. Now exactly how does that differ from the savanna theory?
>>
>
> How? In this. When new evidence indicated that hominid evolution
> occurred in a wetter, more wooded habitat that became the new 'theory'.
> In other words science goes where the evidence takes it.
You want it both ways. AAT has shifted its emphases when new evidence
came to light . The orthodox position has done the same. In the case of
AAT you describe this as shifty behaviour - having a "fall-back
position" to retire to. When exactly the same thing occurs in the
orthodox context you praise it as being flexible and responding to new
data. It is exactly the same thing with this one exception. When my
thoughts about salt in tears and sweat were invalidated by new evidence
I accepted that but continued to hold that the anomalies must have some
other explanation. I even tried to find one. Among the orthodox only a
very few like P.V.Tobias have faced up to this and said: If the savanna
theory has failed us we are back to square one and must look for another
one. The orthodox stance has been to ignore the need to replace savanna,
to pretend that it is somehow still there, or that a mosaic habitat
somehow constitutes a new "theory". You do well to put it in quotes,
because it explains nothing.
>
>>
>
> The claim is that it's not easy to figure out exactly what the AAT
> is at any given point in time. Either they are claiming that hominids
> had an aquatic phase in their evolution substantial enough to pro-
> duce profound morphological and metabolic changes or they're not.
Okay.let's clarify. I can't speak for "they", because opinions vary.
As much as (say) the orthodox attempts to account for bipedalism vary.
That is in both cases healthy; minds are at work, throwing up ideas.
My idea is that at some point in time the bipedal behaviour that most
primates exhibit when crossing or wading into water became (whether
voluntarily or under duress) habitual enough to cause skeletal changes
selected to make bipedalism more effective. I would call that a
substantial effect, yes. And since water is the only element guaranteed
to produce b.p. locomotion in a wide variety of primates it would be
highly dogmatic to rule it out as a possibility.
Secondly, I also think that at some point they were in the habit of
putting their heads under water. I cannot be sure of the reason.
Maybe the level of water in their habitat varied with the season and it
became necessary to swim to cross wider stretches of water. More likely
they were going under to forage. Maybe break off shellfish from the
underwater rocks as sea otters do. But I believe this behaviour also
became sufficiently habitual to bring about changes, otherwise
unexplained, in the respiratory canal. Since water is the environment
most likely to necessitate changes in the respiratory canal, it would be
highly dogmatic to rule it out unless and until some better idea comes
to light.
Elaine
Elaine Morgan
<ross...@eisa.net.au> writes
>
>Recent posts from Elaine Morgan indicate that much of the theory used to
>support her original AAT speculations, such as salt cravings, tearing and
>breath-holding in neonates, can no longer be seen as evidence of AAT;
>however I struggle to understand what are the remaining cornerstones of her
>version of AAT.
Cornerstaones:
Humans ANOA (and no other apes) use bipedal locomotion
Humans ANOA have lost functional body hair.
Humans ANOA have large deposits of sucutaneous fat, from birth.
Humans ANOA have a descended larunx
Humans ANOA have voluntary breath control
Humans ANOA have proliferating sebaceous glands
Humans ANOA have a movable velum
Humans ANOA have lost apocrine glands except in opubic area
Humans ANOA have infants born covered with vernix
Humans ANOA have lost the habit of pant-cooling
Humans have only half the olfactory powers of other apes.
Humans ANOA have emotional tears.
Humans ANOA gasp when startled. (Can't porve this one but have sought
in vain for scientific evidence of this reaction in any other mammal)
Humans ANOA have resuscitated the hymen, lost to all other primates
higher than the lemurs.
Humans ANOA have lost estrus.
...et al. I do not believe that all these things are best explained
by living in a mosaic habitat, differing from the apes' habitat only in
necessitating occasional walks acroos open ground between one patch of
forest and the next. Do you? In all honesty?
>
>
>I still can't discern a well thought out Aquatic Ape Theory which references
>exactly which lines of evidence support it and which don't,
Well, where have you looked? I tried to give that in my last book
>or which type of
>aquatic niche was occupied,
I dont know, I wasn't there. The evidence points to water. Darwin
hypothesised Africa for our lca. He didn't say where; he didn't know.
The function of a hypotheses is to generate the kind of questions and
research that will bring us nearer to the answers.
what tests can be applied to prove or
>disprove the theory.
I was told for years that the fossil evidence disproved it. It doesn't.
All the long list of human autapomorphies is strong evidnce that our
ancestors lived in a very different habitat from their ape cousins. I
think nobody disputes that. Until someone comes up with a better idea
the water hypothesis is the only one in the field. When savanna was the
only one in the field that was held to be strong evidence in its favour.
It was treated as proven. Until it was proven wrong. Why shouldn't the
water theory be given an equal run for its money, even if it too
ultimately bites the dust?
>
>Elaine
--
Elaine Morgan
rwa...@junctionnet.com
First things first so we don't have things being more unpleasant than
necessary. I am not accusing you or Marc or any other AAT proponent of
being 'shifty' or dishonest in any other sense. Your nemesis Lorenzo
makes accusations of that sort and I find that unfortunate and counter
productive since, IMHO, he has the bigger battalions on his side.
Secondly I put the word 'theory' in quotes not because I think the
revisions to the notion of hominids evolving in habitats that were not
as dry as Raymond Dart first thought is invalid but because I would like to
rescuethe word. A theory in the strict scientific sense is an explanation for
a body of evidence, both observational and experimental, which has
predictive value. Lacking this body of evidence what is described as
a theory is in fact only a hypothesis, speculation, a guess or inspir-
ation. This is not to say that the mosaic 'theory' is unsupported - far
from it - but everything is not a theory. There is a theory of hominid
evolution which says our evolutionary history is a terrestrial one and
that is where the entire body of evidence points. Where people like me
take issue with the amorphous nature of the AAT is when evidence or
common sensical conjecture of ancient hominids being found around lakes
and eating shellfish is proposed as evidence for more extreme notions
for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
> >
> > The claim is that it's not easy to figure out exactly what the AAT
> > is at any given point in time. Either they are claiming that hominids
> > had an aquatic phase in their evolution substantial enough to pro-
> > duce profound morphological and metabolic changes or they're not.
>
> Okay.let's clarify. I can't speak for "they", because opinions vary.
> As much as (say) the orthodox attempts to account for bipedalism vary.
The fact of bipedalism is not in question. Why can't you speak for "they"?
Because there is no consistent theory that has a body of evidence for
which it must account. Cosmologists who argue for 'Big Bang' don't say
they can't speak for other Big Bang Cosmologists. That's understood and
unnecessary because there is a theory attempting to explain evidence which
is independent of any one of them. The situation for the AAT is as if
there were several competing theories of relativity because the speed of
light was unknown and everybody was using a different figure based on
pure guesswork.
> That is in both cases healthy; minds are at work, throwing up ideas.
> My idea is that at some point in time the bipedal behaviour that most
> primates exhibit when crossing or wading into water became (whether
> voluntarily or under duress) habitual enough to cause skeletal changes
> selected to make bipedalism more effective. I would call that a
> substantial effect, yes. And since water is the only element guaranteed
> to produce b.p. locomotion in a wide variety of primates it would be
> highly dogmatic to rule it out as a possibility.
Or rather primates have a body plan guaranteed to produce a minimal sort
of bipedalism when they go into water.
>
> Secondly, I also think that at some point they were in the habit of
> putting their heads under water. I cannot be sure of the reason.
> Maybe the level of water in their habitat varied with the season and it
> became necessary to swim to cross wider stretches of water. More likely
> they were going under to forage. Maybe break off shellfish from the
> underwater rocks as sea otters do. But I believe this behaviour also
> became sufficiently habitual to bring about changes, otherwise
> unexplained, in the respiratory canal. Since water is the environment
> most likely to necessitate changes in the respiratory canal, it would be
> highly dogmatic to rule it out unless and until some better idea comes
> to light.
>
Okay its not ruled out. The point is to rule it in. Want a better 'theory'?
How about the anatomical and metabolic features which have made Homo
sapiens the most phenomenally succesful _Terrestrial_ vertebrate ever
evolving those characters in response to adaptive pressures imposed by
terrestrial life.
Regards, Rick Wagler
Chollian Newsgroup User
: In article <71fu6o$pbg$1...@xenon.inbe.net>,
: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> wrote:
: >
: > rwa...@junctionnet.com
: > >
: > > Until and unless the AAT comes up with solid evidence to support
: > > its claims paleoanthropolgy is quite right to ignore a 'theory'
: > > which at its heart contains such a massive absurdity. Resources
: > > are scarce and life is short.
: > >
: > It seems that you are unaware of a few facts. For instance:
: >
: > ? Lukeino KNM-LU 335 ‘pre-australopithecine’: ‘The red beds seems to contain
: > marginal lacustrine deposits as indicated by the presence of algal mats and
: > lacustrine bivalves (including complete specimens with valves in the closed
: > position)’ (Pickford, 1975).
: >
: [Rest of list snipped for reasons of space. Please refer
: to Marc's original post]
: This is an interesting list and I thank you for it but just what
: do you propose I should conclude from it?
: A} That various fossil hominids inhabited or at least ventured
: into swamps, lagoons etc. Fine. Why not?
: B} That conditions in South and East Africa were wetter and the
: forest cover more extensive than Raymond Dart thought they
: were when writing 75 years ago? Sure, okay. Even silly old
: paleoanthropologists learn a thing or two in 75 years.
: A lot of this list looks like it tells us where _fossils_ are created
: rather than where hominids were living. I'm sure I wouldn't be telling
: you something you don't know if I were to say that fossilization is
: vanishingly rare when considering the total number of individuals of
: extinct species that existed and that being buried quickly by flood
: waters is about the best way there is to accomplish the task.
: My qustion for you or anyone else is this. Given what we know or can
: confidently hypothesize about the life histories of the various hominid
: species in your list are their fossils abundant, rare or somewhere in
: between when compared to the fossils of unambiguously aquatic animals
: such as crocodiles, hippos, turtles etc?
: And if I may, ask how many of the authors you cited in this list and
: did the field work which provided the data which you seem to think
: provides support for the AAT support you in this?
: Regards,
Marc Verhaegen
rwa...@junctionnet.com
>rescuethe word. A theory in the strict scientific sense is an explanation
for
>a body of evidence, both observational and experimental, which has
>predictive value. Lacking this body of evidence what is described as
>a theory is in fact only a hypothesis, speculation, a guess or inspir-
>ation. This is not to say that the mosaic 'theory' is unsupported - far
>from it - but everything is not a theory. There is a theory of hominid
>evolution which says our evolutionary history is a terrestrial one and
>that is where the entire body of evidence points.
Please, Rick...
The entire body of evidence (linear build, nakedness, volunt.breathing, SC
fat, apnea diving, etc. etc.) points to some "aquatic" or "amphibious"
theory or whatever you like to call it. Of course, we live at land, but all
evidence suggests we spent a lot of time wading & swimming & diving (& I
call "wading & swimming & diving" aquatic behaviour).
>
>Okay its not ruled out. The point is to rule it in. Want a better 'theory'?
>How about the anatomical and metabolic features which have made Homo
>sapiens the most phenomenally succesful _Terrestrial_ vertebrate ever
>evolving those characters in response to adaptive pressures imposed by
>terrestrial life.
What adaptive pressures imposed by terrestrial life do you mean??? please
name 1.
The point is not that we may be "the most phenomenally succesful
_Terrestrial_ vertebrate" (??, though nobody doubts we are terrestrial), but
how we got there. Certainly not through a savanna phase. Every non-forest
feature we have is much better explained by some "amphibious" (read:
semiaquatic) lifestyle than by some "savanna" lifestyle, see part of my
paper in Nutr.Health 9:165-191 (1993) "Aquatic vs savanna..." in which I
compared human features with savanna mammals, semiaquatics, fully aquatics,
arboreals & apes.
If you have still other (non-savanna) scenarios of human evolution please
let me know.
Marc
DISCUSSION OF THE COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE
Most of the listed human features appear to disprove the savanna hypothesis
in favour of the aquatic and especially the semi-aquatic hypothesis (Table
3).
More typical of (semi)aquatic than of savanna or arboreal mammals are:
nakedness, superficial fat, elaborate sebaceous glands, salty "tears",
multipapillary kidneys, flipper-like feet, broad hands, barrel-shaped
thorax, volitional breath control, poor olfaction, very long childhood and
very high longevity. A few other human features might also be typical of
aquatics (Morgan, 1982, 89; Verhaegen, 1987, 1991 a,c; Rhys Evans, 1992):
proneness to bronchial constriction, and to occlusion of the auditory canal
in swimmers, extensive superficial venous networks, and extensive, valveless
vertebral venous networks.
A second group of features, while characteristic of (semi)aquatic species,
may sometimes be found in arboreal mammals (often in apes), but these also
are absent in savanna mammals: rectal temperature around 37°C, very small
diurnal temperature fluctuations, proneness to dehydration, thermo-active
eccrine glands, ventro-ventral copulation, great angle between spine and
bind limbs, broadened thorax, very large brain, and very long lactation.
Very atypical of savanna mammals are: high water needs, low drinking
capacity, maximal urine concentration of c. 1400 mOsm/1, relatively long
first and fifth digital rays of feet and hands, tool use, well-developed
dexterity and vocality.
A few features, when compared to other mammals, do not allow clear
conclusions: bipedality, descended larynx, external nose, milk composition,
and long gestation.
Several human features are absent in Cetacea, Sirenia and most Pinnipedia:
large paranasal sinuses, moderate ear size, inferior position of the foramen
magnum, broad sternal bones, long clavicles, long arms, very long legs,
scrotal testes. All of these are found in (some or all) other primates, but
only the long limbs and the descended testes (and perhaps the large sinuses)
are normally seen in savanna mammals.
On balance then, if we must choose between an aquatic and a savanna
scenario, the choice is easy: not one single feature distinguishing the
savanna mammals is found in humans (relative independence of drinking water
and of water-containing nourishment, high tolerance of radiation heat, very
high diurnal body temperatures and daily temperature fluctuations, very
large external ears, slender build, high velocity, etc.).
In Table 3, the numerical score for "fully aquatic" is not far short of that
for "semi-aquatic", but in view of our long scalp, axillar and pubic hair,
abundant skin glands (eccrine, sebaceous, and axillar apocrine), scrotal
testes, intermediate ear size, pneumatised skull, inferior foramen magnum
position, broad shoulders, short lumbar spine, non-rudimentary pelvis, very
long legs, tool use, and return to the land, it is unlikely that there ever
existed a fully aquatic stage.....
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
I thought I answered this before.
>: > It seems that you are unaware of a few facts. For instance:
>: > ? Lukeino KNM-LU 335 ‘pre-australopithecine’: ‘The red beds seems to
contain
>: > marginal lacustrine deposits as indicated by the presence of algal mats
and
>: > lacustrine bivalves (including complete specimens with valves in the
closed
>: > position)’ (Pickford, 1975).
>: [Rest of list snipped for reasons of space. Please refer to Marc's
original post]
>
>: This is an interesting list and I thank you for it but just what do you
propose I should conclude from it?
>: A} That various fossil hominids inhabited or at least ventured into
swamps, lagoons etc. Fine. Why not?
OK. Swamp & lagoon = water, isn't? So what are we arguing about?
>: My question for you or anyone else is this. Given what we know or can
>: confidently hypothesize about the life histories of the various hominid
>: species in your list are their fossils abundant, rare or somewhere in
>: between when compared to the fossils of unambiguously aquatic animals
>: such as crocodiles, hippos, turtles etc.?
>
incromprehensable question?
(comma after "...your list"?)
(What can you confidently hypothesize about the life histories of the
various hominid species in my list??)
You seem to ask: How abundant are the fossils of the hominid species in my
list when compared to the fossils of unambiguously aquatic animals such as
crocodiles, hippos, turtles etc.?
The list is about hominid fossils, so the fossils of the hominid species are
"very" abundant.
I think you could better ask, what is the ratio of unambiguously aquatic
animals vs unambiguously terrestrial animals near the hominid fossils? but
then, what is terrestrial? what is aquatic? how near? etc.
Difficult to answer. I can only give:
1) my list (I didn't find any pro-savanna evidence),
2) my impression (for what it's worth to you),
3) the opinion of the authors of the papers,
4) sometimes complete absence of terr.forms,
5) the list is about fossil hominids, not about our ancestors.
1) Please read it carefully & try to find some correlations.
2) IMO:
- earliest hominids (6-5 mya) near molluscs,
- early australopiths (4-3 mya) in swamp & gallery forests,
- robust australopiths (2-1 mya) near reedbeds, riverside, lagoon..
- early Homo (2-1 mya) near molluscs.
IOW there are clear distinctions, which fit the dental (microwear) & the
archeol.data: early australopiths ate (besides fruits) aquatic herbaceaous
vegetation (cf. microwear in capibara...); robusts ate more reeds & sedges
(thick enamel & microwear); Homo fed (partly) on molluscs (cf. tool use).
3) eg,
- Hadar AL.333 A. afarensis: ‘found in swale-like features […] it is very
likely that they died and partially rotted at or very near this site […]
buried in streamside gallery woodland’ (Radosevich et al., 1992).
- Makapan A. africanus: ‘[…] very different conditions from those prevailing
today. Higher rainfall, fertile, alkaline soils and moderate relief
supported significant patches of sub-tropical forest and thick bush, rather
than savannah. Taphonomic considerations […] suggest that sub-tropical
forest was the hominins’ preferred habitat rather than grassland or
bushveld, and the adaptations of these animals was therefore fitted to a
forest habitat’ (Rayner et al., 1993; see also Reed, 1993; and Wood, 1993).
- Taung australopithecine: ‘the clayey matrix from which the Taung cranium
was extracted, and the frequent occurrence of calcite veins and void
fillings within it (Butzer 1974, 1980) do suggest a more humid environment
during its accumulation’ (Partridge, 1985).
- Lake Turkana: ‘The lake margins were generally swampy, with extensive
areas of mudflats […] Australopithecus boisei was more abundant in fluvial
environments, whereas Homo habilis was rare in such environments […]
Australopithecus fossils are more common than Homo both in channel and
floodplain deposits. The gracile hominids […] seem to be more restricted
ecologically to the lake margin than are the robust forms’ (Conroy, 1990).
- Ileret A. boisei: ‘the fossil sample reflects climatic and ecological
environmental conditions differing significantly from those of the present
day. At Ilerat, 1.5 Myr ago, climatic conditions must have been cooler and
more humid than today, and more favourable to extensive forests […] The
prominence of montane forest is particularly striking […] dominated by
Gramineae and Chenopodiaceae appropriate to the margins of a slightly saline
or alkaline lake’ (Bonnefille, 1976).
- Olduvai middle Bed I: ‘[…] the middle Bed-I faunas indicate a very rich
closed woodland environment, richer than any part of the present-day savanna
biome in Africa […] (Fernández-Jalvo et al., 1998). ‘[…] Cyperaceae fruits
were common in H. habilis habitat (Bonnefille, 1984). Ancient Egyptians ate
Cyperus papyrus root which was also present at Olduvai in swamp-margins and
river banks’ (Puech, 1992).
4) sometimes absence of terr.forms in immediate neighbourhood of hominid
fossils, eg,
- Lucy lay in a small, slow-moving stream. ‘Fossil preservation at this
locality is excellent, remains of delicate items such as crocodile and
turtle eggs and crab claws being found’ (Johanson & Taieb, 1976).
- Chesowanja A. boisei: ‘The fossiliferous sediments were deposited in a
lagoon […] Abundant root casts […] suggest that the embayment was flanked by
reeds and the presence of calcareous algae indicates that the lagoon was
warm and shallow. Bellamya and catfish are animals tolerant of relatively
stagnant water, and such situation would also be suitable for turtles and
crocodiles’ (Carney et al., 1971).
- Turkana Boy KNM-WT 15000 H. erectus: ‘Mammalian fossils are rare at this
locality, the most abundant vertebrate fossils being parts of small and
large fish. The depositional environment was evidently an alluvial plain of
low relief […] Typical lacustrine forms (for example, ostracods, molluscs)
could invade the area […] The only other fauna found so far in the
fossiliferous bed are many opercula of the swamp snail Pila, a few bones of
the catfish Synodontis and two fragments of indeterminate large mammal bone
[…]’ (Brown et al., 1985).
5) I have the impression that our ancestors at that time (4-1 mya) lived at
the Indian Ocean shores (see possible finds H.erectus in India 3.4 mya, eg,
M.P.Singh 1998 "First record of mid-Pleisto.hominid from Siwalik" Abstracts
Dual Congress p.67). IOW the African hominid fossils are relatives but
perhaps not ancestors of ours (in fact, I believe the australopiths are just
fossil African apes...). Fossilisation in mangrove areasis is very
difficult: the tides spread the bones over a vast area; the high acidity
dissolves the bones; in the mangrove areas the sea floor is flat, so
landslides can't cover any remains. But inland hominids that dwelt near
lagoons, estuaries and rivers have more chances to be fossilised (=
australopiths).
>: And if I may, ask how many of the authors you cited in this list and
>: did the field work which provided the data which you seem to think
>: provides support for the AAT support you in this?
(what "AAT" do you mean??)
If they use to think as far as you do, very few I'm afraid.
Marc
Elaine Morgan
>> >
>> >
>
>First things first so we don't have things being more unpleasant than
>necessary.
I'm sorry if I sounded unpleasant. I wasn't feeling that way .
> am not accusing you or Marc or any other AAT proponent of
>being 'shifty' or dishonest in any other sense. Your nemesis Lorenzo
>makes accusations of that sort and I find that unfortunate and counter
>productive since, IMHO, he has the bigger battalions on his side.
>
>Secondly I put the word 'theory' in quotes not because I think the
>revisions to the notion of hominids evolving in habitats that were not
>as dry as Raymond Dart first thought is invalid but because I would like to
>rescuethe word. A theory in the strict scientific sense is an explanation for
>a body of evidence, both observational and experimental, which has
>predictive value. Lacking this body of evidence what is described as
>a theory is in fact only a hypothesis, speculation, a guess or inspir-
>ation. This is not to say that the mosaic 'theory' is unsupported - far
>from it - but everything is not a theory.
Right, that is very clear. Now: suppose we agree that neither mosaic nor
water scenarios constitute "theories" in the Popperian sense which you
wish to stipulate. Then they are both, shall we say, hypotheses. The
water hypothesis offers a scenario which purports to explain many human
autapomorphies. Until recently the savanna hypothesis did the same. It
claimed to have predictive value but the predictions, insofar as there
were predictions, were not fuilfilled.
I cannot quite see in what sense the mosaic scenario constitutes even a
hypothesis, because I am not at all clear what it purports to explain.
You say "it is not unsupported - far from it ". There is plenty of
support for the idea that hominids lived at some time in a mosaic
environment. But there is very little or no new thinking to connect this
environment with any of the physical facts about the hominids that need
explaining. The strength of the savanna hypothesis was the idea that
protohominids lived in a dramatically different environment from other
apes, which could lead to the dramatic differences that in fact emerged.
The weakness of the mosaic idea is that the difference from the ape
habitat is minor, temporary, optional. If they got overheated they could
move into the shade of the nearby trees. Intermittent lack of such shade
is the only distinguishing feature of the mosaic on which the
conventional scientists seem to be agreed. You may know more than I do
about this. Can you give me references to papers which describe the
mosaic as a good source of explanations?
About predictions. If instead of saying "I think the savanna hyp[othesis
is invalid", I had said: "I predict that the savanna hypothesis will be
found to be invalid and will have to be abandoned", that prediction
would have been fulfilled. If I had said in 1972, "Hardy has named some
anomalies for which the water theory appears to offer a good
explanation. I predict that numbers of other anomalies will come to
light in the next couple of decades which no-one has thought about or
tried to explain which could arguably be connected with a watery
habitat"= then that prediction too would have been vindicated.
However I amm happy to settle for "hypothesis", and by your definition
that puts the water scenario on a scientific par with the mosaic one in
anybody's terms. Would you agree then that there is no good reason why
they should noty be given parity of esteem?
> is a theory of hominid
>evolution which says our evolutionary history is a terrestrial one and
>that is where the entire body of evidence points.
It depends what you call evidence. The fossil evidence is ambiguous.
Virtually all the hominid fossils were found in waterside locations.
It has been assumed that taphonomic bias is the only possible way of
accounting for this. That is an unsafe assumption.
You seem to assume that evidence from comparative anatomy is not
evidence. That is a very unsafe assumption. It is a recent heresy which
came into being after Dart had directed attention to fossil remains and
almost everyone in the field promptly forsook the study of general
comparative anatomy to immerse themselves in studies of bones and teeth
- the only features to fossilise. Darwin's work was 99 oercent
comparative anatomy. And it certainly got results.
>
>> > The claim is that it's not easy to figure out exactly what the AAT
>> > is at any given point in time. Either they are claiming that hominids
>> > had an aquatic phase in their evolution substantial enough to pro-
>> > duce profound morphological and metabolic changes or they're not.
>>
>> Okay.let's clarify. I can't speak for "they", because opinions vary.
>> As much as (say) the orthodox attempts to account for bipedalism vary.
>
>The fact of bipedalism is not in question.
No, but the reason for it is very much in question. It has been sought
in vain for well over a century. You imply that I base my ideas on
"facts" that *are* in question. I am not aware of doing this. If you can
find anything that I have stated as fact when you think it is not a
fact, I will try to sort it out.
>Why can't you speak for "they"?
Because different supporters of the aquatic idea have different
conceptions of how aquatic the creatures might have been. I thought you
were trying to pin me down to a specific pronouncement on this and there
is not enough evidence. I gave you my own guess.The difference between
this and other versions is no greater than the difference between
supporters of svanna scenarios who could not agree whether their
hominids were scavengers or seed eaters or hunters of big game. This
was not assumed to invalidate the whole idea of a savanna type of
existence.
no consistent theory that has a body of evidence for
>which it must account. Cosmologists who argue for 'Big Bang' don't say
>they can't speak for other Big Bang Cosmologists.
No, but any of the speculators about bipedalism - and they are legion -
would not be expected to take responisibility for the vews of other
speculators about bipedalism
The situation for the AAT is as if
>there were several competing theories of relativity because the speed
of
>light was unknown and everybody was using a different figure based on
>pure guesswork.
Ths is a good argument for saying that speculating about human origins
is not an exact science. I agree. It is not a good argument for saying
that any other speculation resembles physics any more closely than the
water speculation does.
>
>> That is in both cases healthy; minds are at work, throwing up ideas.
>> My idea is that at some point in time the bipedal behaviour that most
>> primates exhibit when crossing or wading into water became (whether
>> voluntarily or under duress) habitual enough to cause skeletal changes
>> selected to make bipedalism more effective. I would call that a
>> substantial effect, yes. And since water is the only element guaranteed
>> to produce b.p. locomotion in a wide variety of primates it would be
>> highly dogmatic to rule it out as a possibility.
>
>Or rather primates have a body plan guaranteed to produce a minimal
sort
>of bipedalism when they go into water.
Yes. I agree. But only in one did it become much more than minimal
>
> it would be
>> highly dogmatic to rule it out unless and until some better idea comes
>> to light.
>>
>
>Okay its not ruled out. The point is to rule it in. Want a better 'theory'?
>How about the anatomical and metabolic features which have made Homo
>sapiens the most phenomenally succesful _Terrestrial_ vertebrate ever
>evolving those characters in response to adaptive pressures imposed by
>terrestrial life.
Fine. That could account very nicely for the opposable thumb and the big
brain and the invention of tools. But there are numerous features which
would have been maladaptive for a terrestrial primate when they first
evolved - and are mildly maladaptive even today. Natural selection
could never have accounted for them in a savanna or mosaic setting.
Something extraordinary happened. Why was it only one
ape that turned out so phenominally successful? We all started from the
same original ancestor. Something must have happened to us which did not
happen to them. Your summary does not indicate what you think it was.
Elaine
Koen Robeys
Elaine Morgan wrote in message ...
>Right, that is very clear. Now: suppose we agree that neither mosaic nor
>water scenarios constitute "theories" in the Popperian sense which you
>wish to stipulate. Then they are both, shall we say, hypotheses. The
>water hypothesis offers a scenario which purports to explain many human
>autapomorphies. Until recently the savanna hypothesis did the same. It
>claimed to have predictive value but the predictions, insofar as there
>were predictions, were not fuilfilled.
Just one point. IF we listen to philosophers at all concerning the value of
science, THEN we can do a lot worse than starting with Popper. In that case,
the mosaic theory has the weak point that it is not very "dangerous": when
is it actually wrong? If humans are so nicely adaptable to savannah and
woodland and water and the pole and mountains and (...), then what does the
theory add to what we already see?
From that point of view, at least, the AAT is much more interesting because
much more dangerous. In its ability to be utterly wrong, it attracts sharp
questions and deep investigations. It is obviously quite shocking to some
people and much more focused on what actually might have happened. It is not
a "safe" theory like the mosaic one, which even if the watertheory were
taken for granted might still manage to claim the aquatic stage was just one
part of what in the end was te big picture - the mosaic.
I noticed many philosophers seem to like AAT for this reason: it provokes,
it makes people stop and think. That doesn't say anything about the value of
its content. It's just their deep conviction the orthodoxy should be
sometimes challenged.
Lenire
I came across a SAT, Spanking Ape Theory, explaining the
loss of fur as a means of facilitating sexual spanking.
That was posted as a joke but quickly there were references
to chimps and such actually spanking.
Aquatic Ape is not erotic in the least.
=====
Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science
as the layman equates incomprehensibility with science.
alg...@my-dejanews.com
Is this the best you can do? It is not the AAT that is convoluted but the
various traditional theories.
Give me the traditional uncovoluted arguments that explain hairlessness and
bipedalism. It is the human evolutionary 'establishment' that try to pull the
wool over the layman's eyes and make it incomprehensible to them.
Algis
rwa...@junctionnet.com
"Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> wrote:
> Chollian Newsgroup User
>
> I thought I answered this before.
Hello Marc. This reposting is not my doing. I have no idea who the
Chollian Newsgroup User is. I apologize if it seemed as if I was
badgering you for an answer to my questions. I wasn't and I wish
the person responsible would say what he intended by reposting my
questions.
Regards, Rick Wagler
rwa...@junctionnet.com
"Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> wrote:
>
> rwa...@junctionnet.com
>
> >rescuethe word. A theory in the strict scientific sense is an explanation
> for
> >a body of evidence, both observational and experimental, which has
> >predictive value. Lacking this body of evidence what is described as
> >a theory is in fact only a hypothesis, speculation, a guess or inspir-
> >ation. This is not to say that the mosaic 'theory' is unsupported - far
> >from it - but everything is not a theory. There is a theory of hominid
> >evolution which says our evolutionary history is a terrestrial one and
> >that is where the entire body of evidence points.
>
> The entire body of evidence (linear build, nakedness, volunt.breathing, SC
> fat, apnea diving, etc. etc.) points to some "aquatic" or "amphibious"
> theory or whatever you like to call it.
What do you call it? I questioned the careless use of the concept
'theory'. As for whether we are dealing with marine, amphibious,
aquatic, soggy, damp, lighty splashed upon or whatever is for you to
say. You must know by now that people are having a hard time figuring
out what any version of the AAT actually proposes.
> Of course, we live at land, but all the evidence suggests we spent a lot of
time wading & swimming & diving (& I call "wading & swimming & diving" aquatic
behaviour).
Sufficient to produce profound morphological and metabolic changes?
Presumably you say yes but all your recent postings to me and others
is only a list of evidence that hominids spent at least some time around
lakes, lagoons etc. This is not terribly persuasive for the wetter
version of AAT. A labouring elephant gives forth a mouse.
>
> >
> >Okay its not ruled out. The point is to rule it in. Want a better 'theory'?
> >How about the anatomical and metabolic features which have made Homo
> >sapiens the most phenomenally succesful _Terrestrial_ vertebrate ever
> >evolving those characters in response to adaptive pressures imposed by
> >terrestrial life.
>
> What adaptive pressures imposed by terrestrial life do you mean??? please
> name 1.
>
How about the opening up of the landscape of Eastern Africa....you
know the usual...
> The point is not that we may be "the most phenomenally succesful
> _Terrestrial_ vertebrate" (??, though nobody doubts we are terrestrial), but
> how we got there. Certainly not through a savanna phase. Every non-forest
> feature we have is much better explained by some "amphibious" (read:
> semiaquatic) lifestyle than by some "savanna" lifestyle, see part of my
> paper in Nutr.Health 9:165-191 (1993) "Aquatic vs savanna..." in which I
> compared human features with savanna mammals, semiaquatics, fully aquatics,
> arboreals & apes.
> If you have still other (non-savanna) scenarios of human evolution please
> let me know.
So we're back to the savanna as Southern Alberta or Eastern Montana
in a bad year are we? You just won't accept what people constantly
say when they point out that nobody is arguing from the position of
the straw man which seems so necessary to keep the AAT going. However
I'm game for an argument....
If you wish to play the pompous German Professor to the hominid bumblebee
be my guest. I have read several times - oh, okay, skimmed it once - your
list of the many and various ways in which we don't resemble camels. I had
always supposed so but it always helps to have the opinion of an expert.
However unsuited to the savanna you think hominids were they just didn't
care it seems. At some point hominids (Australopithecus,
habilis, erectus who knows) moved into it and eventually (sapiens) became
dominant. Compared to a Musk Ox we're terribly unsuited to life in the
high arctic but there we are. Compared to a lynx we're terribly unsuited
to life in the Northern Boreal Forest but there we are. I could go on...
According to you we are, however, very well suited to life in all the
various marine and aquatic habitats and there we aren't. Not in a
single one of them. You propose that a full and complete suite of traits
which made us accomplished aquatics should have been transferred in toto
to a terrestrial existence and proved so well suited to the task that
sapiens became, and I repeat, the most phenomenally sucessful terrestrial
vertebrate ever. Where are the atrophied aquatic traits? Surely there
must be some? Preadaptation is all very well but to propose it to this
degree is the reductio ad absurdum of the concept.
David Cogman
posted:
>
>
>> I came across a SAT, Spanking Ape Theory, explaining the
>> loss of fur as a means of facilitating sexual spanking.
>>
>> That was posted as a joke but quickly there were references
>> to chimps and such actually spanking.
>>
>> Aquatic Ape is not erotic in the least.
>>
>> =====
>> Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science
>> as the layman equates incomprehensibility with science.
>Is this the best you can do? It is not the AAT that is convoluted but the
>various traditional theories.
>Give me the traditional uncovoluted arguments that explain hairlessness and
>bipedalism. It is the human evolutionary 'establishment' that try to pull the
>wool over the layman's eyes and make it incomprehensible to them.
Perhaps simply, it can't be explained at the moment should
suffice. That it can not be explained does not mean that anyone
thing that comes along which can not explain it either has merit.
I also fail to see why the "establishment" would give a damn
one way or the other much less what laymen think. I know they are
conspiring to cover the truth of AAT in your mind but much
greater changes have happened to no gain or loss.
Marc Verhaegen
rwa...@junctionnet.com
>> Please, Rick...
>> The entire body of evidence (linear build, nakedness, volunt.breathing,
SC
>> fat, apnea diving, etc. etc.) points to some "aquatic" or "amphibious"
>> theory or whatever you like to call it.
>
> What do you call it? I questioned the careless use of the concept
> 'theory'. As for whether we are dealing with marine, amphibious,
> aquatic, soggy, damp, lighty splashed upon or whatever is for you to
> say. You must know by now that people are having a hard time figuring
> out what any version of the AAT actually proposes.
For my version see http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
As for "theory", we're dealing here with a historical theory: explaining
what has happened. This is very different from a physical etc. theory.
>> Of course, we live at land, but all the evidence suggests we spent a lot
of
>time wading & swimming & diving (& I call "wading & swimming & diving"
aquatic
>behaviour).
>
> Sufficient to produce profound morphological and metabolic changes?
> Presumably you say yes but all your recent postings to me and others
> is only a list of evidence that hominids spent at least some time around
> lakes, lagoons etc. This is not terribly persuasive for the wetter
> version of AAT. A labouring elephant gives forth a mouse.
DID CHIMP AND GORILLA FOREBEARS WALK ON TWO LEGS?
Only a few years ago, most anthropologists agreed that the origin of human
bipedalism had to be found in a savanna environment some four million years
ago. But now the available fossil evidence suggests that it happened in a
forested habitat and that the date ought to be set further back.
Another recent acquisition in anthropology results from DNA comparisons of
different species. These bio-molecular data - sometimes, rather
inappropriately, called the molecular clock - prompted to move chimpanzees
and gorillas from the pongids to the hominids. The hominoids (humans and
apes) are divided into the lesser apes (the hylobatids or the gibbon and
siamang apes) and the great hominoids. The great hominoids contain two
groups, the pongids and the hominids. “Pongids” in its new definition is now
understood to include the Asian orang-utans and their presumed fossil
relatives such as Sivapithecus and Gigantopithecus, but not any more the
other great apes - the African chimpanzees and gorillas. The “hominid” group
was formerly believed to include only humans and their supposed fossil
relatives the australopithecines (see the NS of 29 March, p 18, Human
origins thrown into doubt).
The molecular “clock” also suggests that the pongids (orangs) and the
hominids (humans, chimps and gorillas) broke into two groups some ten
million years ago. Then the forebears of the gorillas and those of humans
and chimps split apart about eight or six million years ago. Most recently
the ancestors of the chimpanzees and those of humans separated between six
and four million years ago.
These new insights - the forested habitat of the early australopiths, the
“ancient” origin of bipedalism and the “recent” split of African apes and
humans - mean that the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and
humans may have been a forest-dweller that walked part of the time on its
hindlimbs. Then the question remains: for what reason did the earliest
hominids begin walking on two legs?
Humans are very peculiar primates. No doubt they have had a special
evolution. Yet they evolved within the same biological constraints as all
other mammals. We think the comparative evidence might provide new ideas
about our evolution through the systematic study of the parallel or
convergent adaptations of different animals in similar environments and the
consistent comparison of human and hominid anatomy and physiology with those
of other species.
Most primates are four-legged tree-dwellers with mobile joints and limbs
that can be stretched and straightened to reach other branches. Thanks to
this locomotor flexibility they can adopt a bipedal gait with extended knees
and hips when wading through water. They prefer this “linear build” rather
than the leaping bipedality with bent knees and hips that some primates use
when moving on the ground. This erect posture allows the wading primates to
hold their heads as far as possible above the water surface. For example,
the western lowland gorillas go wading on their hindlimbs through forest
swamps to supplement their diet with what the researchers call aquatic
herbaceous vegetation or AHV (photo). And the mangrove-dwelling proboscis
monkeys cross stretches of water to reach other mangrove trees walking on
two legs, and they sometimes use this locomotion on dry ground in a
remarkably human-like way.
This suggests that the hominids began walking on two legs, part of the time,
in a milieu where there was a combination of trees and water. The early
hominids might have adopted a bipedal gait when they waded in seasonally or
tidally flooded forests such as gallery, swamp or mangrove forests. We think
an early association with mangrove forests especially is suggested by
several independent arguments: brain size, enamel thickness, tool use, and
the geographical distribution of the hominoid species.
Of the living hominoids, the hylobatids (gibbons and siamangs) as well as
the pongids (orang-utans) live in Asia, whereas only the hominids (humans,
chimpanzees and gorillas) live in Africa. About ten million years ago, most
hominoids, such as Dryopithecus, Sivapithecus, Ouranopithecus and
Ankarapithecus, are found in Eurasia. The Turkish fossil Ankarapithecus
meteai, for instance, displays anatomical features of both pongids and
hominids. These data suggest that pongids and hominids split somewhere in
Eurasia, possibly in the Near East. Therefore it is not unlikely that a
basic hominid population, perhaps ten or eight million years ago, before
entering Africa, could have clustered in the mangrove forests between Asia
and Africa in what eventually became the Red Sea.
These bipedally wading hominids might have fed partly on the bivalves fixed
to the mangrove trunks exposed at low tide. This high-caloric and highly
nutritious diet could have facilitated the building and fuelling of a larger
brain. Michael Crawford, Stephen Cunnane, Lee Broadhurst and others
connected with the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition,
University of North London, have shown that the long-chain poly-unsaturated
lipid ratios of tropical fish and shellfish are more similar to those in the
mammalian brain than all other food sources known. But shellfish, just as
fish and meat and most animal foods, lack vitamin C. Fruits are the richest
source of vitamin C, and most higher primates are predominantly frugivores
that cannot produce their own vitamin C. Fruit production occurs mostly in
forested areas but is often seasonal. Therefore, shellfish is a welcome
dietary supplement for a dexterous frugivore in mangrove forests. Marcus
Fernandes of the Emílio Goeldi Museum, Brazil, describes how the capuchin
monkeys of the mangrove areas supplement their frugivorous diet with
oysters.
Tool use is seen in diverse animals, but the best examples among mammals are
the capuchin monkeys, the chimpanzees and the sea otters. They all try to
open hard-shelled foods by hammering with hard objects. Sea otters feed on
shellfish and crack the shells with stones. The mangrove capuchins even use
oyster shells where stones are not available, Fernandes reports. Chimpanzees
and capuchins also crack open nuts with stones. It thus seems likely that
stone tool use often began with shellfish or nut eating. No doubt, the
hominids, like the capuchins and the sea otters, manipulated hard objects
for opening nuts and oysters. Arguably, this was the beginning of the human
Stone Age technology.
The hominids, present in Africa at least since six million years ago,
radiated into the australopithecines, African apes and humans. Several
side-branches may have gone extinct. Paleontologists now generally accept
the late Colin Patterson’s view that direct ancestors of living species have
little chance to be found in the fossil record. This means that most or all
fossil Australopithecus and Homo species are extinct side-branches of the
living hominids. Geologists say that fossilisation is especially difficult
in mangrove areas. Tidal water movements spread the bones over a vast area,
and the high acidity dissolves the bony remains. Also, in mangrove areas the
sea floor is plain, so there is virtually no chance for a landslide to cover
any remains. So the inland offshoots, which might have dwelt in lagoons,
estuaries and rivers, are more likely to be discovered than mangrove
dwelling hominids.
Many of the more inland branches must have evolved in parallel. As they
followed the rivers upstream, shellfish became rarer, and the shellfish part
in the diet was gradually replaced by plant food. Step by step, they became
more herbivorous and terrestrial again. Since, according to the
bio-molecular data, the hominids first split into the gorilla branch at the
one hand and the human-chimp branch at the other (about eight or six million
years ago), the gorilla branch might have been the first to colonise the
African inland. Presumably they did so along the rivers of the Rift Valley,
and eventually became the present-day herbi-folivorous gorillas that feed on
aquatic and terrestrial herbaceous vegetation. As they moved upstream, they
must have consumed less and less AHV and more and more THV, and AHV is now
known to be less than two per cent in the diet of lowland gorillas. The
chimpanzee branch, one or two million years later, followed them. They
developed parallel features, but generally remained more omni-frugivorous
and more tree-living. Few traces of bipedalism would remain in present-day
chimpanzees and gorillas, since their ancestors’ interlude of frequent
wading and shellfish or AHV collecting was probably short and partial and
long ago. In some ways, we can view many changes as a U-turn back to a more
ancestral lifestyle of non-hominoid primates like monkeys. Features like
bipedal gait, tool use, dexterous hands, enlarged brains or thick enamel
might diminish or disappear.
Developmental mechanisms to account for thick and thin enamel in mammals and
especially in hominoids have been proposed in the 1980s by Laurence Martin
of University College, London. His comparative studies of tooth enamel
formation in apes and humans have suggested that the earliest hominids had
thick enamel. The fossil record tends to supports this view. Thick enamel is
seen in most of our fossil ape relatives, whether they lived before the
human-chimp splitting time (for instance, Siva-, Ourano- and Ankarapithecus,
though not in Dryopithecus) or after that time (the Australopithecus
species, though not in Ardipithecus). In living mammals, thick enamel is
typical of capuchin monkeys or sea otters that eat hard-shelled foods like
nuts or molluscs. “If for example, a mammalogist who know nothing about
hominids were asked which mammalian molar most resembled those of
Australopithecus, the answer would probably be the molars of the sea otter
(Enhydra lutris). This species possesses small anterior teeth, and large,
broad, flat molars with thick enamel”, says Alan Walker. In the sea otters,
it is perhaps not for cracking the shells, he adds, but for the occasional
hard inclusions, which could otherwise damage the dentition. Dental studies
by Pierre-François Puech and co-workers of the University of Marseille,
France, confirm that ancestral features such as back teeth with thick enamel
and rounded cusps, presumably linked to the procession of hard foods, may
have undergone an evolutionary reversal, showing more reduction in the
African apes than in the orang-utans, which still consume more hard-shelled
fruits.
The electron microscopic comparisons by these investigators also showed,
already more than ten years ago, that the early australopithecine molar
teeth had enamel microwear features, such as a polished surface with glossy
appearance, that resembled those of mountain beavers and capybaras, rodents
which feed on marsh plants. Puech was puzzled by these results, since at
that time it was generally believed that human ancestors were savannah
dwellers. But, more recently, it has become clear that most if not all
hominids must have dwelt in “wet” rather than “dry” milieus. For instance,
in 1992, Radosevich and co-workers, in a paper on the Australopithecus
afarensis fossils from Hadar, East Africa, wrote: ‘The bones were found in
swale-like features … it is very likely that they died and partially rotted
at or very near this site … this group of hominids was buried in streamside
gallery woodland’. And in 1993, Rayner and co-workers, on the A. africanus
fossils of Makapansgat, South Africa, wrote: ‘… very different conditions
from those prevailing today. Higher rainfall, fertile, alkaline soils and
moderate relief supported significant patches of sub-tropical forest and
thick bush, rather than savannah … sub-tropical forest was the hominins’
preferred habitat rather than grassland or bushveld, and the adaptations of
these animals was therefore fitted to a forest habitat’. Since then, other
palaeo-environmental reconstructions have confirmed that early
australopithecines typically dwelt in swale-like streamside gallery
woodlands. This is where they might have frequently waded bipedally in
search of aquatic herbaceous vegetation (AHV). It is to be expected that
they did this in the same way, but regularly instead of occasionally, as the
western lowland gorillas do in the shallow swamps of the tropical forest
clearings (photo).
In the meantime, when australopithecines and African ape ancestors were
dwelling in wetlands, our human ancestors were left behind at the coasts.
Homo erectus-like people colonised the Indian Ocean shores and even reached
as far as Java perhaps as early as two million years ago. Over time, these
omnivores improved their shellfish collection and preparation techniques.
Stone use and tool manipulation proceeded as a means of extracting the meat.
It is likely that this advanced their swimming and even their diving
adaptations.
Breath-hold diving is still practised by diverse human populations that
collect shellfish. In contrast with nonhuman primates, diving capabilities
are obvious in the human physiology, as has been demonstrated by Erika
Schagatay, in the physiological lab of the University of Lund, Sweden. All
diving mammals have the ability to breathe at free will whenever they intend
to dive. Many of them, like dolphins and seals, also have large brains, much
larger than most equally large land mammals. We think that large brains and
voluntary breathing, in combination with the rich vocal and musical
abilities as seen in primates like gibbons and other arboreal animals, were
prerequisites for what we now call human language.
Dexterous hands and large brains and spoken language then predisposed them
to occupy also the inland milieus along the rivers. Our ancestors’ linear
build - with the extended knees and hips and backs (the so-called lumbar
lordosis) suited for wading and swimming and diving - made it too difficult
for them to re-adopt a four-legged gait. They were forced to walk on two
legs rather than run on all fours. This bipedality is slower and might be
more expensive than the four-legged locomotion of other terrestrials, but it
allows us to make full use of our dexterous hands. On their way back from
part-time swimmers and waders to full-time walkers on land, our ancestors,
at first, might have spent a lot of time wading and fishing in rivers and
lakes. Other Homo species may have preceded sapiens in re-conquering the
land, to different degrees, as long-legged bipeds: rudolfensis and ergaster
in Africa, erectus and neanderthalensis in Eurasia.
Bio-molecular data suggest that Homo sapiens finds his origins in Africa
some hundred fifty thousand years ago (the so-called African Eve
hypothesis). This seems to be confirmed by palaeontological and
archaeological evidence. The first people with a fully modern anatomy and
without archaic features are found in Africa. And H. J. Deacon,
archaeologist at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, describes the
archaic Acheulian populations of the African Old Stone Age as “stenotopic”.
This means they still occupied a narrow niche in riverine and wetland
habitats. It is only in the Middle and Late Stone Ages that modern human
populations become “eurytopic”, occupying the same niche as the traditional
foragers in Africa today.
>> >Okay its not ruled out. The point is to rule it in. Want a better
'theory'?
>> >How about the anatomical and metabolic features which have made Homo
>> >sapiens the most phenomenally succesful _Terrestrial_ vertebrate ever
>> >evolving those characters in response to adaptive pressures imposed by
>> >terrestrial life.
>>
>> What adaptive pressures imposed by terrestrial life do you mean??? please
>> name 1.
>>
>
> How about the opening up of the landscape of Eastern Africa....you know
the usual...
>
...rubbish
(Because there are some indications that at some places in Africa at one
time or another there were less trees, that means that we began walking
upright. Can you imagine such nonsense?)
......
Marc
Tommy Dye
Marc Verhaegen
Tommy Dye heeft geschreven in bericht <364BC1...@merlin.ebicom.net>...
>Is there a website that details the ATT theory?
(AAT, you mean?)
Yes, http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/aquape.html &
http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
There you can find references to other websites.
Marc
alg...@my-dejanews.com
>
> Perhaps simply, it can't be explained at the moment should
> suffice. That it can not be explained does not mean that anyone
> thing that comes along which can not explain it either has merit.
>
> I also fail to see why the "establishment" would give a damn
> one way or the other much less what laymen think. I know they are
> conspiring to cover the truth of AAT in your mind but much
> greater changes have happened to no gain or loss.
>
-- "We don't know" is at least an honest approach. But can't you see any
merit in the AAT at all? Does not, for instance, the model of an ape living
by rivers which are notoriously prone to flooding offer the most plausible
explantion for bipedalism? It is such a simple explanation and would so
obviously favour the dawn of bipedalism, I cannot understand why it is not
even listed as a 'possible' in the 'traditional' text books when some rather
incredulous ones are. You used the word 'conspiracy', not me.
If I'd spent the last twenty years lecturing people, writing books and
obtaining tax-payer's funding for research based on the Aquatic Ape Theory
and then someone came along with a new, obvious, theory that had been staring
me in the face all my life that indicated I'd been wrong all the time I think
I'd be pretty hostile to it.
Algis Kuliukas
Elaine Morgan
writes
>>
> What do you call it? I questioned the careless use of the concept
> 'theory'. As for whether we are dealing with marine, amphibious,
> aquatic, soggy, damp, lighty splashed upon or whatever is for you to
> say. You must know by now that people are having a hard time figuring
> out what any version of the AAT actually proposes.
It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time wading
to transform the occasional laborious bipedalism with whoich all apes
confront the process of going into water into a habitual and much more
efficient bipedalism. If water did not do this, what did? There are a
score of guesses but none that the challengers of AAT seem an#xious to
espouse.
It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time with their
skin underwater to change their pelts out of all recognition, modify
their skinglands, get rid of their functional body hair, transform their
modes. If water did not do these things, what did?
It proposes thirdly that at one stage they spent enough of their time
with their heads underwater to make it adaptative to transform their
respiratory canal in ways unique among land mammals, affecting
everything from their palate to the nerves controlling the movements of
chest and diaphragm and the neural control of their breathing. If water
did not do it, what did?
>
> Sufficient to produce profound morphological and metabolic changes?
> Presumably you say yes but all your recent postings to me and others
> is only a list of evidence that hominids spent at least some time around
> lakes, lagoons etc. This is not terribly persuasive for the wetter
> version of AAT. A labouring elephant gives forth a mouse.
It is more persuasive when you recall that there is no hard evidence
that australopithecus spent any time *away* from lakes, rivers, lagoons,
etc.
>>
>>
> So we're back to the savanna as Southern Alberta or Eastern Montana
> in a bad year are we? You just won't accept what people constantly
> say when they point out that nobody is arguing from the position of
> the straw man which seems so necessary to keep the AAT going. However
> I'm game for an argument....
For thirty or forty years it was not a straw man. Its former propnents
are not the people who argue that it was; that plea comes from the young
who never knew it in its heyday.
It is certainly not necessary to keep AAT going. The further you
rettreat from the original position and protest that no, no, it was not
arid, there was shade, there were wooded areas, there were of course
streams and rivers - the more vociferously you play that game, the
harder you are going to find it to explain why we are so different from
the other apes when we lived in conditions only marginally different
from theirs. You are forced into defending the proposition that we alone
became bipedal, naked, vocal, and intelligent because where our
ancestors lived the trees were further apart. I have not yet heard even
the beginning of an explanation as to why that should be.
Have you got san explanation?
Elaine
>
David Styles
posted:
>> Perhaps simply, it can't be explained at the moment should
>> suffice. That it can not be explained does not mean that anyone
>> thing that comes along which can not explain it either has merit.
>> I also fail to see why the "establishment" would give a damn
>> one way or the other much less what laymen think. I know they are
>> conspiring to cover the truth of AAT in your mind but much
>> greater changes have happened to no gain or loss.
>-- "We don't know" is at least an honest approach. But can't you see any
>merit in the AAT at all? Does not, for instance, the model of an ape living
>by rivers which are notoriously prone to flooding offer the most plausible
>explantion for bipedalism?
When I look at a species whose known predecessors are
climbing trees, pulling with their forelimbs and pushing with
their back, no. As for flooding a very irregular maybe annual
at best flooding would not appear to introduce any evolutionary
pressure at all nor has it on any other river edge species,
primarily amphibians going back before the reptile/dinosaur
divergence.
Thus it offers no explanation at all else humans would be
far from the first given 3-400 million years of opportunity.
Were it characteristic to develop bipedalism from such an
environment then you folks might have case to make. But bipedal
salamanders are a touch rare.
>It is such a simple explanation and would so
>obviously favour the dawn of bipedalism, I cannot understand why it is not
>even listed as a 'possible' in the 'traditional' text books when some rather
>incredulous ones are. You used the word 'conspiracy', not me.
But it was not the dawn of bipedalism. Good old special
effect tyranosaurus as the obvious. And a dozen or three other
dinosaur species, plus all birds if you think there is a
difference, plus kangaroos of several species living and
extinct and bats and related. And then we can move to the
insect world if you like.
None of those indicate a riverine path to bipedalism.
>If I'd spent the last twenty years lecturing people, writing books and
>obtaining tax-payer's funding for research based on the Aquatic Ape Theory
>and then someone came along with a new, obvious, theory that had been staring
>me in the face all my life that indicated I'd been wrong all the time I think
>I'd be pretty hostile to it.
But if you were a scientist you would realize that
championing the new idea would be your route to a Nobel Prize
or equivalent and your name in the history books up there with
Darwin if you were right.
You cannot substitute your misunderstanding of the way
science progresses for reality.
Lorenzo L. Love
Elaine Morgan wrote:
> In article <72cv2h$bt7$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, rwa...@junctionnet.com
> writes
> >>
> > What do you call it? I questioned the careless use of the concept
> > 'theory'. As for whether we are dealing with marine, amphibious,
> > aquatic, soggy, damp, lighty splashed upon or whatever is for you to
> > say. You must know by now that people are having a hard time figuring
> > out what any version of the AAT actually proposes.
>
> It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time wading
> to transform the occasional laborious bipedalism with whoich all apes
> confront the process of going into water into a habitual and much more
> efficient bipedalism. If water did not do this, what did? There are a
> score of guesses but none that the challengers of AAT seem an#xious to
> espouse.
Hundreds of species of aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals and not one biped. If
bipedalism is an adaption to water, why are human, who do not live in water,
uniquely bipedal?
>
>
> It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time with their
> skin underwater to change their pelts out of all recognition, modify
> their skinglands, get rid of their functional body hair, transform their
> modes. If water did not do these things, what did?
All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats, unlike
humans. Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans. Aquatics have
waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans. If
human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely covered by a
thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
>
>
> It proposes thirdly that at one stage they spent enough of their time
> with their heads underwater to make it adaptative to transform their
> respiratory canal in ways unique among land mammals, affecting
> everything from their palate to the nerves controlling the movements of
> chest and diaphragm and the neural control of their breathing. If water
> did not do it, what did?
Humans have a unique respiratory canal because humans uniquely talk. For
detailed infomation on how humans are markedly unsuited for diving and are
very unlike real diving mammals, and how other mammals can in fact control
their breathing, see Jim Moore's site
at:http://www.inforamp.net/~jimmoore/AAT/DivingReflex.html
and
http://www.inforamp.net/~jimmoore/AAT/BreathHolding.html
> >
> > Sufficient to produce profound morphological and metabolic changes?
> > Presumably you say yes but all your recent postings to me and others
> > is only a list of evidence that hominids spent at least some time around
> > lakes, lagoons etc. This is not terribly persuasive for the wetter
> > version of AAT. A labouring elephant gives forth a mouse.
>
> It is more persuasive when you recall that there is no hard evidence
> that australopithecus spent any time *away* from lakes, rivers, lagoons,
> etc.
There is no hard evidence that australopithecines were not subjects of an
alien breeding program either. Nor is there any hard evidence that
australopithecines were not dependant on cats for their survival. In this
aspect, aquatic apes, ancient astronauts and Pliocene pussy cats are all
valid.
> >>
> >>
> > So we're back to the savanna as Southern Alberta or Eastern Montana
> > in a bad year are we? You just won't accept what people constantly
> > say when they point out that nobody is arguing from the position of
> > the straw man which seems so necessary to keep the AAT going. However
> > I'm game for an argument....
>
> For thirty or forty years it was not a straw man. Its former propnents
> are not the people who argue that it was; that plea comes from the young
> who never knew it in its heyday.
For 50 years, Piltdown Man was beleived to be valid. Some people learn and
change their views.
>
>
> It is certainly not necessary to keep AAT going. The further you
> rettreat from the original position and protest that no, no, it was not
> arid, there was shade, there were wooded areas, there were of course
> streams and rivers - the more vociferously you play that game, the
> harder you are going to find it to explain why we are so different from
> the other apes when we lived in conditions only marginally different
> from theirs. You are forced into defending the proposition that we alone
> became bipedal, naked, vocal, and intelligent because where our
> ancestors lived the trees were further apart. I have not yet heard even
> the beginning of an explanation as to why that should be.
>
> Have you got san explanation?
>
> Elaine
> >
The Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory. The only theory of human evolution that is not
under dispute.
Lorenzo
Roger Taylor
<lll...@thegrid.net> writes
>The Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory. The only theory of human evolution that is not
>under dispute.
>
And this is the Deity who constantly claims that other people are barmy.
Go lie down in a dark room for a few years Lorenzo.
--
Roger Taylor
Michael Clark
I don't see any smileys here. Could I take this to mean that Mr. Taylor
is without a sense of humor? I'd say that as long as we're treated to
lengthy dissertations about wet apes, we should give equal time to
pussycats as both theories make equal sense. eh roger? ;-)
> --
> Roger Taylor
Michael B. Clark ><DARWIN>
MCl...@Skypoint.com L L ><DARWIN>
Minneapolis, MN ><DARWIN> L L
http://www.skypoint.com/~mclark L L
Ji...@msn.com.au
Lorenzo L. Love wrote in message <36531E0A...@thegrid.net>...
>
SNIP
>All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats,
unlike
>humans. Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans. Aquatics have
>waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans. If
>human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely covered by a
>thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
>
>>
I'm pretty sure that whales and other large marine mammals still have a
degree of hairiness, just with very thin, very short hairs. (Just like
humans have thin short hairs compared with chimps, but a similar density of
hair follicles). Sorry, I don't recall the reference I got this from
alg...@my-dejanews.com
> When I look at a species whose known predecessors are
> climbing trees, pulling with their forelimbs and pushing with
> their back, no. As for flooding a very irregular maybe annual
> at best flooding would not appear to introduce any evolutionary
> pressure at all nor has it on any other river edge species,
> primarily amphibians going back before the reptile/dinosaur
> divergence.
>
> Thus it offers no explanation at all else humans would be
> far from the first given 3-400 million years of opportunity.
> Were it characteristic to develop bipedalism from such an
> environment then you folks might have case to make. But bipedal
> salamanders are a touch rare.
Thanks for replying.
Serious, life-threatening floods might indeed be rare, but surely the point
is this: If an ape became adapted to living off food-sources from rivers
(let's say they learned to catch fish) they would naturally adapt to that
environment. Escaping land-based predators, the need to cross relatively
shallow rivers for new trees to explore and the pressure to find new spots
from which they could catch fish would also surely act as a pressure for them
to evolve features to enable them to survive in a semi-aquatic (ie shallow
water) environment.
Your point about riverine salamanders and dinosaurs and insects (and birds)
not evolving bipedalism ignores the basic point that we are evolved from
apes, not amphibians, reptiles or invertebrates. (An accusation that is often
made against AAT supporters when we use seals, and dolphins as examples.)
Ask yourself this hypothetical question: If such an ape ancestor of ours did
start living by rivers, how would you EXPECT it to evolve? It seems
painstakingly obvious to me that one of the first adaptations would be for its
legs and neck to get longer and its posture to become much more erect.
Bipedalism is surely simply the logical consequence of this.
This is backed up by simple evidence of apes today. Whenever you see a
gorilla, chimpanzee or, especially, a bonobo cross a shallow stretch of water
they do so on two feet. Why is this simple observation always deemed not
significant?
Bearing in mind that rivers offer such a naturally rich supply of water
(obviously) and high quality food, I can't understand why the scientific
community seem determined to ignore this obvious route to bipedalism.
> But if you were a scientist you would realize that
> championing the new idea would be your route to a Nobel Prize
> or equivalent and your name in the history books up there with
> Darwin if you were right.
I am not a (professional) scientist, but I agree with the bit about
championing the new idea. In that regard I believe people like Elaine Morgan
will ultimately be rewarded for their persistence in the face of some pretty
unbelievable bigotry coming from the 'establishment.'
My basic point is that the AAT is not a crackpot idea, although many
antagonists want the layman to think so. It is in fact far more modest,
reasonable and believable theory than the absurd guesses that have been made
to try to make the story fit the idea that we must have evolved on the
savannah. I would expect so-called scientists to be more open-minded and
objective about it, rather than behaving like religious leaders of the middle
ages confronted with the revoluionary idea that the earth revolves around the
sun.
Algis Kuliukas
Nathan Bellomy-McKnight
> > skin underwater to change their pelts out of all recognition, modify
> > their skinglands, get rid of their functional body hair, transform their
> > modes. If water did not do these things, what did?
>
> humans. Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans. Aquatics have
> waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans. If
> human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely covered by a
> thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
At some point in our evolution, body fat took over for hair as the primary mode of
insulation. The only context in which that makes sense is an aquatic environment.
just my 2cents
Nathan
Michael Clark
[snippage]
> > All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats, unlike
> > humans. Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans. Aquatics have
> > waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans. If
> > human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely covered by a
> > thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
>
> At some point in our evolution, body fat took over for hair as the primary mode of
> insulation. The only context in which that makes sense is an aquatic environment.
>
> just my 2cents
> Nathan
That's about what it's worth...
Lorenzo L. Love
Nathan Bellomy-McKnight wrote:
> > > It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time with their
> > > skin underwater to change their pelts out of all recognition, modify
> > > their skinglands, get rid of their functional body hair, transform their
> > > modes. If water did not do these things, what did?
> >
> > All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats, unlike
> > humans. Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans. Aquatics have
> > waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans. If
> > human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely covered by a
> > thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
>
> At some point in our evolution, body fat took over for hair as the primary mode of
> insulation. The only context in which that makes sense is an aquatic environment.
>
> just my 2cents
> Nathan
Just like a wet ape to change the subject when the theory doesn't fit. Blubber
insulated aquatic mammals have waterproof skins. Humans do not have waterproof skins.
This is consistently ignored by wet ape supporters as it doesn't match their
preconceptions. Besides, humans are not blubber insulated. Human fat is concentrated
in breasts, belly and butt. Insulating fat would be evenly spead over the entire body.
Human skin and fat both point to a non-aquatic background. Wet apes deliberately
ignore these facts. This disregarding of inconvenient facts is characteristic of
pseudo-scientists.
Lorenzo
>
Marc Verhaegen
Ji...@msn.com.au
>I'm pretty sure that whales and other large marine mammals still have a
>degree of hairiness, just with very thin, very short hairs. (Just like
>humans have thin short hairs compared with chimps, but a similar density of
>hair follicles). Sorry, I don't recall the reference I got this from
All completely aquatics (sirenians & cetaceans) have no hairs (less than
humans), except sometimes a few hairs near body openings.
Non-tropical semi-aquatics smaller than male Steller sealions, sea elephants
& walruses, do have a fur all over the body, much thicker than in humans.
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
Nathan Bellomy-McKnight heeft geschreven in bericht
<36556DC3...@osu.edu>...
>> > It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time with
their
>> > skin underwater to change their pelts out of all recognition, modify
>> > their skinglands, get rid of their functional body hair, transform
their
>> > modes. If water did not do these things, what did?
>>
>> All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats,
unlike
>> humans. Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans. Aquatics have
>> waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans.
If
>> human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely covered by
a
>> thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
>
>At some point in our evolution, body fat took over for hair as the primary
mode of
>insulation. The only context in which that makes sense is an aquatic
environment.
Yes, but fur & SC fat have very different features & are not mutually
exclusive.
Fur is mostly for thermo-insulation in air (& perhaps for protection against
blows etc.). SC fat is often for thermo-insulation in water (or snow or wet
soil), but can also be used for energy storage or even buoyancy.
There are mammals that have both superficial fur & fat layers. Some have
only fat. Some have only fur. Some have none.
Some examples:
1) most pinnipeds, polar bear & other polar mammals (eg, mammoth)
2) the completely aquatics, male sea elephants & walruses
3) most mammals such as dogs, horses (+- no SC fat layer)
4) elephants, aardvarks, naked molerats (all tropical)
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
Michael Clark
......
>> At some point in our evolution, body fat took over for hair as the
primary mode of
>> insulation. The only context in which that makes sense is an aquatic
environment.
>>
>> Nathan
>
>That's about what it's worth...
>That's about what it's worth...
Instead of giving such stupid comments could you please give us an
alternative explanation for why we're furless but have a lot of subdermal
fat?
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
>...... Humans do not have waterproof skins.
??????
All mammals & reptiles & birds have waterproof skins.
>........humans are not blubber insulated. Human fat is concentrated
>in breasts, belly and butt. Insulating fat would be evenly spead over the
entire body.
??????
1) Our subcutaneous fat is spread over the entire body as every surgeon
knows (vs. monkeys & cats & horses), but is thicker over the more central
body parts, as it is in aquatic mammals.
2) Our SC fat is not only thermo-insulative in water (yellowish SC fat vs
brown fat in terrestrials), but has several other implications: lower
density (see equilibrium in the water, compensation of bone or air
distribution in the body), buoyancy (total fat vs. bone tissue etc.),
streamlining (more fat in certain body parts), energy store, burden outside
the water (hence less fat in tropical people than elsewhere), etc.
3) Our present-day fat is not the fat of an aquatic mammal, but of a mammal
that used to dive & swim & wade a lot & that nowadays lives mostly on land.
4) For the fat female breasts, read E.Schagatay 1992 "Human sexual
dimorphism" in M.Roede ed. "The aquatic ape: fact or fiction?" Souvenir
London.
Nathan D
<Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> posted:
That is not a characteristic of amphibians. Therefore it is not
characteristic of the environment.
Elaine Morgan
>
>>>
>> It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time wading
>> to transform the occasional laborious bipedalism with whoich all apes
>> confront the process of going into water into a habitual and much more
You refuse to answer this question as usual.
>
>Hundreds of species of aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals and not one biped. If
>bipedalism is an adaption to water, why are human, who do not live in water,
>uniquely bipedal?
>
Most primates practice bipedal locomotion when they find themselves in
water. One species became habitually bipedal, suggesting that they found
themselves in water much more frequently.
If bipedalism is an adaptation to living on land, why did no other lamd
mammal acquire it?
>>
>> It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time with
their
>> skin underwater to change their pelts out of all recognition, modify
>> their skinglands, get rid of their functional body hair, transform
their
>> modes. If water did not do these things, what did?
You have not answered this question either.
>
>All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats, unlike
>humans.
Yes, we know. So have non-aquatics of all sizes.
> Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans
Don't you mean "like humans"?
> Aquatics have
>waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans.
It is only the volar surfaces that wrinkle in humans when wet.
>If human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely
covered by a
>thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
I could as legitimately ask "If human skin is an adaptation to life on
land, why is human skin uniquely covered by a thin coat of hair - so
thin that in parts the hairs do not emerge above the surface of the
skin- instead of a thick one like all its relatives? "
It would be pointless to ask it, because you do not attempt to answer
any questions; you just steam-roller over them with more questions...
>H
However that is not an example I propose to follow. Why is it uniquely
covered with a thin coat of hair? Because it is in a stage that all the
naked aquatics must have passed through on the way to becoming fully
naked. It did not remain aquatic long enough for the process to be
repeated.
Why is it uniquely not waterproof? I would like to know your reference
for the statement that the skin of, say, a walrus is waterproof in a
way in which the human skin is not waterproof. Then we will know what
we are talking about. If you are just waffling about fingertipos, I
would reply "Because the walrus does not have dermatoglyphics".
>> It proposes thirdly that at one stage they spent enough of their time
>> with their heads underwater to make it adaptative to transform their
>> respiratory canal in ways unique among land mammals, affecting
>> everything from their palate to the nerves controlling the movements of
>> chest and diaphragm and the neural control of their breathing. If water
>> did not do it, what did?
>
>Humans have a unique respiratory canal because humans uniquely talk.
And why do humans uniquely talk? Wouldn't it be equally useful for
apes? Why don't they do it? Then they too according to your argument
would evolve a respiratory canal like ours as a result of talking?
That's another question you won't answer. My answer is that the aqbility
to breath control came first and made the talking possible. That's why
apes never learned the trick of it.
>detailed infomation on how humans are markedly unsuited for diving and are
>very unlike real diving mammals, and how other mammals can in fact control
>their breathing, see Jim Moore's site
>at:http://www.inforamp.net/~jimmoore/AAT/DivingReflex.html
>and
>http://www.inforamp.net/~jimmoore/AAT/BreathHolding.html
>
Sorry I can't access www, the way you can't read books. If you like to
post these papers I woukld be better able to evaluate them.
> You are forced into defending the proposition that we alone
>> became bipedal, naked, vocal, and intelligent because where our
>> ancestors lived the trees were further apart. I have not yet heard even
>> the beginning of an explanation as to why that should be.
>>
>> Have you got san explanation?
>>
>> Elaine
>> >
>
> The Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory. The only theory of human evolution that is not
>under dispute.
In other words no you haven't.
Elaine
>
>
>
--
Lenire
>
>> When I look at a species whose known predecessors are
>> climbing trees, pulling with their forelimbs and pushing with
>> their back, no. As for flooding a very irregular maybe annual
>> at best flooding would not appear to introduce any evolutionary
>> pressure at all nor has it on any other river edge species,
>> primarily amphibians going back before the reptile/dinosaur
>> divergence.
>>
>> Thus it offers no explanation at all else humans would be
>> far from the first given 3-400 million years of opportunity.
>> Were it characteristic to develop bipedalism from such an
>> environment then you folks might have case to make. But bipedal
>> salamanders are a touch rare.
>
>Thanks for replying.
>
>Serious, life-threatening floods might indeed be rare,
Life threatening floods are a quite modern phenomenon. Before
there were assets to try to protect near rivers such as houses and
livestock one just walked away and avoided being trapped on local
high points.
>but surely the point
>is this: If an ape became adapted to living off food-sources from rivers
>(let's say they learned to catch fish) they would naturally adapt to that
>environment. Escaping land-based predators, the need to cross relatively
>shallow rivers for new trees to explore and the pressure to find new spots
>from which they could catch fish would also surely act as a pressure for them
>to evolve features to enable them to survive in a semi-aquatic (ie shallow
>water) environment.
The point is that in those 300-400 million years of known
aquatic species, bipedalism is not one of those adaptations.
>Your point about riverine salamanders and dinosaurs and insects (and birds)
>not evolving bipedalism ignores the basic point that we are evolved from
>apes, not amphibians, reptiles or invertebrates. (An accusation that is often
>made against AAT supporters when we use seals, and dolphins as examples.)
Being apes or not has no bearing. Adaptation pressures apply to
all. That is one of the basics of evolution that niches are filled
by whatever species are around. Darwin finches in the "columbus egg"
case. AND alternatively we know of many bipedal species where there
is no known connection with any riverine environment.
AND you are assuming your conclusion in saying it is to a
riverine environment.
AND you are supporting a position that casually explains away
the lack of evidence. That is no different than crediting the
Monolith and saying the aliens took it away.
>Ask yourself this hypothetical question: If such an ape ancestor of ours did
>start living by rivers, how would you EXPECT it to evolve? It seems
>painstakingly obvious to me that one of the first adaptations would be for its
>legs and neck to get longer and its posture to become much more erect.
>Bipedalism is surely simply the logical consequence of this.
Why should it be the first four legged species to do that? What
made the pressures different for apes than for everything else?
BUT IF I were to assume they adapted to a riverine environment
I would say they would be caught between land predators and river
predators and would expect extinction quite quickly.
>This is backed up by simple evidence of apes today. Whenever you see a
>gorilla, chimpanzee or, especially, a bonobo cross a shallow stretch of water
>they do so on two feet. Why is this simple observation always deemed not
>significant?
Because crossing has NOT caused them to become bipedal
therefore water is not such a pressure.
>Bearing in mind that rivers offer such a naturally rich supply of water
>(obviously) and high quality food, I can't understand why the scientific
>community seem determined to ignore this obvious route to bipedalism.
If you wish to truly look at African rivers they are an even
richer source of predators and diseases to which we are not adapted.
The ignoring of it is because it is only obvious to true
believers who have glommed on to a facile explanation that fails
everything else.
>> But if you were a scientist you would realize that
>> championing the new idea would be your route to a Nobel Prize
>> or equivalent and your name in the history books up there with
>> Darwin if you were right.
>I am not a (professional) scientist, but I agree with the bit about
>championing the new idea. In that regard I believe people like Elaine Morgan
>will ultimately be rewarded for their persistence in the face of some pretty
>unbelievable bigotry coming from the 'establishment.'
It is up to her to come up with fossil evidence not with facile
explanations as to why it does not exist. Absent fossil evidence
there is no merit to the speculation.
>My basic point is that the AAT is not a crackpot idea, although many
>antagonists want the layman to think so.
Your opinion of crackpot and mine vary considerably. I see it
as crackpot. It makes no predictions. It requires that a riverine
adaptation be totally abandoned such that human show not the
slightest interest in it any longer.
>It is in fact far more modest,
>reasonable and believable theory than the absurd guesses that have been made
>to try to make the story fit the idea that we must have evolved on the
>savannah.
That is the one supported by use folks finding ourselves on the
Savannah side of the Rift valley while no member of the human line
or considered for the human line is found on the jungle side of the
valley. Not even on the jungle side of the slope of the valley.
As for "wanting the layman to think" none really give a damn
what laymen think.
And if you wish to bring up the funding nonsense, as the All
Wet Ape Theory requires that there be no fossils to find, just what
would she be funded to do? Write another book without evidence?
>I would expect so-called scientists to be more open-minded and
>objective about it, rather than behaving like religious leaders of the middle
>ages confronted with the revoluionary idea that the earth revolves around the
>sun.
There is nothing revolutionary about beliefs without physical
evidence, in this case fossil evidence. That is the sort of thing
science works to obviate.
Paul Crowley
<lll...@thegrid.net> wrote:
Elaine asks:
>> (about the process of going into water into a habitual and much more
>> efficient bipedalism).
>>If water did not do this, what did?
Lorenzo doesn't answer, responding with another question
>Hundreds of species of aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals and not one biped. If
>bipedalism is an adaption to water, why are human, who do not live in water,
>uniquely bipedal?
Elaine asks:
>>(about getting rid of their functional body hair)
>> If water did not do these things, what did?
Lorenzo doesn't answer (responding with another question)
>All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats, unlike
>humans. Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans. Aquatics have
>waterproof skin which doese not wrinkle when it is wet, unlike humans. If
>human skin is an adaption to water, why is human skin uniquely covered by a
>thin coat of hair and not waterproof?
Elaine asks:
>> (about respiratory systems and neural control of their breathing)
>> If water did not do it, what did?
Lorenzo doesn't answer
Elaine asks
>> Have you got an explanation?
Lorenzo doesn't answer, responding with his usual 'humour'
> The Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory. The only theory of human evolution that is not
>under dispute.
What is point? Is pusillaminity that enjoyable?
OK the problem is difficult. Is that an excuse for not
attempting to tackle it? It seems you want to pretend that it
isn't there. Or that the scientists in the universities must
know the answers -- but you never dare repeat them. Are they
secret or something?
I don't think Elaine has more than a fraction of the answers, but
at least she acknowledges the existence of the problem. So she's
a long way ahead of you -- and, it seems, the great bulk of PA.
Paul.
Marc Verhaegen
..........
>>but surely the point
>>is this: If an ape became adapted to living off food-sources from rivers
>>(let's say they learned to catch fish) they would naturally adapt to that
>>environment. Escaping land-based predators, the need to cross relatively
>>shallow rivers for new trees to explore and the pressure to find new spots
>>from which they could catch fish would also surely act as a pressure for
them
>>to evolve features to enable them to survive in a semi-aquatic (ie shallow
>>water) environment.
>
> The point is that in those 300-400 million years of known
>aquatic species, bipedalism is not one of those adaptations.
What makes you believe that??
The mangrove-dwelling proboscis monkeys cross stretches of water to move
from one mangrove tree to another & they walk on two legs when making these
treks. They often even use this bipedal locomotion on dry ground in a
remarkably human-like way.
As for the earliest archosaurs (& their descendants or relatives the
dinosaurs & birds), we don't know, see, eg, M.Williams 1997 "The adaptive
significance of endothermy and salt excretion amongst the earliest
archosaurs" Spec.Sci.Technol.20:237-247. Williams gives some arguments that
"suggest that the emergence of reptilian bipedal locomotion is related to an
arboreal-aquatic existence".
.....
>>I am not a (professional) scientist, but I agree with the bit about
>>championing the new idea. In that regard I believe people like Elaine
Morgan
>>will ultimately be rewarded for their persistence in the face of some
pretty
>>unbelievable bigotry coming from the 'establishment.'
>
> It is up to her to come up with fossil evidence not with facile
>explanations as to why it does not exist. Absent fossil evidence
>there is no merit to the speculation.
>
Absent fossil evidence??
All Homo species are found at rivers & lakes & even seacoasts in spite of
the fact that fossilization is especially difficult in coastal areas due to
the action of the tides & sea level changes.
Moreover, all our nearest relatives are/were found in wet or very wet
environments: there are no indications of savanna environments for the
australopithecines or earlier apes.
......
> Your opinion of crackpot and mine vary considerably. I see it
>as crackpot. It makes no predictions. It requires that a riverine
>adaptation be totally abandoned such that human show not the
>slightest interest in it any longer.
>
???
Before modern technology, in the Middle Ages in Europe, eg, cities were
founded next to the rivers. Can you name one big city not near a river or
coast? The river water was necessary for hygiene & drinking water & washing
clothes & transport. Humans can't survive without water, as opposed to
savanna species.
If you want a crackpot idea, take the savanna rubbish. Not one valid
argument in favor of it. No physiological evidence, no anatomical evidence,
no fossil evidence, nothing, just the speculation of Dart & two generations
of imitating parrots that were creating ridiculous reasons (walking upright
for minimizing solar radiation etc.) for not having to abondon this stupid
idea.
Marc
PZ Myers
<elaine@NO_SPAM_PLEASE-desco.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <36531E0A...@thegrid.net>, "Lorenzo L. Love"
><lll...@thegrid.net> writes
[snip]
>>
>>All small and medium aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals have fur coats, unlike
>>humans.
>
>Yes, we know. So have non-aquatics of all sizes.
>
>> Many large aquatics are hairless, unlike humans
>
>Don't you mean "like humans"?
[snip]
Let's cut to the chase. I presume you are aware of the hypothesized
selection pressures which favored hairlessness in cetaceans...how do
you reconcile that with your model of how humans became hairless? I
don't see any possible comparison between the two.
--
PZ Myers
rwa...@junctionnet.com
Elaine Morgan <elaine@NO_SPAM_PLEASE-desco.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <72cv2h$bt7$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, rwa...@junctionnet.com
> writes
> >>
> > What do you call it? I questioned the careless use of the concept
> > 'theory'. As for whether we are dealing with marine, amphibious,
> > aquatic, soggy, damp, lighty splashed upon or whatever is for you to
> > say. You must know by now that people are having a hard time figuring
> > out what any version of the AAT actually proposes.
>
> to transform the occasional laborious bipedalism with whoich all apes
> efficient bipedalism. If water did not do this, what did? There are a
> score of guesses but none that the challengers of AAT seem an#xious to
> espouse.
How would wading improve bipedalism to the point that hominids could
become the prodigious distance walkers that we so obviously are? How
would a medium that effectively reduces weight improve an animal's
capacity to carry it on two legs rather than four? All primates have
a certain minimal predisposition to bipedalism that, for example, an
ungulate doesn't. I've seen gibbons in a zoo walk bipedally. They're
awkward as hell and look like they'd rather be doing something else
but they do it. As for what did? The many and various adaptive pressures
that the terrestrial environment this particular animal was in exerted
on it?
>
> It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time with their
> skin underwater to change their pelts out of all recognition, modify
> their skinglands, get rid of their functional body hair, transform their
> modes. If water did not do these things, what did?
And if being out of the water for five to ten million years is not
sufficient time to dispense with this unnecessary aquatic adaptation
and reacquire a pelt how much is? We are not hairless. If necessary
hominids - specifically sapiens - could have reacquired fur. But we
didn't. Could it be that our hairlessness has an adaptive function
or is a not particularly maladaptive byproduct of something else. Why
on earth are we hanging on to this aquatic adaptation for dear life?
As for what did cause it? Thermoregulation has been proposed. Go with
that.
>
> It proposes thirdly that at one stage they spent enough of their time
> with their heads underwater to make it adaptative to transform their
> respiratory canal in ways unique among land mammals, affecting
> everything from their palate to the nerves controlling the movements of
> chest and diaphragm and the neural control of their breathing. If water
> did not do it, what did?
How about turning the respiratory and alimentary canal through 90 degrees
and holding it there for long stretches of time? How about selective
pressure for increased vocalization leading eventually to what I'm doing
right now?
> >
> > Sufficient to produce profound morphological and metabolic changes?
> > Presumably you say yes but all your recent postings to me and others
> > is only a list of evidence that hominids spent at least some time around
> > lakes, lagoons etc. This is not terribly persuasive for the wetter
> > version of AAT. A labouring elephant gives forth a mouse.
>
> It is more persuasive when you recall that there is no hard evidence
> that australopithecus spent any time *away* from lakes, rivers, lagoons,
> etc.
What does 'away' mean? I live in central Alberta. We get less than thirty
inches of pecipitation a year which is just shy of being a semi-arid
climate. Despite that between several rivers, countless streams, potholes,
sloughs, lakes, roadside ditches etc etc water is everywhere. You can't
get away from the stuff! But of course you propose the choice between
dry savannah and fully aquatic. However, as the traditional Yiddish
proverb puts it, when presented with two alternatives choose the third
one...
> >>
> >>
> > So we're back to the savanna as Southern Alberta or Eastern Montana
> > in a bad year are we? You just won't accept what people constantly
> > say when they point out that nobody is arguing from the position of
> > the straw man which seems so necessary to keep the AAT going. However
> > I'm game for an argument....
>
> For thirty or forty years it was not a straw man. Its former propnents
> are not the people who argue that it was; that plea comes from the young
> who never knew it in its heyday.
>
> It is certainly not necessary to keep AAT going. The further you
> rettreat from the original position and protest that no, no, it was not
> arid, there was shade, there were wooded areas, there were of course
> streams and rivers - the more vociferously you play that game, the
> harder you are going to find it to explain why we are so different from
> the other apes when we lived in conditions only marginally different
> from theirs. You are forced into defending the proposition that we alone
> became bipedal, naked, vocal, and intelligent because where our
> ancestors lived the trees were further apart. I have not yet heard even
> the beginning of an explanation as to why that should be.
>
> Have you got san explanation?
>
> Elaine
> >
>
The Savannah Theory, to the extent that it was ever codified as a
'theory', was the best estimate at the time of what the environmental
conditions of east and south Africa were like when hominids evolved.
New data has modified that picture. That's how science operates - deal
with it...or not. MV in this very thread is back at it hammering away
at the dead horse so my point about the ST strawman being necessary
for AAT stands.
Why are we so different from apes when we lived in conditions not so
extremely divergent form the habitats of apes as was once thought?
Ecosystems are extraordinarily complex things. Ask a soil scientist
what's going on in a cubic metre of your garden and settle in for the
long haul! The adaptive pressures exerted in any habitat are multifarious
and range from the blatantly obvious to the unimaginably subtle. Trying
to puzzle out the complexities of Africa ten million years ago from
an exasperatingly stingy fossil record is a daunting task and will
prove, in large part, an impossible one. Would the opening up of the
landscape provide enough of an impetus to select for a efficient way
to travel significant distances? Possibly. Were other more subtle
selective pressures which we can't even guess at operating to set in
motion a chain of evolutionary events? Almost certainly.
You ask if I have an explanation? Is this what it's all about then? The
identification of the One Big Thing That Explains It All? What if there
is no OBG but evolution working on us as it works on the multitude
of other organisms, subtly and in ways that constantly surprise. If
there is an OBG it comes much later than the story you're trying to
tell and involves language and culture. The OBG explaining this is to
be found, not out on the savannah or in the water, but in our brains.
Regards,
Rick Wagler
rwa...@junctionnet.com
alg...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> > But if you were a scientist you would realize that
> > championing the new idea would be your route to a Nobel Prize
> > or equivalent and your name in the history books up there with
> > Darwin if you were right.
>
> championing the new idea. In that regard I believe people like Elaine Morgan
> will ultimately be rewarded for their persistence in the face of some pretty
> unbelievable bigotry coming from the 'establishment.'
>
> reasonable and believable theory than the absurd guesses that have been made
> to try to make the story fit the idea that we must have evolved on the
> objective about it, rather than behaving like religious leaders of the middle
> ages confronted with the revoluionary idea that the earth revolves around the
> sun.
Read the interview with Donald Johanson in Skeptic, Vol 5, No 3.
These are not the words of a hidebound defender of orthodoxy. The
unsolved questions he poses about human origins provide a golden
opportunity of the proponents of AAT to enlighten us all but in forty
years of trying they have gotten absolutely nowhere. Can you imagine
why?
Lennier
<ela...@desco.demon.co.uk> posted:
>It proposes that at one stage they spent enough of their time wading
>to transform the occasional laborious bipedalism with whoich all apes
>confront the process of going into water into a habitual and much more
>efficient bipedalism. If water did not do this, what did? There are a
>score of guesses but none that the challengers of AAT seem an#xious to
>espouse.
If water is partly supporting body weight, there is no survival
value.
Lennier
<Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> posted:
>Lenire
>> The point is that in those 300-400 million years of known
>>aquatic species, bipedalism is not one of those adaptations.
>What makes you believe that??
The lack of evidence in the fossil record. The lack of evidence
in the living record. It is not a matter of belief. It is a matter
of lack of evidence.
Mighty Blob
Nathan D wrote:
>>Instead of giving such stupid comments could you please give us an
>>alternative explanation for why we're furless but have a lot of subdermal
>>fat?
>
> That is not a characteristic of amphibians. Therefore it is not
>characteristic of the environment.
Please expand this arguement a little. What is furlessness and a lot of
subdermal fat charateristic of?
The Mighty Blob
alg...@my-dejanews.com
Len...@b5.spam.com (Lenire) wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Nov 1998 16:41:43 GMT, alg...@my-dejanews.com posted:
>
> I would say they would be caught between land predators and river
> predators and would expect extinction quite quickly.
Why? If riverside life is so hostile how are apes supposed to have survived on
the savannah against big-cat predators there?
In reply to my question 'Why is the evidence of modern day apes crossing
stretches of water on two feet always totally ignored (by the anti-AATers)?'
>
> Because crossing has NOT caused them to become bipedal
> therefore water is not such a pressure.
Yes it didn't make THEM bipedal but, (think carefully here) I am arguing that
it made US bipedal, or more precisely our ancestors. Can't you see that if an
ape that is not even semi-aquatic (chimpanzee, gorilla, bonobo) uses a two-
footed mode of locomotion to cross small stretches of water then for an ape
that WAS semi-aquatic it would be a natural method to adopt? It didn't make
THEM bipedal because they don't live in an environment that is aquatic
enough. It DID make our ancestors aquatic because they DID live in such an
environment.
> The ignoring of it is because it is only obvious to true
> believers who have glommed on to a facile explanation that fails
> everything else.
You continually claim that AAT has no evidence, and yet when it stares you in
the face you choose to ignore it completely. You accuse our arguments as
facile but what about yours... "therefore water is not a pressure?" (End of
argument. Next!)
Talking of evidence, can you please tell me about any fossil that was ever
found that showed we DIDN'T live by water?
--
Anyone can convince themselves of the most convoluted argument, scientific or
not, if they repeat it often enough.
alg...@my-dejanews.com
> Isn't this the problem with the AAT. We have the AAT in, ahem, full
> flood and also the dried out fallback position when the incoming
> becomes too hot and heavy. A recent poster to this NG put it very well
> when he said that genuine scientific theory has a pretty clear idea
> what it's about. Lacking any credible evidence the AAT can't set any
> bounds around itself and is a morass of unsupported speculation.
>
Hold on a minute! What's the "pretty clear" explanation for bipedalism,
hairlessness, descended larynx etc. offered by the 'traditionalists'? At least
the AAT provides a reasonable hypothesis for these features.
Algis Kuliukas
alg...@my-dejanews.com
> And if being out of the water for five to ten million years is not
> sufficient time to dispense with this unnecessary aquatic adaptation
> and reacquire a pelt how much is? We are not hairless. If necessary
> hominids - specifically sapiens - could have reacquired fur. But we
> didn't. Could it be that our hairlessness has an adaptive function
> or is a not particularly maladaptive byproduct of something else. Why
> on earth are we hanging on to this aquatic adaptation for dear life?
> As for what did cause it? Thermoregulation has been proposed. Go with
> that.
>
Please excuse me, as I am very new to this debate, but why do you assume that
the aquatic phase ended so long ago?
In another reply of yours, somewhere else, you asked a very good question to
the AATers which basically was 'If we became so well adapted to an aquatic
environment, why did we then give it all up?' Since I have become interested
in the AAT this was the question that put me off for a long time as we are,
undeniably pretty terrestrial now.
From what I have read the most likely scenario which explains both of these
problems is that our ancestors inhabited the area around Afar until quite
recently. Elaine Morgan has proposed that the flooding of this area acted as a
sudden catalyst to cause bipedalism and other human features, but little has
been postulated, as far as I know, about how the drying up of the inland sea
that existed there may have played its part in shaping us too.
If the final stages of human evolution occurred by this drying sea, it would
be logical that our ancestors would have gradually become less aquatic and
more terrestrial. Having to walk more on dry land to get from one water
source to another would answer some of the other questions posed in your
message. When the sea finally evapourated it would be time for them to
finally leave and conquer the world.
The Afarian sea disappeared between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago. A human
exodus happening over this period of time, is consistent with the fossil
record, explains why we haven't re-evolved fur and offers a good explanation
as to why humans finally gave up their semi-aquatic life-style.
Algis Kuliukas
alg...@my-dejanews.com
"Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science as
Is this suffix to their postings supposed to frustrate us into giving up? Make
us angry with their tedious monotony? Or What?
Lorenzo L. Love
alg...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> In article <36562f48....@news.earthlink.net>,
> Len...@b5.spam.com (Lenire) wrote:
> > On Fri, 20 Nov 1998 16:41:43 GMT, alg...@my-dejanews.com posted:
> >
> > BUT IF I were to assume they adapted to a riverine environment
> > I would say they would be caught between land predators and river
> > predators and would expect extinction quite quickly.
>
> Why? If riverside life is so hostile how are apes supposed to have survived on
> the savannah against big-cat predators there?
>
> In reply to my question 'Why is the evidence of modern day apes crossing
> stretches of water on two feet always totally ignored (by the anti-AATers)?'
> >
> > Because crossing has NOT caused them to become bipedal
> > therefore water is not such a pressure.
>
> Yes it didn't make THEM bipedal but, (think carefully here) I am arguing that
> it made US bipedal, or more precisely our ancestors. Can't you see that if an
> ape that is not even semi-aquatic (chimpanzee, gorilla, bonobo) uses a two-
> footed mode of locomotion to cross small stretches of water then for an ape
> that WAS semi-aquatic it would be a natural method to adopt? It didn't make
> THEM bipedal because they don't live in an environment that is aquatic
> enough. It DID make our ancestors aquatic because they DID live in such an
> environment.
>
> > The ignoring of it is because it is only obvious to true
> > believers who have glommed on to a facile explanation that fails
> > everything else.
>
> You continually claim that AAT has no evidence, and yet when it stares you in
> the face you choose to ignore it completely. You accuse our arguments as
> facile but what about yours... "therefore water is not a pressure?" (End of
> argument. Next!)
>
> Talking of evidence, can you please tell me about any fossil that was ever
> found that showed we DIDN'T live by water?
>
> --
>
> Anyone can convince themselves of the most convoluted argument, scientific or
> not, if they repeat it often enough.
>
> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
For ever observed case of an ape walking bipedally in water, there must be ten or
twenty observed cases of apes walking bipedally when carrying something without
any connection to water. Why do wet ape supporters choose to ignore this evidence
completely? Because it doesn't fit their silly little pseudo-scientific notions.
Talking of evidence, can you please tell me about any fossil that was ever found
that showed we DIDN'T live in close association with cats during the Pliocene? The
only theory of human evolution not under dispute is the Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory.
Lorenzo
Marc Verhaegen
Lennier heeft geschreven in bericht
<365752fe....@news.earthlink.net>...
>On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 16:25:29 +0100, "Marc Verhaegen"
><Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> posted:
>
>>Lenire
>
>>>aquatic species, bipedalism is not one of those adaptations.
>
>
> The lack of evidence in the fossil record. The lack of evidence
>in the living record. It is not a matter of belief. It is a matter
>of lack of evidence.
No lack of evidence. Bipedalism is one of those adaptations.
Marc Verhaegen
rwa...@junctionnet.com
> How would wading improve bipedalism to the point that hominids could
> become the prodigious distance walkers that we so obviously are?
Is it so difficult? Nobody claims that we still are wading mammals.
>How
> would a medium that effectively reduces weight improve an animal's
> capacity to carry it on two legs rather than four? All primates have
> a certain minimal predisposition to bipedalism that, for example, an
> ungulate doesn't.
......
Of course, that why primates are more prone to becoming bipedal than
ungulates. What's your problem?
>
> And if being out of the water for five to ten million years
why so long?
>is not
> sufficient time to dispense with this unnecessary aquatic adaptation
> and reacquire a pelt how much is? We are not hairless. If necessary
> hominids - specifically sapiens - could have reacquired fur. But we
> didn't.
Yes, we could have reacquired it even faster IMO. But humans wear clothes
now (& remove these when they go swimming).
>Could it be that our hairlessness has an adaptive function
> or is a not particularly maladaptive byproduct of something else. Why
> on earth are we hanging on to this aquatic adaptation for dear life?
Because it's the only solution. Give 1 other possibility. Humans are unique
in many instances. If we had been terrestrial for the last millions of
years, we would still run on 4 legs, as all primates do outside the forest.
> As for what did cause it? Thermoregulation has been proposed. Go with
that.
>
Then all savanna mammals would have been furless, of course.
> How about turning the respiratory and alimentary canal through 90 degrees
> and holding it there for long stretches of time?
And giraffes?
>How about selective
> pressure for increased vocalization leading eventually to what I'm doing
> right now?
>
In that case all terrestrials should be able to talk.
> What does 'away' mean? I live in central Alberta. We get less than thirty
> inches of pecipitation a year which is just shy of being a semi-arid
> climate. Despite that between several rivers, countless streams, potholes,
> sloughs, lakes, roadside ditches etc etc water is everywhere. You can't
> get away from the stuff! But of course you propose the choice between
> dry savannah and fully aquatic.
Nobody suggests fully aquatic, but dry savanna has been suggested by most
anthropologists, as you know:
The savanna hypothesis of human evolution was strongly promoted by Professor
Dart in 1924 after the discovery of the skull of Taung in South Africa’s
treeless grasslands. He wrote (1925): ‘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, "Post-Cretaceous
Climates of South Africa," African Journal of Science, vol. xix., 1922) that
the climate has fluctuated within exceedingly narrow limits in this country
since Cretaceous times’ and ‘South Africa, by providing a vast open country
with occasional wooded belts and a relatively 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”.
While we now known that the climate did change since the time of Taung
(Partridge, 1985), Dart was thus convinced that the present and the ancient
environment did not differ significantly and that the Taung child had lived
in such open grasslands. Dart only got recognition a few decades later when
Piltdown Man (rather big brain and big teeth) had been unmasked as a fraud,
and anthropologists accepted the Taung fossil (small brain, small teeth) as
a more likely link between apes (small brain, big teeth) and humans (big
brain, small teeth). However, they not only accepted Dart’s view on Taung’s
affinity, but also his view on Taung’s lifestyle in a dry and open country.
.......
>> Have you got an explanation?
>>
>> Elaine
......
>
> Why are we so different from apes when we lived in conditions not so
> extremely divergent form the habitats of apes as was once thought?
> Ecosystems are extraordinarily complex things. Ask a soil scientist
> what's going on in a cubic metre of your garden and settle in for the
> long haul! The adaptive pressures exerted in any habitat are multifarious
> and range from the blatantly obvious to the unimaginably subtle. Trying
> to puzzle out the complexities of Africa ten million years ago from
> an exasperatingly stingy fossil record is a daunting task and will
> prove, in large part, an impossible one. Would the opening up of the
> landscape provide enough of an impetus to select for a efficient way
> to travel significant distances? Possibly.
.......
Ridiculous. No mamma in open landscapes are bipedal except kangaroos, but
their bipedality is a bit different from ours.
Marc
Rich Travsky
=> Lenire
=> [...]
=> > It is up to her to come up with fossil evidence not with facile
=> >explanations as to why it does not exist. Absent fossil evidence
=> >there is no merit to the speculation.
=> >
=> Absent fossil evidence??
=> All Homo species are found at rivers & lakes & even seacoasts in spite of
=> the fact that fossilization is especially difficult in coastal areas due to
=> the action of the tides & sea level changes.
=> Moreover, all our nearest relatives are/were found in wet or very wet
=> environments: there are no indications of savanna environments for the
=> australopithecines or earlier apes.
This is not "fossil" evidence. It is association. Fossil evidence would be
some skeletal trait exhibited in the remains that would indicate an aquatic
adaption. Anatomical evidence, in other words.
Regarding the environs association: Animals have to drink. Predators know
this,
and will prowl the water holes and rivers. In times of draught, water sources
become fewer and prey animals become denser as they make for the surviving
water sources. Deaths due to thirst will go up.
This association means little, except for such generalities as early
hominids needed water. It could even be due to just the limited work
that's been done so far.
=> [...]
=> > Your opinion of crackpot and mine vary considerably. I see it
=> >as crackpot. It makes no predictions. It requires that a riverine
=> >adaptation be totally abandoned such that human show not the
=> >slightest interest in it any longer.
=> >
=> ???
=> Before modern technology, in the Middle Ages in Europe, eg, cities were
=> founded next to the rivers. Can you name one big city not near a river or
=> coast? The river water was necessary for hygiene & drinking water & washing
=> clothes & transport. Humans can't survive without water, as opposed to
=> savanna species.
It's doubtful early hominids needed water for commerce, clothes washing, or
had any notions of hygiene. By listing mere drinking, you undercut the
association
of fossils and environment you mention earlier.
There's no evidence, til much later, that travel over water was accomplished
(other than such speculative and occasional instances of using floating logs
or the like).
All you've listed are modern concerns of water.
And the statement "Humans can't survive without water, as opposed to
savanna species" is ridiculous. Name some savannah species that can survive
without water.
=> If you want a crackpot idea, take the savanna rubbish. Not one valid
=> argument in favor of it. No physiological evidence, no anatomical evidence,
=> no fossil evidence, nothing, just the speculation of Dart & two generations
=> of imitating parrots that were creating ridiculous reasons (walking upright
=> for minimizing solar radiation etc.) for not having to abondon this stupid
=> idea.
What is the anatomical FOSSIL evidence for AAT?
Rich
Lorenzo L. Love
Nathan D wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Nov 1998 16:55:26 GMT, alg...@my-dejanews.com posted:
>
> >Hold on a minute! What's the "pretty clear" explanation for bipedalism,
> >hairlessness, descended larynx etc. offered by the 'traditionalists'? At least
> >the AAT provides a reasonable hypothesis for these features.
>
> Every time I leave this ng for a while you AAT whackos show up
> a few months later.
>
> Your ideas are falsified lamarcian. That is 90% of all of it.
> The rest are misc. misunderstanding of evolution and that is all you
> AAT folks have. End of discussion.
>
> You appear as though you can not search Dejanews much less
> Altavista.
>
> =====
>
> Proud member of the conspiracy to suppress the AAT before they
> take over the world.
>
> =====
> Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science
> as the layman equates incomprehensibility with science.
They do that all the time. Repeatly demand that the sum total of current
scientific knowledge be repeated for them, and then ignore the answers. If they
would bother to take an introductory course in physical anthropology or just read a
textbook on the subject, they could answer all these questions themselves. But most
of them will never do that, as they might learn some real science, and that would
destroy their belief systems. We see this willfull ignorance in all sorts of crack
pots. The faces on Mars bunch keep going back to the 24 year old Viking photos
rather then the new Global Surveyor photos because they don't want to see that the
new photos show that there is nothing there. AAT may had been marginally plausible
in 1960 when Hardy came up with it, but we know a lot more now, several whole new
species of hominines have been found since then. If the wet ape bunch want to get
any where, they need to come up with something new, and not trot out the same old
disproved arguments over and over again, the same way that the faces on Mars bunch
trot out the 1976 Viking photos over and over again.
Lorenzo
Nathan D
>Who are these people, the members of the...
>"Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science as
>the layman equates incomprehensibility with science" club?
>Is this suffix to their postings supposed to frustrate us into giving up? Make
>us angry with their tedious monotony? Or What?
Taglines /sigs may appear tedious. I would appreciate a mail
reader that would rotate them.
However the point is regarding the layman. The ability to
discriminate even by trained scientists, takes years to develop even
within their own field. Outside their field some never develop the
ability.
The untrained layman can not be expected to accomplish much in
separating one incomprehensibility from another.
For those who consider themselves self-taught laymen, they
should have at least once tested themselves and proven to themselves
that they have been able to accomplish it.
Specific to the AAT, I note so many of the "arguments" are
Lamarcian. Those not understanding enough about evolution to
discriminate between lamarcian and darwinian have not learned enough
about the subject of evolution be able to form an opinion on the AAT
matter.
Nathan D
<Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> posted:
>
>Lennier heeft geschreven in bericht
><365752fe....@news.earthlink.net>...
>>On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 16:25:29 +0100, "Marc Verhaegen"
>><Marc.Ve...@village.uunet.be> posted:
>>
>>>Lenire
>>>> The point is that in those 300-400 million years of known
>>>>aquatic species, bipedalism is not one of those adaptations.
>>>What makes you believe that??
>> The lack of evidence in the fossil record. The lack of evidence
>>in the living record. It is not a matter of belief. It is a matter
>>of lack of evidence.
>No lack of evidence. Bipedalism is one of those adaptations.
Fossils are the only acceptable evidence of evolution.
Otherwise the opposable thumb is to hold fish. Ex post facto
rationals are not the stuff of science, only of speculation
(hypothesis) which remain speculation until there is fossil
confirmation.
>The mangrove-dwelling proboscis monkeys
Humans are apes not monkeys.
>cross stretches of water to move
>from one mangrove tree to another & they walk on two legs when making these
>treks. They often even use this bipedal locomotion on dry ground in a
>remarkably human-like way.
Velociraptor appears to have run in an remarkably human like
manner. So? You realize that when you are restricted to two legs we
all are remarkably similar. However "remarkably" tells me next to
nothing. Even when joies are walking instead of hopping they are
"remarkably" similar.
>As for the earliest archosaurs (& their descendants or relatives the
>dinosaurs & birds), we don't know, see, eg, M.Williams 1997 "The adaptive
>significance of endothermy and salt excretion amongst the earliest
>archosaurs" Spec.Sci.Technol.20:237-247. Williams gives some arguments that
>"suggest that the emergence of reptilian bipedal locomotion is related to an
>arboreal-aquatic existence".
See studies of fossil foot prints. Get the body mass and the
leg length and the same equation describes the stride of all bipeds.
Nathan D
>In article <36562f48....@news.earthlink.net>,
> Len...@b5.spam.com (Lenire) wrote:
>> On Fri, 20 Nov 1998 16:41:43 GMT, alg...@my-dejanews.com posted:
>> BUT IF I were to assume they adapted to a riverine environment
>> I would say they would be caught between land predators and river
>> predators and would expect extinction quite quickly.
>Why? If riverside life is so hostile how are apes supposed to have survived on
>the savannah against big-cat predators there?
They barely did survive. I think we are up to six or seven ape
variants that were not able to survive, i.e. extinct.
Rather more important, NONE of those six or seven have been
found on the jungle side of the Rift Valley.
>In reply to my question 'Why is the evidence of modern day apes crossing
>stretches of water on two feet always totally ignored (by the anti-AATers)?'
Because it is Larmarcian evolution. Learned traits can not be
passed on to the young. Therefore that is not ignored, it is
rejected as it is known false.
As it is obvious for example cats do NOT go bipedal to cross
water clearly the ability to go bipedal came before the water. All
apes and bears have the ability to go bipedal functionally for some
period of time.
For a few species of ape, where there was a hip change for some
reason bipedal became permanent. But it is clear the bipedal
potential came before being able to do it in water.
>> Because crossing has NOT caused them to become bipedal
>> therefore water is not such a pressure.
>Yes it didn't make THEM bipedal but, (think carefully here) I am arguing that
>it made US bipedal, or more precisely our ancestors.
And 6-7 other ape species that are way too old in divergence to
fit your lamarcian model.
>Can't you see that if an
>ape that is not even semi-aquatic (chimpanzee, gorilla, bonobo) uses a two-
>footed mode of locomotion to cross small stretches of water then for an ape
>that WAS semi-aquatic it would be a natural method to adopt?
What I see differs from your usage of english. Science english
is quite different from common english.
>It didn't make
>THEM bipedal because they don't live in an environment that is aquatic
>enough. It DID make our ancestors aquatic because they DID live in such an
>environment.
But they were to some degree bipedal before the river.
If you are going to push the river limits back farther than all
the quasi-human bipdals, you have to deal with aquatic lemurs.
>> The ignoring of it is because it is only obvious to true
>> believers who have glommed on to a facile explanation that fails
>> everything else.
>You continually claim that AAT has no evidence, and yet when it stares you in
>the face you choose to ignore it completely. You accuse our arguments as
>facile but what about yours... "therefore water is not a pressure?" (End of
>argument. Next!)
There is no evidence in matters of evolution but fossil
evidence. That is a fact. When do you folks assert the opposable
thumb was to grasp fish? Or have you done it already?
>Talking of evidence, can you please tell me about any fossil that was ever
>found that showed we DIDN'T live by water?
Prove a negative? I thought you were representing you were
educated.
Nathan D
>> And if being out of the water for five to ten million years is not
>> sufficient time to dispense with this unnecessary aquatic adaptation
>> and reacquire a pelt how much is? We are not hairless. If necessary
>> hominids - specifically sapiens - could have reacquired fur. But we
>> didn't. Could it be that our hairlessness has an adaptive function
>> or is a not particularly maladaptive byproduct of something else. Why
>> on earth are we hanging on to this aquatic adaptation for dear life?
>> As for what did cause it? Thermoregulation has been proposed. Go with
>> that.
>Please excuse me, as I am very new to this debate, but why do you assume that
>the aquatic phase ended so long ago?
When did you abandon Darwinism and become an adherent of
Larmarcism?
>In another reply of yours, somewhere else, you asked a very good question to
>the AATers which basically was 'If we became so well adapted to an aquatic
>environment, why did we then give it all up?' Since I have become interested
>in the AAT this was the question that put me off for a long time as we are,
>undeniably pretty terrestrial now.
ONLY survival pressures can cause giving it up.
How did apes from the jungle side get around the Rift Valley
and miraculously find that a riverine adaptation was perfect for the
savannah?
>From what I have read the most likely scenario which explains both of these
>problems is that our ancestors inhabited the area around Afar until quite
>recently. Elaine Morgan has proposed that the flooding of this area acted as a
>sudden catalyst to cause bipedalism and other human features, but little has
>been postulated, as far as I know, about how the drying up of the inland sea
>that existed there may have played its part in shaping us too.
A proposition of flooding is a hypothesis. Absent evidence of
flooding "suddenly" and for no reason it remains baseless
speculation at best.
>If the final stages of human evolution occurred by this drying sea,
What drying sea? Consult any paleo-geology text and get back to
me. No such thing, period.
>it would
>be logical that our ancestors would have gradually become less aquatic and
>more terrestrial.
There is nothing logical about evolution. Evolution is chaotic.
Chaos can be neither logical nor predictable, only decribable as
chaotic.
>Having to walk more on dry land to get from one water
>source to another would answer some of the other questions posed in your
>message. When the sea finally evapourated it would be time for them to
>finally leave and conquer the world.
That is Lamarcian. Larmarcian is false.
>The Afarian sea disappeared between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago. A human
>exodus happening over this period of time, is consistent with the fossil
>record, explains why we haven't re-evolved fur and offers a good explanation
>as to why humans finally gave up their semi-aquatic life-style.
Actually several human species did in that time frame. How
could they have diversified from such a homogenous beginning?
As to re-evolving, evolution does not work that way. It is
chaotic. It has no direction or intent. Dinos lived in the Antarctic
with six months of darkness remember.
"Gave up" is a ridiculous term regarding evolution.
I can only presume you have no knowledge at all of the subject.
Nathan D
<mb...@globalnet.co.uk> posted:
Nothing in particular if you have ever seen a fat Chichuacha.
If you have not seen one, Allah has been merciful to you.
More seriously, I have no idea. Humans do not have the all over
subdural fat characteristic of aquaitic mammal. Humans have the
least fat in the legs that are "required" from wading.
As for furless, humans are not furless. Rather humans appear to
have had their "fur" gense sliced and diced in the process of
evolution. It differs by sex (which can not be related to water
unless there were sex differences in water exposure) and I once
enumerated the types of male human hair and I think I came up with
seven.
Heh! we have unique pubic hair from all other mammals but
identical between the sexes. Please explain the identity by means of
river water. And with that joke out of the way, explain why the arm
pits/underarm hair of both is the same also. Were they always in the
water up to their armpits?
Men have at least three kinds of fur on their head, beard,
balding and non-balding. Women have 1.5 types, some have male
pattern baldness.
Male/female fur in other apes is essentially identical. In the
human ape the texture difference is noticable.
Rather it appears that the genes related to body hair were
picked up, shaken, nuked, and shuffled by a card shark, then put
back in place. There is no rational evolutionary pressure for
different kinds of hair/fur in our species much less the sex
differences in our species.
I suggest that some day you take a look at the big picture,
then entire problem not the little bit of it that is a quasi issue.
You do realize that bipedal is a much simpler change than the
foot do you not?
Nathan D
>Hold on a minute! What's the "pretty clear" explanation for bipedalism,
>hairlessness, descended larynx etc. offered by the 'traditionalists'? At least
>the AAT provides a reasonable hypothesis for these features.
Every time I leave this ng for a while you AAT whackos show up
a few months later.
Your ideas are falsified lamarcian. That is 90% of all of it.
The rest are misc. misunderstanding of evolution and that is all you
AAT folks have. End of discussion.
You appear as though you can not search Dejanews much less
Altavista.
=====
Proud member of the conspiracy to suppress the AAT before they
take over the world.
Paul Crowley
> Why are we so different from apes when we lived in conditions not so
> extremely divergent form the habitats of apes as was once thought?
Your points were entirely reasonable up to this
> Ecosystems are extraordinarily complex things. Ask a soil scientist
> what's going on in a cubic metre of your garden and settle in for the
> long haul!
But we are not talking about microscopic creatures in the
relatively enormous space of a cubic metre. We are talking about
large mammals that need square kilometers. Richard Wrangham
calculates the biomass density for gorillas to be 35 to 55 kg per
square km and the biomass density for chimpanzees (in the same
forest) to be 30 to 80 kg per square km. (He suggests that the
main differences between chimps and bonobos comes from the fact
that gorillas are absent from bonobo habitat -- so they can eat
its food as well.)
What would be the biomass density of hominines per sq km when
mixed in with chimps? I'd suggest the figure of zero. Flat-
footed bipedal hominines simply couldn't compete with chimps in
getting food from trees. And, of course, we know that throughout
the vast areas of tropical forests there aren't any hominines
(except modern ones on rivers, supported by good technology). We
do not find australopithecine-like (or erectus-like) bipedal
hominines in woodland habitat. Whereas if they had ever
established a viable niche in that habitat, we should find them
still present. And their descendants, with larger brains and
better technology, should have wiped out the chimps and be ruling
the place.
>The adaptive pressures exerted in any habitat are multifarious
> and range from the blatantly obvious to the unimaginably subtle. Trying
> to puzzle out the complexities of Africa ten million years ago from
> an exasperatingly stingy fossil record is a daunting task and will
> prove, in large part, an impossible one.
Going for theories that can't possibly work (such as the Savannah
theory or the Woodland-bipedal-ape theory) will certainly make it
impossible.
> Would the opening up of the
> landscape provide enough of an impetus to select for a efficient way
> to travel significant distances? Possibly.
No. Australopiths weren't designed for travel.
> You ask if I have an explanation? Is this what it's all about then?
Yes, that's what science is about.
>The
> identification of the One Big Thing That Explains It All?
It's not necessarily OBG. (What's the 'G' btw?) But we're all
certainly missing out on something crucial.
>What if there
> is no OBG but evolution working on us as it works on the multitude
> of other organisms, subtly and in ways that constantly surprise.
This is just waffle . . . what if it's the rain and the sunshine?
>If there is an OBG it comes much later than the story you're trying to
> tell and involves language and culture.
Language and culture came a long time after bipedalism.
Paul.
al...@ctsuk.demon.co.uk
Na...@geheimspan.mot (Nathan D) wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Nov 1998 19:33:59 GMT, alg...@my-dejanews.com posted:
>
> >Who are these people, the members of the...
>
>
> >Is this suffix to their postings supposed to frustrate us into giving up?
Make
> >us angry with their tedious monotony? Or What?
>
> Taglines /sigs may appear tedious. I would appreciate a mail
> reader that would rotate them.
I hope you find one. It would make reading your postings more entertaining.
>
> However the point is regarding the layman. The ability to
> discriminate even by trained scientists, takes years to develop even
> within their own field. Outside their field some never develop the
> ability.
>
> The untrained layman can not be expected to accomplish much in
> separating one incomprehensibility from another.
>
> For those who consider themselves self-taught laymen, they
> should have at least once tested themselves and proven to themselves
> that they have been able to accomplish it.
>
Oh dear. Well as one of your humble little AAT-laymen I suppose I should be
grateful that you even honour me with a few seconds of your time to reply.
"Tested themselves?" what are you talking about?
> Specific to the AAT, I note so many of the "arguments" are
> Lamarcian. Those not understanding enough about evolution to
> discriminate between lamarcian and darwinian have not learned enough
> about the subject of evolution be able to form an opinion on the AAT
> matter.
AAT "Lamarcian?" where do you get that idea from? Having acted as judge and
jury on that one, this apparently then gives you the right to patronisingly
dismiss anyone who advocates it. Mmm. Dare I suggest (only as a mere layman,
of course) that you are not being very open minded about this.
>
> =====
> Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science
> as the layman equates incomprehensibility with science.
There you go again!
Nathan D
>In article <3658b73d....@news.earthlink.net>,
> Na...@geheimspan.mot (Nathan D) wrote:
>> On Sun, 22 Nov 1998 19:33:59 GMT, alg...@my-dejanews.com posted:
>>
>> >Who are these people, the members of the...
>>
>> >"Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science as
>> >the layman equates incomprehensibility with science" club?
>>
>> >Is this suffix to their postings supposed to frustrate us into giving up?
>Make
>> >us angry with their tedious monotony? Or What?
>>
>> Taglines /sigs may appear tedious. I would appreciate a mail
>> reader that would rotate them.
>
>I hope you find one. It would make reading your postings more entertaining.
>
>>
>> However the point is regarding the layman. The ability to
>> discriminate even by trained scientists, takes years to develop even
>> within their own field. Outside their field some never develop the
>> ability.
>> The untrained layman can not be expected to accomplish much in
>> separating one incomprehensibility from another.
>> For those who consider themselves self-taught laymen, they
>> should have at least once tested themselves and proven to themselves
>> that they have been able to accomplish it.
>Oh dear. Well as one of your humble little AAT-laymen I suppose I should be
>grateful that you even honour me with a few seconds of your time to reply.
I did nothing for you. I commented upon what was here.
>"Tested themselves?" what are you talking about?
Something that would lead you to have some confidence that you
have correctly determined what is correct or incorrect without
looking up the opinions of others. Do it completely independently
yourself first.
>> Specific to the AAT, I note so many of the "arguments" are
>> Lamarcian. Those not understanding enough about evolution to
>> discriminate between lamarcian and darwinian have not learned enough
>> about the subject of evolution be able to form an opinion on the AAT
>> matter.
>AAT "Lamarcian?" where do you get that idea from? Having acted as judge and
>jury on that one, this apparently then gives you the right to patronisingly
>dismiss anyone who advocates it. Mmm. Dare I suggest (only as a mere layman,
>of course) that you are not being very open minded about this.
Obviously you do not understand what constitutes lamarcian as
opposed to darwinian. As we have dismissed Lamarc's idea in general,
the particulars which invoke his ideas are likewise dismissed. To
accept AAT would require the acceptance of Lamarc's ideas but then
Lysenko would have succeeded.
>> =====
>> Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science
>> as the layman equates incomprehensibility with science.
>There you go again!
I do not intend to remove it for you.