Evolution of the vertebrate brain

[Oxyaena]

While there isn't much in the fossil record to learn how humans became
so intelligent, only that they did, or even to indicate the development
of the evolution of the vertebrate nervous system. A look at comparative
anatomy sheds some light on the subject; at least on the evolution of
the vertebrate brain.

For example, if one looks at the nervous system of the lancelet, while
not a vertebrate it is still a chordate, it has a lump of neurons at the
end of the notochord, not a true brain mind you, but it provides a
glimpse at the early vertebrate nervous system. Lampreys are a far bette
example, given that they are true (albeit basal, if you'll pardon my
usage of the expression, John) vertebrates. For example, according to
Baramov et al. (2016), a specific gene the lamprey possesses provides a
key clue to the "origins of telencephalation", or, in layman's terms,
aka language that is not needlessly complicated while still getting the
message across, the origins of the brain.

[quick note: for the record I am aware that some scientific concepts can
only accurately be described in technical terms]

Baramov hypothesizes that the Anf homeobox gene played a key role in the
development of the vertebrate brain based of homological evidence I will
discuss here. Invertebrate and vertebrate early embryonic development of
the brain rudiment are remarkably similar, however, where they diverge
is that the Anf gene is absent from every single invertebrate on this
planet, and is only found in vertebrates, including lampreys. According
to the hypothesis provided by Baramov et a, the appearance of the Anf
variant gene in the LCA of all vertebrates is related to, and perhaps
caused, the appearance of the telencephalon.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39849 - The article isn't paywalled,
if any of you were wondering.

[erik simpson]

Good stuff! And better here than Over There, know what I mean? Makes me
want to look up what similarities in brain structure and function might be
found in invertebrates that exhibit relatively high intelligence. More than
one way to skin cats?

[Oxyaena]

I've had this in drafts for two days now, well, the first half anyways.
As I`m sure you are aware, I`m not as active on Usenet as I used to be,
this is the first time that I've posted here in well over a month, and
it doesn't surprise that I would have an unfinished post in drafts.

Anyhow, I`m not sure what similarities you'll find. My post only
addressed chordates, and the smartest invertebrate (the common octopus)
is about as smart as a songbird, invertebrate nervous systems are too
decentralized to support higher intelligence. Doesn't mean they can't
possess some modicum of intelligence, just look at cephalopods.

The cephalopod nervous system has some 86 million neurons spread
throughout its body, which is extremely alien to the human (and by
extension, vertebrate) nervous system. Octopi are extremely intelligent
for invertebrates, yes, but in terms of vertebrates they only approach
songbirds in terms of intelligence. Although it might not be the best
idea to compare two extremely different organisms to each other outside
of them being bilaterians.

[ruben safir]

On 03/21/2018 03:20 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> While there isn't much in the fossil record to learn how humans became
> so intelligent,

to the most part, I don't think humans are any smarter than several
species. We just have culture and exceptional individuals that drive
innovation.

[Mario Petrinovic]

ruben safir:
> erik simpson:

>> While there isn't much in the fossil record to learn how humans became
>> so intelligent,
>
> to the most part, I don't think humans are any smarter than several
> species. We just have culture and exceptional individuals that drive
> innovation.

Yes, that's my opinion, too. There isn't any link at all between some
achievement and the size of brain. Actually, it is the other way around.
The biggest thing probably was the first one, tool making. We had small
brain at that time. In the last 40ky we did the biggest achievements,
yet, our brain actually *significantly* shrunk during that time.
If the size of our brain correlates with anything, it correlates with
the latitude we have spread to. The northern we went, the bigger our
brain was.
Humans have particular thermoregulation (which is obvious at the first
sight). Where other animals have fur, we have subcutaneous fat. Thermal
photos show that we radiate our heat through our head. Those big
arteries in our neck actually serve to exchange this heat (and not to
feed our "magnificent" brain).
Somebody should check whether birds that have neo-cortex also
accumulate subcutaneous fat.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that mammals also originated on
high latitudes.
See how chimp brain works much better than human brain:
https://youtu.be/cPiDHXtM0VA
What clearly set as apart from other animals is language.
Somebody can say that our language is the proof of our intelligence.
Well, if somebody listens to what we are actually talking about, then
there is no better proof of our stupidity than our talking is.
In my view, for tool making of the kind humans had, you definitely
need advanced language. I would say that this was why Homo could prevail
of Australopithecus on Australopithecus' territory.
To me, Australopithecus has exact morphological changes for my theory
about it. First he fed on burned meat, having big incisors, to chop off
meat (of course, he didn't have tools). Then Homo came, Australopithecus
couldn't burn fire anymore, fire is seen by all your enemies far away,
during day, and during night. This is why nobody who eats raw meat could
never change onto burned meat eating (you also have to collect wood,
cook meat for at least one hour, recently some study showed that this is
*big* energy expenditure, too big). So, Australopithecus had to change
onto raw meat eating, and had to fight humans. So, he started to cut
meat with stones (instead of incisors), and to chew meat with cheek
teeth, and became robust.
So, do you need intelligence for language? I wouldn't say so.
What you need is the capability of articulation of sounds, and the
capability of analyzing sounds. You also need to start to use sounds
instead of "body language".
Animals who bark cannot articulate sounds, so, we didn't bark.
For capability to analyze sounds, the best environment is rocky coast,
where sounds are very corrupted.
For starting to use sounds, the best is if your body is immersed in
water, so the only thing that is left is sound, for communication. When
you get lucky to have conditions to replace body language with sounds,
then you get really lucky, because sounds have much better capabilities
than other forms of communication. But, it is only the case of being
lucky, and nothing else. This is why Homo managed to extinct
Australopithecus.
So, in my view, hominines extincted all the other Miocene apes by
burning forest, so called "deforestation". So, bipedals were actually
the king of this planet for millions of years, without doing anything
advanced, like civilization, or so. We can take that bipedals lived on
the coast before deforestation, and then some of those went inland to
perform deforestation. This means that the ones that remained on the
coast lived on the coast for 5 million years more. During this 5 million
years they advanced language so much that they finally could start to
make tools.
So, this was all long, gradual process, and not like a divine spark
hit us one day in the head, so one day we suddenly became very smart.
This was, just like anything else in nature, slow, gradual process,
logical, not divine. So, we were the kings of this planet for 8 million
years before we started civilization. This was slow, long, gradual process.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 8:26:26 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> ruben safir:
> > erik simpson:
> >> While there isn't much in the fossil record to learn how humans became
> >> so intelligent,
> >
> > to the most part, I don't think humans are any smarter than several
> > species. We just have culture and exceptional individuals that drive
> > innovation.

...and opposable thumbs, and full use of hands. And "culture" is too
general: our use of language is unparalleled as far as we know. As you,
Mario, note below.

> Yes, that's my opinion, too. There isn't any link at all between some
> achievement and the size of brain.

The cerebral cortex and its degree of convolution does seem to provide
a link, though.

> Actually, it is the other way around.
> The biggest thing probably was the first one, tool making.

Hence my emphasis on opposable thumbs. And bipedal posture was
necessary for full use of hands. Except for sifakas, and possibly
some extinct lemurs, we are the most "vertical" animals on this planet.

> We had small
> brain at that time. In the last 40ky we did the biggest achievements,
> yet, our brain actually *significantly* shrunk during that time.

I wouldn't call a few percentage points significant. YMMV.

> If the size of our brain correlates with anything, it correlates with
> the latitude we have spread to. The northern we went, the bigger our
> brain was.
> Humans have particular thermoregulation (which is obvious at the first
> sight). Where other animals have fur, we have subcutaneous fat.

Most women do. Fat men tend to store their fat inside their body
cavity (coelom).

And arctic pinnipeds have lots of subcutaneous fat.

Combining the two, I read ca. two decades ago of a woman who swam
long distances in arctic waters. She was well endowed with fat.
An ectomorph like me would be in critical condition if I tried
to swim even one tenth that distance that far north.

> Thermal
> photos show that we radiate our heat through our head.

And elsewhere. Recently I've read that high percentages of heat
radiated from the head are something like an "urban legend," and
that our heads don't radiate heat any more as percentage of surface
area than other parts of our bodies.

> Those big
> arteries in our neck actually serve to exchange this heat (and not to
> feed our "magnificent" brain).

Documentation?

One thing I know: the brain dies without oxygen faster than most
parts of the body. This has nothing to do with intelligence AFAIK,
just the importance of the brain as "head" of the nervous system
and of bodily activities.

> Somebody should check whether birds that have neo-cortex also
> accumulate subcutaneous fat.

My first guess is that birds either all have neo-cortex, or none do.
If that doesn't pan out, my second guess is that palaeognaths lack
them and neo-gnaths have them.

I have seen turkeys with inch-thick layers of subcutaneous fat, if
that's of any help.

> I wouldn't be surprised to find out that mammals also originated on
> high latitudes.

High southern latitudes, maybe. Therapsids are mostly know from Africa.

> See how chimp brain works much better than human brain:
> https://youtu.be/cPiDHXtM0VA
> What clearly set as apart from other animals is language.
> Somebody can say that our language is the proof of our intelligence.
> Well, if somebody listens to what we are actually talking about, then
> there is no better proof of our stupidity than our talking is.

Speak for yourself.

> In my view, for tool making of the kind humans had, you definitely
> need advanced language.

You need even more to arrive at, and to communicate abstract concepts;
and to reason about them and about various situations in which we find
ourselves. Advanced language has enabled us to learn the nature of
planets and stars, and to arrive at an incredibly deep scientific theories
and numerous branches of mathematics.

I think what you write below of human evolution is overly speculative,
but if no one else takes you up on it, I might explain why I think
that way.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[erik simpson]

Bravo! IMO that was a good move.

[Mario Petrinovic]

On 28.3.2018. 3:46, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 8:26:26 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>> ruben safir:
>>> erik simpson:
>>>> While there isn't much in the fossil record to learn how humans became
>>>> so intelligent,
>>>
>>> to the most part, I don't think humans are any smarter than several
>>> species. We just have culture and exceptional individuals that drive
>>> innovation.
>
> ...and opposable thumbs, and full use of hands. And "culture" is too
> general: our use of language is unparalleled as far as we know. As you,
> Mario, note below.
>
>
>> Yes, that's my opinion, too. There isn't any link at all between some
>> achievement and the size of brain.
>
> The cerebral cortex and its degree of convolution does seem to provide
> a link, though.

"Does seem" is about it. We have creatures that lived alongside us
with tinny brains. Brains are white matter, not grey matter. For
example, if you want to make subcutaneous fat inside skull, you do it
from what you have inside already. Inside you have brain. So, you modify
brain. There are papers that talk about thermoregulation capabilities of
nerve cells.

>> Actually, it is the other way around.
>> The biggest thing probably was the first one, tool making.
>
> Hence my emphasis on opposable thumbs. And bipedal posture was
> necessary for full use of hands. Except for sifakas, and possibly
> some extinct lemurs, we are the most "vertical" animals on this planet.

Yes, exactly. So, we added one upon the other. Not in one instant
moment, when divine spark, up from the sky, hit us. The only reason for
the theory of genetic mutation is to explain that divine spark. They
have to explain *why* we are different from other animals. Well, I have
news for them, we are *not* different from other animals, we *didn't*
evolve all our features overnight, but during long period, one after the
other. We were kings of this planet for a long time *before* we even
started to make tools. We are not divine, we are normal animals.
All the Miocene apes went extinct (except very few of them). Only
bipedals continued to thrive. I am offering an explanation. 20 - 7 mya
was the Age of Apes, because apes thrived during those times. Well, I
have news for scientists, apes didn't stop to thrive 7mya, and suddenly
reappeared 2.5mya again. No, bipedal apes continued to thrive from 7 to
2.5mya. But those bipedal apes were using fire. There is no evidence?
Well, of course, fire destroys evidence.

>> We had small
>> brain at that time. In the last 40ky we did the biggest achievements,
>> yet, our brain actually *significantly* shrunk during that time.
>
> I wouldn't call a few percentage points significant. YMMV.

Well, this is the problem, it wasn't few percentage points. And it was
short time, only 40 ky (or something). So, it was sudden, huge drop.
I don't know if you can believe me, I've read about different numbers
on different places. It is strange how every part of our body is
thoroughly researched, there were numerous scientific projects
*tailored* to prove our intelligence, yet I don't know about anybody who
even thought about researching our brain shrinkage. For example, this is
the first page talking about it in my Google search:
https://www.cobbresearchlab.com/issue-2-1/2015/12/24/average-cranium-brain-size-of-homo-neanderthalensis-vs-homo-sapiens
There they are mentioning 1500 ccm for early H.sapiens, and 1350 ccm
for today's brain. This is 10%. In only 40 ky (or somethign).
But, if we take a look at Wikipedia, we see that average brain size is
1260 ccm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size
Now, this is 16% in only 40ky (or something).
Ok now, if you take a look at the first link again, you will see that
they clearly mention that people in cold climate tend to have larger
brains, while people in warmer climate tend to have smaller brains.
Exactly. I would also say that people in warmer climate tend to have
larger mouths, while those in cold climate tend to have smaller mouths.
All these are for thermoregulation, intelligence has nothing to do with
it. The expansion of our brain *matches* the expansion of humans to the
north, and *doesn't match at all* anything intelligent. Yet, we are
absolutely sure that our big brain is actually the proof of our
intelligence. Not only that it doesn't match at all, actually, it is the
other way around. I think that we can agree that in the exact time that
our brain hugely shrunk, humans performed by far the most intelligent
achievements. But for this, suddenly, science doesn't exist. For this
there is no science (this is the simplest possible scientific task) that
will be done on this data. Because in the very first minute somebody
would try to research this, it will be very *obvious* that brain size
*doesn't* match intelligence.

>> If the size of our brain correlates with anything, it correlates with
>> the latitude we have spread to. The northern we went, the bigger our
>> brain was.
>> Humans have particular thermoregulation (which is obvious at the first
>> sight). Where other animals have fur, we have subcutaneous fat.
>
> Most women do. Fat men tend to store their fat inside their body
> cavity (coelom).
>
> And arctic pinnipeds have lots of subcutaneous fat.
>
> Combining the two, I read ca. two decades ago of a woman who swam
> long distances in arctic waters. She was well endowed with fat.
> An ectomorph like me would be in critical condition if I tried
> to swim even one tenth that distance that far north.
>
>> Thermal
>> photos show that we radiate our heat through our head.
>
> And elsewhere. Recently I've read that high percentages of heat
> radiated from the head are something like an "urban legend," and
> that our heads don't radiate heat any more as percentage of surface
> area than other parts of our bodies.

Take simple physical task, run, do some job in your home. You will use
leg muscles, you will use arm muscles, you will not use head muscles,
yet, you will pour sweat from your forehead. This is for thermoregulation.

>> Those big
>> arteries in our neck actually serve to exchange this heat (and not to
>> feed our "magnificent" brain).
>
> Documentation?
>
> One thing I know: the brain dies without oxygen faster than most
> parts of the body. This has nothing to do with intelligence AFAIK,
> just the importance of the brain as "head" of the nervous system
> and of bodily activities.
>
>> Somebody should check whether birds that have neo-cortex also
>> accumulate subcutaneous fat.
>
> My first guess is that birds either all have neo-cortex, or none do.
> If that doesn't pan out, my second guess is that palaeognaths lack
> them and neo-gnaths have them.
>
> I have seen turkeys with inch-thick layers of subcutaneous fat, if
> that's of any help.

Birds generally don't have those, yet they managed to find it in some
migrating birds. They are speculating that this is for intelligence, to
remember their voyages.
Some birds do have subcutaneous fat, especially those that live on
water (like pelican). But also, some migrating birds accumulate
subcutaneous fat before their voyages.
But I am writing all this from memory, I am not a scientists. But I
did read about it, and tried to research this, some time before.

>> I wouldn't be surprised to find out that mammals also originated on
>> high latitudes.
>
> High southern latitudes, maybe. Therapsids are mostly know from Africa.

Which was once connected to South America, which was once connected to
Antarctica.

>> See how chimp brain works much better than human brain:
>> https://youtu.be/cPiDHXtM0VA
>> What clearly set as apart from other animals is language.
>> Somebody can say that our language is the proof of our intelligence.
>> Well, if somebody listens to what we are actually talking about, then
>> there is no better proof of our stupidity than our talking is.
>
> Speak for yourself.

Yes, I am speaking for myself.

>> In my view, for tool making of the kind humans had, you definitely
>> need advanced language.
>
> You need even more to arrive at, and to communicate abstract concepts;
> and to reason about them and about various situations in which we find
> ourselves. Advanced language has enabled us to learn the nature of
> planets and stars, and to arrive at an incredibly deep scientific theories
> and numerous branches of mathematics.
>
> I think what you write below of human evolution is overly speculative,
> but if no one else takes you up on it, I might explain why I think
> that way.

Please, do.

[ruben safir]

On 03/27/2018 09:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> our use of language is unparalleled as far as we know.

not really. Not much better than my African Grey. How many words does
an average person know? The innovation is the ability to accumulate
symbolic thought through recording.

[ruben safir]

On 03/28/2018 11:22 AM, erik simpson wrote:
>>> So, this was all long, gradual process, and not like a divine spark
>>> hit us one day in the head, so one day we suddenly became very smart.
>>> This was, just like anything else in nature, slow, gradual process,
>>> logical, not divine. So, we were the kings of this planet for 8 million
>>> years before we started civilization. This was slow, long, gradual process.
> Bravo! IMO that was a good move.

what was a good move?

[erik simpson]

It was addressedto Peter, who has beenhaveing a hard time in another group.
He's better over here, and the discussion much more civil. However, shortly
after I wrote that he went back to talk.origins and had another outburst, so
I don't know if we'll see much more of him for a while.

[Oxyaena]

On 3/27/2018 9:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 8:26:26 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>> ruben safir:
>>> erik simpson:
>>>> While there isn't much in the fossil record to learn how humans became
>>>> so intelligent,
>>>
>>> to the most part, I don't think humans are any smarter than several
>>> species. We just have culture and exceptional individuals that drive
>>> innovation.
>
> ...and opposable thumbs, and full use of hands. And "culture" is too
> general: our use of language is unparalleled as far as we know. As you,
> Mario, note below.

I often like to point out to people that we aren't necessarily smarter
than other organisms, dolphins and elephants rank alongside us in terms
of intelligence, and one could make an argument that dolphins possess
language. The reason we excel while the other two fail is because of
their anatomical (and environmental), for want of a better term,
"deficiencies". Water in the case of dolphins isn't conducive for
civilization or the development of opposable thumbs and full use of
hands, organisms in the water must use fins (or if they are tetrapods,
flippers to compensate). Dolphins possess flippers, not hands. It also
has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures, while
humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
aren't.

>
>
>> Yes, that's my opinion, too. There isn't any link at all between some
>> achievement and the size of brain.
>
> The cerebral cortex and its degree of convolution does seem to provide
> a link, though.

It indeed does, next to humans cetaceans have the most convoluted
cortexes on the planet, the amount of brainfolds is staggering.

>
>
>> Actually, it is the other way around.
>> The biggest thing probably was the first one, tool making.
>
> Hence my emphasis on opposable thumbs. And bipedal posture was
> necessary for full use of hands. Except for sifakas, and possibly
> some extinct lemurs, we are the most "vertical" animals on this planet.

See above.

>
>
>> We had small
>> brain at that time. In the last 40ky we did the biggest achievements,
>> yet, our brain actually *significantly* shrunk during that time.
>
> I wouldn't call a few percentage points significant. YMMV.
>
>
>> If the size of our brain correlates with anything, it correlates with
>> the latitude we have spread to. The northern we went, the bigger our
>> brain was.
>> Humans have particular thermoregulation (which is obvious at the first
>> sight). Where other animals have fur, we have subcutaneous fat.
>
> Most women do. Fat men tend to store their fat inside their body
> cavity (coelom).
>
> And arctic pinnipeds have lots of subcutaneous fat.
>
> Combining the two, I read ca. two decades ago of a woman who swam
> long distances in arctic waters. She was well endowed with fat.
> An ectomorph like me would be in critical condition if I tried
> to swim even one tenth that distance that far north.

<snark>Age also has something to do with it, but I can't recall.</snark>

>
>
>> Thermal
>> photos show that we radiate our heat through our head.
>
> And elsewhere. Recently I've read that high percentages of heat
> radiated from the head are something like an "urban legend," and
> that our heads don't radiate heat any more as percentage of surface
> area than other parts of our bodies.

Wait, you weren't aware of that? I was aware of that for a long time,
that's why I always make sure to cover my entire body rather than the head.

>
>
>> Those big
>> arteries in our neck actually serve to exchange this heat (and not to
>> feed our "magnificent" brain).
>
> Documentation?
>
> One thing I know: the brain dies without oxygen faster than most
> parts of the body. This has nothing to do with intelligence AFAIK,
> just the importance of the brain as "head" of the nervous system
> and of bodily activities.
>
>
>
>> Somebody should check whether birds that have neo-cortex also
>> accumulate subcutaneous fat.
>
> My first guess is that birds either all have neo-cortex, or none do.
> If that doesn't pan out, my second guess is that palaeognaths lack
> them and neo-gnaths have them.

Neo-cortexes are only found in mammals, and the most intelligent birds
still lack neo-cortexes. All birds possess cerebral cortexes, on the
other hand.

>
> I have seen turkeys with inch-thick layers of subcutaneous fat, if
> that's of any help.
>
>
>> I wouldn't be surprised to find out that mammals also originated on
>> high latitudes.
>
> High southern latitudes, maybe. Therapsids are mostly know from Africa.

I don't really know, since therapsids have also been found in higher
latitudes as well. Then again, most cynodonts (the suborder of
Therapsida that mammals belong to) were found in the Southern continents
barring a few mammaliformes found in China (*cough*Castorocauda*cough*).

[Mario Petrinovic]

Opposable thumbs aren't enough. You got to have dexterous hand. I
don't know the right definition, but it is something like this, the tip
of your thumb has to be able to reach the tip of some other finger, i
presume. Take a look at "hands" of robots. It is actually enough to have
only two fingers, but those two have to be able to clinch and object
from opposing directions. Like, for example, your thumb and your index
finger. This is what is needed for object manipulation. The hands of
apes are just hooks, nothing else. Take a look at how this monkey grabs
mussels. I presume that thumb is essential in such task. Monkey cannot
use thumb efficiently, he has to curl all his other fingers around the
object, and this is just a weak pressure, only thumb gives enough force,
enough squeeze for the job (for example, imagine how would you grab a
pencil if you don't have thumb):
https://youtu.be/ZMFLjx47G88?t=3m53s
AFAIK, only few primates have this capability, humans, gelada baboon,
and capuchin monkey. So, you got to have a language, and you got to have
dexterous hand in order to start to use tools the way we are using.

>>>         Yes, that's my opinion, too. There isn't any link at all
>>> between some
>>> achievement and the size of brain.
>>
>> The cerebral cortex and its degree of convolution does seem to provide
>> a link, though.
>
> It indeed does, next to humans cetaceans have the most convoluted
> cortexes on the planet, the amount of brainfolds is staggering.

I believe that one new paper ties brainfolds to the size of brain.
IOW, brainfolds *aren't* for intelligence, they are just a consequence
of big brains, no matter of the intelligence.

>>> Those big
>>> arteries in our neck actually serve to exchange this heat (and not to
>>> feed our "magnificent" brain).
>>
>> Documentation?
>>
>> One thing I know: the brain dies without oxygen faster than most
>> parts of the body. This has nothing to do with intelligence AFAIK,
>> just the importance of the brain as "head" of the nervous system
>> and of bodily activities.
>>
>>
>>
>>>         Somebody should check whether birds that have neo-cortex also
>>> accumulate subcutaneous fat.
>>
>> My first guess is that birds either all have neo-cortex, or none do.
>> If that doesn't pan out, my second guess is that palaeognaths lack
>> them and neo-gnaths have them.
>
>
> Neo-cortexes are only found in mammals, and the most intelligent birds
> still lack neo-cortexes. All birds possess cerebral cortexes, on the
> other hand.

If mammals evolved at high latitudes, then you can tie neo-cortex to
high latitudes.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 12:53:59 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> On Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 9:09:20 PM UTC-7, ruben safir wrote:
> > On 03/28/2018 11:22 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> > >>> So, this was all long, gradual process, and not like a divine spark
> > >>> hit us one day in the head, so one day we suddenly became very smart.
> > >>> This was, just like anything else in nature, slow, gradual process,
> > >>> logical, not divine. So, we were the kings of this planet for 8 million
> > >>> years before we started civilization. This was slow, long, gradual process.
> > > Bravo! IMO that was a good move.
> >
> > what was a good move?
>
> It was addressedto Peter, who has beenhaveing a hard time in another group.
> He's better over here, and the discussion much more civil.

...thanks to an agreement I came up with and to which you
and I and Harshman signed on. However, the kid gloves come off
when Harshman deals with some others here.

Mine only come off when Oxyaena, who never signed on to this
agreement, makes savage unprovoked attacks on me. I'm quite
civil towards even Oxyaena when not under the gun, as my most
recent reply to him/her on another s.b.p. thread demonstreates.

> However, shortly
> after I wrote that he went back to talk.origins and had another outburst,
> so I don't know if we'll see much more of him for a while.

You are violating our agreement, which was to set aside our
differences from talk.origins and to treat s.b.p. as a kind
of embassy where we treat and each other like good ambassadors.

If you do not apologize for this infraction, I will assume that
you have renounced our agreement and will then set the record
straight on what really happened in talk.origins.

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

I wasn't talking to you, and no apology will be forthcoming since there was
no infraction. I have not renounced the aforementioned agreement, and I intend
to address you in a civil manner, period. Both here and in talk.origins. Ruben
asked what my comment about a "good move" meant, and I answered, truthfully. I
still think it was a good move. I wish you'd contribute more over here; the
discussions you're involved with in talk.origins are your business.

[ruben safir]

On 04/03/2018 11:17 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> I have not renounced the aforementioned agreement, and I intend
> to address you in a civil manner, period. Both here and in talk.origins. Ruben
> asked what my comment about a "good move" meant, and I answered, truthfully.

Taxation without representation!

[erik simpson]

???

[Peter Nyikos]

I'm sorry, that won't do. You claimed I had "another outburst"
without any prior mention by anyone of outbursts. That suggests
that I had been doing something improper in talk.origins, and I deny that.

Also, why did you say "Bravo!"? I have responded calmly to people
many times in talk.origins and you have NEVER said "Bravo!" to me
there, even though we've interacted about ten times as much there
as we do here. So what's the point of you saying "Bravo!" *here* when it is
my HABIT to write calmly in sci.bio.paleontology?

In fact, Harshman thought it was a violation of our agreement
to tell Joe LyonLayden that not everyone here is as nasty to
newcomers as John was to him. I reminded John that he is not
bound by our agreement to be nice to others who have not signed
onto it, and told him that if he doesn't like me making factual
comments like that, he can always try being nicer to Joe.

> I have not renounced the aforementioned agreement, and I intend
> to address you in a civil manner, period.

Whether intended or not, you also violated our agreement at the end
of January, and I called you out on that too. But I don't think you
saw where I did that: you never replied to that post, which
can be found here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/buu6YMYw924/JFf5XO-OAQAJ
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2018 17:35:34 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <ad2662ba-89bc-48d2...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: New Page--Dinosaur-Age Fossil Leaves In California

> Both here and in talk.origins.

No comment.

> Ruben
> asked what my comment about a "good move" meant, and I answered, truthfully. I
> still think it was a good move. I wish you'd contribute more over here; the
> discussions you're involved with in talk.origins are your business.

And yours, obviously, since you are in lots of discussions with me there,
one as late as last week which had its beginning on the s.b.p. topic of
"type specimen," and on three other threads in March.

Was the alleged "outburst" in reply to you in one of them?

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

I not going to haggle with you here, or in t.o. If we differ in what we
consider acceptable (obviously we do), so be it.

[ruben safir]

On 04/03/2018 11:17 AM, erik simpson wrote:

> I
> still think it was a good move.

I still don't even understand what the good move was, but evidently,
there is a wonderful soap opera involved.

[erik simpson]

If you're really interested, the soap opera is continuous on talk.origins, with
many players and non-stop drama. I can't say I recommend it. It's still pretty
quiet here, but the tone is much better. It hasn't always been so.

[Peter Nyikos]

This is much more serious than any soap opera. Erik is shaking
the foundations of our agreement.


And if the agreement goes, sci.bio.paleontology will be the biggest loser.


The situation is very similar to the time you said you were
leaving sci.bio.paleontology because of the way Harshman
was treating you. He had made baseless charges of you knowing
nothing about two things about which you DID know a good bit.

Erik never lifted a finger to persuade you to relent, or to remonstrate
with Harshman. It fell to me to do that, and I did both by telling
you that if you had signed on to our agreement, Harshman would
have been guilty of twice violating it.

Harshman claimed that HE didn't see it that way. Rather than
make an issue of that, I directly let you know how much your
input here is appreciated by myself (and, I hope, others
like Pandora and Inyo).


But the issue remains: it seems as though Harshman thinks that HIS making
baseless derogatory accusations does not violate any
agreement to behave like good ambassadors to each other.

And Erik's recent behavior suggests he is of the same opinion.
He still hasn't replied to the post I linked, which ends with the charge
that he had also violated our agreement in January:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/buu6YMYw924/JFf5XO-OAQAJ
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2018 17:35:34 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <ad2662ba-89bc-48d2...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: New Page--Dinosaur-Age Fossil Leaves In California

Note this, however: I did not put a time limit on Erik's
apology. If he discusses these issues like a responsible
adult who cares about the future of sci.bio.paleontology,
I will put my assumption of him having repudiated our
agreement on indefinite hold.


Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

Peter, I respectfully ask you to drop this thread. My understanding of our
"agreement" is that we would speak politely and leave interpersonal wrangling
and previous gripes out. That is still my understanding, and I will try my
best. Your last post recounts previous grievances and interpersonal problems.
In my opinion these don't belong here, and would fit much better in the "soap
opera" analogue Ruben described.

[Peter Nyikos]

Might I remind you that you have not written anything substantive
on paleontology all through this thread? I have written lots, and
I intend to resume, later today.

By the way, while we were doing our back-and-forth, I posted
meaty stuff twice to a thread I began in sci.anthropology.paleo.
Here is my second post to it:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.anthropology.paleo/M47pc-CYZj4/obVuFxDtBQAJ
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2018 16:27:31 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <209fec50-3a47-4533...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Prothero on genetic distances among hominins

> My understanding of our
> "agreement" is that we would speak politely and leave interpersonal wrangling
> and previous gripes out.

So, as long as someone makes derogatory baseless accusations
that are worded politely, he is not in violation? [See above
about Harshman.]

Is that your idea of civil behavior?

> That is still my understanding, and I will try my
> best. Your last post recounts previous grievances and interpersonal problems.

You ignored the post linked above when it came out. You
ignored it when I called it to your attention. So am
I supposed to be disqualified from calling out violations that have
not been addressed just because two months have gone by?

Did you even READ that January 31 post? Here is the relevant
part:

________________________ excerpt _____________________

> For what it's worth (very little), I also read your initial
> reaction as belittling Signor and Lipps.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I assume you had thought
I had read one or both of the articles rather than just the
Wiki entry.

But I hadn't. I even had trouble accessing an abstract with the
substandard link in Wikipedia, as I described to Harshman.



> Belittling comes easily to you.

You are in violation of our agreement. There is no way you
could justify this statement by what has happened in s.b.e.
since we made that agreement.

Hence, you could only justify it (if at all) by some events that took
place in talk.origins. And our agreement specifically said we would
lay aside our differences in t.o. when posting here.

================== end of excerpt ===================

Take special note of what I said about the basis for your
accusation. One of two things seems to be true:

1. You don't have a leg to stand on with your accusation
that belittlement comes easily to me.

2. You think that belittling people includes accusing
dishonest people of dishonesty, hypocritical people
of hypocrisy, cowardly people of cowardice, etc.

And when I say "dishonest (etc.) people" I don't just mean
one or two cases of dishonest behavior. I mean dozens,
and in some cases hundreds of cases. There is more than one person
in talk.origins who fits that description, some with respect
to all three named traits.

So I would put it this way: accusing immoral people of immoral
behavior comes naturally to someone who cares about morality,
and I am one such person. Are you?

> In my opinion these don't belong here, and would fit much better in the "soap
> opera" analogue Ruben described.

Do you think it is "uncivil" to accuse someone of dishonesty, etc.
even if that someone is libeling another? That is the kind
of "soap opera" accusation that has been forced on me more than
once in talk.origins to counter grotesquely false claims
(1) that I am a creationist and (2) that I want to take rights away from gays.

In talk.origins, (1) is more damaging to one's reputation
than being pathologically dishonest, and (2) is even more
damaging -- it is just about the most damaging accusation
one can make in talk.origins, given the political outlook
of most of its members.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

I wrote something that might be confusing:

On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 3:29:46 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 11:25:17 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 7:42:22 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > And Erik's recent behavior suggests he is of the same opinion.
> > > He still hasn't replied to the post I linked, which ends with the charge
> > > that he had also violated our agreement in January:
> > >
> > >
> > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/buu6YMYw924/JFf5XO-OAQAJ
> > > Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2018 17:35:34 -0800 (PST)
> > > Message-ID: <ad2662ba-89bc-48d2...@googlegroups.com>
> > > Subject: Re: New Page--Dinosaur-Age Fossil Leaves In California

> > Peter, I respectfully ask you to drop this thread.
>
> Might I remind you that you have not written anything substantive
> on paleontology all through this thread? I have written lots, and
> I intend to resume, later today.
>
> By the way, while we were doing our back-and-forth, I posted
> meaty stuff twice to a thread I began in sci.anthropology.paleo.
> Here is my second post to it:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.anthropology.paleo/M47pc-CYZj4/obVuFxDtBQAJ
> Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2018 16:27:31 -0700 (PDT)
> Message-ID: <209fec50-3a47-4533...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Re: Prothero on genetic distances among hominins

<snip for focus>

> You ignored the post linked above when it came out.

This referred to the first of the posts linked above. After
I wrote this line, I put in the second link, but forgot to change
the wording to reflect this change.

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

This is my last response to this subject.

1) I am not interested in nor will I respond to any of your grievances, real or
imagined, with me or anyone else, here or anywhere else.

2) If I ever respond to you anywhere, it will be on a substantive issue of
interest to me.

[ruben safir]

On 04/06/2018 10:42 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> The situation is very similar to the time you said you were
> leaving sci.bio.paleontology because of the way Harshman
> was treating you. He had made baseless charges of you knowing
> nothing about two things about which you DID know a good bit.

quiet usage of filters generally works for me until or unless the board
just dies from fatigue of troll abuse.

[ruben safir]

On 04/06/2018 03:29 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> Note this, however: I did not put a time limit on Erik's
>>> apology. If he discusses these issues like a responsible
>>> adult who cares about the future of sci.bio.paleontology,
>>> I will put my assumption of him having repudiated our
>>> agreement on indefinite hold.
>>>
>>>
>>> Peter Nyikos
>> Peter, I respectfully ask you to drop this thread.
> Might I remind you that you have not written anything substantive
> on paleontology all through this thread? I have written lots, and
> I intend to resume, later today.

It would, IMO, be best if my innocent inquiry as to what something meant
not be used as a platform for a nonconstructive argument.

I would ask as a personal favor that it not be used as a reason to fight.

[erik simpson]

Excellent advice. Sometimes silence is really golden.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, April 2, 2018 at 12:12:20 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> On 2.4.2018. 16:27, Oxyaena wrote:
> > On 3/27/2018 9:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 8:26:26 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >>> ruben safir:
> >>>> erik simpson:
> >>>>> While there isn't much in the fossil record to learn how humans became
> >>>>> so intelligent,
> >>>>
> >>>> to the most part, I don't think humans are any smarter than several
> >>>> species.  We just have culture and exceptional individuals that drive
> >>>> innovation.
> >>
> >> ...and opposable thumbs, and full use of hands. And "culture" is too
> >> general: our use of language is unparalleled as far as we know. As you,
> >> Mario, note below.
> >
> >
> > I often like to point out to people that we aren't necessarily smarter
> > than other organisms, dolphins and elephants rank alongside us in terms
> > of intelligence,

So it has been alleged, but I wonder how rigorously this claim
has been supported.



> > And one could make an argument that dolphins possess
> > language.

I believe it is a very different type of language from ours, because
dolphins communicate by sonar, which may actually enable them
to directly communicate what to us are visual images, but
which are ultrasonic in nature.

I say "may" because we have no clue as to whether this sonar
is subjectively like conveying a picture, or conveying an
especially rich sound full of overtones, or something that
is completely foreign to our conscious experience.

I've often wondered about the infrared sensing of pit vipers
and the lateral line of fishes in the same way. What in human
experience is closer to those experiences than the sensation
of a blue sky is to the sound of a chord on a piano?

> > The reason we excel while the other two fail is because of
> > their anatomical (and environmental), for want of a better term,
> > "deficiencies". Water in the case of dolphins isn't conducive for
> > civilization or the development of opposable thumbs and full use of
> > hands, organisms in the water must use fins (or if they are tetrapods,
> > flippers to compensate). Dolphins possess flippers, not hands. It also
> > has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
> > ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures,

They too are a kind of ungulate, and some have claimed that
an elephant's trunk is second only to the human hand in dexterity.

while
> > humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
> > intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
> > aren't.
>
> Opposable thumbs aren't enough. You got to have dexterous hand. I
> don't know the right definition, but it is something like this, the tip
> of your thumb has to be able to reach the tip of some other finger, i
> presume. Take a look at "hands" of robots. It is actually enough to have
> only two fingers, but those two have to be able to clinch and object
> from opposing directions.

Like that finger-like extension on an elephant's trunk,
which seems to be opposable to the main part of the trunk's end.

I still have some unfinished business in talk.origins, and
I'm afraid I only have time for one or two pieces of it. And
so I sign off here.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

You were very interested in the alleged grievances
I had with others when you said "Belittlement comes easily
to you." And you have not withdrawn that statement.

So I have to wonder what 1) is really saying.

>
> 2) If I ever respond to you anywhere, it will be on a
> substantive issue of interest to me.

This seems to say that your future behavior will be a radical
departure from your behavior everywhere on this thread so far, except
for your little four liner on March 21.

But I wonder whether it means anything remotely like it.
For sure, you've repeatedly avoided attempts to get you
to clarify what falls within the bounds of "civil" or
"polite" behavior the way you use those words.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

At the end of this post I give a condition on which I am willing
to drop all talk about a dispute that strikes at the future
of sci.bio.paleontology. But first I want to clarify just what
the dispute is about, and why it is so central to s.b.p.

This is no ordinary argument. It is a meta-argument, so to speak, about what
our agreement was and was not all about. And it threatens
to produce a complete breakdown in communication of what it means
to me on the one hand and Erik on the other.

> I would ask as a personal favor that it not be used as a reason to fight.

There is no fight going on, only me trying to get a feel for
just what Erik thinks our agreement was really all about.
So far, he has ducked questions which would start to clearly reveal
what his idea of "civil" is, and what his idea of "polite" is.

Erik MIS-stated our agreement, part of which was to lay
aside our grievances FROM TALK.ORIGINS. He said he remembered it
as saying we were to also lay aside what he calls grievances
that stem from behavior here. The "grievances" to which he is
referring are actually charges that Erik violated our agreement
not just once, but twice. And he hasn't said a single word about
that earlier violation, not even a denial that it was a violation.

And he seems to be saying that, inasmuch as he has ignored this
charge, and is still ignoring it after having had it called
to his attention again, that I am guilty of harping on a "grievance."

His reasoning seems to be that, since he has maintained a two-month stony
silence about that earlier violation, with which he has been charged, HE
is the victim of my continuing to harp on this "grievance."


Do you see what I mean about a dangerous breakdown of communication
that threatens to make our agreement meaningless? And not just between
Erik and me, but also Harshman, who also signed on to it.


Note also how Erik has repeatedly ignored questions that would begin
to clarify what he means by "civil" and "polite." These are words
that he seems to want to replace the original wording of our agreement.


Having said all this, I now give a condition under which I am
willing to drop this momentous issue. And that is that Erik
agree to add the following to our agreement.

It is a violation of our agreement for anyone to post
a distorted account to talk.origins of events in
sci.bio.paleontology. And if someone (call him A) does do that in
a way that makes another person (call him B) look a lot worse or
more ignorant than he really is, then B has the
right to call attention to that event in sci.bio.paleontology
without being charged with a violation of our agreement.

I am signing on to this right now, and I hope Harshman will also
do so too, but I don't make that a condition for dropping the issue
of what our agreement means. The only condition is that Erik sign on to it.

Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

Obviously, any given organism can only comprehend so much, and while we
may know the science behind an experience, we will never truly
comprehend it unless we are that organism, unless you were a dolphin in
a past life.

>
> I say "may" because we have no clue as to whether this sonar
> is subjectively like conveying a picture, or conveying an
> especially rich sound full of overtones, or something that
> is completely foreign to our conscious experience.

See above.

>
> I've often wondered about the infrared sensing of pit vipers
> and the lateral line of fishes in the same way. What in human
> experience is closer to those experiences than the sensation
> of a blue sky is to the sound of a chord on a piano?
>
>
>>> The reason we excel while the other two fail is because of
>>> their anatomical (and environmental), for want of a better term,
>>> "deficiencies". Water in the case of dolphins isn't conducive for
>>> civilization or the development of opposable thumbs and full use of
>>> hands, organisms in the water must use fins (or if they are tetrapods,
>>> flippers to compensate). Dolphins possess flippers, not hands. It also
>>> has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
>>> ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures,
>
> They too are a kind of ungulate, and some have claimed that
> an elephant's trunk is second only to the human hand in dexterity.

The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
condylarths, included. While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification, to me
that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.

>
>
>
> while
>>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
>>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
>>> aren't.
>>
>> Opposable thumbs aren't enough. You got to have dexterous hand. I
>> don't know the right definition, but it is something like this, the tip
>> of your thumb has to be able to reach the tip of some other finger, i
>> presume. Take a look at "hands" of robots. It is actually enough to have
>> only two fingers, but those two have to be able to clinch and object
>> from opposing directions.
>
> Like that finger-like extension on an elephant's trunk,
> which seems to be opposable to the main part of the trunk's end.
>
> I still have some unfinished business in talk.origins, and
> I'm afraid I only have time for one or two pieces of it. And
> so I sign off here.

Why go over to talk.origins if you know you will only receive hostility
there? Unfinished business only means more hostility for you, Peter, so
why go back? I much prefer sbp to talk.origins because, as bad as things
get here sometimes, it's much, much worse in t.o. Then again, you seem
to be one that enjoys getting proverbially bashed in the head over and
over again, so each to his own I guess.

When will you be returning? You like to take long absences from sbp
while posting at t.o., and as much as I'd hate to say it, it's different
without you here.

[Oxyaena]

On 4/3/2018 10:57 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 12:53:59 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
>> On Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 9:09:20 PM UTC-7, ruben safir wrote:
>>> On 03/28/2018 11:22 AM, erik simpson wrote:
>>>>>> So, this was all long, gradual process, and not like a divine spark
>>>>>> hit us one day in the head, so one day we suddenly became very smart.
>>>>>> This was, just like anything else in nature, slow, gradual process,
>>>>>> logical, not divine. So, we were the kings of this planet for 8 million
>>>>>> years before we started civilization. This was slow, long, gradual process.
>>>> Bravo! IMO that was a good move.
>>>
>>> what was a good move?
>>
>> It was addressedto Peter, who has beenhaveing a hard time in another group.
>> He's better over here, and the discussion much more civil.
>
> ...thanks to an agreement I came up with and to which you
> and I and Harshman signed on. However, the kid gloves come off
> when Harshman deals with some others here.
>
> Mine only come off when Oxyaena, who never signed on to this
> agreement, makes savage unprovoked attacks on me. I'm quite
> civil towards even Oxyaena when not under the gun, as my most
> recent reply to him/her on another s.b.p. thread demonstreates.

I thought I agreed to the terms of this "treaty" like a month ago. I`m
trying to be patient with you, Peter, but I politely request that you do
not mention me in conversations I have nothing to do with.

[Oxyaena]

One of the greatest examples of sage advice in history/

[Daud Deden]

has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
>>> ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures,
>
> They too are a kind of ungulate, and some have claimed that
> an elephant's trunk is second only to the human hand in dexterity.

The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
condylarths, included. While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification, to me
that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.


>
>
>
> while
>>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
>>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
>>> aren't.
>>

---

Odd conversation. But crabs have opposable "thumbs" and live at the seashore, but aren't known to be articulate nor intelligent. Elephants, hyraxes, sirenians all evolved from a beaver-like hyraxine in the Congo rainforest, the elephant shrew branching off slightly earlier. The development of great ape woven bowl/dome(Homo) nesting and gnawed/knapped tip) thrusting spears (shared by forest-dwelling Pan & Homo exclusively) provides sufficient evidence of common descent & niche divergence(terrestrial vs arboreal).

[John Harshman]

Will both of you please stop?

[erik simpson]

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 7:02:54 AM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
> <...>

> Will both of you please stop?

Gladly. I have.

[Peter Nyikos]

Ruben is giving us his hard-earned advice, after having
been "Poppin Mad" in the wake of Hsrshman having behaved as
described above. I hope that in the future, Harshman
will not test Ruben's resolve to follow his own advice.

> Excellent advice. Sometimes silence is really golden.

It is also an alternative to answering questions one
does not want to answer.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

It's always good to see new contributors to paleontology.
Welcome to s.b.p., Daud!


On Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 3:31:25 AM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:

By the way, don't you use a method that automatically puts
in lines like the above for you? Here is one for
the post to which you are replying:

> On 2.4.2018. 16:27, Oxyaena wrote:

Oxyaena in turn was replying to me:

> > On 3/27/2018 9:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Yours did some strange things besides leaving these lines out. This
reply of yours is not in its proper place for a direct reply to
Oxyaena's post, nor to mine. Also it looks below as though
you were replying to my post listed above, and as though you
were actually writing what Oxyaena wrote, until the very end.

> >> Back on 2.4.2018. 16:27, Oxyaena had written:

> >>> has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
> >>> ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures,

[I wrote in the post referenced above:]

> > They too are a kind of ungulate, and some have claimed that
> > an elephant's trunk is second only to the human hand in dexterity.

[from Oxyaena's reply, referenced above, to which you are replying:]

> The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
> because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
> members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
> related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
> condylarths, included. While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
> the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification, to me
> that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
> elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.

> >>> while
> >>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
> >>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
> >>> aren't.
> >>
> ---

And now, my New Google Groups group that I am using, put in the
extra > in the margin for what YOU wrote, Daud.

> Odd conversation.

Maybe not so odd, when the writers are properly identified.

> But crabs have opposable "thumbs" and live at the seashore, but aren't known to be articulate nor intelligent.

Well, of course, opposable "thumbs" are certainly not sufficient
for being either articulate or intelligent. And the characters
that Mario, Oxyaena, and I listed in addition aren't necessarily
sufficient either.


I'm reminded of Plato's definition of "man" as a featherless biped,
which I've seen in books on paleontology that were mostly popularizations.

The context in these popularizations was that many dinosaurs satisfied
Plato's original definition, but of course Plato didn't know about
dinosaurs.


However, some popularizers go on to say that a heckler plucked a chicken
and held it up for all to see, saying "Here is Plato's man."

One went on to say that Plato therefore amended his earlier definition to
include flat nails.

Unbeknownst to both Plato and his heckler, and perhaps some or all of the
popularizers, there were sifakas and indris in Madagascar that satisfied
all three of Plato's conditions. Possibly there were also some other
lemurs that were subsequently driven to extinction by humans, and
which also fit the three conditions.

> Elephants, hyraxes, sirenians all evolved from a beaver-like hyraxine in the Congo rainforest, the elephant shrew branching off slightly earlier. The development of great ape woven bowl/dome(Homo) nesting and gnawed/knapped tip) thrusting spears (shared by forest-dwelling Pan & Homo exclusively) provides sufficient evidence of common descent & niche divergence(terrestrial vs arboreal).

I don't get your use of "sufficient" here. Obviously, the
evidence for common descent of all these mammals from a common
mammal is so overwhelming that this evidence is superfluous.

On the other hand, if you mean something more specific,
then I'd appreciate it if you would go into more detail
about this.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

[Daud Deden]

On Monday, April 9, 2018 at 3:20:18 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> It's always good to see new contributors to paleontology.
> Welcome to s.b.p., Daud!
>
>
> On Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 3:31:25 AM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
>
> By the way, don't you use a method that automatically puts
> in lines like the above for you?

-
Due to ongoing phone & computer changes, I simply inserted spacing for readability, disregarding the automatic alignments. Hopefully next week I'll have everything back to normal.
-

-
Elephants, dugongs, whales, rhinos, camels, hyraxes, elephant shrews, horses, antelope, deer had hoofed ancestors, so are true ungulates.
-

> > >>> while
> > >>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
> > >>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
> > >>> aren't.
> > >>
> > ---
>
> And now, my New Google Groups group that I am using, put in the
> extra > in the margin for what YOU wrote, Daud.
>
> > Odd conversation.
>
> Maybe not so odd, when the writers are properly identified.
>
>
> > But crabs have opposable "thumbs" and live at the seashore, but aren't known to be articulate nor intelligent.
>
> Well, of course, opposable "thumbs" are certainly not sufficient
> for being either articulate or intelligent. And the characters
> that Mario, Oxyaena, and I listed in addition aren't necessarily
> sufficient either.

-
Ok, I just wanted to mention that opposable thumbs/claws are not unusual features among fauna.
-

>
>
> I'm reminded of Plato's definition of "man" as a featherless biped,
> which I've seen in books on paleontology that were mostly popularizations.
>
> The context in these popularizations was that many dinosaurs satisfied
> Plato's original definition, but of course Plato didn't know about
> dinosaurs.
>
>
> However, some popularizers go on to say that a heckler plucked a chicken
> and held it up for all to see, saying "Here is Plato's man."
>
> One went on to say that Plato therefore amended his earlier definition to
> include flat nails.
>
> Unbeknownst to both Plato and his heckler, and perhaps some or all of the
> popularizers, there were sifakas and indris in Madagascar that satisfied
> all three of Plato's conditions. Possibly there were also some other
> lemurs that were subsequently driven to extinction by humans, and
> which also fit the three conditions.

-
Yes.
-

>
> > Elephants, hyraxes, sirenians all evolved from a beaver-like hyraxine in the Congo rainforest, the elephant shrew branching off slightly earlier. The development of great ape woven bowl/dome(Homo) nesting and gnawed/knapped tip) thrusting spears (shared by forest-dwelling Pan & Homo exclusively) provides sufficient evidence of common descent & niche divergence(terrestrial vs arboreal).

-

> I don't get your use of "sufficient" here. Obviously, the
> evidence for common descent of all these mammals from a common
> mammal is so overwhelming that this evidence is superfluous.
>
> On the other hand, if you mean something more specific,
> then I'd appreciate it if you would go into more detail
> about this.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

-

Humans have massive convoluted brains. Why, since other mammals have strict physiological limits to brain size? 1.5ma mutation of Homo-unique Apo-lipo-protein epsilon 4 ("soap" that "washes" fats out of bloodstream, at cost of atherosclerosis risks) allowed increased carnivory resulting in smaller GI tracts & bigger brains. The major stimulus of further evolution of the Homo brain is the change from forest canopy open nests to forest terrain portable enclosed dome shelters, which encouraged non-visual conversational language unrelated to physical size dominance & gestural & olfactional communication.

-
An aside: big-brained "dwarf" elephant of Sicily

http://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-changes-everything-we-know-about-the-evolution-of-elephants-94426

"My own research on this dwarf elephant, Palaeoloxodon falconeri has shown that this remarkable species had an exceptionally large brain. In fact, it’s the only animal species ever recorded with a brain size comparable to a human’s."
-

[Peter Nyikos]

I think anything with hooves deserves to be called an ungulate,
whether or Ungulata is the name of an accepted taxon. Official taxon
names don't cover everything that is generally thought of as belonging.

For example, *Tetrapoda* does not cover a wide variety of extinct
amphibians, because the powers that be among professional systematics
decreed that the taxon should ONLY designate the descendants of the LCA
of all living tetrapods.

There seems to be an unending push to attach
all the "nicest" names to crown groups, meaning groups of all descendants
from the LCA of some living animals. For instance, John Harshman, one of
the old regulars of sci.bio.paleontology,
would like it very much if *Aves*, which currently is not the name of
any accepted taxon, were to be be made into a crown group. Thus it
would banish *Archaeopteryx* and even *Hesperornis* and *Ichthyornis* --
the three genera of Mesozoic birds that millions of children grew up with --
from membership in the group whose Latin name means "birds".

I know of no accepted limits. See below.

> 1.5ma mutation of Homo-unique Apo-lipo-protein epsilon 4 ("soap" that "washes" fats out of bloodstream, at cost of atherosclerosis risks) allowed increased carnivory resulting in smaller GI tracts & bigger brains. The major stimulus of further evolution of the Homo brain is the change from forest canopy open nests to forest terrain portable enclosed dome shelters, which encouraged non-visual conversational language unrelated to physical size dominance & gestural & olfactional communication.
>
> -
> An aside: big-brained "dwarf" elephant of Sicily
>
> http://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-changes-everything-we-know-about-the-evolution-of-elephants-94426
>
> "My own research on this dwarf elephant, Palaeoloxodon falconeri has shown that this remarkable species had an exceptionally large brain. In fact, it’s the only animal species ever recorded with a brain size comparable to a human’s."

This is incorrect. Elephants have much bigger brains than we do,
and some whales have even bigger ones. AFAIK, the largest brain
on earth is that of the sperm whale, about four times as large as ours.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics at
The Original USC

[Peter Nyikos]

True, but we need to be aware of the possibilities that have not
been ruled out. Words like "ultrasound" create the dubious
impression that the inner experience is more like hearing than sight,
and the truth may be that it is nothing like either, but something
we are as much in the dark about as dogs are about colors.

>
>
> >
> > I say "may" because we have no clue as to whether this sonar
> > is subjectively like conveying a picture, or conveying an
> > especially rich sound full of overtones, or something that
> > is completely foreign to our conscious experience.
>
>
> See above.
>
>
> >
> > I've often wondered about the infrared sensing of pit vipers
> > and the lateral line of fishes in the same way. What in human
> > experience is closer to those experiences than the sensation
> > of a blue sky is to the sound of a chord on a piano?
> >
> >
> >>> The reason we excel while the other two fail is because of
> >>> their anatomical (and environmental), for want of a better term,
> >>> "deficiencies". Water in the case of dolphins isn't conducive for
> >>> civilization or the development of opposable thumbs and full use of
> >>> hands, organisms in the water must use fins (or if they are tetrapods,
> >>> flippers to compensate). Dolphins possess flippers, not hands. It also
> >>> has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
> >>> ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures,
> >
> > They too are a kind of ungulate, and some have claimed that
> > an elephant's trunk is second only to the human hand in dexterity.
>
> The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
> because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,

"ungulates" is not defined the way "perissodactyl" is defined.

> members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
> related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
> condylarths, included.

And litopterns? *Thoatherium* was every bit as hooved as *Equus*, and
the splints on the two sides were even smaller. Any definition of "ungulate"
that leaves it out is misguided.

> While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
> the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification,

No, Romer and Colbert called them "subungulates." I side with
newcomer Daud Deden on this one, at least for the time being.
If you have a good reason, besides the shifting alliances of
cladistics [like, theorpods being torn away from sauropods and
allied with ornithischians], I'm amenable to persuasion.

> to me
> that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
> elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.

Or like saying snakes are tetrapods, because they are closer to
cows than frogs are.

>
> >
> >
> >
> > while
> >>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
> >>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
> >>> aren't.
> >>
> >> Opposable thumbs aren't enough. You got to have dexterous hand. I
> >> don't know the right definition, but it is something like this, the tip
> >> of your thumb has to be able to reach the tip of some other finger, i
> >> presume. Take a look at "hands" of robots. It is actually enough to have
> >> only two fingers, but those two have to be able to clinch and object
> >> from opposing directions.
> >
> > Like that finger-like extension on an elephant's trunk,
> > which seems to be opposable to the main part of the trunk's end.

How much do you know about the dexterity of the trunk as compared to our hands?

> > I still have some unfinished business in talk.origins, and
> > I'm afraid I only have time for one or two pieces of it. And
> > so I sign off here.
>
> Why go over to talk.origins if you know you will only receive hostility
> there?

Because most of the regulars of t.o. aren't hostile to me, and I'm getting
a lot of rewarding discussion from two of them right now.

There is a very vocal minority in t.o., and there are invariably
at least two of them at a time who stick to me like leeches,
and bring all kinds of trumped-up charges against me. And while
some of the charges are just Internet Hellion formulaic trolling,
some of them are exceptionally cunning.

You've seen some of that happen, so you know what I mean.

> Unfinished business only means more hostility for you, Peter, so
> why go back? I much prefer sbp to talk.origins because, as bad as things
> get here sometimes, it's much, much worse in t.o. Then again, you seem
> to be one that enjoys getting proverbially bashed in the head over and
> over again,

NEVER! It's never enjoyable, but the alternative of ignoring them
seems to be even worse. When I started posting to Usenet, and
saw someone named Doug Holtsinger bombarded by one derogatory
allegation after another, I kept wondering, "Why doesn't he deny
the charges if they are false? Maybe they are true, and if so,
I don't want to be seen as being allied with him."

It takes a LOT of experience to realize that some forums are
such cesspools that people can be proven to have committed libel
(though of the non-actionable sort) again and again, and
as one person put it:

THEY DON'T CARE HOW BAD IT MAKES THEM LOOK!

> so each to his own I guess.

Indeed.

>
> When will you be returning? You like to take long absences from sbp

I do NOT like to take them; it is the dedicated perpetrators
of injustice in t.o. that keep me away.

> while posting at t.o., and as much as I'd hate to say it, it's different
> without you here.

Well, thanks. I will be posting here more often now that I've got
the goods on a couple of the worst people there.

[Mario Petrinovic]

John Harshman:

> Will both of you please stop?

A fact to think about: humans live about 30,000 days in their lives.
Some of those days they are kids, some of those they are simply too old.
I try not to waste my days, ;).

[Oxyaena]

That reminds me, most humans can't see every spectrum of light there is
either, but a certain group of women can, that is, they can see in the
ultraviolet spectrum of light. There was once an experiment on a group
of women to determine what they could see in terms of color, 21 people
were involved. All but one of the women could only see in the spectrum
of light that is visible to human eyes, while the other could see colors
no other person can. Imagine her having to describe what she sees on an
everyday basis.

>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I say "may" because we have no clue as to whether this sonar
>>> is subjectively like conveying a picture, or conveying an
>>> especially rich sound full of overtones, or something that
>>> is completely foreign to our conscious experience.
>>
>>
>> See above.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I've often wondered about the infrared sensing of pit vipers
>>> and the lateral line of fishes in the same way. What in human
>>> experience is closer to those experiences than the sensation
>>> of a blue sky is to the sound of a chord on a piano?
>>>
>>>
>>>>> The reason we excel while the other two fail is because of
>>>>> their anatomical (and environmental), for want of a better term,
>>>>> "deficiencies". Water in the case of dolphins isn't conducive for
>>>>> civilization or the development of opposable thumbs and full use of
>>>>> hands, organisms in the water must use fins (or if they are tetrapods,
>>>>> flippers to compensate). Dolphins possess flippers, not hands. It also
>>>>> has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
>>>>> ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures,
>>>
>>> They too are a kind of ungulate, and some have claimed that
>>> an elephant's trunk is second only to the human hand in dexterity.
>>
>> The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
>> because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
>
> "ungulates" is not defined the way "perissodactyl" is defined.

I follow cladistics, which you reject out of hand. Let's just leave it
at that.

>
>
>> members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
>> related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
>> condylarths, included.
>
> And litopterns? *Thoatherium* was every bit as hooved as *Equus*, and
> the splints on the two sides were even smaller. Any definition of "ungulate"
> that leaves it out is misguided.

Yes, I neglected to mention that meridiungulates are stem-perissodactyls.

>
>
>> While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
>> the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification,
>
> No, Romer and Colbert called them "subungulates." I side with
> newcomer Daud Deden on this one, at least for the time being.
> If you have a good reason, besides the shifting alliances of
> cladistics [like, theorpods being torn away from sauropods and
> allied with ornithischians], I'm amenable to persuasion.
>
>
>> to me
>> that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
>> elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.
>
> Or like saying snakes are tetrapods, because they are closer to
> cows than frogs are.

Snakes are tetrapods, and so are whales. That's just really idiotic for
you to say. Of course snakes are tetrapods, they're reptiles, and
reptiles belong to the superclass Tetrapoda, therefore they are tetrapods.

>
>
>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> while
>>>>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
>>>>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
>>>>> aren't.
>>>>
>>>> Opposable thumbs aren't enough. You got to have dexterous hand. I
>>>> don't know the right definition, but it is something like this, the tip
>>>> of your thumb has to be able to reach the tip of some other finger, i
>>>> presume. Take a look at "hands" of robots. It is actually enough to have
>>>> only two fingers, but those two have to be able to clinch and object
>>>> from opposing directions.
>>>
>>> Like that finger-like extension on an elephant's trunk,
>>> which seems to be opposable to the main part of the trunk's end.
>
>
> How much do you know about the dexterity of the trunk as compared to our hands?

While this wasn't a response to me, the dexterity of an elephant's trunk
is comparable to the dexterity of our hands.

>
>
>>> I still have some unfinished business in talk.origins, and
>>> I'm afraid I only have time for one or two pieces of it. And
>>> so I sign off here.
>>
>> Why go over to talk.origins if you know you will only receive hostility
>> there?
>
> Because most of the regulars of t.o. aren't hostile to me, and I'm getting
> a lot of rewarding discussion from two of them right now.
>
> There is a very vocal minority in t.o., and there are invariably
> at least two of them at a time who stick to me like leeches,
> and bring all kinds of trumped-up charges against me. And while
> some of the charges are just Internet Hellion formulaic trolling,
> some of them are exceptionally cunning.

I beg to differ, I think it's a two-way street. You certainly don't help
your case when a large portion of the posts you post on t.o. are related
to those feuds, and they don't help their case by engaging in this feud,
all of the parties involved are responsible, I should know because I
used to be one of the "Helions", and I didn't see my posts in those
dick-measuring contests as entirely unwarranted. While some of the fault
is mine, because my posts too devolved into that sort of mud-flinging, I
have distanced myself from it, and I recommend you do the same. You
don't want people attacking you, don't engage them.

>
> You've seen some of that happen, so you know what I mean.
>
>
>> Unfinished business only means more hostility for you, Peter, so
>> why go back? I much prefer sbp to talk.origins because, as bad as things
>> get here sometimes, it's much, much worse in t.o. Then again, you seem
>> to be one that enjoys getting proverbially bashed in the head over and
>> over again,
>
> NEVER! It's never enjoyable, but the alternative of ignoring them
> seems to be even worse. When I started posting to Usenet, and
> saw someone named Doug Holtsinger bombarded by one derogatory
> allegation after another, I kept wondering, "Why doesn't he deny
> the charges if they are false? Maybe they are true, and if so,
> I don't want to be seen as being allied with him."
>
> It takes a LOT of experience to realize that some forums are
> such cesspools that people can be proven to have committed libel
> (though of the non-actionable sort) again and again, and
> as one person put it:
>
> THEY DON'T CARE HOW BAD IT MAKES THEM LOOK!
>
>> so each to his own I guess.
>
> Indeed.
>
>>
>> When will you be returning? You like to take long absences from sbp
>
> I do NOT like to take them; it is the dedicated perpetrators
> of injustice in t.o. that keep me away.

Then don't engage them. You can distance yourself from them and still
post here.

[Mario Petrinovic]

Oxyaena:

> I beg to differ, I think it's a two-way street. You certainly don't help
> your case when a large portion of the posts you post on t.o. are related
> to those feuds, and they don't help their case by engaging in this feud,
> all of the parties involved are responsible, I should know because I
> used to be one of the "Helions", and I didn't see my posts in those
> dick-measuring contests as entirely unwarranted. While some of the fault
> is mine, because my posts too devolved into that sort of mud-flinging, I
> have distanced myself from it, and I recommend you do the same. You
> don't want people attacking you, don't engage them.

I've seen similar behavior in one croatian political news group.
Croatia is specific country, because everything here is still controlled
by Stasi-like secret service, so they want to control what people think
(by controlling media), and they want to halt any independent discussion.
So, this political news group is, obviously, under "supervision" of
this Stasi. So, what they do? They make the "denial-of-service" (DoS)
attack. How? There are two guys who always quarrel, at exactly the same
way I've seen here. Whenever there is some interesting conversation
going on, those two suddenly began to quarrel, post after post, easily
writing 20 posts in just half an hour, and completely hijack the thread
that way. After them, thread usually stops.
I've been in this news group 10 years ago, just recently I visited it
again. You would think that those two "came to their senses" after 10
years. Not at all, in their behaving absolutely nothing changed during
those 10 years, not a single comma.

[Peter Nyikos]

It may just be a shade of violet that others can see under other
conditions. The eponymous inventor of the (Polaroid) Land camera
did a Scientific American article on the subject of color perception,
and he gave quite a different account of human color perception than
the usual one which has human eyes mimicking the three-color prints
in books.

He showed how a scene photographed in two rather close but different
wavelengths of light could produce perceived colors that are well outside
the part of the spectrum spanned by the two wavelengths.


As if that were not enough, Isaac Asimov wrote that people who had
had cataract surgery could also see into the ultraviolet, which had
been blocked by their natural lenses. When I had my first cataract
surgery and could see many differences between my unoperated eye
and my operated eye, I made a point of attending a concert where
ultraviolet light was used.

It was amazing, but the opposite in some ways of what I had expected.
My unoperated eye saw the lamp as deep purple, while the operated one
saw it as many times brighter -- but shading towards the blue!

> >>> I say "may" because we have no clue as to whether this sonar
> >>> is subjectively like conveying a picture, or conveying an
> >>> especially rich sound full of overtones, or something that
> >>> is completely foreign to our conscious experience.
> >>
> >>
> >> See above.
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> I've often wondered about the infrared sensing of pit vipers
> >>> and the lateral line of fishes in the same way. What in human
> >>> experience is closer to those experiences than the sensation
> >>> of a blue sky is to the sound of a chord on a piano?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>> The reason we excel while the other two fail is because of
> >>>>> their anatomical (and environmental), for want of a better term,
> >>>>> "deficiencies". Water in the case of dolphins isn't conducive for
> >>>>> civilization or the development of opposable thumbs and full use of
> >>>>> hands, organisms in the water must use fins (or if they are tetrapods,
> >>>>> flippers to compensate). Dolphins possess flippers, not hands. It also
> >>>>> has something to do with ancestry as well. Cetaceans descend from
> >>>>> ungulates, and Proboscideans descend from semi-aquatic creatures,
> >>>
> >>> They too are a kind of ungulate, and some have claimed that
> >>> an elephant's trunk is second only to the human hand in dexterity.
> >>
> >> The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
> >> because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
> >
> > "ungulates" is not defined the way "perissodactyl" is defined.
>
> I follow cladistics,

This isn't cladistics, it's semi-scientific terminology, like
saying "platypus" rather than "duckbill" or "echidna" instead
of "spiny anteater" to sound scientific, when the scientific
terms are *Ornithorhyncus* and *Tachyglossus* respectively.

> which you reject out of hand. Let's just leave it
> at that.

I cannot, because you've uttered a falsehood. I reject only
the intolerant demands of cladistS that all
paraphyletic taxa must be banished from formal classifications.

> >
> >> members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
> >> related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
> >> condylarths, included.
> >
> > And litopterns? *Thoatherium* was every bit as hooved as *Equus*, and
> > the splints on the two sides were even smaller. Any definition of "ungulate"
> > that leaves it out is misguided.
>
> Yes, I neglected to mention that meridiungulates are stem-perissodactyls.
>
>
> >
> >
> >> While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
> >> the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification,
> >
> > No, Romer and Colbert called them "subungulates." I side with
> > newcomer Daud Deden on this one, at least for the time being.
> > If you have a good reason, besides the shifting alliances of
> > cladistics [like, theorpods being torn away from sauropods and
> > allied with ornithischians], I'm amenable to persuasion.
> >
> >
> >> to me
> >> that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
> >> elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.
> >
> > Or like saying snakes are tetrapods, because they are closer to
> > cows than frogs are.
>
>
> Snakes are tetrapods, and so are whales. That's just really idiotic for
> you to say. Of course snakes are tetrapods, they're reptiles,

Bite your tongue! you used a paraphyletic taxon name. :-)

> and
> reptiles belong to the superclass Tetrapoda, therefore they are tetrapods.

So why would it be inaccurate to call elephant shrews subungulates?

> >>> while
> >>>>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
> >>>>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
> >>>>> aren't.
> >>>>
> >>>> Opposable thumbs aren't enough. You got to have dexterous hand. I
> >>>> don't know the right definition, but it is something like this, the tip
> >>>> of your thumb has to be able to reach the tip of some other finger, i
> >>>> presume. Take a look at "hands" of robots. It is actually enough to have
> >>>> only two fingers, but those two have to be able to clinch and object
> >>>> from opposing directions.
> >>>
> >>> Like that finger-like extension on an elephant's trunk,
> >>> which seems to be opposable to the main part of the trunk's end.
> >
> >
> > How much do you know about the dexterity of the trunk as compared to our hands?
>
> While this wasn't a response to me, the dexterity of an elephant's trunk
> is comparable to the dexterity of our hands.

So I've heard, but do you know of any scientific studies of dexterity
that have made some sort of quantifiable comparison?


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.


Peter Nyikos
Mathematics Professor
University of South Carolina (in Columbia)
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Oxyaena]

This reminds of a tidbit I once read that addressed colors and language.
Many languages don't have a word for the color blue, and must instead
use metaphors, such as "wine-colored sea" and the like. The reasoning
being that people only conceptualize a color if they can manufacture it,
blue is also typically the last color to be recognized by children. A
small child, when asked what color the sky is, will say "white", while
most adults reflexively say "blue".

The expression "wine-colored sea" comes from the ancient Greeks, who
didn't have a dye for the color blue, thus they had to use metaphors to
describe it. Humans can't psychologically conceptualize new colors, they
just can't. As an experiment, I dare you to imagine a new color, I
highly doubt you will be able to.

Eh, tomaytoe-tomahtoe (usage of letters not in actual word to illustrate
pronunciation). Ungulata is defined, according to Wikipedia, anyways, as
comprising the Perissodactyls, Artiodactyls (including cetaceans), and
all related orders. Elephants, and thus all other Paenungulates, fall
outside of Ungulata.

>
>
>> which you reject out of hand. Let's just leave it
>> at that.
>
> I cannot, because you've uttered a falsehood. I reject only
> the intolerant demands of cladistS that all
> paraphyletic taxa must be banished from formal classifications.

Why do you reject it?

>
>>>
>>>> members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
>>>> related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
>>>> condylarths, included.
>>>
>>> And litopterns? *Thoatherium* was every bit as hooved as *Equus*, and
>>> the splints on the two sides were even smaller. Any definition of "ungulate"
>>> that leaves it out is misguided.
>>
>> Yes, I neglected to mention that meridiungulates are stem-perissodactyls.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
>>>> the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification,
>>>
>>> No, Romer and Colbert called them "subungulates." I side with
>>> newcomer Daud Deden on this one, at least for the time being.
>>> If you have a good reason, besides the shifting alliances of
>>> cladistics [like, theorpods being torn away from sauropods and
>>> allied with ornithischians], I'm amenable to persuasion.
>>>
>>>
>>>> to me
>>>> that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
>>>> elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.
>>>
>>> Or like saying snakes are tetrapods, because they are closer to
>>> cows than frogs are.
>>
>>
>> Snakes are tetrapods, and so are whales. That's just really idiotic for
>> you to say. Of course snakes are tetrapods, they're reptiles,
>
> Bite your tongue! you used a paraphyletic taxon name. :-)

This isn't a peer-reviewed paper, it's a goddamn forum, excuse me if I
have a slip of the tongue. No hostility meant, of course. ;)

>
>
>> and
>> reptiles belong to the superclass Tetrapoda, therefore they are tetrapods.
>
> So why would it be inaccurate to call elephant shrews subungulates?

Because elephant shrews aren't paenungulates, the only relation they
have to proboscideans is that they're both afrotherians.

>
>
>>>>> while
>>>>>>> humans are primates, and the treetops are an excellent environment for
>>>>>>> intelligence and opposable thumbs to develop, while swamps and seashores
>>>>>>> aren't.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Opposable thumbs aren't enough. You got to have dexterous hand. I
>>>>>> don't know the right definition, but it is something like this, the tip
>>>>>> of your thumb has to be able to reach the tip of some other finger, i
>>>>>> presume. Take a look at "hands" of robots. It is actually enough to have
>>>>>> only two fingers, but those two have to be able to clinch and object
>>>>>> from opposing directions.
>>>>>
>>>>> Like that finger-like extension on an elephant's trunk,
>>>>> which seems to be opposable to the main part of the trunk's end.
>>>
>>>
>>> How much do you know about the dexterity of the trunk as compared to our hands?
>>
>> While this wasn't a response to me, the dexterity of an elephant's trunk
>> is comparable to the dexterity of our hands.
>
> So I've heard, but do you know of any scientific studies of dexterity
> that have made some sort of quantifiable comparison?

Does this help? It's the closest I can find to an actual peer-reviewed
paper on this subject on my 10 second voyage through the abyss that is
the Google:


https://books.google.com/books?id=5VH_hCSHMCkC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=elephant+trunk+and+human+hand+dexterity+comparison&source=bl&ots=SjBtKLQLl3&sig=T8cUG5erKkBaPcqIW0dEpDtblRA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8usDi-djaAhUC9YMKHeprCKMQ6AEIdjAK#v=onepage&q=elephant%20trunk%20and%20human%20hand%20dexterity%20comparison&f=false

[Oxyaena]

I was merely using it as an example, and craps don't have opposable
"thumbs" at all, or anything even semi-opposable. Their claws can only
move a certain way, in a "pinching" motion. Loud Deden is sort of a
know-nothing-know-it-all, not nearly as attuned to the life sciences as
he likes to think he is, and he has demonstrated this on many occasions.
The "bird flying face first into mud to grab prey" 'hypothesis' of the
evolution of avian flight comes to mind.

>
>
> I'm reminded of Plato's definition of "man" as a featherless biped,
> which I've seen in books on paleontology that were mostly popularizations.
>
> The context in these popularizations was that many dinosaurs satisfied
> Plato's original definition, but of course Plato didn't know about
> dinosaurs.

Of course, many of those same dinosaurs had feathers, so...

>
>
> However, some popularizers go on to say that a heckler plucked a chicken
> and held it up for all to see, saying "Here is Plato's man."

He evidently had a great sense of humor. Reminds me of an anecdote how,
during the prelude to Huxley and Wilberforce's (in)famous debate in 1860
at Cambridge, a group of college pranksters had dressed a stuffed monkey
in academic robes and put it on display.

>
> One went on to say that Plato therefore amended his earlier definition to
> include flat nails.
>
> Unbeknownst to both Plato and his heckler, and perhaps some or all of the
> popularizers, there were sifakas and indris in Madagascar that satisfied
> all three of Plato's conditions. Possibly there were also some other
> lemurs that were subsequently driven to extinction by humans, and
> which also fit the three conditions.

Of course, sifakas and indris are primates, like humans. Something I
doubt anyone in the audience (or Plato for that matter) were aware of.

>
>
>> Elephants, hyraxes, sirenians all evolved from a beaver-like hyraxine in the Congo rainforest, the elephant shrew branching off slightly earlier. The development of great ape woven bowl/dome(Homo) nesting and gnawed/knapped tip) thrusting spears (shared by forest-dwelling Pan & Homo exclusively) provides sufficient evidence of common descent & niche divergence(terrestrial vs arboreal).
>
> I don't get your use of "sufficient" here. Obviously, the
> evidence for common descent of all these mammals from a common
> mammal is so overwhelming that this evidence is superfluous.
>
> On the other hand, if you mean something more specific,
> then I'd appreciate it if you would go into more detail
> about this.

You shouldn't have said that, Peter! Prepare for inane crackpot "theory"
to come about! Of course, the drivel he spouts isn't nearly as bad as
our old friend Jon Lyon Ladens. Whatever happened to him, BTW?

[Daud Deden]

---

I'm waiting until I get my phone in proper working order etc.
There are a few fools in this forum, I'll let them entertain the scholars.

[erik simpson]

J.Lyon Layden is actually a pretty public figure (not sure if well-known is the
right term). He writes, plays music and is a pretty versatile guy. He's very
up front about his paleontological fantasies. Google him.

[Mario Petrinovic]

Oxyaena:

> Why do you reject it?

I don't follow this discussion, and I actually don't care who is
messing around here, I can only say that this whole discussion reminds
me on that political forum, and is very fishy to me.
So, the answer is very simple, if you have a murder case, then it is
extremely important to set exactly, was Queen that day in Buckingham
palace or, possibly, at some other place, with pinpoint accuracy, then
we will discuss what was exactly the weather on Mars at that day, when
we set all this completely accurately, and we don't have a single doubt
about it, well, then we will start to discuss (but, slowly) the murder
weapon and the motif of killer.

[Oxyaena]

Just because he's a public figure doesn't mean shit when it comes to his
scientific accuracy. I don't pander to people just because they're
famous. If someone's wrong, I will not hesitate to point out why they
are wrong, even if it inevitably offends them. You should know this by now.

[Oxyaena]

I don't know what the hell this has to do with human perception of
color, but, okay, I guess.

[Mario Petrinovic]

Oxyaena:
> Mario Petrinovic:

It has something to do with human communication. Even you mentioned
that somebody cannot describe by words something. So, there will be no
discussion about anything if we don't make discussion permeable, as the
first thing to do.

[Peter Nyikos]

I find that very hard to believe. Surely almost every part of the world
has days when there is a blue sky that isn't more than half overcast.

The absence of a word *known* to mean "blue" in the very scanty
ancient literature that was not destroyed with the demise of
the great library at Alexandria, or various other demises, can hardly be
taken to prove that there was no word that meant "blue".

Now, if you could name a contemporary language that still has no
word for the color "blue" but has words for red, green, and yellow,
you may be on to something.

I left out "orange" because there are a number of languages that
treat it like a shade of yellow. Hungarian, for instance, has only
a word which literally is translated "orangeyellow," meaning "the shade
of yellow that oranges have."

> The reasoning
> being that people only conceptualize a color if they can manufacture it,

Very strained, IMO.

> blue is also typically the last color to be recognized by children. A
> small child, when asked what color the sky is, will say "white", while
> most adults reflexively say "blue".

I never heard of such a thing. Maybe the children in the experiment were
confusing clouds with "the sky," which is a rather abstract concept
when you stop to think about it. They should have been asked, "what color
is the sky when it doesn't have any clouds in it?"

> The expression "wine-colored sea" comes from the ancient Greeks, who
> didn't have a dye for the color blue, thus they had to use metaphors to
> describe it.

Blue wine??? even "Blue nun" isn't blue.

My guess is that they were describing the sea at sunset or sunrise.
Homer is full of the expression, "The child of morning, rosy-fingered
dawn".

It was only after I was 40 that I learned that "dawn" does not
mean "sunrise" but "morning twilight." Prior to that, in the Army,
I had learned of the BMNT (Beginning of Morning Nautical Twilight),
and it's a time when the sky is gray but not black any more.

Some day I'll write a story about Achilles in which I will write
about "the embryo of morning, steely-fingered BMNT." [Don't worry,
I'll play it straight for almost all of the story.]

> Humans can't psychologically conceptualize new colors, they
> just can't. As an experiment, I dare you to imagine a new color, I
> highly doubt you will be able to.

This takes me back to my early days as an undergraduate taking
a course in psychology.


<snip of earlier text, not commented on>

> >>>> The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
> >>>> because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
> >>>
> >>> "ungulates" is not defined the way "perissodactyl" is defined.

Apparently there is a clade called Ungulata, but Wikipedia does not
recognize it as including Litopterna, and so the word "ungulate" does not match it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungulate

OTOH there is a claim elsewhere in Wikipedia that Litopterna is
the sister group of Perissodactyla (thereby dethroning Artiodactyla
from that role):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litopterna

so this may be a case of the right hand not knowing what the
left hand is doing.

> >> I follow cladistics,
> >
> > This isn't cladistics, it's semi-scientific terminology, like
> > saying "platypus" rather than "duckbill" or "echidna" instead
> > of "spiny anteater" to sound scientific, when the scientific
> > terms are *Ornithorhyncus* and *Tachyglossus* respectively.
>
> Eh, tomaytoe-tomahtoe (usage of letters not in actual word to illustrate
> pronunciation). Ungulata is defined, according to Wikipedia, anyways, as
> comprising the Perissodactyls, Artiodactyls (including cetaceans), and
> all related orders.

But NOT Litopterna in the entry that gives a phylogenetic tree within
Ungulata; see above.

> Elephants, and thus all other Paenungulates, fall
> outside of Ungulata.

Fine with me, but until systematists get their act together,
I will continue to maintain a distinction between Ungulata
and "ungulate."

>
>
>
> >
> >
> >> which you reject out of hand. Let's just leave it
> >> at that.
> >
> > I cannot, because you've uttered a falsehood. I reject only
> > the intolerant demands of cladistS that all
> > paraphyletic taxa must be banished from formal classifications.
>
> Why do you reject it?

Because cladistic classification is tailor-made for extant animals.
The further back in time you go, the more surreal it becomes:
Tiktaalik and Elpistostege can go into the same Linnean family
(maybe even subfamily) but the next smallest cladistic taxon that
contains them both is the hyper-super class containing all of Tetrapoda--
in fact all terrestrial vertebrates.

On the other hand, in the despised Linnean classification, they might
be in the same family as Elginerpeton, the same superfamily as
Acanthostega, the same suborder as Ichthyostega, and in the same
order as the family Watscheriidae.

A cursory acquaintance with this order should help budding paleontologists
to identify fossils of members right in the field. They don't have
to agonize over whether they are also in the same clade as Tiktaalik and
Elpistostege, but can leave that to more experienced paleontologists.
On the other hand, they give the latter lots of information in a few
seconds that a Harshmanite would have to hem and haw for half an hour about.

Harshman keeps insisting that unless I can give an ACTUAL documented example
of this kind of thing, he cannot for the life of him see the sense of
keeping a classification going even if there are a dozen paleontologists
who are sympathetic towards it.

And so paleontology takes a giant step towards being an elitist realm
of specialists who can't see the forest for the trees but insist
on students passing tests tailor made for their idea of research.

> >>>
> >>>> members of the Cetartiodactyla and the order Perissodactyla, with
> >>>> related stem-perissodactyls and stem-artiodactyls, with various
> >>>> condylarths, included.
> >>>
> >>> And litopterns? *Thoatherium* was every bit as hooved as *Equus*, and
> >>> the splints on the two sides were even smaller. Any definition of "ungulate"
> >>> that leaves it out is misguided.
> >>
> >> Yes, I neglected to mention that meridiungulates are stem-perissodactyls.
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> While to you elephants may be ungulates due to
> >>>> the fact that you adhere to an outdated model of classification,
> >>>
> >>> No, Romer and Colbert called them "subungulates." I side with
> >>> newcomer Daud Deden on this one, at least for the time being.
> >>> If you have a good reason, besides the shifting alliances of
> >>> cladistics [like, theorpods being torn away from sauropods and
> >>> allied with ornithischians], I'm amenable to persuasion.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> to me
> >>>> that's as accurate as saying that elephant shrews are ungulates, because
> >>>> elephants are closer to elephant shrews than horses.
> >>>
> >>> Or like saying snakes are tetrapods, because they are closer to
> >>> cows than frogs are.
> >>
> >>
> >> Snakes are tetrapods, and so are whales. That's just really idiotic for
> >> you to say. Of course snakes are tetrapods, they're reptiles,
> >
> > Bite your tongue! you used a paraphyletic taxon name. :-)
>
> This isn't a peer-reviewed paper, it's a goddamn forum, excuse me if I
> have a slip of the tongue. No hostility meant, of course. ;)

Of course, if a cladophile with clout decides that Sauropsida should
be retired as a name and Reptilia become the new label for what
Sauropsida denotes, you will have the last laugh over me.

Also over the old paleontology books, which will become gradually
undecipherable to students because of the Orwellian campaign
to take every paraphyletic taxon name and attach it to a very
different clade, simultaneously making the original cladistic
name for the clade obsolete. I could give you at least two
more examples, if you are interested.

Elitism, here we come.

Thank you. I will take a close look during the weekend.

Got to go now. Duty calls.

Peter Nyikos
Mathematics Professor
University of South Carolina in Columbia
>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[John Harshman]

I'd say that there's enough to suggest that there was no word for
"blue". Why the sea is "wine-dark" is a puzzle that many scholars have
grappled with, and no clear explanation has been forthcoming.

> Now, if you could name a contemporary language that still has no
> word for the color "blue" but has words for red, green, and yellow,
> you may be on to something.

Why the qualification? Generally, languages that have no word for "blue"
also have no word for "green" but have a single word for both, known to
linguists as "grue". There are languages that have only two basic color
words, equivalent to "light" and "dark".

> I left out "orange" because there are a number of languages that
> treat it like a shade of yellow. Hungarian, for instance, has only
> a word which literally is translated "orangeyellow," meaning "the shade
> of yellow that oranges have."
>
>
>> The reasoning
>> being that people only conceptualize a color if they can manufacture it,
>
> Very strained, IMO.

Agreed.

>> blue is also typically the last color to be recognized by children. A
>> small child, when asked what color the sky is, will say "white", while
>> most adults reflexively say "blue".
>
> I never heard of such a thing. Maybe the children in the experiment were
> confusing clouds with "the sky," which is a rather abstract concept
> when you stop to think about it. They should have been asked, "what color
> is the sky when it doesn't have any clouds in it?"

No, that isn't it. There are languages in which the sky is considered
white.

>> The expression "wine-colored sea" comes from the ancient Greeks, who
>> didn't have a dye for the color blue, thus they had to use metaphors to
>> describe it.
>
> Blue wine??? even "Blue nun" isn't blue.
>
> My guess is that they were describing the sea at sunset or sunrise.

No, that isn't it either. The sea is wine-dark at all times. No idea why.

>> Humans can't psychologically conceptualize new colors, they
>> just can't. As an experiment, I dare you to imagine a new color, I
>> highly doubt you will be able to.
>
> This takes me back to my early days as an undergraduate taking
> a course in psychology.

> <snip of earlier text, not commented on>
>
>
>>>>>> The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
>>>>>> because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
>>>>>
>>>>> "ungulates" is not defined the way "perissodactyl" is defined.
>
> Apparently there is a clade called Ungulata, but Wikipedia does not
> recognize it as including Litopterna, and so the word "ungulate" does not match it.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungulate

If you actually read that you will find that Ungulata is quite possibly
not a real clade, with or without litopterns.

> OTOH there is a claim elsewhere in Wikipedia that Litopterna is
> the sister group of Perissodactyla (thereby dethroning Artiodactyla
> from that role):
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litopterna
>
> so this may be a case of the right hand not knowing what the
> left hand is doing.

Wikipedia is not an integrated whole, but that's not the chief candidate
for non-monophyly of Ungulata.

>>>> I follow cladistics,
>>>
>>> This isn't cladistics, it's semi-scientific terminology, like
>>> saying "platypus" rather than "duckbill" or "echidna" instead
>>> of "spiny anteater" to sound scientific, when the scientific
>>> terms are *Ornithorhyncus* and *Tachyglossus* respectively.
>>
>> Eh, tomaytoe-tomahtoe (usage of letters not in actual word to illustrate
>> pronunciation). Ungulata is defined, according to Wikipedia, anyways, as
>> comprising the Perissodactyls, Artiodactyls (including cetaceans), and
>> all related orders.
>
> But NOT Litopterna in the entry that gives a phylogenetic tree within
> Ungulata; see above.
>
>> Elephants, and thus all other Paenungulates, fall
>> outside of Ungulata.
>
> Fine with me, but until systematists get their act together,
> I will continue to maintain a distinction between Ungulata
> and "ungulate."

"Ungulata" probably doesn't exist. I would agree that "ungulate" is best
used as a descriptive term for unguligrade animals.

>>>> which you reject out of hand. Let's just leave it
>>>> at that.
>>>
>>> I cannot, because you've uttered a falsehood. I reject only
>>> the intolerant demands of cladistS that all
>>> paraphyletic taxa must be banished from formal classifications.
>>
>> Why do you reject it?
>
> Because cladistic classification is tailor-made for extant animals.
> The further back in time you go, the more surreal it becomes:
> Tiktaalik and Elpistostege can go into the same Linnean family
> (maybe even subfamily) but the next smallest cladistic taxon that
> contains them both is the hyper-super class containing all of Tetrapoda--
> in fact all terrestrial vertebrates.
>
> On the other hand, in the despised Linnean classification, they might
> be in the same family as Elginerpeton, the same superfamily as
> Acanthostega, the same suborder as Ichthyostega, and in the same
> order as the family Watscheriidae.

Of course the problem with that is that the boundaries of paraphyletic
groups are arbitrary and do not reflect any real relationships.
Paleontologists as well as neontologists have abandoned them. Consider
the possibility that there are good reasons, not having to do with
politics or peer pressure.

> A cursory acquaintance with this order should help budding paleontologists
> to identify fossils of members right in the field. They don't have
> to agonize over whether they are also in the same clade as Tiktaalik and
> Elpistostege, but can leave that to more experienced paleontologists.
> On the other hand, they give the latter lots of information in a few
> seconds that a Harshmanite would have to hem and haw for half an hour about.
>
> Harshman keeps insisting that unless I can give an ACTUAL documented example
> of this kind of thing, he cannot for the life of him see the sense of
> keeping a classification going even if there are a dozen paleontologists
> who are sympathetic towards it.

There may be as many as a dozen. Ask yourself why so few. I can't say
that a documented example would be helpful.

> And so paleontology takes a giant step towards being an elitist realm
> of specialists who can't see the forest for the trees but insist
> on students passing tests tailor made for their idea of research.

I would contend, on the other hand, that clear thinking is never a bad
idea, and that tree-thinking has greatly clarified the questions we can
profitably ask. Given a little mental flexibility, you too should be
able to comprehend the modern field. "Elitist realm of specialists" is
just wrong.

All this pejorative language is not helping.

> Also over the old paleontology books, which will become gradually
> undecipherable to students because of the Orwellian campaign
> to take every paraphyletic taxon name and attach it to a very
> different clade, simultaneously making the original cladistic
> name for the clade obsolete. I could give you at least two
> more examples, if you are interested.
>
> Elitism, here we come.

Just because of a few changes from the names your learned in your
childhood? This is a gross overreaction.

[Oxyaena]

As Harshman pointed out, many languages don't have a word for blue *or*
green, yet they have a singular word for both called "grue". As pointed
out, it doesn't matter if the sky is blue because if a language lacks a
word for blue, you lack a word for blue. Some languages call the sky
"white".

>
> The absence of a word *known* to mean "blue" in the very scanty
> ancient literature that was not destroyed with the demise of
> the great library at Alexandria, or various other demises, can hardly be
> taken to prove that there was no word that meant "blue".

That's not all there is to it. We know a whole lot more about the
Ancient Greek language than is available to us from the written records.
It's called reconstruction, you can reconstruct a language just by
comparing its living descendants, it's been done a lot of times before,
the oldest language we've (partially) reconstructed is
Proto-Afro-Asiatic, which existed at the tail-end of the Pleistocene,
between 18,000-12,000 kya. Any further than that and it becomes a hell
of a lot more murky. The reconstruction of Proto-Afro-Asiatic is
incomplete at best, simply because of the sheer amount of time that has
passed. The fact we were able to (partially) reconstruct it at all is a
miracle in and of itself.

>
> Now, if you could name a contemporary language that still has no
> word for the color "blue" but has words for red, green, and yellow,
> you may be on to something.

Navajo lacks a word for blue *and* green, yet has a singular word for
both as pointed out above. Classical Latin lacked a word for the colors
grey and brown, and yet had a singular word for both colors, just as
Navajo does with grey and brown, not to mention blue and green.

>
> I left out "orange" because there are a number of languages that
> treat it like a shade of yellow. Hungarian, for instance, has only
> a word which literally is translated "orangeyellow," meaning "the shade
> of yellow that oranges have."

So you understand where I`m coming from, even if you're too thick-headed
to realize it?

>
>
>> The reasoning
>> being that people only conceptualize a color if they can manufacture it,
>
> Very strained, IMO.
>
>> blue is also typically the last color to be recognized by children. A
>> small child, when asked what color the sky is, will say "white", while
>> most adults reflexively say "blue".
>
> I never heard of such a thing. Maybe the children in the experiment were
> confusing clouds with "the sky," which is a rather abstract concept
> when you stop to think about it. They should have been asked, "what color
> is the sky when it doesn't have any clouds in it?"

As Harshman pointed out, many peoples call the sky "white", not "blue".

>
>
>> The expression "wine-colored sea" comes from the ancient Greeks, who
>> didn't have a dye for the color blue, thus they had to use metaphors to
>> describe it.
>
> Blue wine??? even "Blue nun" isn't blue.

Yes, they called the sea "wine-colored". Why they called it that is
anyone's guess, but in an instance where your language lacks a word to
describe something, you must use metaphors to get your point across.
This is where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis falls apart, just because your
language lacks a word for something doesn't mean you can't think of it,
hell, it's even easier to just pluck a word from another language that
describes it and call it a day. It's been done plenty of times before,
they're called "loanwords", most if not all (there may be a few
exceptions, such as Sentinelese, but we hardly know anything about the
language of the North Sentinel Islanders so even that could be
potentially doubted) languages have them.

>
> My guess is that they were describing the sea at sunset or sunrise.
> Homer is full of the expression, "The child of morning, rosy-fingered
> dawn".

They weren't. Many languages call the sky "white", and the context of
which it comes from (I think the *Odyssey*) doesn't mention anywhere
that what's happening is at dusk or dawn.

>
> It was only after I was 40 that I learned that "dawn" does not
> mean "sunrise" but "morning twilight." Prior to that, in the Army,
> I had learned of the BMNT (Beginning of Morning Nautical Twilight),
> and it's a time when the sky is gray but not black any more.

You were in the Army?

>
> Some day I'll write a story about Achilles in which I will write
> about "the embryo of morning, steely-fingered BMNT." [Don't worry,
> I'll play it straight for almost all of the story.]

I dread that day.

>
>
>> Humans can't psychologically conceptualize new colors, they
>> just can't. As an experiment, I dare you to imagine a new color, I
>> highly doubt you will be able to.
>
> This takes me back to my early days as an undergraduate taking
> a course in psychology.
>
>
> <snip of earlier text, not commented on>
>
>
>>>>>> The reason I didn't count elephants as being members of Ungulata is
>>>>>> because they share no genetic affinity with true ungulates, that is,
>>>>>
>>>>> "ungulates" is not defined the way "perissodactyl" is defined.
>
> Apparently there is a clade called Ungulata, but Wikipedia does not
> recognize it as including Litopterna, and so the word "ungulate" does not match it.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungulate





>
> OTOH there is a claim elsewhere in Wikipedia that Litopterna is
> the sister group of Perissodactyla (thereby dethroning Artiodactyla
> from that role):
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litopterna
>
> so this may be a case of the right hand not knowing what the
> left hand is doing.

Wikipedia is hardly the end-all be-all of things, while it's a good
source, it does get things wrong from time to time.

>
>
>>>> I follow cladistics,
>>>
>>> This isn't cladistics, it's semi-scientific terminology, like
>>> saying "platypus" rather than "duckbill" or "echidna" instead
>>> of "spiny anteater" to sound scientific, when the scientific
>>> terms are *Ornithorhyncus* and *Tachyglossus* respectively.
>>
>> Eh, tomaytoe-tomahtoe (usage of letters not in actual word to illustrate
>> pronunciation). Ungulata is defined, according to Wikipedia, anyways, as
>> comprising the Perissodactyls, Artiodactyls (including cetaceans), and
>> all related orders.
>
> But NOT Litopterna in the entry that gives a phylogenetic tree within
> Ungulata; see above.

I wouldn't recognize this, I thought litopterns were meridiungulates,
which *are* the sister group of perissodactyls, so the person writing
that entry might have mistaken the term "Litopterna" for "Meridiungulata".

>
>> Elephants, and thus all other Paenungulates, fall
>> outside of Ungulata.
>
> Fine with me, but until systematists get their act together,
> I will continue to maintain a distinction between Ungulata
> and "ungulate."

That's fine that you do so. I don't think systematists need to get their
act together, if there is harmony in a field that means that it's a dead
field. In order for a field of science to be healthy and active you need
debate. Ungulate may be used to describe unguligrade mammals, but not
all ungulates are members of Ungulata.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> which you reject out of hand. Let's just leave it
>>>> at that.
>>>
>>> I cannot, because you've uttered a falsehood. I reject only
>>> the intolerant demands of cladistS that all
>>> paraphyletic taxa must be banished from formal classifications.
>>
>> Why do you reject it?
>
> Because cladistic classification is tailor-made for extant animals.
> The further back in time you go, the more surreal it becomes:
> Tiktaalik and Elpistostege can go into the same Linnean family
> (maybe even subfamily) but the next smallest cladistic taxon that
> contains them both is the hyper-super class containing all of Tetrapoda--
> in fact all terrestrial vertebrates.

Okay, I agree with you on that. Cladistics fails to account for
characteristics, hence why *Koolasuchus* is technically not a tetrapod
despite possessing all of the characteristics of a tetrapod. I've
pointed out before that it's murky because temnospondyls might indeed be
the ancestors of lissamphibians.

I don't read old paleontology books outside of a historical interest
because they tend to be wildly out of date, and I`m not talking about
classification.

[ruben safir]

On 04/27/2018 09:17 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> The absence of a word *known* to mean "blue" in the very scanty
> ancient literature that was not destroyed with the demise of
> the great library at Alexandria, or various other demises, can hardly be
> taken to prove that there was no word that meant "blue".

what does this have to do with fossils?

[Peter Nyikos]

That I can readily believe, with my Hungarian background, as the
case of "sa'rga" [the word ordinarily translated "yellow" -- btw.,
the apostrophe takes the place of an acute accent over the letter a]
shows.

> As pointed
> out, it doesn't matter if the sky is blue because if a language lacks a
> word for blue, you lack a word for blue. Some languages call the sky
> "white".

Which ones? If they are languages that are almost extinct, and studied
by only one linguistic expert, or none, the translators could be thinking
that a certain word in that language meant "white" when it is really a
synonym for "clear" or "bright". It's hard for a translator just learning
the native language to get across the fact that "white" is the name of a
color if the native language for "color" does not include white, which the
native speakers might think of as the absence of all color.

I can even imagine an almost extinct language whose living speakers
lack a word for "color" because the word was used so infrequently around
them, they never caught on to it.


[This reminds me: Hungarian has a common, everyday word for the hard
little sand-like particles in your eye when you wake up from sleep
some times. They are the things on which the story of the Sandman
is based. When was the last time, if ever, that you heard a common
English language word for them?]

> >
> > The absence of a word *known* to mean "blue" in the very scanty
> > ancient literature that was not destroyed with the demise of
> > the great library at Alexandria, or various other demises, can hardly be
> > taken to prove that there was no word that meant "blue".
>
> That's not all there is to it. We know a whole lot more about the
> Ancient Greek language than is available to us from the written records.
> It's called reconstruction, you can reconstruct a language just by
> comparing its living descendants, it's been done a lot of times before,
> the oldest language we've (partially) reconstructed

"partially" is a huge overstatement. I don't think anyone can
carry on a normal conversation even in what has been *reliably*
reconstructed of "Indo-European," much less "Nostartic".

> is
> Proto-Afro-Asiatic, which existed at the tail-end of the Pleistocene,
> between 18,000-12,000 kya. Any further than that and it becomes a hell
> of a lot more murky. The reconstruction of Proto-Afro-Asiatic is
> incomplete at best,

I think it is all guesswork to begin with. People have accused me
of making "Wild-Assed Guesses" [WAGs] but I think the words of
this "Proto-Afro-Asiatic" language fit the description better.

One big problem with all reconstructions is that some things
are true simply by accident. Did you ever look up the etymology
of the English word "bad"? It astounded me, and the only reason
I looked it up is that I read somewhere that the Iranian language
has the same word with the same IDENTICAL meaning but with a
totally different etymology.

> simply because of the sheer amount of time that has
> passed. The fact we were able to (partially) reconstruct it at all is a
> miracle in and of itself.

Or it could be an illusion, like one early dictionary of a language
of the New World (Mayan, perhaps) which was complete nonsense because
the explorer who compiled it did not have the kind of training modern
day linguists have.

> > Now, if you could name a contemporary language that still has no
> > word for the color "blue" but has words for red, green, and yellow,
> > you may be on to something.

No takers here? You are just providing information on something

John wrote:
>
>
> Navajo lacks a word for blue *and* green, yet has a singular word for
> both as pointed out above. Classical Latin lacked a word for the colors
> grey and brown, and yet had a singular word for both colors, just as
> Navajo does with grey and brown, not to mention blue and green.

I'd like to see an authoritative linguistic source for this, not
just a popularization. The English language has some color idioms
for some objects that are more or less exclusive to those objects.
Eyes are called "blue" when close inspection shows them to have
only a trace of blue, with gray the predominant color and some
other colors mixed in. My own eyes were like that when I was younger.


Trivia: Back in the late fifties or early sixties, there was a song
with the line,

Are they blue? NO! Are they green? NO! sort of in between? NO!

And the next line went something like, "Oh, those rich hazel eyes!"

I tried Googling it just now, and I learned a good bit about hazel
eyes, but that song seems to be extinct as far as the internet
is concerned. All I could find was a completely different song,
"Behind those hazel eyes."

> >
> > I left out "orange" because there are a number of languages that
> > treat it like a shade of yellow. Hungarian, for instance, has only
> > a word which literally is translated "orangeyellow," meaning "the shade
> > of yellow that oranges have."


>
> So you understand where I`m coming from, even if you're too thick-headed
> to realize it?

As usual, the devil is in the details. See above.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later, I hope.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

Oxyaena and I have taken baby steps in that direction by touching on the
evolution of languages. Would you like to steer us back to the evolution
of animals?

Peter Nyikos

[Andre G. Isaak]

In article <51a192fe-0651-476b...@googlegroups.com>,

The authoritative linguistic source would probably be
_Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution_ by Brent Berlin
and Paul Kay (UC Press, 1969)

The popularization often muddles this a bit, as Berlin and Kay weren't
referring to color terms generally, but to _basic_ color terms which
have a number of properties which include (going from memory here):

1. they are monomorphemic (i.e. they are not compound words or derived
from other words using suffixes or prefixes).

2. They refer exclusively to a color (this would exclude english terms
like silver or orange from being basic terms).

3. They are not subsumed under another color term (that would exclude
things like lavender which is a subset of purple).

4. There is widespread agreement among speakers over the scope of their
denotation (that would exclude terms like mauve or burgundy which people
will argue over what they can refer to).

5. They are not limited to a particular domain (this would exclude, e.g.
blond which usually refers only to hair or beer).

6. They are fully productive morphologically (in English, for example,
'red' has comparative and superlative forms 'redder' and 'reddest' as
one would expect for an adjetive. 'Burnt sienna', however. does not.)

and probably a few others that I am missing.

Berlin and Kay's claim was that their is a hierarchy of basic color
terms as follows:

1. black, white
2. red
3. green and/or yellow
4. blue
5. brown
6. additional colors (not well ordered).

If a language has a given basic color term it will always have all
lower-ranked basic color terms.

But, they are careful to point out that in a language with only two
basic terms, these would be best translated as 'dark' and 'light' rather
than 'black' and 'white'. The terms used in the hierarchy refer to the
colors which speakers will choose from a spectrum or set of pantone
tiles when asked to identify the *best* instance of a given color.

So a language containing only three basic terms will contain one for
covering dark ranges, one covering pale ranges, and one covering
'colorful' ranges which would include not only red, but also bright
green, bright yellow, bright blue etc. However, speakers will treat a
red object as a better instance of 'colorful' than they would a green or
blue one.

Note that this doesn't mean speakers can't refer to a full range of
colors, merely that they will use compounds or other terms to specify
more specific shades.

Under their theory, the basic color terms in English are black, white,
red, green, yellow, blue, brown, and grey.

Orange, purple, and pink are borderline. Pink and purple have largely
lost their original meanings (names of flowers) for most people and are
thus becoming basic. Orange retains both meanings, but the color meaning
is likely becoming prominent enough for it to be considered basic.

Andre

--
To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service.

[Oxyaena]

I've heard of them referred to as "sleep", rather unimaginative, I know,
but still.

>
>
>>>
>>> The absence of a word *known* to mean "blue" in the very scanty
>>> ancient literature that was not destroyed with the demise of
>>> the great library at Alexandria, or various other demises, can hardly be
>>> taken to prove that there was no word that meant "blue".
>>
>> That's not all there is to it. We know a whole lot more about the
>> Ancient Greek language than is available to us from the written records.
>> It's called reconstruction, you can reconstruct a language just by
>> comparing its living descendants, it's been done a lot of times before,
>> the oldest language we've (partially) reconstructed
>
> "partially" is a huge overstatement. I don't think anyone can
> carry on a normal conversation even in what has been *reliably*
> reconstructed of "Indo-European," much less "Nostartic".

I`m rather iffy on that. Proto-Indo-European has been reconstruced, and
I have seen people have conversations in it. The existence of a
Nostratic language family is, to put it mildly, highly controversial, as
many linguists doubt one can reconstruct a language that far back in time.

>
>> is
>> Proto-Afro-Asiatic, which existed at the tail-end of the Pleistocene,
>> between 18,000-12,000 kya. Any further than that and it becomes a hell
>> of a lot more murky. The reconstruction of Proto-Afro-Asiatic is
>> incomplete at best,
>
> I think it is all guesswork to begin with. People have accused me
> of making "Wild-Assed Guesses" [WAGs] but I think the words of
> this "Proto-Afro-Asiatic" language fit the description better.
>

I don't think so. Reconstruction of dead languages is very
time-consuming, and what we have reconstructed of Proto-Afro-Asiatic
does seem reliable, given its descendant languages. Proto-Afro-Asiatic
is a genuine language, and its existence isn't doubted unlike that of
say, Proto-Dene-Caucasian or Proto-Nostratic. That's because
Afro-Asiatic is a genuine language family, while the latter two I
mentioned are merely attempts at bridging together multiple language
families.

> One big problem with all reconstructions is that some things
> are true simply by accident. Did you ever look up the etymology
> of the English word "bad"? It astounded me, and the only reason
> I looked it up is that I read somewhere that the Iranian language
> has the same word with the same IDENTICAL meaning but with a
> totally different etymology.

Yes, I am aware of that, but reconstructing languages goes a lot further
than merely comparing words of two related languages, it involves
comparing syntax, tracing the etymology of cognates,
grammar-comparisons, phonology etc.

>
>> simply because of the sheer amount of time that has
>> passed. The fact we were able to (partially) reconstruct it at all is a
>> miracle in and of itself.
>
> Or it could be an illusion, like one early dictionary of a language
> of the New World (Mayan, perhaps) which was complete nonsense because
> the explorer who compiled it did not have the kind of training modern
> day linguists have.

No, it's not. You don't seem to have that much knowledge on historical
linguistics, a field I definitely am more versed in than you. The
difference between guesswork and reconstruction is that when you're
guessing, you probably don't know diddly-squat about linguistics, while
reconstructing an extinct language is a lot more complicated than mere
"guess-work", as I outlined above. The fact that you imply that is
highly offensive.

--
"Biology only makes sense in the light of evolution." - Theodosius
Doubzhansky

[Daud Deden]

"Sleeptite" cf stalactite.

[Oxyaena]

You realize I got my doctorate in paleontology, right? And from what
I've read of the shit that you semi-coherently type, you are one of
those fools.

[Daud Deden]

That excuses your deliberately misspelling of a great Biologist's surname?

right? And from what
> I've read of the shit that you semi-coherently type,

Then do not read my posts.

you are one of
> those fools.

You are a poorer judge of character than you think.

>
> --
> "Biology only makes sense in the light of evolution." - Theodosius

> Dobzhansky

[Andre G. Isaak]

In article <8720b76b-76b6-4f11...@googlegroups.com>,

Given that he was Ukrainian, Dobzhansky would have spelled his name in
Cyrillic. There are numerous different acceptable ways of romanizing
Cyrillic names.

[Daud Deden]

On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 10:16:35 PM UTC-4, Andre G. Isaak wrote:
> In article <8720b76b-76b6-4f11...@googlegroups.com>,
> Daud Deden <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 6:59:42 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>
> > > You realize I got my doctorate in paleontology,
> >
> > That excuses your deliberately misspelling of a great Biologist's surname?
>
> Given that he was Ukrainian, Dobzhansky would have spelled his name in
> Cyrillic. There are numerous different acceptable ways of romanizing
> Cyrillic names.
>
> Andre

Andre, please review:

Theodosius Dobzhansky | American scientist | Britannica.com
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Theodosius-Dobzhansky

"Theodosius Dobzhansky, original name Feodosy Grigorevich Dobrzhansky"

Then, please find anywhere on earth a typed or written signature by him that begins with surname "Doub..." rather than "Dob...".

I'll pay you $1 if you can find it.

(I think my money is safe.)

[Peter Nyikos]

And I suspect it was always a language family and not a single
language; see below.

>
>
> > One big problem with all reconstructions is that some things
> > are true simply by accident. Did you ever look up the etymology
> > of the English word "bad"? It astounded me, and the only reason
> > I looked it up is that I read somewhere that the Iranian language
> > has the same word with the same IDENTICAL meaning but with a
> > totally different etymology.
>
> Yes, I am aware of that, but reconstructing languages goes a lot further
> than merely comparing words of two related languages, it involves
> comparing syntax, tracing the etymology of cognates,
> grammar-comparisons, phonology etc.

IMO the biggest difficulty of all is that the evolution of
languages is not at all like the Tree of Life, which begins
where lateral transfer of genetic information takes on a
minor role.

I believe that there were many distinct early languages
almost from the moment language began [and when THAT was
is a major mystery]. Tribes and clans had their separate
languages, but there was an enormous amount of borrowing,
especially when far-flung trade began. Sure, sign language
goes a long way, but if traders want to develop rapport and
not just have a supermarket impersonality to trading, they
would naturally want to know what each one calls a certain item.

Borrowing shows no signs of abating, by the way. Magyar has
borrowed extensively from German, from Slavic languages, and
from romance languages. We Hungarians (Magyarok as we call ourselves)
have a German word, nokedli, and a Slavic word, galuska,
for a kind of dumpling that is as Hungarian as apple pie
is American, and my wife keeps wishing we had an Uralic-Altaic
word for them.

And here is a comparison for you. Old English took on an endosymbiont,
Norman French, like a eukaryote engulfing a prokaryote to incorporate it as
a mitochondrion or chloroplast. And while its "nucleus" (grammar) remains
Germanic, the plurality of its words have romance etymology.

However, "engulfing" might be misleading. Perhaps the prokaryote
incorporated itself as aggressively as William the Conqueror
incorporated himself into England, along with his language.


Got to go now. Family duty calls.


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

Yes, there are doubts about the monophyly of Afro-Asiatic as a language
family, with some experts thinking that Cushitic should be moved to
either Nilo-Saharan or become independent of Afro-Asiatic. That said,
there are certain features within the Afro-Asiatic language family that
suggests monophyly, such as root-words only containing consonants,
something that can be seen in both the Hebrew and Egyptian writing
systems, and let's not forget the Arabic or Ge'ez (a Semitic language
native to Ethiopia) writing systems while we're at it.

>
>>
>>
>>> One big problem with all reconstructions is that some things
>>> are true simply by accident. Did you ever look up the etymology
>>> of the English word "bad"? It astounded me, and the only reason
>>> I looked it up is that I read somewhere that the Iranian language
>>> has the same word with the same IDENTICAL meaning but with a
>>> totally different etymology.
>>
>> Yes, I am aware of that, but reconstructing languages goes a lot further
>> than merely comparing words of two related languages, it involves
>> comparing syntax, tracing the etymology of cognates,
>> grammar-comparisons, phonology etc.
>
> IMO the biggest difficulty of all is that the evolution of
> languages is not at all like the Tree of Life, which begins
> where lateral transfer of genetic information takes on a
> minor role.

Obviously, you have loan words for starters, when a language lacks a
word that describes something, people will grab a word from another
language (or coin a new term) to plug the hole, this is where the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis fails, Sapir and Whorf held that language
determines thought, but as can be seen by the existence of loan words,
that's not necessarily the case. Besides, one can describe something
without having a word for it, it's just harder to do so because you
actually have to think of a description rather than conveniently
uttering a word that does it for you.

>
> I believe that there were many distinct early languages
> almost from the moment language began [and when THAT was
> is a major mystery]. Tribes and clans had their separate
> languages, but there was an enormous amount of borrowing,
> especially when far-flung trade began. Sure, sign language
> goes a long way, but if traders want to develop rapport and
> not just have a supermarket impersonality to trading, they
> would naturally want to know what each one calls a certain item.

Sign languages *are* actual languages, and the Plains Indians used the
Plains Indian sign language to communicate, even in trading, just fine
without knowing each others' oral languages. The Plains Indian sign
language was the lingua franca of the Plains for centuries before the
White men came, and ASL was influenced by it to some extent.

>
> Borrowing shows no signs of abating, by the way. Magyar has
> borrowed extensively from German, from Slavic languages, and
> from romance languages. We Hungarians (Magyarok as we call ourselves)
> have a German word, nokedli, and a Slavic word, galuska,
> for a kind of dumpling that is as Hungarian as apple pie
> is American, and my wife keeps wishing we had an Uralic-Altaic
> word for them.
>
> And here is a comparison for you. Old English took on an endosymbiont,
> Norman French, like a eukaryote engulfing a prokaryote to incorporate it as
> a mitochondrion or chloroplast. And while its "nucleus" (grammar) remains
> Germanic, the plurality of its words have romance etymology.

Of course, but the most commonly used words in the English language
(including profanity) are of Germanic derivation.

>
> However, "engulfing" might be misleading. Perhaps the prokaryote
> incorporated itself as aggressively as William the Conqueror
> incorporated himself into England, along with his language.
>
>
> Got to go now. Family duty calls.

Doesn't it ever.

Dobzhansky