Attenborough does AAT proud
Marc Verhaegen
apes last night (the episode is entitled 'Food for Thought'). I quoted his
thoughts on AAT from the book some weeks ago, and hoped he wouldn't fudge
the issue. He didn't. We got lengthy shots of both chimps and gorillas
wading in thigh-deep water, some with infants, and they looked very
comfortable there. There were some shots of gorillas feeding on swamp
plants, too. As soon as I get time, I'll copy out his exact words, but
it was basically a shorter version of what was in the book. He briefly
suggested two other possible motives for bipedalism - looking over tall
grasses or carrying things (no mention of standing up to get those cool
breezes, a la Wheeler!) - before giving a long description of bipedal
wading, and mentioning how wet the environment was then. -- Pauline Ross
Algis Kuliukas
Thanks Pauline (and Marc). Yes. I wonder what the aquasceptic response
will be to this.
According to past form it will be a combination of ...
A sneering dismissal of David attenborough himself. When Phillip
Tobias dared to even suggest that scientists should be open to the AAH
the response seemed to be to question his sanity. Presumably
Attenborough can expect the same.
and
A shrug of the shoulders and an exasperated "so what?" Ignoring
evidence in favour of the AAH is what they have become accustomed to.
But before 1997 there was little evidence of extant apes having much
to do with water and a great deal indicating their aquaphobia. This
was one of the main arguments against the AAH. That argument now,
simply, has been disarmed.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
Whatever the response of the aquatsceptics, such a prominent and clear
visual portrayal of real 'aquatic' apes and such a heaviweight backing
from *the* voice in natural history is bound to add thousands to the
ranks of those of us who think that water obviously played some part
in our evolution.
One way or another this subject is going to be studied much, much in
the future than it has been so far. And programmes such as Life of
Mammals can only help in that process.
Algis Kuliukas
Jason Eshleman
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>"Marc Verhaegen" <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message news:<3e429212$0$20550$ba62...@news.skynet.be>...
>> >David Attenborough's 'Life of Mammals' BBC TV series finally reached the
>> apes last night (the episode is entitled 'Food for Thought'). I quoted his
>> thoughts on AAT from the book some weeks ago, and hoped he wouldn't fudge
>> the issue. He didn't. We got lengthy shots of both chimps and gorillas
>> wading in thigh-deep water, some with infants, and they looked very
>> comfortable there. There were some shots of gorillas feeding on swamp
>> plants, too. As soon as I get time, I'll copy out his exact words, but
>> it was basically a shorter version of what was in the book. He briefly
>> suggested two other possible motives for bipedalism - looking over tall
>> grasses or carrying things (no mention of standing up to get those cool
>> breezes, a la Wheeler!) - before giving a long description of bipedal
>> wading, and mentioning how wet the environment was then. -- Pauline Ross
>
>Thanks Pauline (and Marc). Yes. I wonder what the aquasceptic response
>will be to this.
>
>According to past form it will be a combination of ...
>
>A sneering dismissal of David attenborough himself. When Phillip
>Tobias dared to even suggest that scientists should be open to the AAH
>the response seemed to be to question his sanity. Presumably
>Attenborough can expect the same.
I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution. He's also been
known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
support. That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
>and
>
>A shrug of the shoulders and an exasperated "so what?" Ignoring
>evidence in favour of the AAH is what they have become accustomed to.
>But before 1997 there was little evidence of extant apes having much
>to do with water and a great deal indicating their aquaphobia. This
>was one of the main arguments against the AAH. That argument now,
>simply, has been disarmed.
Ummm. And what "evidence" would he be presenting? That chimps and
gorillas can wade? BFD. How again does that produce a terrestrial biped?
>Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
>assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
>heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>Whatever the response of the aquatsceptics, such a prominent and clear
>visual portrayal of real 'aquatic' apes and such a heaviweight backing
>from *the* voice in natural history is bound to add thousands to the
>ranks of those of us who think that water obviously played some part
>in our evolution.
So you've decided that in absense of any actual ability to put together a
coherant hypothesis that explains something without adding more
contradictions you've now decided that it's a public opinion poll and
Attenborough's gonna get people in your camp. Please. You really ought
to be embarrassed.
Curious Amateur
>In article <77a70442.0302...@posting.google.com>,
>Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>
>>Whatever the response of the aquatsceptics, such a prominent and clear
>>visual portrayal of real 'aquatic' apes and such a heaviweight backing
>>from *the* voice in natural history is bound to add thousands to the
>>ranks of those of us who think that water obviously played some part
>>in our evolution.
>
>So you've decided that in absense of any actual ability to put together a
>coherant hypothesis that explains something without adding more
>contradictions you've now decided that it's a public opinion poll and
>Attenborough's gonna get people in your camp. Please. You really ought
>to be embarrassed.
You're expecting an interest in scientific accuracy when you're
being shown an interest in book sales and/or popularity, Jason.
There is no overlap in this case.
CA
Pauline M Ross
Eshleman) wrote:
>I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
>He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution.
He is regarded (in Britain at least) as the number one observer and
commentator on natural history. His work is aimed at general
audiences, not specialists, and as such he inevitably skims over the
detail and occasionally gets things wrong, but he has acquired huge
respect over many years, not because of looks or personality, but
because of his enormous general knowledge of the subject and his
infectious enthusiasm which comes over very well on TV.
For that reason, when he publicly throws his weight behind an idea
like AAT, it inevitably increases by several orders of magnitude the
number of people who are going to bob up in undergraduate classes (and
newsgroups!) asking - OK, so why is the AAT wrong?
Sooner or later, the professionals are going to have to address the
questions that AAT raises, instead of ignoring it and hoping it will
go away.
--
Pauline Ross
John Roth
"Jason Eshleman" <j...@veni.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
news:b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu...
i.e. a sneering dismissal of David Attenborough himself. This is known
as an ad hominum arguement, and immediately disqualifies the person
making it from further consideration.
> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal.
Really? Since when does *conventional academic credentials* mean
that the possessor has the only access to either knowledge or wisdom?
That's what your comment about "not trained in the slightest" means,
after all.
I presume you have things to contribute to the debate. If you would
take care to present arguements on the facts, coupled with defensible
argumentation, you might be more effective.
John Roth
Nick Maclaren
In article <b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>,
j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) writes:
|>
|> I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
|> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution. He's also been
|> known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
|> Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
|> only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
|>
|> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
|> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
|> support. That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
|> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
Sorru, but you ARE sneering - he is NOT just a good producer, but
a fairly respectable observational zoologist. He is not an academic
scientist, but that does not make him just an entertainer.
On thing that sets him off from many of the "professionals" in
hominid evolution is that he actually looks at how animals really
behave rather than how the established theory says how they should
behave!
|> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
|> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
|> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
|>
|> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
|> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
|> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
That remark can be applied almost equally to all parties in this
sterile dispute.
The so-called "mosaic theory" doesn't even have the decency to
produce a hypothesis that can be debated - there are zillions of
species that have adapted to mosaics and only one has taken such a
bizarre path. Furthermore, the belief that improbable occurrences
don't need explaining because they have happened is bad statistics;
it is based on the sort of simplistic statistical models that are
taught to non-specialists.
I don't have a ruddy clue what the right answers are, but it is
the case that at least Elaine Morgan has attempted to answer some
hard questions that too many of the "professionals" attempt to
sweep under the carpet.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email: nm...@cam.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679
Michael Clark
news:b20cvo$enh$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
>
> In article <b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>,
> j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) writes:
> |>
> |> I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
> |> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution. He's also been
> |> known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
> |> Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
> |> only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
> |>
> |> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
> |> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
> |> support. That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
> |> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
>
> a fairly respectable observational zoologist. He is not an academic
> scientist, but that does not make him just an entertainer.
I don't see any sneer. I see a rather broad overview of DA's
accomplishments. He is ~not~, as you say, an academic. If
he were, you could point to published ~science~ with DA's
name on it. Look up his bio. An interesting comparison can
be made with Elaine Morgan, who is ~also~ a non-scientist
--and a ~producer~ of popular books.
> On thing that sets him off from many of the "professionals" in
> hominid evolution is that he actually looks at how animals really
> behave rather than how the established theory says how they should
> behave!
I think you need to familiarize yourself with what anthropologists do
and what they have done in the past 50 years. You wouldn't be
"sneering", would you?
> |> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
> |> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
> |> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
> |>
> |> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
> |> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
> |> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>
> That remark can be applied almost equally to all parties in this
> sterile dispute.
Sterile it is.
> The so-called "mosaic theory" doesn't even have the decency to
> produce a hypothesis that can be debated - there are zillions of
> species that have adapted to mosaics and only one has taken such a
> bizarre path. Furthermore, the belief that improbable occurrences
> don't need explaining because they have happened is bad statistics;
> it is based on the sort of simplistic statistical models that are
> taught to non-specialists.
"Things have changed in Minsk since you were a lad." --N. Khruschev
> I don't have a ruddy clue what the right answers are, but it is
> the case that at least Elaine Morgan has attempted to answer some
> hard questions that too many of the "professionals" attempt to
> sweep under the carpet.
So lacking a "ruddy clue", you latch on to the one argument in this
"debate" that has been laughed off the professional stage. Which one
of the planks in the wet ape platform would you like to defend first --
foot as flipper, fat for floatation, chimps can't swim so we were
"more aquatic in the past", "linear build" for efficient swimming,
lose the hair to decrease drag, valgas knee for wading sideways,
standing up to avoid drowning, etc etc....?
Or perhaps you'd rather just slip over to the film library
and watch a kindly old gentlman expound on the life of birds. Take
some popcorn.
Michael Clark
news:v47cvni...@news.supernews.com...
>
> "Jason Eshleman" <j...@veni.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
> news:b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu...
> > In article <77a70442.0302...@posting.google.com>,
> > Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
> > >"Marc Verhaegen" <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message
> news:<3e429212$0$20550$ba62...@news.skynet.be>...
> >
> > I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in
> question.
> > He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution.
>
> i.e. a sneering dismissal of David Attenborough himself. This is known
> as an ad hominum arguement, and immediately disqualifies the person
> making it from further consideration.
Saying that DA is "not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution" is
not ad hominem. Saying that John Roth is a blithering idiot and so
his posts to SAP should be ignored, is. See the difference? No?
> > Threre's no sneer in this dismissal.
>
> Really? Since when does *conventional academic credentials* mean
> that the possessor has the only access to either knowledge or wisdom?
> That's what your comment about "not trained in the slightest" means,
> after all.
No, that's not what it means. Here is something you might find easier
to understand: Your car breaks down. You can take it across the street
to the kindly old lady who's spent a lifetime fixing her neighbors hair or
you can take it to a licenced mechanic. What do you do?
> I presume you have things to contribute to the debate. If you would
> take care to present arguements on the facts, coupled with defensible
> argumentation, you might be more effective.
Jason is extremely effective. If you had been reading this group with
any attention span, you would know that. You, on the other hand,
are merely entertainment.
> John Roth
Richard Wagler
Pauline M Ross wrote:
Professionals truly confronting it would be the death
knell of the AAT. Just how long do you think the
ridiculous misconceptions upon which the AAT is based
would survive such scrutiny? And what will Pauline Ross
do when this happens? Is it a case of "the AAT can be
right" or "the AAT must be right". AAT survives on the
fringes. It's not centre-stage material.
Rick Wagler
Richard Wagler
John Roth wrote:
Nonsense. Whether or not DA has professional credentials
is very germane. The interpretation of the data that is needed
to confirm or refute the AAT is very germane and requires
them.
>
>
> > Threre's no sneer in this dismissal.
>
> Really? Since when does *conventional academic credentials* mean
> that the possessor has the only access to either knowledge or wisdom?
> That's what your comment about "not trained in the slightest" means,
> after all.
The statement does not imply this. I can acquire a lot
of knowledge about medecine but I rather doubt you
would want me to operate on you or your family. Just
what do you think acquiring 'professional credentials'
is all about? If they are of no use then why do it?
I am, of course, assuming you aren't taking the
Crowley-McGinn approach.
>
>
> I presume you have things to contribute to the debate. If you would
> take care to present arguements on the facts, coupled with defensible
> argumentation, you might be more effective.
>
If you were not blinded by an "AAT must be right" presumption
you would have notivced that Jason has done precisely that
in his postings to this group.
Rick Wagler
Richard Wagler
Nick Maclaren wrote:
> In article <b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>,
> j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) writes:
> |>
> |> I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
> |> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution. He's also been
> |> known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
> |> Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
> |> only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
> |>
> |> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
> |> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
> |> support. That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
> |> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
>
> Sorru, but you ARE sneering - he is NOT just a good producer, but
> a fairly respectable observational zoologist. He is not an academic
> scientist, but that does not make him just an entertainer.
So what, then, is the value of the science of anything?
>
>
> On thing that sets him off from many of the "professionals" in
> hominid evolution is that he actually looks at how animals really
> behave rather than how the established theory says how they should
> behave!
And your example of a "professional in hominid evolution" who
does not do this would be?
>
>
> |> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
> |> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
> |> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
> |>
> |> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
> |> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
> |> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>
> That remark can be applied almost equally to all parties in this
> sterile dispute.
Nonsense. Show me a professional who adopts, for
example, Marc Verhaegen's "research methods".
>
>
> The so-called "mosaic theory" doesn't even have the decency to
> produce a hypothesis that can be debated - there are zillions of
> species that have adapted to mosaics and only one has taken such a
> bizarre path.
Any good "obvservational zoologist" of amateur rank
should be able to tell you that nature is nothing but a
concatenation of bizarre paths. Where does this notion
that humans are so 'strange' - whatever such a subjective
adjective might mean - come from? "Obvservational
zoology" will tell you that it is wholly unwarranted. As for
'only' the last few years are demonstrating what may
well have been a significant radiation of bipedal hominins.
> Furthermore, the belief that improbable occurrences
> don't need explaining because they have happened is bad statistics;
> it is based on the sort of simplistic statistical models that are
> taught to non-specialists.
>
> I don't have a ruddy clue what the right answers are, but it is
> the case that at least Elaine Morgan has attempted to answer some
> hard questions that too many of the "professionals" attempt to
> sweep under the carpet.
>
>
But if her support for her answers are bunk what does
it matter? C'mon, Nick, if there is no sound data upon
which to base a theory what have you got? And where
did this notion that PA does not attempt to make informed
speculations about things come from? PA is full of them.
The AAT 'critique' of conventional PA is pathetic tripe
and you should place absolutely no stock in it.
Rick Wagler
Pauline M Ross
wrote:
>Professionals truly confronting it would be the death
>knell of the AAT. Just how long do you think the
>ridiculous misconceptions upon which the AAT is based
>would survive such scrutiny? And what will Pauline Ross
>do when this happens? Is it a case of "the AAT can be
>right" or "the AAT must be right". AAT survives on the
>fringes. It's not centre-stage material.
It really isn't a case of 'can be right' or 'must be right'. I find it
plausible, that's all, and I find the conventional thinking
implausible. I would be quite happy to see a convincing argument
against the AAT, or supporting the conventional view. That's actually
why I hang out here.
So far as I know, only one professional has ever taken a proper shot
at demolishing the AAT, but it wasn't an overwhelming success. Both
his premises and his arguments were flawed, but at least he confronted
it head-on.
If you (or anyone else) wants to have a go at it, be my guest. Or if
you could just define what the 'ridiculous misconceptions upon which
the AAT is based' are, that would be very helpful. I'm listening.
On the other hand, you may feel (as I do) that the AAT takes up far
too much time on this group (although I admit to being partly to blame
for that lately).
But it is not constructive or helpful to arm-wavingly dismiss it as
'not centre-stage material'. It's been around for 40-odd years now;
either dismantle it scientifically or accept it.
--
Pauline Ross
Jason Eshleman
Pauline M Ross <pmr...@ross-software.co.uk> wrote:
>On Fri, 7 Feb 2003 08:04:27 +0000 (UTC), j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason
>Eshleman) wrote:
>
>>I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
>>He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution.
>
>He is regarded (in Britain at least) as the number one observer and
>commentator on natural history. His work is aimed at general
>audiences, not specialists, and as such he inevitably skims over the
>detail and occasionally gets things wrong, but he has acquired huge
>respect over many years, not because of looks or personality, but
>because of his enormous general knowledge of the subject and his
>infectious enthusiasm which comes over very well on TV.
So his regard as commentator makes him the authority? Yes, his aim is at
general audiences and he does a very nice job of presenting stuff to
general audiences. You are right. He gets things wrong from time to
time. He got this one wrong.
>For that reason, when he publicly throws his weight behind an idea
>like AAT, it inevitably increases by several orders of magnitude the
>number of people who are going to bob up in undergraduate classes (and
>newsgroups!) asking - OK, so why is the AAT wrong?
Hasn't seemed to happen in the U.S. yet. In the last 7 years, I had
exactly one student comment on the aquatic ape and her paper was so
egregiously plagiarized that I'm not sure that she ever read the sections
she cut and pasted in. It does seem curious that there is more support
for wet ape nonsense in the UK.
>Sooner or later, the professionals are going to have to address the
>questions that AAT raises, instead of ignoring it and hoping it will
>go away.
Um, the professionals *have* addressed it. Addressed and dismissed back
to the ranks of the kooks.
Jason Eshleman
It hasn't survived as is in anything other than kook-fringe space. The
misconceptions upon which AAT/H/R rest don't bother the supporters any
more than the misconceptions about evolution bother creationists. I doubt
"confronting" it will do anything to change the opinions of those who
steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the hodge-podge of internal
inconsistencies of wet-apedom.
Marc Verhaegen
"Jason Eshleman" <j...@veni.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
news:b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu...
> >> >David Attenborough's 'Life of Mammals' BBC TV series finally reached
the apes last night (the episode is entitled 'Food for Thought'). I quoted
his thoughts on AAT from the book some weeks ago, and hoped he wouldn't
fudge the issue. He didn't. We got lengthy shots of both chimps and
gorillas wading in thigh-deep water, some with infants, and they looked very
comfortable there. There were some shots of gorillas feeding on swamp
plants, too. As soon as I get time, I'll copy out his exact words, but
it was basically a shorter version of what was in the book. He briefly
suggested two other possible motives for bipedalism - looking over tall
grasses or carrying things (no mention of standing up to get those cool
breezes, a la Wheeler!) - before giving a long description of bipedal
wading, and mentioning how wet the environment was then. -- Pauline Ross
> >Thanks Pauline (and Marc). Yes. I wonder what the aquasceptic response
will be to this. According to past form it will be a combination of ...
A sneering dismissal of David attenborough himself. When Phillip Tobias
dared to even suggest that scientists should be open to the AAH the response
seemed to be to question his sanity. Presumably Attenborough can expect the
same.
> I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
?? Is it? And your "authority"?? :-D You have nothing: no insight in
evolutionary processes, no insight in primate evolution, no alternative to
our scenario, no arguments against our scenario, you have nothing at all.
> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution.
Are you are "trained in hominid evolution" I suppose?? :-D Man, go
home.
Jason Eshleman
John Roth <john...@ameritech.net> wrote:
>
>Really? Since when does *conventional academic credentials* mean
>that the possessor has the only access to either knowledge or wisdom?
>That's what your comment about "not trained in the slightest" means,
>after all.
It means that as someone with substantial training in this field, I can
see that his conclusions are flawed.
>I presume you have things to contribute to the debate. If you would
>take care to present arguements on the facts, coupled with defensible
>argumentation, you might be more effective.
Have you been paying any attention at all or did you just show up?
Jason Eshleman
Nick Maclaren <nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>In article <b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>,
>j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) writes:
>|>
>|> I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
>|> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution. He's also been
>|> known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
>|> Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
>|> only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
>|>
>|> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
>|> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
>|> support. That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
>|> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
>
>Sorru, but you ARE sneering - he is NOT just a good producer, but
>a fairly respectable observational zoologist. He is not an academic
>scientist, but that does not make him just an entertainer.
But in this case, it explains why he's just plain wrong. It's not his
statement about the AAR that was the big problem for me. It's that the
two options he proposed *aren't* the only two options. Indeed, they're
two of the poorer options and no ammount of observational zoology, as a
professional or skilled amateur or entertainer or whatnot changes this.
He just got it wrong.
>On thing that sets him off from many of the "professionals" in
>hominid evolution is that he actually looks at how animals really
>behave rather than how the established theory says how they should
>behave!
Um, do you have *any* clue what you're talking about? From what lofty
vantage do you make the conclusion that professionals simply follow
established theories? Have you ever been to academic meetings? Have you
ever listened to the conflict and disagreements? Ever submitted anything
for peer review and seen three or more opinions come back?
Have you ever followed the development of a field of science to notice
that it is not the static pursuit of the "established theories" but in
fact changes and is quite dynamic?
Have you ever read a dissertation on primate behavior based upon field
observations, generally many years of observations taken from dawn to dusk
or longer every day of the week? On what grounds to you say that
professionals only look at how they behav
Pauline M Ross
Eshleman) wrote:
>It does seem curious that there is more support
>for wet ape nonsense in the UK.
The aqua-sceptics seem to be concentrated in the US, and it is
curious.
>Um, the professionals *have* addressed it. Addressed and dismissed back
>to the ranks of the kooks.
Where and when? I'm serious - if there is some in-depth academic
refutation somewhere, I would like to see it. The only one I know of
is John Langdon's effort, which was very flawed. If there is something
else out there, where is it?
--
Pauline Ross
Jason Eshleman
>Eshleman) wrote:
>
>>It does seem curious that there is more support
>>for wet ape nonsense in the UK.
>
>The aqua-sceptics seem to be concentrated in the US, and it is
>curious.
That's an inaccurate statement. Wet-apers are a fringe minority even in
the UK. It's curious that the fringe is larger there. Knowledge that
wet-apedom is crap isn't confined to the US.
>>Um, the professionals *have* addressed it. Addressed and dismissed back
>>to the ranks of the kooks.
>
>Where and when? I'm serious - if there is some in-depth academic
>refutation somewhere, I would like to see it. The only one I know of
>is John Langdon's effort, which was very flawed. If there is something
>else out there, where is it?
Langdon's efforts pretty much dismantled any unified "aquatic" theory.
Part of the problem is the seeming insistence that there is an aquatic
theory, regardless of how watered down it is, uniting events from the
origin of bipedalism to the origins of language and many events in
between which don't appear to be united. Langdon's treatment of aquatic
ape crap made it look like the mish-mash it was. If he misunderstood what
was being proposed, I can't blame him. I've yet to see anything that
looks like a coherant hypothesis that is more than trivial from the
wet-apers. If you're convinced that he got it wrong, why not explain what
he got wrong.
Lorenzo L. Love
Is there any animal that can walk that can't wade?
How many times have we heard this so called "aquaphobia" of chimps used
as support for the Hypothesis of an Aquatic Human Ancestor showing how
different humans and chimps are regarding water? Now the absence of this
"aquaphobia" is used for the same thing. Typical of crackpot theories,
anything can be twisted into supporting evidence.
>
> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
>
> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>
> >Whatever the response of the aquatsceptics, such a prominent and clear
> >visual portrayal of real 'aquatic' apes and such a heaviweight backing
> >from *the* voice in natural history is bound to add thousands to the
> >ranks of those of us who think that water obviously played some part
> >in our evolution.
>
> So you've decided that in absense of any actual ability to put together a
> coherant hypothesis that explains something without adding more
> contradictions you've now decided that it's a public opinion poll and
> Attenborough's gonna get people in your camp. Please. You really ought
> to be embarrassed.
Embarrassment is not a characteristic of crackpots.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
"In the old days being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's
crazy."
Charles Manson
Rich Travsky
Here's one approach:
http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/anth501.html
Human Thermoregulation and Hair Loss
...
The aquatic model does not fit more parsimoniously or reasonably with the
available data than any theory explaining these features on the basis of the
thermoregulatory advantage of sweating.
...
Algis Kuliukas
> "Nick Maclaren" <nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
> news:b20cvo$enh$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
> >
> > In article <b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>,
> > j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) writes:
> > |>
> > |> I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in question.
> > |> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution. He's also been
> > |> known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
> > |> Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
> > |> only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
> > |>
> > |> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
> > |> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
> > |> support. That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
> > |> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
> >
> > Sorry, but you ARE sneering - he is NOT just a good producer, but
> > a fairly respectable observational zoologist. He is not an academic
> > scientist, but that does not make him just an entertainer.
>
> I don't see any sneer. I see a rather broad overview of DA's
> accomplishments. He is ~not~, as you say, an academic. If
> he were, you could point to published ~science~ with DA's
> name on it. Look up his bio. An interesting comparison can
> be made with Elaine Morgan, who is ~also~ a non-scientist
> --and a ~producer~ of popular books.
Whether it qualifies as a sneer or not - you are making my precise
point in lumping Attenborough together with Morgan - and dumping both
safely in the "non-specialist, don't know-what-they're-talking-about"
bin. As with Tobias, instead of having an ounce of humility and
thinking 'mmm - this guy's got many years of experience, he's
obviously thought about this a lot - perhaps he's got a point' - the
response instead is the rather arrogant 'what an old fool' kind of
affair.
> > On thing that sets him off from many of the "professionals" in
> > hominid evolution is that he actually looks at how animals really
> > behave rather than how the established theory says how they should
> > behave!
>
> I think you need to familiarize yourself with what anthropologists do
> and what they have done in the past 50 years. You wouldn't be
> "sneering", would you?
As far as this debate goes - we are discussing the AAT in this thread
remember - precisely what have anthropologists 'done' since the idea
was first published 43 years ago? It is not sneering to point out that
they have done almost exactly nothing.
> > |> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
> > |> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
> > |> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
> > |>
> > |> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
> > |> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
> > |> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
> >
> > That remark can be applied almost equally to all parties in this
> > sterile dispute.
>
> Sterile it is.
How on earth can anyone argue that this subject is sterile? What could
be more fascinating and important for humans than human origins? In a
world where religious bigotry and fanaticism seems to be running out
of control surely now, more than ever, science has a duty to address
this subject properly and come up with a plausible model of human
evolution which makes sense to the general public and is consistent
with the evidence.
The fact that the AAT has been dismissed out of hand with a kind of
knee-jerk, sneering ridicule instead of ever being investigated along
proper scientific lines of enquiry only adds to the intrigue for me.
Sterile it certainly is not.
[..]
> > I don't have a ruddy clue what the right answers are, but it is
> > the case that at least Elaine Morgan has attempted to answer some
> > hard questions that too many of the "professionals" attempt to
> > sweep under the carpet.
>
> So lacking a "ruddy clue", you latch on to the one argument in this
> "debate" that has been laughed off the professional stage.
"Laughed off the professional stage"? When, exactly, did this happen?
Which was that paper? Do you mean Langdon? Was that the great rebuttal
of which you allude to? Fact is: In 43 years it's almost exactly been
completely ignored. What kind of science is that?
> Which one
> of the planks in the wet ape platform would you like to defend first --
> foot as flipper, fat for floatation, chimps can't swim so we were
> "more aquatic in the past", "linear build" for efficient swimming,
> lose the hair to decrease drag, valgas knee for wading sideways,
> standing up to avoid drowning, etc etc....?
All of these deserves a serious scientific study. If any of them had
been investigated properly we'd have something to debate here other
than sneering ridicule - which is all you can offer.
But, as you lay down the challenge, let's take the last one - as it is
relevant to this particular debate (Attenborough has, after all,
pretty much put his weight behind the wading origin for bipedalism
idea.)
What were the main causative factors that led to the adoption of
bipedal locomotion in human ancestors? It's a subject that has receive
a huge amount of attention and vast amounts have been published about
it in the academic press. How much of that has investigated the wading
hypothesis? Not much. Until 1997 (the Doran & McNeilage paper) it was
more or less thought that apes never go in the water so it could, at
least, be argued that an aquasceptic position there was based on some
data (or lack of it).
Hunt's paper that was published just three years before that - looking
for incidents of facultative bipedalism in extant chimps for clues as
to how it might have begun - was possibly the most objective study
done by that time. It has been much cited and remains today one of the
most important studies in this area. Hunt's chimps never went in the
water. He found that several behaviours could induce them to go
bipedal for short periods of time - postural feeding being marginally
the most likely to do so.
Now, speaking hypothetically, if Hunt had studied apes in waterside
habitats - like chimps at Conkuati, instead of the Gombe or gorillas
at Mbeli Bai or bonobos in Planckendael (Videan & McGrew did a similar
study of captive chimps and bonobos, again where no water was present)
- he would have found very different data. There's no doubt, that such
studies would reveal that wading through water would have been the
number one motivator for bipedalism. Any comparison of such studies
would, equally doubtless, have shown that the more time the ape spends
in water the more bipedal it would be.
This is a very significant piece of data that has simply not been
assimilated by paleoanthropologists because, to date, such studies
have not been done.
And yet you claim it has been "laughed off the profesional stage."
How's that, then?
> Or perhaps you'd rather just slip over to the film library
> and watch a kindly old gentlman expound on the life of birds. Take
> some popcorn.
As I said the only response is a) sneering personal dismissal or b)
ignoring the evidence. Hardly an objective scientific response.
Algis Kuliukas
Marc Verhaegen
"Lorenzo L. Love" <lll...@thegrid.net> wrote in message
news:3E44197D...@thegrid.net...
> Embarrassment is not a characteristic of crackpots.
said the crackpot who thinks Nature is not a peer-reviewed journal...
Paul Crowley
> Nonsense. Whether or not DA has professional credentials
> is very germane. The interpretation of the data that is needed
> to confirm or refute the AAT is very germane and requires
> them.
Almost anyone, possessing elementary
scepticism and prepared to look hard, can
see that all versions of the AAT are dreadful
science. But professional credentials would
be a serious handicap in spotting its worst
errors. For the profession itself is the origin
of them. It has as much integrity as a piece
of mouldy gorgonzola
One great quality that the AAT has, though,
which the profession lacks, is a willingness
to seek explanations. THAT is refreshing.
Only it is a shame that the ones it find are
so bad.
> > Really? Since when does *conventional academic credentials* mean
> > that the possessor has the only access to either knowledge or wisdom?
> > That's what your comment about "not trained in the slightest" means,
> > after all.
>
> The statement does not imply this. I can acquire a lot
> of knowledge about medecine but I rather doubt you
> would want me to operate on you or your family. Just
> what do you think acquiring 'professional credentials'
> is all about? If they are of no use then why do it?
>
> I am, of course, assuming you aren't taking the
> Crowley-McGinn approach.
What is the "Crowley-McGinn approach". I share
next nothing of McGinn's approach. I constantly
attack his statements, getting -- at best -- feeble
replies.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
> It does seem curious that there is more support
> for wet ape nonsense in the UK.
It's a European phenomenon, rather than just UK.
Firstly, we don't have the Creationist problem that
you do in the US. There is an informed and
intelligent attitude towards Evolution in general
among educated people. There is a high level
of interest in human origins, and we are able to
consider the questions without all the Creationist
baggage. We'd like to have sensible answers,
but failing to get them from the profession, the
next best thing IS the AAT, appallingly bad as it
may be.
Also (as I have speculated here before)
swimming is almost universally taught in
European schools -- which is far from the case
in the US. That _may_ be part of the reason AAT
theories have such an attraction.
> >Sooner or later, the professionals are going to have to address the
> >questions that AAT raises, instead of ignoring it and hoping it will
> >go away.
>
> Um, the professionals *have* addressed it. Addressed and dismissed back
> to the ranks of the kooks.
But they STILL tell us nothing about how or
why we became bipedal -- and fail to answer
almost every question posed by intelligent
laymen. There is probably no aspect of
human knowledge more primitive than that
concerning its own evolutionary origins.
Paul.
Marc Verhaegen
> Professionals truly confronting it would be the death knell of the AAT.
Marc Verhaegen
> It hasn't survived as is in anything other than kook-fringe space.
Still believing that Wegener was at the fringes of geology??
Still incapable of providing 1 argument against our scenario??
Marc Verhaegen
> Hasn't seemed to happen in the U.S. yet.
Yes, the US...
Marc Verhaegen
"Pauline M Ross" <pmr...@ross-software.co.uk> wrote in message
news:29r74vou65lkrqgfe...@4ax.com...
> The aqua-sceptics seem to be concentrated in the US, and it is curious.
Yes, very. I always wondered why. Creationists are also concentrated in the
US?
Marc
Algis Kuliukas
> >Thanks Pauline (and Marc). Yes. I wonder what the aquasceptic response
> >will be to this.
> >
> >According to past form it will be a combination of ...
> >
> >A sneering dismissal of David attenborough himself. When Phillip
> >Tobias dared to even suggest that scientists should be open to the AAH
> >the response seemed to be to question his sanity. Presumably
> >Attenborough can expect the same.
>
... oh that's big of you.
> but his authority is in question.
He's a naturalist who has spent far, far more time observing animals
in their natural habitats than you or, I suspect, any of those you
*would* consider authorised to have a valid opinion on this matter.
He's watched evolution in action.
When Attenborough observed apes wading bipedally he, of course, made
the link with human bipedalism. But any child could have done that.
What he gives us is the benefit of his vast experience observing a
very wide variety of life on earth. It makes sense to him, it makes
sense to the public. It only doesn't make sense when preconceptions
about how it happenned prevent you from being open minded to the
model. That, plus, the fear of being wrong.
> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution.
He's got more than enough 'training' to recognise a plausible model
for the origin of bipedalism when it stares him in the face. (Or
should I say, when he's up to the waist in it) Apparently, you do not.
Again the only response is "He doesn't know what he's talking about".
> He's also been
> known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
> Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
> only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
Who hasn't made mistakes? Why can't you be open to the possibility
that you're making one right now?
> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
> support.
Producer? Do you know who we're talking about here?
> That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
I'm sure he's well aware of the other ideas too, including the long
distance efficiency argument. But the evidence from extant apes (the
scope of this series) is quite clear and unambiguous: to move long
distances, (or short distances for that matter) they knuckle walk - to
wade, they go bipedal.
> >and
> >
> >A shrug of the shoulders and an exasperated "so what?" Ignoring
> >evidence in favour of the AAH is what they have become accustomed to.
> >But before 1997 there was little evidence of extant apes having much
> >to do with water and a great deal indicating their aquaphobia. This
> >was one of the main arguments against the AAH. That argument now,
> >simply, has been disarmed.
>
> Ummm. And what "evidence" would he be presenting? That chimps and
> gorillas can wade? BFD. How again does that produce a terrestrial biped?
As we have argued before ad nauseum it gets them moving bipedally.
That is something your pet model - and all the others - simply do not
do.
Once they are moving bipedally in water there is a continuum of depths
against which fully terrestrial bipedalism can evolve. Your refusal to
accept (even see) this simple point is difficult to understand. I can
only put it down to stubbornness and an unwillingness to be open to
the possibility that you might be wrong.
> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
>
> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
Apes wade bipedally. Of all the motivators for extant ape bipedalism,
wading is the clear number one. The earliest bipeds all lived in
habitats where wading was probable. Stop pretending.
> >Whatever the response of the aquatsceptics, such a prominent and clear
> >visual portrayal of real 'aquatic' apes and such a heaviweight backing
> >from *the* voice in natural history is bound to add thousands to the
> >ranks of those of us who think that water obviously played some part
> >in our evolution.
>
> So you've decided that in absense of any actual ability to put together a
> coherant hypothesis that explains something without adding more
> contradictions you've now decided that it's a public opinion poll and
> Attenborough's gonna get people in your camp. Please. You really ought
> to be embarrassed.
It's not an opinion poll, that's right. But when students see images
of apes wading bipedally and then look in their human evolution texts
and notice that wading isn't even listed as a possible factor that is
thought to have led to our bipedalism they're going to (if they've an
ounce of independent thought) ask *why*?
You're the one who should be embarassed, Jason. You claim to be a
scientist and yet when presented with the most childishly simple but
obvious observational data presented by one of the most respected
naturalists in the world, you choose to ignore it and instead hide
behind your well rehearsed, pretentious arguments.
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
[..]
> > Sooner or later, the professionals are going to have to address the
> > questions that AAT raises, instead of ignoring it and hoping it will
> > go away.
>
> knell of the AAT.
On the contrary the fact it hasn't been "confronted" yet should, if
normal scientific procedures be applied, suggest that it be considered
carefully and objectively.
> Just how long do you think the
> ridiculous misconceptions upon which the AAT is based
> would survive such scrutiny?
Before 1997: Nothing in the literature about apes wading. Wading
theory therefore, understandably, not generally considered.
Since 1997: Evidence emerging that all great apes wade and do so,
predominently, bipedally. So, it's time to consider it, isn't it? If
not, why not?
The data's changed in the last five years. We need to test our
assumptions in the light of new data don't we? That's the way science
works, right?
> And what will Pauline Ross
> do when this happens? Is it a case of "the AAT can be
> right" or "the AAT must be right". AAT survives on the
> fringes. It's not centre-stage material.
The AAH is only still fringe because of academic inculturation. It is
not studied today only because it has not been studied in the past,
nothing more. This cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies will only be
broken when someone goes against the grain, rides the academic
ridicule, seriously studies it and gets something interesting
published. Once that mould has been broken others will follow.
What will the Rick Wagler position be if the predictions the AAT is
based upon do finally get studied and prove true? Are you open to that
possibility?
Algis Kuliukas
Marc Verhaegen
"Rich Travsky" <traR...@hotMOVEmail.com> wrote in message
news:3E441CEB...@hotMOVEmail.com...
> Here's one approach: http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/anth501.html
Human Thermoregulation and Hair Loss
Yes, but an unscientific approach. Just read:
Erect Posture, Nakedness and Subcutaneous Fat
The suggestion has been made that erect posture and nakedness may have
evolved to function in humans as a combined strategy of thermoregulation in
an arid environment. In this connection it is noteworthy that (1) in no
other species are hairlessness and erect posture found in combination, and
(2) in no other species can either feature be shown to assist efficient
temperature control on land.
Meerkats, prairie dogs and gerenuks frequently stand erect on extended hind
limbs; kangaroos and several convergent rodents (for instance, Dipodus,
Pedetes, Dipodomys, Jaculus) resort to bipedal locomotion when moving at
speed, though their body posture with flexed hip and knee joints is very
different from the human erect stance. But all these have retained a coat of
fur which protects them from the sun (Montagna, 1965).
As for nakedness, it is found among real savannah or desert dwellers only in
the underground tunnels of the naked mole-rat, a completely fossorial
animal. In the African elephant and black and white rhino, which are
functionally naked and live partly on the savannah, the hairlessness seems
more of an affliction than an asset; these animals exploit every opportunity
of wallowing to acquire a covering of mud as a protection against solar
radiation. It is true that a few medium-sized savannah mammals, such as
aardvarks, wart-hogs and hunting dogs, are comparatively sparsely haired.
But this feature is unlikely to have evolved as a defence against the sun's
heat, since these species spend the day in holes and are active at dusk or
at night.
Humans lack the short reflective fur of diurnal savannah dwellers such as
zebras and bovids, lions and camels (Wilson, 1979, pp. 752-3; Newman, 1970;
Wheeler, 1984). Instead, they display a subcutaneous layer of white fat
tissue, fairly evenly distributed over the surface of the central body parts
and comprising on average around 20 per cent of body weight. This fat layer
is (1) conspicuously absent in savannah mammals and conspicuously common in
the larger aquatic ones, and (2) demonstrably maladaptive in a hot
terrestrial environment.
There are no fat animals on the savannah, with the exception of small
burrowing rodents or marsupials. In the case of these species, the fat is
brown rather than white, internal or localised (for instance, in a fat tail)
rather than subcutaneous and, unlike human fat, it is subject to seasonal
fluctuation. Among larger animals, the dromedary has occasional need of a
fat store against food shortage, but here again the fat is highly
concentrated (in the hump), varies with the animal's feeding condition, and
fluctuates between 0.5 and 8 per cent of its body weight. The only fat
animal which exploits the grasslands around the rivers is the hippopotamus,
but it does this at night and stays in the water during the day. In the case
of marine mammals, however, the fat tissue is universal among the larger
species. It varies from 20 to 25 per cent of the body weight in fast
swimmers to more than 40 per cent in the slower species (Slijper, 1958,
1979). The adaptiveness of this feature in water has been further
illustrated by studies of human athletes. For example, blacks - in whom
subcutaneous fat comprises a somewhat lower percentage of overall body
weight than in other races - tend to be the swiftest runners over both short
and long distances, but they are relatively poor swimmers (Ghesquiere and
Bunkens, this volume, chapter 16). Successful swimmers are on average fatter
than the winners of track events, and many long-distance swimmers are even
grossly fat (Pugh and Edholm, 1955). The fat layer has been shown to be an
effective barrier against heat loss in water. A study of a fat Channel
swimmer revealed that when lying still in bath water at 18°C for more than
one hour, he complained of no discomfort other than boredom, whereas another
subject with much less subcutaneous fat complained of intense discomfort and
showed a drastic drop in rectal temperature after fifteen minutes (Pugh and
Edholm).
Clearly, the possession of the fat layer facilitates spending more time in
the water. The result of one recent experiment even suggested that the
converse may also be true. It was found in a study of slightly obese women
that, without dietary restriction, an hour's daily walking or cycling
reduced body weight by 10 and 12 per cent respectively after six months,
while a daily swim caused a weight gain of 3 per cent over the same period
(Gwinup, 1987). On land, on the other hand, subcutaneous fat has the dual
disadvantage of reducing speed and, in hot climates, of acting as a heat
trap. An extra weight of fat tissue equivalent to only 10 per cent of body
weight seriously reduces speed. Even in temperate climates, no terrestrial
animal that has to run for its life - be it as predator or prey - has much
fat. Hares, for instance, which escape predators by running, have much less
body fat than rabbits, which take refuge in their burrows.
Excess fat can constitute a real risk to humans taking exercise, especially
in hot and sunny environments (Austin and Lanking, 1986). In fact, it has
been calculated that most land-based sports other than walking and table
tennis are up to ten times more likely to lead to fatalities than swimming,
despite the additional danger of drowning incurred by swimmers (Dolmans,
1987). And the same fat layer that is advantageous in water, with its high
thermal conductivity, is a handicap to effective temperature control
on-land. Stranded dolphins, even in cool environments, soon die of
hyperthermia. And Pribilof fur seals are seriously distressed by any
activity on land at air temperatures of only 10°C (McFarland et al., 1979,
p. 773). The alleged danger of overheating on the savannah - sometimes
advanced as the reason for hairlessness - would have been compounded by the
evolution of the fat layer.
Body Temperature
In an endothermic species the normal temperature represents a compromise
between the advantages and disadvantages of high body temperature in
relation to its particular habitat and behaviour.
One of the advantages of high body temperatures - especially the higher
nervous tissue and muscle temperature - is the facilitation of faster
reactions (McFarland et al., p. 651). For every rise of 10°C the velocity of
the biochemical processes is more than doubled (compare the warming-up of
athletes). Fast reactions are important in predators and their prey, in
intra-species conflicts, and for birds, in flight. For these purposes,
generally speaking, the higher the nerve and muscle temperature, the better.
The disadvantage lies in the high energy expenditure needed to sustain the
temperature: the cost of keeping body tissues at about 38-42°C, as in most
mammals and birds during the day, is enormous (Else and Hulbert, 1987). High
temperatures may also incur other disadvantages - for example, problems of
lipid and protein solubility and protein denaturation.
If the processes of thermoregulation in humans had evolved in response to a
move from the trees to savannah, we would expect them to be characterised by
a high normal temperature because of the need for speed, whether in flight
or in pursuit, and a capacity to tolerate periods of higher temperature
because of exposure to the tropical heat. Most hunted or hunting animals
have a body temperature of at least 38°C. While the average rectal
temperature in man is 37°C, in horses it is 38°C, in cattle and guinea pigs
38.5°C, in rabbits, sheep, dogs and cats 39°C, in goats 39.5°C (Slijper,
1958; Calloway, 1976). By contrast, animals which do not defend themselves
by running away - such as hedgehogs, mole- rats, armadillos, monotremes,
pottos and sloths - may have body temperatures lower than 35°C, and
consequently incur much lower energy costs than other animals of the same
size (Wilson, 1979, p. 747; McFarland et al., 1979, p. 652; Calloway, 1976;
Goffart, 1978).
If we exclude the group of slow-moving mammals listed above, a normal
temperature as low as man's is found chiefly among the larger aquatic
mammals. Hunting and hunted pinnipeds have a body temperature like ours or
slightly higher - for instance, 37.5°C in fur seals and 36.5°C in
sea-elephants. But aquatic mammals that can afford to move slowly often have
lower temperatures, which saves energy and allows longer submersion.
Hippopotamuses and many cetaceans have body temperatures of about 35.5°C,
sea-cows probably even lower (Slijper, 1958, p. 359). In other words, humans
have a normal temperature resembling that of sea mammals, lower than most
terrestrial ones, and markedly lower than that of any active savannah
species. As well as possessing such a high basic temperature, animals living
in exposed habitats evolve the capacity to survive periods when the diurnal
air temperature is very high. The oryx, for example, can sustain a rectal
temperature of 45°C and Grant's gazelle of 46.5°C for many hours, whereas
humans feel ill if their rectal temperature rises to 38°C. Different
mechanisms have been developed in warm-blooded animals for selectively
keeping their brain temperature lower than the body temperature (Taylor and
Lyman, 1972). These mechanisms, well developed in savannah dwellers, are
poorly developed in humans (Cabanac, 1986), so that in man a rectal
temperature of 41°C may result in permanent brain damage (Cabanac, 1986;
Krupp and Chatton, 1981, pp. 1, 939).
In a savannah-type environment there is an unusually wide difference between
day and night temperatures. Consequently, one final characteristic of
thermoregulation in animals living in this environment is that they have
evolved a wide range of body temperatures. Many show a fluctuation of more
than 6°C between day and night temperatures: the oryx, for example, ranges
between 38°C and 45°C, and the gazelle's rectal temperature may increase by
5 or 6°C during a single run, which - through muscular warming-up - has the
advantage of enhancing its speed (Taylor, 1970; Taylor and Rowntree, 1973).
At the other extreme are the medium-sized and large aquatic mammals which
display almost no body temperature fluctuations. For instance, the core
temperature of the East Siberian dolphin shows fluctuations of less than
0.5°C (Slijper, 1958, p. 205). Human metabolism seems to be adapted to
fluctuations of less than 1°C (Schmidt-Nielsen, 1979, figure 4), although
naked Australian aborigines after a single night's sleep under the desert
sky may have body temperatures as low as 35°C (Kanwisher, 1977, p. 500).
Running a marathon may raise the body temperature by two degrees, but rises
greater than that can be fatal.
This factor is stressed in textbooks of physiology: 'The range of body
temperature in a group of healthy persons is quite small. Indeed, the
co-efficient of variation of body temperature in man is one of the smallest
for which quantitative data are available' (Bell, Davidson and Scarborough,
1968). If we had been, as has been suggested, savannah-adapted over millions
of years, it seems likely that we would have been able to accommodate with
ease a temperature rise to more than 40°C in the afternoon. The peak figures
of death by heat-stroke in Greece in the hot summers of 1987 and 1988
suggest that man is anything but a savannah animal
Marc Verhaegen
> Saying that DA is "not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution" is
not ad hominem. Saying that John Roth is a blithering idiot and so his
posts to SAP should be ignored, is. See the difference? No?
The usual dry ape arguments... Yet found 1 argument against our aquarboreal
view??
Marc Verhaegen
> Nonsense. Whether or not DA has professional credentials is very germane.
:-D Not when we see here the "professional" inabilities to say why our
view of AAT would be wrong...
Marc Verhaegen
> It means that as someone with substantial training in this field, I can
see that his conclusions are flawed.
You?? :-D You can't even give 1 argument against our view....
Jason Eshleman
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>Richard Wagler <taxi...@shaw.ca> wrote in message news:<3E43DCE6...@shaw.ca>...
>> Pauline M Ross wrote:
>[..]
>> > Sooner or later, the professionals are going to have to address the
>> > questions that AAT raises, instead of ignoring it and hoping it will
>> > go away.
>>
>> Professionals truly confronting it would be the death
>> knell of the AAT.
>
>On the contrary the fact it hasn't been "confronted" yet should, if
>normal scientific procedures be applied, suggest that it be considered
>carefully and objectively.
>
>> Just how long do you think the
>> ridiculous misconceptions upon which the AAT is based
>> would survive such scrutiny?
>
>Before 1997: Nothing in the literature about apes wading. Wading
>theory therefore, understandably, not generally considered.
>
>Since 1997: Evidence emerging that all great apes wade and do so,
>predominently, bipedally. So, it's time to consider it, isn't it? If
>not, why not?
Consider what? That animals that wade don't seem to become obligate
bipeds? I'm still really curious as to how you see this all fitting
together. This piece of "evidence" doesn't clarify things.
>The data's changed in the last five years. We need to test our
>assumptions in the light of new data don't we? That's the way science
>works, right?
And what would those assumptions be? Consider that practically all
primates (AFAIK all haplorhines) can move bipedally. Now what is so
magical about wading? Really. What is it?
>> And what will Pauline Ross
>> do when this happens? Is it a case of "the AAT can be
>> right" or "the AAT must be right". AAT survives on the
>> fringes. It's not centre-stage material.
>
>The AAH is only still fringe because of academic inculturation. It is
>not studied today only because it has not been studied in the past,
>nothing more. This cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies will only be
>broken when someone goes against the grain, rides the academic
>ridicule, seriously studies it and gets something interesting
>published. Once that mould has been broken others will follow.
AAR is on the fringe because there's not solid evidence to support it,
because the hypotheses generated in its wake aren't viable, contain too
many additional contradictions and consequently only seem to appeal to
those who don't know enough to see the contradictions. It takes on a
religious flavor when, when these contradictions are exposed, the
proponents of the various aquatic hypotheses vehemently stand up and
disregard the criticism chosing instead to cite either persecution by some
mythological monolithic academic mainstream (as if there was a consensus
unwavering academic opinion).
>What will the Rick Wagler position be if the predictions the AAT is
>based upon do finally get studied and prove true? Are you open to that
>possibility?
A) Your scientific training was rather incomplete if you believe that
anything can be "proved" but I'll cut you some slack as there's a chance
you didn't mean it that way. B) If there's sufficient evidence to support
it and not sifficiently more evidence countering it, I'll buy into a
hypothesis. You, Algis, seem to want to skip the evidence part. Being
open to the possibility still doesn't help the fact that what YOU have
presented on a wading origin of bipedalism falls flat and there's
positively no reason your hypothesis as stands shouldn't be rejected in
favor of any null.
Marc Verhaegen
> Ever submitted anything for peer review and seen three or more opinions
come back?
1) Is this your only "argument"??
2) Peer Review BMJ 2003;326:241 - Little evidence for effectiveness of
scientific peer review - Caroline White
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7383/241/a
3) Traditional PA peers keep repeating the same savanna nonsense... Exactly
as in geology before the theory of plate tectonics.
4) Still believing that Nature is not peer-reviewed??
Algis Kuliukas
> Pauline M Ross <pmr...@ross-software.co.uk> wrote:
> >On Fri, 7 Feb 2003 17:12:13 +0000 (UTC), j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason
> >Eshleman) wrote:
> >
> >>It does seem curious that there is more support
> >>for wet ape nonsense in the UK.
> >
> >The aqua-sceptics seem to be concentrated in the US, and it is
> >curious.
>
> That's an inaccurate statement. Wet-apers are a fringe minority even in
> the UK. It's curious that the fringe is larger there. Knowledge that
> wet-apedom is crap isn't confined to the US.
How can anyone tell? Has anyone done a survey? It would, surely, be an
interesting study to find out which nations' anthropologists are most
open to the AAH.
My hunch is that you'd find an inverse correlation between the number
of people who are open to the AAH and the number who are creationists.
Those societies where the concept of evolution through natural
selection is more mature are, I suspect, more open to the notion.
There are other countries (mentioning no names) where the general
populace are still so God-fearing that the debate seems not to have
moved on much from Darwin v The Bible.
Perhaps American PAs are so tired of arguing with creationists that
they have closed ranks and tend to dismiss any alternative views with
the same defensive brush. Just thinking alound.
> >>Um, the professionals *have* addressed it. Addressed and dismissed back
> >>to the ranks of the kooks.
> >
> >Where and when? I'm serious - if there is some in-depth academic
> >refutation somewhere, I would like to see it. The only one I know of
> >is John Langdon's effort, which was very flawed. If there is something
> >else out there, where is it?
>
> Langdon's efforts pretty much dismantled any unified "aquatic" theory.
> Part of the problem is the seeming insistence that there is an aquatic
> theory, regardless of how watered down it is, uniting events from the
> origin of bipedalism to the origins of language and many events in
> between which don't appear to be united. Langdon's treatment of aquatic
> ape crap made it look like the mish-mash it was. If he misunderstood what
> was being proposed, I can't blame him. I've yet to see anything that
> looks like a coherant hypothesis that is more than trivial from the
> wet-apers. If you're convinced that he got it wrong, why not explain what
> he got wrong.
So that *is* it. That's all you have: Langdon's paper. This hardly
justifies the statement "the professionals *have* addressed it.
Addressed and dismissed back to the ranks of the kooks." Fact is,
Jason, the professionals have *not* addressed it in 43 years. It is
simply time they did.
Algis Kuliukas
Marc Verhaegen
"Marc Verhaegen" <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message
news:3e429212$0$20550$ba62...@news.skynet.be...
>>David Attenborough's 'Life of Mammals' BBC TV series finally reached the
apes last night (the episode is entitled 'Food for Thought'). I quoted his
thoughts on AAT from the book some weeks ago, and hoped he wouldn't fudge
the issue. He didn't. We got lengthy shots of both chimps and gorillas
wading in thigh-deep water, some with infants, and they looked very
comfortable there. There were some shots of gorillas feeding on swamp
plants, too. As soon as I get time, I'll copy out his exact words, but
it was basically a shorter version of what was in the book. He briefly
suggested two other possible motives for bipedalism - looking over tall
grasses or carrying things (no mention of standing up to get those cool
breezes, a la Wheeler!) - before giving a long description of bipedal
wading, and mentioning how wet the environment was then. -- Pauline Ross
As soon as I get time, I'll copy out his exact words.
> OK, these are Attenborough's words from the 'Life of Mammals' TV program.
After some preamble about ape tool use, culture and hunting, he shows the
Laetoli footprints: "The big question, of course, is why did they stand
upright. There have been a number of suggestions. One is that it was to get
a better view of the surroundings to spot for danger or for prey. Maybe it
was to release the hands to use tools or pick up food or hold a baby. And
there's a third, rather more controversial, suggestion. About 6 million
years ago, the climate of the earth became very erratic. The great African
forests began to die back. The blanket of trees became broken by patches of
scrub and grassland. There's some evidence, too, that slow movements in the
earth's crust caused areas of East Africa to flood. A new habitat had
appeared for the apes. Using their long, chimp-like arms, these early
creatures were still climbing trees in order to find their food, but as the
forests diminished, so they had to travel farther from one tree to the next,
and that involved crossing open spaces covered with grass or even water, and
to do that they travelled upright on two feet as I am doing. [Cut from
shot of Attenborough wading to several shots of chimps wading thigh-deep;
the males have their arms raised above their heads, the females have their
arms lowered to occasionally support their infants, some carried on the
front, some on the back.] Suddenly an image from our remote past comes
vividly to life, the time when our distant ancestors, in order to keep up
with the changing environment, had to wade and keep their heads above water
in order to find food; that crucial moment when our far distant ancestors
took a step away from being apes and a step towards humanity. Apes are
primarily adapted for a life in the trees, which is why they waddle if they
try to walk upright. It's tiring for them to stand on two feet for any
length of time. But when they wade, the water supports their bodies and
takes some of the strain off their leg muscles, so that they can stay
upright for much longer. Maybe a life at the water's edge encouraged
anatomical change. At about this time, the hip bones of these early ape-men
altered and our ancestors adopted an upright existence. There are places
in the forest of the Congo which can give us a clue as to the sort of thing
that ape-men may have found to eat in the swamps. [Shots of a large
number of gorillas wading through the swamps and eating water-plants.]
These are lowland gorillas. They're collecting marsh plants. Our ancestors
might well have come to such places to feed in a very similar way. We know
from other evidence that nutritious roots and tubers were indeed eaten by
early humans." -- Pauline Ross
:-) Thanks, Pauline, and thanks, DA. Unfortunately DA has an outdated
view of AAT. As everybody here knows, most of us now think that
wading-climbing began 15 Ma or so, when hominid-pongid ancestors spread
along the Tethys coastal forests, probably hominids west, pongids east. Our
ancestors' wading-diving phase was much later, late Plio- or early
Pleistocene or so, when Homo dispersed in an apparently "short" along the
Mediterranean & Indian ocean coast.
Marc Verhaegen
http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Marc Verhaegen
> I don't see any sneer. I see a rather broad overview of DA's
accomplishments. He is ~not~, as you say, an academic. If he were, you
could point to published ~science~ with DA's name on it. Look up his bio.
An interesting comparison can be made with Elaine Morgan, who is ~also~ a
non-scientist --and a ~producer~ of popular books.
Yes, Clark is right: DA & Elaine are obviously wrong: not because they have
no arguments (they have plenty of arguments) but because they're not
academic. Clark OTOH is academic...
Jason Eshleman
But I don't see anything to suggest that he ~has~ though about it a lot.
I see instead that he was making another documentary and did a bit of
background stuff that might pass with the layperson, but to someone
educated in the field is either incomplete or wrong. I've found him to be
in error before, especially in the field of primatology.
I've pointed out his specific error here (claiming that there were only
two options) and elsewhere. I'm curious where you see anyone calling him
an "old fool."
You're making up strawmen again Algis. That's dispicable behavior on your
part and you really ought to be ashamed of this dishonesty. I expect that
sort of stuff from Marc, but I've not seen you delve this low before. You
continue to pull this garbage and you'll only find yourself in a darker
den of kooks.
>
>> > On thing that sets him off from many of the "professionals" in
>> > hominid evolution is that he actually looks at how animals really
>> > behave rather than how the established theory says how they should
>> > behave!
>>
>> I think you need to familiarize yourself with what anthropologists do
>> and what they have done in the past 50 years. You wouldn't be
>> "sneering", would you?
>As far as this debate goes - we are discussing the AAT in this thread
>remember - precisely what have anthropologists 'done' since the idea
>was first published 43 years ago? It is not sneering to point out that
>they have done almost exactly nothing.
Almost exactly nothing with what? With a popular scientific magazine
article published by someone who didn't get it right? Who asked a
question "was man more aquatic in the past" when the overwhelming answer
is probably know and really didn't warrant any more work?
No one is stopping you from exploring the issue. Where people will stop
you is when you start claiming to have solved things without evidence,
when you claim to have answers that require ignoring mountains of
counterevidence. And when you start up on the persecution complex, not
only will people continue to point out you're wrong (if you ever get to
the point of a coherant hypothesis that's solid enough such that it won't
get rejected with the current evidence on hand as your current hypotheses
are) they'll also think you're crazy. That's if anyone pays any attention
to you at all. People you yell about being persecuted by scientific
conspiracies have homes on the internet, but elsewhere they're rightfully
ignored.
>> > |> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
>> > |> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
>> > |> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
>> > |>
>> > |> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
>> > |> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
>> > |> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>> >
>> > That remark can be applied almost equally to all parties in this
>> > sterile dispute.
>>
>> Sterile it is.
>How on earth can anyone argue that this subject is sterile? What could
>be more fascinating and important for humans than human origins? In a
>world where religious bigotry and fanaticism seems to be running out
>of control surely now, more than ever, science has a duty to address
>this subject properly and come up with a plausible model of human
>evolution which makes sense to the general public and is consistent
>with the evidence.
>
>The fact that the AAT has been dismissed out of hand with a kind of
>knee-jerk, sneering ridicule instead of ever being investigated along
>proper scientific lines of enquiry only adds to the intrigue for me.
>Sterile it certainly is not.
Present a hypothesis that can be explored scientifically and then we can
talk. Ignoring something as incoherant (and nebulous) as AAR is the
sensible thing to do.
>[..]
>
>> > I don't have a ruddy clue what the right answers are, but it is
>> > the case that at least Elaine Morgan has attempted to answer some
>> > hard questions that too many of the "professionals" attempt to
>> > sweep under the carpet.
>>
>> So lacking a "ruddy clue", you latch on to the one argument in this
>> "debate" that has been laughed off the professional stage.
>
>"Laughed off the professional stage"? When, exactly, did this happen?
>Which was that paper? Do you mean Langdon? Was that the great rebuttal
>of which you allude to? Fact is: In 43 years it's almost exactly been
>completely ignored. What kind of science is that?
The right kind. Hardy didn't have a testable platform then that explained
anything without greater contradiction and you don't have one now. Save
your persecution diatribe for someone who gives a damn and do some science
if you care so much. Just don't expect anyone to treat it kindly when
you put forth the stuff you've posted here and expect it to convince
anyone who knows anything about human origins.
>> Which one
>> of the planks in the wet ape platform would you like to defend first --
>> foot as flipper, fat for floatation, chimps can't swim so we were
>> "more aquatic in the past", "linear build" for efficient swimming,
>> lose the hair to decrease drag, valgas knee for wading sideways,
>> standing up to avoid drowning, etc etc....?
>
>All of these deserves a serious scientific study. If any of them had
>been investigated properly we'd have something to debate here other
>than sneering ridicule - which is all you can offer.
Actually, not all of them *do* deserve scientific study yet. The "linear"
build isn't anything like the build of a true aquatic. Our form isn't
anything like the build of amphibious creatures. Our knee isn't anything
like those of creatures that move sideways and indeed is ill-equiped for
such a task.
Our hairlessness isn't anything like the hairlessness of dedicated
aquatics (though curiously is much more like the hairlessness of some
pigs who are not aquatic). That most semi-aquatic mammals aren't hairless
and that hairlessness in aquatics seems to be confined to things much
bigger than us seems lost on you as well. We *already* know this.
That's knowledge that we already have. You make it sound like people
don't know jack about what an aquatic adaptation is, don't know jack about
how knees work.
>But, as you lay down the challenge, let's take the last one - as it is
>relevant to this particular debate (Attenborough has, after all,
>pretty much put his weight behind the wading origin for bipedalism
>idea.)
By your definition of put his weight down, he's also put his weight down
in support of plate tectonic action that's roughly 40 million years off
according to many geologists. Attenborough just got it wrong then and he
just got it wrong here too.
but more to the point, who am I to believe? Someone like Henry McHenry, a
man who specializes in postcranial adaptations in hominids, who is widely
recognized as an authority in the field, who has published extensively on
this for nearly 4 decades? Or a documentarian who may be a fine
naturalist, but *doesn't* specialize on primates, let alone functional
anatomy in hominids, let alone locomotor adapations in bipeds?
What has been laughed off is the hodgepodge of nonsense that you insist
on sticking together saying that it's all due to water. Your wading idea
wouldn't get laughed off if you presented it, but as you've got it now, it
would be rejected because it's ripe with contradictions and does a
pisspoor job of solving the problem.
>> Or perhaps you'd rather just slip over to the film library
>> and watch a kindly old gentlman expound on the life of birds. Take
>> some popcorn.
>
>As I said the only response is a) sneering personal dismissal or b)
>ignoring the evidence. Hardly an objective scientific response.
Explain to me again why I should take Attenborough's opinion when it's
clear that it's not sufficiently researched? Explain to me again how
the two positions (peering over grass or wading) he presents are the only
possibilities? Let me repeat this again:
Attenborough got it wrong.
Explain to me again how wading in things that aren't obligate bipeds is
supposed to convince me that wading leads to obligate bipedalism again?
Actually, if you do explain it, it won't be "again" but will in fact be
the first time.
Lorenzo L. Love
You just can't help lying, can you?
You want to give us a list of your papers and tell us which ones are not
peer reviewed and which ones are pay for print? How many times will they
out number the peer reviewed ones? Or is it one?
And while you are at it, explain why the presence of "aquaphobia" of
chimps can be used as support for the Hypothesis of an Aquatic Human
Ancestor while the absence of "aquaphobia" of chimps can also be used as
support.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
Main Entry: psy·cho·sis
Pronunciation: sI-'kO-s&s
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural psy·cho·ses /-"sEz/
Etymology: New Latin
Date: 1847
: fundamental mental derangement (as schizophrenia) characterized by
defective or lost contact with reality
© 1999 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
Jason Eshleman
>> Pauline M Ross <pmr...@ross-software.co.uk> wrote:
>> >On Fri, 7 Feb 2003 17:12:13 +0000 (UTC), j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason
>> >Eshleman) wrote:
>> >
>> >>It does seem curious that there is more support
>> >>for wet ape nonsense in the UK.
>> >
>> >The aqua-sceptics seem to be concentrated in the US, and it is
>> >curious.
>>
>> That's an inaccurate statement. Wet-apers are a fringe minority even in
>> the UK. It's curious that the fringe is larger there. Knowledge that
>> wet-apedom is crap isn't confined to the US.
>
>How can anyone tell? Has anyone done a survey? It would, surely, be an
>interesting study to find out which nations' anthropologists are most
>open to the AAH.
Define "open to." I don't know any in the US or UK who actually think
aquatics have any real promise based on the arguments made to date.
>My hunch is that you'd find an inverse correlation between the number
>of people who are open to the AAH and the number who are creationists.
>Those societies where the concept of evolution through natural
>selection is more mature are, I suspect, more open to the notion.
>There are other countries (mentioning no names) where the general
>populace are still so God-fearing that the debate seems not to have
>moved on much from Darwin v The Bible.
>
>Perhaps American PAs are so tired of arguing with creationists that
>they have closed ranks and tend to dismiss any alternative views with
>the same defensive brush. Just thinking alound.
I know many physical anthropologists. I don't know any who have "closed
ranks" to battle creationists. I don't know more than a couple who spend
any time at all even considering creationist arguements.
>> >>Um, the professionals *have* addressed it. Addressed and dismissed back
>> >>to the ranks of the kooks.
>> >
>> >Where and when? I'm serious - if there is some in-depth academic
>> >refutation somewhere, I would like to see it. The only one I know of
>> >is John Langdon's effort, which was very flawed. If there is something
>> >else out there, where is it?
>>
>> Langdon's efforts pretty much dismantled any unified "aquatic" theory.
>> Part of the problem is the seeming insistence that there is an aquatic
>> theory, regardless of how watered down it is, uniting events from the
>> origin of bipedalism to the origins of language and many events in
>> between which don't appear to be united. Langdon's treatment of aquatic
>> ape crap made it look like the mish-mash it was. If he misunderstood what
>> was being proposed, I can't blame him. I've yet to see anything that
>> looks like a coherant hypothesis that is more than trivial from the
>> wet-apers. If you're convinced that he got it wrong, why not explain what
>> he got wrong.
>
>So that *is* it. That's all you have: Langdon's paper. This hardly
>justifies the statement "the professionals *have* addressed it.
>Addressed and dismissed back to the ranks of the kooks." Fact is,
>Jason, the professionals have *not* addressed it in 43 years. It is
>simply time they did.
I'm well capable of seeing the flaws in your stuff (and Marco's stuff and
Morgan's stuff) without Langdon. He's the only one I know of who, as a
point of purpose, to waste his time addressing aquatic nonsense as a unit.
As individual points within the hodgepodge aquatic hypothesis, aspects of
it have been addressed and dismissed elsewhere. One of your big problems
is that as a whole, there's nothing unifying about any aquatic ape
hypothesis to consider as a testable whole. You can't test wading origins
and expect it to have bearing on events like language origins millions of
years later until you can demonstrate that a) aquatics are sufficient to
do either independently and b) aquatics is relevent over the time frame to
connect it.
If you want to see where else aquatic nonsense has been put in its place,
get on web-of-science and look for Marco's publications. Then follow to
see who has cited them. Pull those papers and read them. 9 out of 10
times (and I'm being generous to the Macro man here) he's cited as stuff
that's been presented, but is demonstrated to be wrong.
But no, Langdon is not the only to consider and reject aquatic ape stuff.
Marc Verhaegen
"Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.03020...@posting.google.com...
> My hunch is that you'd find an inverse correlation between the number of
people who are open to the AAH and the number who are creationists. Those
societies where the concept of evolution through natural selection is more
mature are, I suspect, more open to the notion. There are other countries
(mentioning no names) where the general populace are still so God-fearing
that the debate seems not to have moved on much from Darwin v The Bible.
Perhaps American PAs are so tired of arguing with creationists that they
have closed ranks and tend to dismiss any alternative views with the same
defensive brush. Just thinking aloud.
Exactly my impression. AFAIK people in the Low Countries seem to have few
prejudices about AAT - and we have no problems with creationists here. We
had 2 AAT symposia here (Valkenburg, Gent), at least 2 in the UK, 1 (small
one) in Norway, 1 (small one) in the US.
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
> > > Embarrassment is not a characteristic of crackpots.
> > said the crackpot who thinks Nature is not a peer-reviewed journal...
> You just can't help lying, can you?
Say, silly savanna idiot, yet found one argument?? 1??
In 1960 Alister Hardy ("Was Man more aquatic in the past?" New Scientist)
described how a sea-side lifestyle - wading, swimming, collecting edible
shells, turtles, crabs, coconuts, seaweeds etc. - could explain many
typically human features that are absent in our nearest relatives the
chimps, and that are unexplained by savanna scenarios: reduction of
climbing skills, very large brain, greater breathing control (=
preadaptation for speech), very dextrous hands (stone tool use to open
shells or nuts), reduction of fur, thicker fat tissues, longer legs, more
linear body build, high needs of iodine, sodium, poly-unsaturated fatty
acids etc.
IMO, Hardy was only wrong in thinking this seaside phase happened more than
10 Ma. Homo ergaster-erectus fossils or tools are found in Israel, Algeria,
E.Africa, Georgia, Java ca.1.8 Ma, IOW, they spread along the Mediterranean
& Indian Ocean coasts early Pleistocene or earlier. Although most
Pleistocene coasts are some 100 m below the present sea level and it's
mostly the inland Homo populations (entering the continents along the
rivers) that are represented in the fossil and archeological record, Homo
remains have frequently been found amid shells, corals, barnacles etc., from
1.8 Ma (Mojokerto) to 0.1 Ma (Eritrea), as well as on islands which could
only be reached oversea (Flores 0.8 Ma).
Jason Eshleman
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) wrote in message news:<b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>...
>> In article <77a70442.0302...@posting.google.com>,
>> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>[..]
>> >Thanks Pauline (and Marc). Yes. I wonder what the aquasceptic response
>> >will be to this.
>> >
>> >According to past form it will be a combination of ...
>> >
>> >A sneering dismissal of David attenborough himself. When Phillip
>> >Tobias dared to even suggest that scientists should be open to the AAH
>> >the response seemed to be to question his sanity. Presumably
>> >Attenborough can expect the same.
>>
>> I don't question Attenborough's sanity,
>
>... oh that's big of you.
>
>> but his authority is in question.
>
>He's a naturalist who has spent far, far more time observing animals
>in their natural habitats than you or, I suspect, any of those you
>*would* consider authorised to have a valid opinion on this matter.
>He's watched evolution in action.
>
>When Attenborough observed apes wading bipedally he, of course, made
>the link with human bipedalism. But any child could have done that.
Children can come up with many fantasies. Children aren't so encumbered
by notions that things have to make sense from a functional anatomy
standpoint. You point appears to be that aquatic ape appeals to children.
That really the stand you want to take.
>What he gives us is the benefit of his vast experience observing a
>very wide variety of life on earth. It makes sense to him, it makes
>sense to the public. It only doesn't make sense when preconceptions
>about how it happenned prevent you from being open minded to the
>model. That, plus, the fear of being wrong.
>> He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution.
>
>He's got more than enough 'training' to recognise a plausible model
>for the origin of bipedalism when it stares him in the face. (Or
>should I say, when he's up to the waist in it) Apparently, you do not.
>Again the only response is "He doesn't know what he's talking about".
>
>> He's also been
>> known to make mistakes. I recall him commenting on the position of
>> Madagascar in his Life in the Treees episode of Life on Earth and he was
>> only off by, oh, 20 to 30 million years.
>
>Who hasn't made mistakes? Why can't you be open to the possibility
>that you're making one right now?
We've all made mistakes. It's just curious that you can't recognize that
Attenborough's making one here. The mistake isn't that he's behind your
aquatic stuff per say. It's that he's make it a "peer over grass" or
"wade bipedally" dichotomy. He may have spent more time looking at
nature, but that's not going to get him off the hook. He's wrong. He's
made a mistake in research that really leads me to believe that he's out
of his field here and his opinion on the matter shouldn't be taken as
anything substantive.
>> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
>> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
>> support.
>
>Producer? Do you know who we're talking about here?
Yes. Attenborough produces nature documentaries. They're entertaining.
I'm not sure what else you call someone who produces documentaries other
than producer. He is responsible for their production at least in part.
Is he not listed as such?
>> That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
>> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
>
>I'm sure he's well aware of the other ideas too, including the long
>distance efficiency argument. But the evidence from extant apes (the
>scope of this series) is quite clear and unambiguous: to move long
>distances, (or short distances for that matter) they knuckle walk - to
>wade, they go bipedal.
Why are you sure he's aware of the other ideas? What gives you that idea
at all?
Extant apes didn't become bipedal. I'm curious why you consider how they
travel greater distances to be all that relevent. They don't show our
adaptations towards bipedalism. I'm curious still why you say that wading
produces bipedalism if you use wading apes (who are not bipedal) to show
how it leads to bipedalism. I'm curious how you can use apes being adept
waders and apes being aquaphobic simultaneously to support your position.
>> >and
>> >
>> >A shrug of the shoulders and an exasperated "so what?" Ignoring
>> >evidence in favour of the AAH is what they have become accustomed to.
>> >But before 1997 there was little evidence of extant apes having much
>> >to do with water and a great deal indicating their aquaphobia. This
>> >was one of the main arguments against the AAH. That argument now,
>> >simply, has been disarmed.
>>
>> Ummm. And what "evidence" would he be presenting? That chimps and
>> gorillas can wade? BFD. How again does that produce a terrestrial biped?
>
>As we have argued before ad nauseum it gets them moving bipedally.
>That is something your pet model - and all the others - simply do not
>do.
It gets them to stand up and waddle. That's insufficient. You still need
to account for the gross mophological changes that separate a waddling,
wading ape and a human. You need to account for the fact that apes can,
and do walk bipedally on dry land as well.
You have not done so. The challenge is there for you. Instead of taking
it, you hold court in public opinion (e.g. citing Attenborough and damn
near deifying him to make your point) and continue to hide behind your
persecution complex.
>Once they are moving bipedally in water there is a continuum of depths
>against which fully terrestrial bipedalism can evolve. Your refusal to
>accept (even see) this simple point is difficult to understand. I can
>only put it down to stubbornness and an unwillingness to be open to
>the possibility that you might be wrong.
Again, how does this continuum work? Where does locomotive efficieny come
into play when you're moving around in the water? What is it about
shallow water that makes the move to being an obligate biped easier. Stop
spouting about your nebulous continuum and actually answer these damn
questions.
Piss or get off the pot, Algis. You've not shown anything.
>> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
>> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
>> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
>> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
>> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>Apes wade bipedally. Of all the motivators for extant ape bipedalism,
>wading is the clear number one. The earliest bipeds all lived in
>habitats where wading was probable. Stop pretending.
And stop pretending that that is clearly connected to the morphological
changes we see in the earliest bipeds. You're linking point A with Z
without knowing the rest of the alphabet.
>> >Whatever the response of the aquatsceptics, such a prominent and clear
>> >visual portrayal of real 'aquatic' apes and such a heaviweight backing
>> >from *the* voice in natural history is bound to add thousands to the
>> >ranks of those of us who think that water obviously played some part
>> >in our evolution.
>>
>> So you've decided that in absense of any actual ability to put together a
>> coherant hypothesis that explains something without adding more
>> contradictions you've now decided that it's a public opinion poll and
>> Attenborough's gonna get people in your camp. Please. You really ought
>> to be embarrassed.
>It's not an opinion poll, that's right. But when students see images
>of apes wading bipedally and then look in their human evolution texts
>and notice that wading isn't even listed as a possible factor that is
>thought to have led to our bipedalism they're going to (if they've an
>ounce of independent thought) ask *why*?
>You're the one who should be embarassed, Jason. You claim to be a
>scientist and yet when presented with the most childishly simple but
>obvious observational data presented by one of the most respected
>naturalists in the world, you choose to ignore it and instead hide
>behind your well rehearsed, pretentious arguments.
I make more than the claim to be a scientist, Algis. Was that an insult?
If so, you're really frickin' close to the killfile.
I'm not ignoring Attenborough. Stop being dishonest. If I was ignoring
it, would I be posting. That's rather insulting as well. I've pointed
out his mistakes. I've pointed out that he's not an authority and done
some not simply by attacking his credentials, but by noting errors that
undermine his authority in this realm. Stop pretending that I'm simply
engaging in a character assassination. That's damn close to being a lie.
Honestly, Algis, your Marc-like accusations are bothersome. You're being
dishonest in saying I've ignored things that I've considered and offered
you rebuttals about. You're starting to resemble Marc tactics more and
more every day. You wanna continue having anything even resembling a
dialog? Then you really ought to acknowledge that I've addressed damn
near everything you've presented and not hidden for fear of being wrong.
I *am* a professional physical anthropologist, Algis, and it's actually
with considerable trepidation that I bother posting here at all as people
in positions to hire me see this stuff. I've got *nothing* to gain and
much to lose by wasting my time here. I'm not hiding at all else you'd
not know me from Adam because I wouldn't sign my name to a bit of this.
There's damn little incentive for me to continue wasting my time with your
stuff, and do believe me, if I ignore you here, it's a strong indication
of the reception you'll get in a more serious academic setting. Consider
this carefully before you jump down Verhaegen's path of intellectual
dishonesty coupled with antisocial behavior.
Marc Verhaegen
> And what would those assumptions be? Consider that practically all
primates (AFAIK all haplorhines) can move bipedally. Now what is so magical
about wading? Really. What is it?
Too stupid to understand I guess. We've explained ad nauseam why IOO the
early hominids were waders-climbers & waded frequently bipedally.
- Functional: Why would a wading anthropoid do that quadrupedally??
- Wading bipedally is the easiest way to explain the shift from above
(monkeys) to below-branch locomotion (apes).
- Idem to explain tail loss (unlikely in pure arborealists, see Ateles).
- Idem to explain large body size (unlikely in pure arborealists, for
functional & comparative reasons).
- Comparative: Nasalis are the most-wading as well as the most-bipedal
monkeys.
- Nasalis has several features in parallel to apes: largest colobine, the
only one with short tail, freqently climbs arms overhead.
- Theoretical: humans are not arboreal any more, but are good divers; the
only gradual transition between trees & water is aquarborealism.
- Fossil: the Miocene great ape Oreopith is argued to have waded bipedally
in coastal forests.
- Several Miocene apes are found in coastal or flooded forests (Heliopith,
Austriacopith, Dryopith, Oreopith).
- All apiths are found in wetlands, early ones in forested areas, robusts
later in more open areas.
- All great apes have been seen wading bipedally in the wild (orangs,
lowland gorillas, chimps, bonobos).
- Aquasceptics are unable to give 1 argument why the aquarboreal hypothesis
would be wrong.
- All alternative just-so "explanations" for bipedality have been proved to
be wrong.
- Apith molar microwear suggests wetland plant feeding.
- Still unable to provide 1 argument against our hypothesis?
Lorenzo L. Love
Oh yes, Alister Hardy, the believer in the effect of telepathy on
evolution.
Back to the part you edited out from shame and inability to answer
without showing the illogicalness of your "theory":
Ross Macfarlane
> "Lorenzo L. Love" <lll...@thegrid.net> wrote in message
> news:3E4449F4...@thegrid.net...
>
> > > > Embarrassment is not a characteristic of crackpots.
>
> > > said the crackpot who thinks Nature is not a peer-reviewed journal...
>
> > You just can't help lying, can you?
>
> Say, silly savanna idiot, yet found one argument?? 1??
>
> In 1960 Alister Hardy ("Was Man more aquatic in the past?" New Scientist)
Say Marc, can you tell us where we can download a copy of Al's
complete original NS article? I'd love to know how whether you
misrepresent his work as much as you notoriously misrepresent or cite
out of context the work of real scientists.
Ross Macfarlane
Lorenzo L. Love
There is a bad jpg scan of it at
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Hardy/HardyPage1.htm
Not much of an article. Hard to believe that he was a professional
biologist. He should have stuck with his evolution by telepathy ideas.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
"A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very
easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over
expenditures on armaments and military equipment. It pays without
discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the
syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors
are an abundant source of gain."
Anatole France
Pauline M Ross
Eshleman) wrote:
>Explain to me again why I should take Attenborough's opinion when it's
>clear that it's not sufficiently researched? Explain to me again how
>the two positions (peering over grass or wading) he presents are the only
>possibilities?
You've said several times that he only mentions two possibilities.
Before this misconception is cast in stone, here's the original quote
at the start of this thread:
"He briefly suggested two other possible motives for bipedalism -
looking over tall grasses or carrying things..."
Of course there are more possibilities he could have mentioned (he
tentatively mentions Wheeler's theory in the book, for instance), but
these are two of the commonest, and they are more plausible than some
others that have been proposed.
--
Pauline Ross
Pauline M Ross
<traR...@hotMOVEmail.com> wrote:
>Here's one approach:
>
> http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/anth501.html
> Human Thermoregulation and Hair Loss
> ...
> The aquatic model does not fit more parsimoniously or reasonably with the
> available data than any theory explaining these features on the basis of the
> thermoregulatory advantage of sweating.
We're back at David Kreger again. Yes, it's a good paper, but the
aquatic discussion is not very robust. There are several statements
like the one you quote, which simply say - yes, OK, but we have other
explanations we like better. Other statements are unsupported. This
hardly amounts to a refutation.
I'd like to know if this paper has been published. Do you know?
--
Pauline Ross
John Roth
> "John Roth" <john...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
> news:v47cvni...@news.supernews.com...> > news:b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu...
> > > In article <77a70442.0302...@posting.google.com>,
> > > Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
> > > >"Marc Verhaegen" <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message
> [..]
> > >
> > > I don't question Attenborough's sanity, but his authority is in
> > question.
> > > He' not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution.
> >
known
> > as an ad hominum arguement, and immediately disqualifies the person
> > making it from further consideration.
>
> Saying that DA is "not trained in the slightest in hominid evolution"
is
> not ad hominem. Saying that John Roth is a blithering idiot and so
> his posts to SAP should be ignored, is. See the difference? No?
Only that one is politer than the other. Neither addresses the data,
both address the person.
> > > Threre's no sneer in this dismissal.
> >
> > Really? Since when does *conventional academic credentials* mean
> > that the possessor has the only access to either knowledge or
wisdom?
> > That's what your comment about "not trained in the slightest" means,
> > after all.
>
> No, that's not what it means. Here is something you might find easier
> to understand: Your car breaks down. You can take it across the
street
> to the kindly old lady who's spent a lifetime fixing her neighbors
hair or
> you can take it to a licenced mechanic. What do you do?
I'd take it to someone I have some confidence in their ability to fix
cars. That has nothing to do with whether they are a licensed mechanic,
but everything to do with my perceptions of their ability. If the two
happen
to coincide, then that's a good thing. If they don't, then so what?
It's interesting you mention that example - my niece's husband happens
to run an auto repair shop! He regularly gets cars that the dealer's
"highly
trained mechanics" can't handle.
> > I presume you have things to contribute to the debate. If you would
> > take care to present arguements on the facts, coupled with
defensible
> > argumentation, you might be more effective.
>
> Jason is extremely effective. If you had been reading this group with
> any attention span, you would know that. You, on the other hand,
> are merely entertainment.
First time anyone has claimed I was entertaining!
On the other hand, I haven't seen him present anything on Attenborough
that addresses the facts. On other issues, yes, and I generally find him
effective when he addresses facts.
> > John Roth
>
>
John Roth
"Ross Macfarlane" <rmac...@alphalink.com.au> wrote in message
news:18fa6145.03020...@posting.google.com...
I believe it's quoted in full in Appendix B of Morgan[1981].
At least, it was 30 seconds ago when I looked it up.
John Roth
>
> Ross Macfarlane
Jason Eshleman
[snip]
>On the other hand, I haven't seen him present anything on Attenborough
>that addresses the facts. On other issues, yes, and I generally find him
>effective when he addresses facts.
Attenborough's statement was something akin to that the only reasonable
explanations for bipedalism were peering over grasses or wading. This is
not opinion. This is not character assassination. This was his assertion.
It is also terribly inaccurate and doesn't reflect that there are more
explanations. This too is fact, as anyone with a text on the matter can
attest and as such indicates that Attenborough has not researched the
field sufficiently to make the claim.
Since I have known him to make other statements that are likewise
incorrect, and, when coupled with some background on Attenborough
(namely that while he's a entertaining producer of nature videos who
seemingly is quite knowledgeable in many areas of zoology, he is
neither a primatologist nor an anthropologist nor a functional
anatomist) it's my educated opinion that Attenborough's authority
is problematic here and that his endorsement, implied or stated, of an
aquatic wading model should not carry much weight.
I thought I was clear enough on this.
Jason Eshleman
My mistake, but now it seems even less like he's endorsing a wading model
as Algis seems to indicate that he is.
Pauline M Ross
Eshleman) wrote:
>>[Pauline] "He briefly suggested two other possible motives for bipedalism -
>>looking over tall grasses or carrying things..."
>>Of course there are more possibilities he could have mentioned (he
>>tentatively mentions Wheeler's theory in the book, for instance), but
>>these are two of the commonest, and they are more plausible than some
>>others that have been proposed.
>
>My mistake, but now it seems even less like he's endorsing a wading model
>as Algis seems to indicate that he is.
"...two OTHER possible motives..." - that is two others PLUS wading.
On the TV program, he mentions the two other possibilities for
bipedalism (briefly) before going on to describe at great length the
wading model. In the book, it's a few lines on other possibilities,
versus two pages plus a nice photo on the wading model. He doesn't
mention AAT in so many words, but he is definitely endorsing a wading
model for the origins of bipedalism.
Check the first post in this thread, and there's a post of his exact
words around as well. If you are going to diss Attenborough, at least
base it on what he actually said, not your misreading of it.
--
Pauline Ross
Mario Petrinovic
> Pauline M Ross :
> > The aqua-sceptics seem to be concentrated in the US, and it is curious.
>
the
> US? Marc
ROTFLMAO
--
Mario
AAT Yahoo! Group
Michael Clark
news:nhka4vk7i19ten7jg...@4ax.com...
Ah yes, Jason can't count. That must mean he can't reason as well.
You are wrong, Pauline (and Marco, and Mario, and Algis et al).
You are wrong for all the reasons that are regularly presented in
these pages. No amount of hand-waving is going to make that
central point disappear. Attenborough, BTW, is just the Brit
equivalent of Marlin Perkins. A kindly old man with a big
bankroll and a penchant for making wildlife films.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?T55012563
I wouldn't buy a used car from either one of them. Next.
> --
> Pauline Ross
>
Marc Verhaegen
> It is also terribly inaccurate and doesn't reflect that there are more
explanations.
You have no explanation for bipedality. I thought I was clear enough on
this.
Marc Verhaegen
> > > > > Embarrassment is not a characteristic of crackpots.
> > > > said the crackpot who thinks Nature is not a peer-reviewed
journal...
> > > You just can't help lying, can you?
> > Say, silly savanna idiot, yet found one argument?? 1?? In 1960
Alister Hardy ("Was Man more aquatic in the past?" New Scientist) described
how a sea-side lifestyle - wading, swimming, collecting edible shells,
turtles, crabs, coconuts, seaweeds etc. - could explain many typically human
features that are absent in our nearest relatives the chimps, and that are
unexplained by savanna scenarios: reduction of climbing skills, very large
brain, greater breathing control (= preadaptation for speech), very dextrous
hands (stone tool use to open shells or nuts), reduction of fur, thicker fat
tissues, longer legs, more linear body build, high needs of iodine, sodium,
poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc. IMO, Hardy was only wrong in thinking
this seaside phase happened more than 10 Ma. Homo ergaster-erectus fossils
or tools are found in Israel, Algeria, E.Africa, Georgia, Java ca.1.8 Ma,
IOW, they spread along the Mediterranean & Indian Ocean coasts early
Pleistocene or earlier. Although most Pleistocene coasts are some 100 m
below the present sea level and it's mostly the inland Homo populations
(entering the continents along the rivers) that are represented in the
fossil and archeological record, Homo remains have frequently been found
amid shells, corals, barnacles etc., from 1.8 Ma (Mojokerto) to 0.1 Ma
(Eritrea), as well as on islands which could only be reached oversea (Flores
0.8 Ma).
> Oh yes, Alister Hardy, the believer in the effect of telepathy on
evolution.
Is this an argument or what?
> Back to the part you edited out from shame and inability to answer without
showing the illogicalness of your "theory": You want to give us a list of
your papers and tell us which ones are not peer reviewed and which ones are
pay for print? How many times will they out number the peer reviewed ones?
Or is it one?
Is this an argument or what?
> And while you are at it, explain why the presence of "aquaphobia" of
chimps can be used as support for the Hypothesis of an Aquatic Human
Ancestor while the absence of "aquaphobia" of chimps can also be used as
support.
If so, so what?
Man, you're crazy.
Marc Verhaegen
"Ross Macfarlane" <rmac...@alphalink.com.au> wrote in message
news:18fa6145.03020...@posting.google.com...
> > In 1960 Alister Hardy ("Was Man more aquatic in the past?" New
Scientist)
> Say Marc, can you tell us where we can download a copy of Al's complete
original NS article? I'd love to know how whether you misrepresent his work
as much as you notoriously misrepresent or cite out of context the work of
real scientists. Ross Macfarlane
You're an uninformed imbecile. You're speaking about AAT & haven't even read
Hardy's paper. Nor Elaine's 2d book, where you also can read the paper.
Silly idiot.
Lorenzo L. Love
No, it just shows that he had more then one crack pot idea.
>
> > Back to the part you edited out from shame and inability to answer without
> showing the illogicalness of your "theory": You want to give us a list of
> your papers and tell us which ones are not peer reviewed and which ones are
> pay for print? How many times will they out number the peer reviewed ones?
> Or is it one?
>
> Is this an argument or what?
No answer. Ashamed?
>
> > And while you are at it, explain why the presence of "aquaphobia" of
> chimps can be used as support for the Hypothesis of an Aquatic Human
> Ancestor while the absence of "aquaphobia" of chimps can also be used as
> support.
>
> If so, so what?
>
> Man, you're crazy.
No answer. Come on, make something up! Never stopped you before.
Jason Eshleman
>Eshleman) wrote:
>
>>>[Pauline] "He briefly suggested two other possible motives for bipedalism -
>>>looking over tall grasses or carrying things..."
>>>Of course there are more possibilities he could have mentioned (he
>>>tentatively mentions Wheeler's theory in the book, for instance), but
>>>these are two of the commonest, and they are more plausible than some
>>>others that have been proposed.
>>
>>My mistake, but now it seems even less like he's endorsing a wading model
>>as Algis seems to indicate that he is.
>
>"...two OTHER possible motives..." - that is two others PLUS wading.
>
>On the TV program, he mentions the two other possibilities for
>bipedalism (briefly) before going on to describe at great length the
>wading model. In the book, it's a few lines on other possibilities,
>versus two pages plus a nice photo on the wading model. He doesn't
>mention AAT in so many words, but he is definitely endorsing a wading
>model for the origins of bipedalism.
His right to do so, however, he's still got to actually support the model
and show that you can get from waddling in the water to an obligate biped
else he's blowing the same smoke all the rest of the AAT folk are.
>Check the first post in this thread, and there's a post of his exact
>words around as well. If you are going to diss Attenborough, at least
>base it on what he actually said, not your misreading of it.
And yet still I'm left with why Attenborough's endorsement means squat.
OK, so let me get this clear: he says there's wading and two other
options. That statement is incorrect. There are more than two other
options. His endorsement of wading by itself means nothing to me. His
endorsement of it (if he is endorsing it) in light of his position that
there are but two other possibilities signals to me that he's out of his
realm here.
Algis Kuliukas
Exactly my impression too, Marc. It should also not be forgotten that
the only country (AFAIK) whose scientists have had the decency to
recognise Elaine Morgan's work was Norway.
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> In article <77a70442.03020...@posting.google.com>,
> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
> >j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) wrote in message news:<b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>...
> >> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
> >When Attenborough observed apes wading bipedally he, of course, made
> >the link with human bipedalism. But any child could have done that.
>
> Children can come up with many fantasies. Children aren't so encumbered
> by notions that things have to make sense from a functional anatomy
> standpoint. You point appears to be that aquatic ape appeals to children.
> That really the stand you want to take.
My point is that wading is such an obvious precursor to bipedalism
that any child could see it. Images of wading apes are very striking
to anyone, Jason. Don't belittle it.
[..]
> >Who hasn't made mistakes? Why can't you be open to the possibility
> >that you're making one right now?
>
> We've all made mistakes. It's just curious that you can't recognize that
> Attenborough's making one here. The mistake isn't that he's behind your
> aquatic stuff per say. It's that he's make it a "peer over grass" or
> "wade bipedally" dichotomy.
It would appear that you are making that assumption from a general
posting that Pauline gave. It's a misunderstanding. I've been talking
to other people who saw it - i haven't seen it myself yet either - and
apparently he also mentioned Wheeler's, freeing the hands and peering
as well as wading. This was a documentary about mammals, Jason. You
cannot expect him to let the subject of bipedal origins take over.
So, instead of jumping in with a typical knee-jerk dismissal, how
about giving the guy some credit? You can't do that, though, can you?
Because that would be giving the slightest hint of recognition to a
theory you dismiss as a religion.
> He may have spent more time looking at
> nature, but that's not going to get him off the hook. He's wrong. He's
> made a mistake in research that really leads me to believe that he's out
> of his field here and his opinion on the matter shouldn't be taken as
> anything substantive.
You didn't even see it, and yet you say "he's wrong" - you're just so
sure, aren't you?
> >> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
> >> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
> >> support.
> >
> >Producer? Do you know who we're talking about here?
>
> Yes. Attenborough produces nature documentaries. They're entertaining.
> I'm not sure what else you call someone who produces documentaries other
> than producer. He is responsible for their production at least in part.
> Is he not listed as such?
Ok but he's much more than a producer.
> >> That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
> >> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
> >
> >I'm sure he's well aware of the other ideas too, including the long
> >distance efficiency argument. But the evidence from extant apes (the
> >scope of this series) is quite clear and unambiguous: to move long
> >distances, (or short distances for that matter) they knuckle walk - to
> >wade, they go bipedal.
>
> Why are you sure he's aware of the other ideas? What gives you that idea
> at all?
Apparently he listed several. He's a very experienced and well read
naturalist. Of course he knows about those theories - do you
seriuously doubt that?
> Extant apes didn't become bipedal. I'm curious why you consider how they
> travel greater distances to be all that relevent.
I thought it was your argument that long dist walking efficiency led
to fully upright bipedalism.
> They don't show our
> adaptations towards bipedalism. I'm curious still why you say that wading
> produces bipedalism if you use wading apes (who are not bipedal) to show
> how it leads to bipedalism.
Groan. It gets them moving in an upright mode which is more than any
other model does. If quadrupedal apes wade bipedally then it is likely
the LCA did so too.
> I'm curious how you can use apes being adept
> waders and apes being aquaphobic simultaneously to support your position.
How many times do I have to spell it out? Why are you being so obtuse
about this?
Let me try to simplify the proposed model again for you...
LCA waded bipedally and climbed - aquarborealists.
Some (the Homo line) continued to live in water-side habitats and so
did the pressure to wade. At some point (2.5my or so) they became less
arboreal and more terrestrial. The idea is that some threshold was
reached that they began to move on land bipedally as well as in water.
Homo continued to live by water and consequently improved
swimming/diving abilities too.
Others (Pan/Gorilla line) continued to live in forested habitats and
retained the pressure to climb. Gorilla continued to live in waterside
habitats but Pan moved to more open, dry ones making them less water
adapted and more aquaphobic.
There. That's really not so difficult is it?
So, apes being waders supports the model because the LCA probably
waded too. Chimps being aquaphobic supports the model because it
emphasises that since the split the Homo line continued to live by
water whereas the Pan line did not.
> >> >and
> >> >
> >> >A shrug of the shoulders and an exasperated "so what?" Ignoring
> >> >evidence in favour of the AAH is what they have become accustomed to.
> >> >But before 1997 there was little evidence of extant apes having much
> >> >to do with water and a great deal indicating their aquaphobia. This
> >> >was one of the main arguments against the AAH. That argument now,
> >> >simply, has been disarmed.
> >>
> >> Ummm. And what "evidence" would he be presenting? That chimps and
> >> gorillas can wade? BFD. How again does that produce a terrestrial biped?
> >
> >As we have argued before ad nauseum it gets them moving bipedally.
> >That is something your pet model - and all the others - simply do not
> >do.
>
> It gets them to stand up and waddle. That's insufficient. You still need
> to account for the gross mophological changes that separate a waddling,
> wading ape and a human.
You say it's insufficient but no other model even has that starting
point. You make too light of that. You just assume that because our
bipedalism is (you claim) more efficient than quadrupedalism that
therefore it would have evolved. That's like arguing that bipedalism
evolved so that we could use our hands to make stone tools - as if
evolution had foresight.
How do *you* explain the gross morphological changes? How can those
costs be accounted for? At least the wading model provides a medium
where those costs are reduced. At waist deep they're practically nil
(from the point of view of evolutionary pressure for the morphological
changes you keep banging on about) but at shallower depths there would
be such costs - *but reduced*.
How do I explain the morphological changes? The same way, presumably,
you do. That locomotor efficiency on land would naturally be selected
for and so, gradually, perfect the morphology for terrestrial
bipedalism. The difference between us is simply that I propose that
perfecting occurred in a reduced cost shallow water environment as the
counter pressure for arboreality was reducing.
The details of how this happenned though, it is fair to say, do need
fleshing out.
> You need to account for the fact that apes can,
> and do walk bipedally on dry land as well.
But only sporadically for a few seconds. Postural feeding, threat and
sexual displays, the ocassional carrying. Read Hunt's paper. The
amount of terrestrial bipedalism of extant chimps is not very
impressive - about 3% max. In water, however, they're bipedal pretty
much 100% of the time. You belittle that evidence.
> You have not done so. The challenge is there for you. Instead of taking
> it, you hold court in public opinion (e.g. citing Attenborough and damn
> near deifying him to make your point) and continue to hide behind your
> persecution complex.
I have no data of course but I have outlined the moldel again and
again. You just, apparently, cannot see it. The AAH makes sense to the
general public. That is not my fault. As more people hear about it
(especially students) it will become even more popular.
> >Once they are moving bipedally in water there is a continuum of depths
> >against which fully terrestrial bipedalism can evolve. Your refusal to
> >accept (even see) this simple point is difficult to understand. I can
> >only put it down to stubbornness and an unwillingness to be open to
> >the possibility that you might be wrong.
>
> Again, how does this continuum work? Where does locomotive efficieny come
> into play when you're moving around in the water?
> What is it about
> shallow water that makes the move to being an obligate biped easier. Stop
> spouting about your nebulous continuum and actually answer these damn
> questions.
>
> Piss or get off the pot, Algis. You've not shown anything.
Ok. I agree I've not *shown* anything. It is just a model. I think it
is a plausible one but it needs testing. I intend to do that. Any
advice?
> >> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
> >> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
> >> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
> >>
> >> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
> >> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
> >> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>
> >Apes wade bipedally. Of all the motivators for extant ape bipedalism,
> >wading is the clear number one. The earliest bipeds all lived in
> >habitats where wading was probable. Stop pretending.
>
> And stop pretending that that is clearly connected to the morphological
> changes we see in the earliest bipeds. You're linking point A with Z
> without knowing the rest of the alphabet.
It needs looking at that's all I'm saying. I think it's a very
plausible model and I'm amazed that no-one's looked at it to date. I
intend to look at it.
I agree with your A-Z analogy. Someone needs to fill in the gaps.
At least the wading model has an 'A'. Your model has only got 'Z'.
[..]
> >You're the one who should be embarassed, Jason. You claim to be a
> >scientist and yet when presented with the most childishly simple but
> >obvious observational data presented by one of the most respected
> >naturalists in the world, you choose to ignore it and instead hide
> >behind your well rehearsed, pretentious arguments.
>
> I make more than the claim to be a scientist, Algis. Was that an insult?
> If so, you're really frickin' close to the killfile.
I don't mean to be insulting. Sorry if that's the way you took it.
> I'm not ignoring Attenborough. Stop being dishonest. If I was ignoring
> it, would I be posting. That's rather insulting as well. I've pointed
> out his mistakes. I've pointed out that he's not an authority and done
> some not simply by attacking his credentials, but by noting errors that
> undermine his authority in this realm. Stop pretending that I'm simply
> engaging in a character assassination. That's damn close to being a lie.
And your patronising 'we know best' tone and continual reference to
'AAR' is insulting too. But lets not get over excited here. I accept
that Attenborough is not a specialist but you should give him a little
more credit than you do too.
> Honestly, Algis, your Marc-like accusations are bothersome. You're being
> dishonest in saying I've ignored things that I've considered and offered
> you rebuttals about. You're starting to resemble Marc tactics more and
> more every day. You wanna continue having anything even resembling a
> dialog? Then you really ought to acknowledge that I've addressed damn
> near everything you've presented and not hidden for fear of being wrong.
Ok. I think there's a misunderstanding going on here. You seem to
expect me to come up with some date or evidence that shows how shallow
water could have led to terrestrial bipedalism. I cannot do that
because it has not been studied but I have a model which i think is
plausible. I accept that I have not *shown* anything. Can you accept
that the model is worth testing?
> I *am* a professional physical anthropologist, Algis, and it's actually
> with considerable trepidation that I bother posting here at all as people
> in positions to hire me see this stuff. I've got *nothing* to gain and
> much to lose by wasting my time here. I'm not hiding at all else you'd
> not know me from Adam because I wouldn't sign my name to a bit of this.
> There's damn little incentive for me to continue wasting my time with your
> stuff, and do believe me, if I ignore you here, it's a strong indication
> of the reception you'll get in a more serious academic setting. Consider
> this carefully before you jump down Verhaegen's path of intellectual
> dishonesty coupled with antisocial behavior.
Well I take my hat off to you for that, Jason. I understand your
reticence in telling me openly that you were a professional PA before
but now that you have you've gone up several notches in my estimation.
That's not because being a professional anthropologist gives you any
great extra cred in my eyes but because posting to this ng in your
position is indeed an act of great courage. It's a shame that more
professional PAs do not share your desire to share your thoughts with
the world through this fantastic medium.
Ok, now that's clear I just want to apologise for any
misunderstandings. I never meant to be insulting but there's give and
take here. How about you stop calling it the AAR?
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> "Ross Macfarlane" <rmac...@alphalink.com.au> wrote in message
> news:18fa6145.03020...@posting.google.com...
> > "Marc Verhaegen" <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message
> news:<3e44516c$0$20561$ba62...@news.skynet.be>...
> > Say Marc, can you tell us where we can download a copy of Al's
> > complete original NS article? I'd love to know how whether you
> > misrepresent his work as much as you notoriously misrepresent or cite
> > out of context the work of real scientists.
>
> I believe it's quoted in full in Appendix B of Morgan[1981].
> At least, it was 30 seconds ago when I looked it up.
I have put a copy on the web...
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Hardy/HardyPage1.htm
Algis Kuliukas
Mario Petrinovic
> And while you are at it, explain why the presence of "aquaphobia" of
> chimps can be used as support for the Hypothesis of an Aquatic Human
> Ancestor while the absence of "aquaphobia" of chimps can also be used as
IIRC, I've read somewhere that chimps get scared even of sound of
running water. This wading of chimps simply shows that they aren't scared
because they are incapable to cross/wade/move in water. Just the opposite.
The very thing that they can do it, in spite of their aquaphobia, shows that
it isn't a problem for ape to wade, and the only thing why they aren't doing
it is their aquaphobia.
Why animals are afraid of water? Because you can die in it. It is
easy to drown in water. Well, not for us.
Pauline M Ross
<bit...@spammer.com> wrote:
>>[Pauline] Check the first post in this thread, and there's a post of his exact
>> words around as well. If you are going to diss Attenborough, at least
>> base it on what he actually said, not your misreading of it.
>
>Ah yes, Jason can't count. That must mean he can't reason as well.
No, Jason can't read carefully enough to base an argument around it,
in this case. And neither (apparently) can you.
And you don't make Attenborough any less authoritative an observer on
wildlife by mentioning Marlin Perkins.
--
Pauline Ross
Pauline M Ross
For goodness sake, read what he ACTUALLY says:
"The big question, of course, is why did they stand upright. There
have been a number of suggestions. One is that it was to get a better
view of the surroundings to spot for danger or for prey. Maybe it was
to release the hands to use tools or pick up food or hold a baby. And
there's a third, rather more controversial, suggestion." [Followed by
a long discussion of the wading model].
Nowhere does he say that there are ONLY three possibilities. In the
book accompanying the TV series, which was quoted here several weeks
ago, he says:
"There are several theories. Maybe it was to allow our
ancestors to carry things in their hands - food that they had just
collected, a simple stone tool that had taken some time and skill to
chip into effective shape, or maybe an infant that lacked the clasping
hands and feet needed to cling to its mother like a baby ape. Maybe it
was to get a clearer view over grass-covered plains to spot a stalking
carnivore. Maybe, if the climate was as hot as some believe, it was to
minimise the amount of the body exposed directly to the sun out on the
open plains - just the shoulders and the top of the head, instead of
the whole length of the torso. There is yet another theory that was
first proposed half a century ago and is often dismissed by many as
far-fetched. Nonetheless it still has its adherents." [Followed by a
long discussion of the wading model].
That is FOUR possibilities, and again he doesn't say that those are
the only ones.
The sum total of your objections here seems to be that a) he is not a
professional PA (which is true but irrelevant); and b) he's wrong to
say there are only two potential causes for bipedalism plus wading
(which he doesn't).
--
Pauline Ross
Mario Petrinovic
> You are wrong, Pauline (and Marco, and Mario, and Algis et al).
I must do a slight correction here. Wading model is not my preffered
model for bipedality. What is my model, I am still not 100% sure. But, I see
rocky coast providing a lot of opportunities. Walking long walks in a
treeless environmnet of rocky coast, where gluteus maximus, with its ability
to climb stairs would come to full use, and efficiency can play a part,
where you are descenting the steep hills by help of clinging on lowest
branches of small trees, where you have a lot of small tree fruits to pick,
and where you can wade also, and streight your body in water alot, and climb
up cliffs, for which lenghtening of legs is beneficial, would be my starting
point.
Gerrit Hanenburg
>> My hunch is that you'd find an inverse correlation between the number of
>>people who are open to the AAH and the number who are creationists. Those
>>societies where the concept of evolution through natural selection is more
>>mature are, I suspect, more open to the notion. There are other countries
>>(mentioning no names) where the general populace are still so God-fearing
>>that the debate seems not to have moved on much from Darwin v The Bible.
>>Perhaps American PAs are so tired of arguing with creationists that they
>>have closed ranks and tend to dismiss any alternative views with the same
>>defensive brush. Just thinking aloud.
>Exactly my impression. AFAIK people in the Low Countries seem to have few
>prejudices about AAT - and we have no problems with creationists here. We
>had 2 AAT symposia here (Valkenburg, Gent), at least 2 in the UK, 1 (small
>one) in Norway, 1 (small one) in the US.
Hey, if anyone comes from low country it's me, I was born below sea
level. AAT is not an issue here probably because we do not consider
ourselves well adapted to water and have to make a constant effort to
keep our feet dry ;-)
Gerrit
John Roth
> John Roth <john...@ameritech.net> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> >On the other hand, I haven't seen him present anything on
Attenborough
> >that addresses the facts. On other issues, yes, and I generally find
him
> >effective when he addresses facts.
>
> Attenborough's statement was something akin to that the only
reasonable
> explanations for bipedalism were peering over grasses or wading.
That's a fact.
> This is
> not opinion. This is not character assassination. This was his
assertion.
> It is also terribly inaccurate and doesn't reflect that there are more
> explanations. This too is fact, as anyone with a text on the matter
can
> attest and as such indicates that Attenborough has not researched the
> field sufficiently to make the claim.
I agree with you. A balanced presentation would have mentioned
other opinions. I don't know that it indicates he hasn't researched
the field enough, however. There are compromises one has to make
when you're doing a presentation for the mass media.
That's one of the reasons I don't watch television - I don't, in fact,
even own one.
> Since I have known him to make other statements that are likewise
> incorrect, and, when coupled with some background on Attenborough
> (namely that while he's a entertaining producer of nature videos who
> seemingly is quite knowledgeable in many areas of zoology, he is
> neither a primatologist nor an anthropologist nor a functional
> anatomist) it's my educated opinion that Attenborough's authority
> is problematic here and that his endorsement, implied or stated, of an
> aquatic wading model should not carry much weight.
>
> I thought I was clear enough on this.
The additional verbiage does help.
Thanks for clarifying this.
John Roth
John Roth
Marc, neither does anyone else at the moment. With the discovery
of older bipeds that lived before there was a savanah, all of the
savanah based theories are off the table.
While I happen to think that your Tethys sea shore hypothesis
is intriguing enough that it should get more attention than it does,
I don't think there's nearly enough hard evidence to say that this
was the way it happened.
At this point, my best guess based on what little I know is that
the explanation will be a multiple micro-habitat thing, with forest,
clearing and lake or swamp all playing a part, and with the
balance between the various elements being crucial.
John Roth
>
>
Pauline M Ross
<john...@ameritech.net> wrote:
>>[Jason] Attenborough's statement was something akin to that the only
>reasonable
>> explanations for bipedalism were peering over grasses or wading.
>
>That's a fact.
No it isn't. Please read the exact quotes I have posted elsewhere in
this thread. In the TV program, he mentions two possibilities (plus
wading); in the book, he mentions three possibilities (plus wading);
in neither case does he say these are the only possibilities, still
less the only *reasonable* possibilities.
--
Pauline Ross
Michael Clark
> On Sat, 8 Feb 2003 15:25:16 -0600, "Michael Clark"
> <bit...@spammer.com> wrote:
>
> >>[Pauline] Check the first post in this thread, and there's a post of his exact
> >> words around as well. If you are going to diss Attenborough, at least
> >> base it on what he actually said, not your misreading of it.
> >
> >Ah yes, Jason can't count. That must mean he can't reason as well.
>
> No, Jason can't read carefully enough to base an argument around it,
> in this case. And neither (apparently) can you.
Who's counting? What does it matter whether he said two or three
or four? The fact is that he apparantly focused on "wading" --which
is obviously wrong. Wading is bipedalism in water. If you're looking
for its origin, look up in the branches. If you're looking for its refinement,
look to terra firma...and take off those damned blinders.
> And you don't make Attenborough any less authoritative an observer on
> wildlife by mentioning Marlin Perkins.
I said: "Attenborough, BTW, is just the Brit
equivalent of Marlin Perkins. A kindly old man with a big
bankroll and a penchant for making wildlife films."
How does that make either of them poor observers of wildlife?
Now, where in all this lurid thrust and parry, is any indication that
either of them would know a platymeric index from their left buttock?
Hmmm?
> --
> Pauline Ross
Mario Petrinovic
> Wading model is not my preffered
> model for bipedality. What is my model, I am still not 100% sure. But, I
> see
> rocky coast providing a lot of opportunities. Walking long walks in a
> treeless environmnet of rocky coast, where gluteus maximus, with its
> ability
> to climb stairs would come to full use, and efficiency can play a part,
> where you are descenting the steep hills by help of clinging on lowest
> branches of small trees, where you have a lot of small tree fruits to
> pick,
> and where you can wade also, and streight your body in water alot, and
> climb
> up cliffs, for which lenghtening of legs is beneficial, would be my
> starting point. -- Mario
Oh, I forgot. I would also investigate what gluteus maximus has with
cliff climbing.
Algis Kuliukas
Well said, Pauline.
It's ironic that Jason's main complaint seems to be that David
Attenborough isn't listing enough possibilities other than wading when
practically every serious textbook on human evolution ever printed
lists all the theories *but* wading.
Algis Kuliukas
Pauline M Ross
<bit...@spammer.com> wrote:
> The fact is that he apparantly focused on "wading" --which
>is obviously wrong.
*Obviously* wrong?? When wading is about the only thing in nature that
gets modern apes up on two legs for any length of time? It may indeed
be wrong (as a cause for bipedalism), but there's nothing obvious
about it.
> Wading is bipedalism in water. If you're looking
>for its origin, look up in the branches.
This is where you lose me. I can't think of a single primate that is
bipedal in the trees. Smaller ones run quadrupedally along branches,
larger ones climb using all four limbs, brachiate using two hands (but
no feet), suspend themselves using 1-4 limbs. None of them move on two
legs alone, without using one or two hands to support themselves.
Perhaps you mean that brachiating or suspensory apes would have become
used to being upright in the trees, and would be more inclined to move
bipedally on the ground? This is a possibility.
The problem is that modern examples of this (eg gibbons and sifakas)
tend to run or bounce rather rapidly when on the ground, nothing at
all like the steady human pace, and a creature which is used to using
all four limbs in the trees is likely to revert to quadrupedalism on
the ground at the earliest opportunity.
> If you're looking for its refinement,
>look to terra firma...and take off those damned blinders.
No one disputes that modern humans have optimised bipedalism for
terrestrial use. As to 'blinders' - I think the aqua-sceptics have
theirs firmly in place, too :-)
--
Pauline Ross
Jason Eshleman
Pauline M Ross <pmr...@ross-software.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sun, 9 Feb 2003 09:23:20 -0600, "Michael Clark"
><bit...@spammer.com> wrote:
>
>> The fact is that he apparantly focused on "wading" --which
>>is obviously wrong.
>
>*Obviously* wrong?? When wading is about the only thing in nature that
>gets modern apes up on two legs for any length of time? It may indeed
>be wrong (as a cause for bipedalism), but there's nothing obvious
>about it.
Um, what "lenghts of time" are we talking about? Algis got his bonobos
upon two legs for a whopping 37 seconds or somethign like that. Wow.
'Scuse me while I sit here unimpressed with the data.
We know that just about every primate can, and does walk around bipedally
on the ground at least some times. All apes can and do do it. Algis's
study indicated that bonobos spent more time walking bipedally on land
than they did wading bipedally in the water. What again is it about wading
that's so remarkable that you need it to get them to evolve to do what
they could already do? What the hell are you saying wading did again?
Jason Eshleman
>Eshleman) wrote:
>
>>OK, so let me get this clear: he says there's wading and two other
>>options. That statement is incorrect. There are more than two other
>>options. His endorsement of wading by itself means nothing to me. His
>>endorsement of it (if he is endorsing it) in light of his position that
>>there are but two other possibilities signals to me that he's out of his
>>realm here.
>
>For goodness sake, read what he ACTUALLY says:
>
>"The big question, of course, is why did they stand upright. There
>have been a number of suggestions. One is that it was to get a better
>view of the surroundings to spot for danger or for prey. Maybe it was
>to release the hands to use tools or pick up food or hold a baby. And
>there's a third, rather more controversial, suggestion." [Followed by
>a long discussion of the wading model].
Still not a ringing endorsement of Attenborough's authority.
[snip]
>The sum total of your objections here seems to be that a) he is not a
>professional PA (which is true but irrelevant); and b) he's wrong to
>say there are only two potential causes for bipedalism plus wading
>(which he doesn't).
Objection A is not totally irrelevant. He doesn't seem to be terribly
familiar with the field and research in the field. I'll generalize
objection B: his presentation doesn't indicate that he's really terribly
familiar with research in the field.
Jason Eshleman
But Algis, as it's been presented, wading isn't a theory. It's a
hypothesis and it's not a viable hypothesis in that it doesn't currently
account for the data effectively.
Michael Clark
> On Sun, 9 Feb 2003 09:23:20 -0600, "Michael Clark"
> <bit...@spammer.com> wrote:
>
> > The fact is that he apparantly focused on "wading" --which
> >is obviously wrong.
>
> *Obviously* wrong?? When wading is about the only thing in nature that
> gets modern apes up on two legs for any length of time? It may indeed
> be wrong (as a cause for bipedalism), but there's nothing obvious
> about it.
To you.
> > Wading is bipedalism in water. If you're looking
> >for its origin, look up in the branches.
>
> This is where you lose me. I can't think of a single primate that is
> bipedal in the trees. Smaller ones run quadrupedally along branches,
> larger ones climb using all four limbs, brachiate using two hands (but
> no feet), suspend themselves using 1-4 limbs. None of them move on two
> legs alone, without using one or two hands to support themselves.
Well, all my observations of white-cheeked gibbons must have been
in dreams or under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. I'll see a
doctor right away.
> Perhaps you mean that brachiating or suspensory apes would have become
> used to being upright in the trees, and would be more inclined to move
> bipedally on the ground? This is a possibility.
Another in a series of possibilities that DA doesn't bother to include.
> The problem is that modern examples of this (eg gibbons and sifakas)
> tend to run or bounce rather rapidly when on the ground, nothing at
> all like the steady human pace, and a creature which is used to using
> all four limbs in the trees is likely to revert to quadrupedalism on
> the ground at the earliest opportunity.
>
> > If you're looking for its refinement,
> >look to terra firma...and take off those damned blinders.
>
> No one disputes that modern humans have optimised bipedalism for
> terrestrial use. As to 'blinders' - I think the aqua-sceptics have
> theirs firmly in place, too :-)
No, again, the "aqua-skeptics" ~are~ interested in alternatives --
the wet apes are not. A moment ago, we were even engaged in
counting them. Remember?
> --
> Pauline Ross
Lorenzo L. Love
>
> On Sun, 9 Feb 2003 09:23:20 -0600, "Michael Clark"
> <bit...@spammer.com> wrote:
>
> > The fact is that he apparantly focused on "wading" --which
> >is obviously wrong.
>
> *Obviously* wrong?? When wading is about the only thing in nature that
> gets modern apes up on two legs for any length of time? It may indeed
> be wrong (as a cause for bipedalism), but there's nothing obvious
> about it.
The only thing besides standing up to carry something, standing up to
pick fruit, standing up to see futher, standing up to use a tool,
standing up to scratch their butt, standing up for a multitude of things
that has nothing to do with wading. Talk about blinders! The narrow
mindedness of wet apes is incredible.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence
of the improbable."
H. L. Mencken
Marc Verhaegen
> On Fri, 07 Feb 2003 13:54:03 -0700, Rich Travsky
> <traR...@hotMOVEmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Here's one approach:
> >
> > http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/anth501.html
> > Human Thermoregulation and Hair Loss
> We're back at David Kreger again. Yes, it's a good paper
Is it??
- "One of the most important physiological constraints that has impacted the
evolution of the human lineage is thermoregulation." ?? What does this mean?
Thermoregulation is very important for all endotherms. Since most mammals
(cats, cows, dogs...) have higher body Tps than humans, it's more important
for other mammals than for humans.
- "Poikilotherms are organisms whose body temperatures are relatively
variable, and change with the changing environmental temperature.
Homeotherms are organisms that maintain their body temperature within a very
narrow range through a variety of thermoregulatory structural and
physiological devices in widely varying environmental temperatures." Sigh.
That man doesn't understand much about thermoregulation. He'd better made
the distinction between ecto- & endotherms. Are primates homeotherms IHO?
Yet small primates have drastic Tp.drops during the night. Apparently he's
not aware of this. Does he know that typical savanna mammals have much
higher body Tps in the afternoon than in the morning?? I guess not.
- "Homo sapiens is a homeothermic species that must maintain a relatively
stable body temperature no matter what environmental conditions individuals
are exposed to." I suggest the author to read a good book on body Tp. Must
maintain?? Why?
- "The function of the thermoregulatory system of a homeothermic organism is
to maintain a constant core body temperature under different environmental
conditions." Nonsense. I've read enough. This person has no insight in
thermoregulation. I suggest him to read this:
In an endothermic species the normal temperature represents a compromise
between the advantages and disadvantages of high body temperature in
relation to its particular habitat and behaviour.
One of the advantages of high body temperatures - especially the higher
nervous tissue and muscle temperature - is the facilitation of faster
reactions (McFarland et al., p. 651). For every rise of 10°C the velocity of
the biochemical processes is more than doubled (compare the warming-up of
athletes). Fast reactions are important in predators and their prey, in
intra-species conflicts, and for birds, in flight. For these purposes,
generally speaking, the higher the nerve and muscle temperature, the better.
The disadvantage lies in the high energy expenditure needed to sustain the
temperature: the cost of keeping body tissues at about 38-42°C, as in most
mammals and birds during the day, is enormous (Else and Hulbert, 1987). High
temperatures may also incur other disadvantages - for example, problems of
lipid and protein solubility and protein denaturation.
If the processes of thermoregulation in humans had evolved in response to a
move from the trees to savannah, we would expect them to be characterised by
a high normal temperature because of the need for speed, whether in flight
or in pursuit, and a capacity to tolerate periods of higher temperature
because of exposure to the tropical heat. Most hunted or hunting animals
have a body temperature of at least 38°C. While the average rectal
temperature in man is 37°C, in horses it is 38°C, in cattle and guinea pigs
38.5°C, in rabbits, sheep, dogs and cats 39°C, in goats 39.5°C (Slijper,
1958; Calloway, 1976). By contrast, animals which do not defend themselves
by running away - such as hedgehogs, mole- rats, armadillos, monotremes,
pottos and sloths - may have body temperatures lower than 35°C, and
consequently incur much lower energy costs than other animals of the same
size (Wilson, 1979, p. 747; McFarland et al., 1979, p. 652; Calloway, 1976;
Goffart, 1978).
If we exclude the group of slow-moving mammals listed above, a normal
temperature as low as man's is found chiefly among the larger aquatic
mammals. Hunting and hunted pinnipeds have a body temperature like ours or
slightly higher - for instance, 37.5°C in fur seals and 36.5°C in
sea-elephants. But aquatic mammals that can afford to move slowly often have
lower temperatures, which saves energy and allows longer submersion.
Hippopotamuses and many cetaceans have body temperatures of about 35.5°C,
sea-cows probably even lower (Slijper, 1958, p. 359). In other words, humans
have a normal temperature resembling that of sea mammals, lower than most
terrestrial ones, and markedly lower than that of any active savannah
species. As well as possessing such a high basic temperature, animals living
in exposed habitats evolve the capacity to survive periods when the diurnal
air temperature is very high. The oryx, for example, can sustain a rectal
temperature of 45°C and Grant's gazelle of 46.5°C for many hours, whereas
humans feel ill if their rectal temperature rises to 38°C. Different
mechanisms have been developed in warm-blooded animals for selectively
keeping their brain temperature lower than the body temperature (Taylor and
Lyman, 1972). These mechanisms, well developed in savannah dwellers, are
poorly developed in humans (Cabanac, 1986), so that in man a rectal
temperature of 41°C may result in permanent brain damage (Cabanac, 1986;
Krupp and Chatton, 1981, pp. 1, 939).
In a savannah-type environment there is an unusually wide difference between
day and night temperatures. Consequently, one final characteristic of
thermoregulation in animals living in this environment is that they have
evolved a wide range of body temperatures. Many show a fluctuation of more
than 6°C between day and night temperatures: the oryx, for example, ranges
between 38°C and 45°C, and the gazelle's rectal temperature may increase by
5 or 6°C during a single run, which - through muscular warming-up - has the
advantage of enhancing its speed (Taylor, 1970; Taylor and Rowntree, 1973).
At the other extreme are the medium-sized and large aquatic mammals which
display almost no body temperature fluctuations. For instance, the core
temperature of the East Siberian dolphin shows fluctuations of less than
0.5°C (Slijper, 1958, p. 205). Human metabolism seems to be adapted to
fluctuations of less than 1°C (Schmidt-Nielsen, 1979, figure 4), although
naked Australian aborigines after a single night's sleep under the desert
sky may have body temperatures as low as 35°C (Kanwisher, 1977, p. 500).
Running a marathon may raise the body temperature by two degrees, but rises
greater than that can be fatal.
This factor is stressed in textbooks of physiology: 'The range of body
temperature in a group of healthy persons is quite small. Indeed, the
co-efficient of variation of body temperature in man is one of the smallest
for which quantitative data are available' (Bell, Davidson and Scarborough,
1968). If we had been, as has been suggested, savannah-adapted over millions
of years, it seems likely that we would have been able to accommodate with
ease a temperature rise to more than 40°C in the afternoon. The peak figures
of death by heat-stroke in Greece in the hot summers of 1987 and 1988
suggest that man is anything but a savannah animal.
Lorenzo L. Love
Complete nonsense. Drowning is second only to automobile accidents as
the leading cause of accidental death in humans under 18.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
"Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not
succeed."
Mark Twain
Jason Eshleman
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) wrote in message news:<b21jvh$q7p$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>...
>> In article <77a70442.03020...@posting.google.com>,
>> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>> >j...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Jason Eshleman) wrote in message news:<b1vpab$r2h$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu>...
>> >> In article <77a70442.0302...@posting.google.com>,
>> >> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote:
>> [..]
>> >When Attenborough observed apes wading bipedally he, of course, made
>> >the link with human bipedalism. But any child could have done that.
>>
>> Children can come up with many fantasies. Children aren't so encumbered
>> by notions that things have to make sense from a functional anatomy
>> standpoint. You point appears to be that aquatic ape appeals to children.
>> That really the stand you want to take.
>
>My point is that wading is such an obvious precursor to bipedalism
>that any child could see it. Images of wading apes are very striking
>to anyone, Jason. Don't belittle it.
And that child would still be ignoring that the "precursor," in this case,
standing up and waddling around on two legs, was something they could
already do which means you're not getting any closer to the observed
endpoint by wading.
>
>[..]
>
>> >Who hasn't made mistakes? Why can't you be open to the possibility
>> >that you're making one right now?
>>
>> We've all made mistakes. It's just curious that you can't recognize that
>> Attenborough's making one here. The mistake isn't that he's behind your
>> aquatic stuff per say. It's that he's make it a "peer over grass" or
>> "wade bipedally" dichotomy.
>
>It would appear that you are making that assumption from a general
>posting that Pauline gave. It's a misunderstanding. I've been talking
>to other people who saw it - i haven't seen it myself yet either - and
>apparently he also mentioned Wheeler's, freeing the hands and peering
>as well as wading. This was a documentary about mammals, Jason. You
>cannot expect him to let the subject of bipedal origins take over.
>
>So, instead of jumping in with a typical knee-jerk dismissal, how
>about giving the guy some credit? You can't do that, though, can you?
>Because that would be giving the slightest hint of recognition to a
>theory you dismiss as a religion.
Credit? Sure. His stuff is beautifully shot and exceptionally
entertaining. He seems to be a rather good naturalist. He is, however,
neither a paleoanthropologist or a functional anatomist.
You have no theory Algis. You have a hypothesis that you're holding to
with religious fervor.
>> He may have spent more time looking at
>> nature, but that's not going to get him off the hook. He's wrong. He's
>> made a mistake in research that really leads me to believe that he's out
>> of his field here and his opinion on the matter shouldn't be taken as
>> anything substantive.
>
>You didn't even see it, and yet you say "he's wrong" - you're just so
>sure, aren't you?
I'm sure that his endorsement of a wading model isn't any cause for
celebration among wet apers.
>> >> Threre's no sneer in this dismissal. Attenborough's a good producer, but
>> >> that's what he is. he's hardly someone to run to for hypothetical
>> >> support.
>> >
>> >Producer? Do you know who we're talking about here?
>>
>> Yes. Attenborough produces nature documentaries. They're entertaining.
>> I'm not sure what else you call someone who produces documentaries other
>> than producer. He is responsible for their production at least in part.
>> Is he not listed as such?
>
>Ok but he's much more than a producer.
But much less than a phyical anthropologist, much less than someone who
has studied hominid origins, much less than a functional anatomist when it
comes to any pronouncements on bipedal origins.
>> >> That he said that the two options were for peering over grasses
>> >> or aquatics is rather indicative of his lack of education in the area.
>> >
>> >I'm sure he's well aware of the other ideas too, including the long
>> >distance efficiency argument. But the evidence from extant apes (the
>> >scope of this series) is quite clear and unambiguous: to move long
>> >distances, (or short distances for that matter) they knuckle walk - to
>> >wade, they go bipedal.
>>
>> Why are you sure he's aware of the other ideas? What gives you that idea
>> at all?
>
>Apparently he listed several. He's a very experienced and well read
>naturalist. Of course he knows about those theories - do you
>seriuously doubt that?
I'm not sure what he knows and what he doesn't know entirely. However,
I've seen nothing to believe he's got special expertise or even general
expertise in the fields that would make me think that his pronouncements
in the field mean anything substantive.
>> Extant apes didn't become bipedal. I'm curious why you consider how they
>> travel greater distances to be all that relevent.
>
>I thought it was your argument that long dist walking efficiency led
>to fully upright bipedalism.
It's not *my* argument, Algis. It's the hypothesis of Rodman and McHenry
(a behavioral ecologist who specialized on primate societies and has spend
thousands upon thousands of hours observing primates and a specialist in
hominid postcranial adaptations).
Their argument is that longer distance efficiency would be selected for.
Their argument was that the last common ancestor population before the
adaptations for *obligate* bipedalism began contained apes that could walk
bipedally but not with any terrible efficiency. Since all extant apes can
walk bipedally (as most extant primates can) this seems entirely
reasonable. Their argument is that those that moved in the most efficient
manner more of the time would have been selected for. Since it appears
that bipedalism as we practice it is significantly more efficient than
ape-like quadrupedalism, any natural variation in the direction of human
like variation would have been selectively advantageous if conditions
favored efficiency.
>> They don't show our
>> adaptations towards bipedalism. I'm curious still why you say that wading
>> produces bipedalism if you use wading apes (who are not bipedal) to show
>> how it leads to bipedalism.
>
>Groan. It gets them moving in an upright mode which is more than any
>other model does. If quadrupedal apes wade bipedally then it is likely
>the LCA did so too.
But that virtually all primates could do this *before* your wading period,
I'm still unclear on what it is that your wading model is explaining. It
seems to be saying that wading got them to evolve to do what they were
already evolved to do. Whoop Dee Do0!
>> I'm curious how you can use apes being adept
>> waders and apes being aquaphobic simultaneously to support your position.
>
>How many times do I have to spell it out? Why are you being so obtuse
>about this?
You have to spell it out once. You haven't done that yet.
>Let me try to simplify the proposed model again for you...
>
>LCA waded bipedally and climbed - aquarborealists.
Why do you not feel the LCA was a knucklewalker? Why was the LCA not a
terrestrial quadruped?
>Some (the Homo line) continued to live in water-side habitats and so
>did the pressure to wade. At some point (2.5my or so) they became less
>arboreal and more terrestrial. The idea is that some threshold was
>reached that they began to move on land bipedally as well as in water.
>Homo continued to live by water and consequently improved
>swimming/diving abilities too.
What in wading causes the morphological changes that we see before 2.5
million years ago associated with terrestrial bipedality? You haven't
*ever* spelled this out.
You've got a scenario, but not an overwhelming reason to believe that this
scenario is correct and certainly no reason to believe that this scenario
explains the data we have.
>Others (Pan/Gorilla line) continued to live in forested habitats and
>retained the pressure to climb. Gorilla continued to live in waterside
>habitats but Pan moved to more open, dry ones making them less water
>adapted and more aquaphobic.
>
>There. That's really not so difficult is it?
Not difficult, but not terribly helpful.
Your starting point *ISN'T* the starting point. All apes can walk
bipedally. Virtually all primates can do this so it's not unique to the
apes. You are trying to explain a starting point that doesn't need
explanation because it's an ancestral condition and then fail miserably to
explain the changes we do see for which we need explanation.
>How do *you* explain the gross morphological changes? How can those
>costs be accounted for? At least the wading model provides a medium
>where those costs are reduced. At waist deep they're practically nil
>(from the point of view of evolutionary pressure for the morphological
>changes you keep banging on about) but at shallower depths there would
>be such costs - *but reduced*.
What costs are you talking about, Algis?
>How do I explain the morphological changes? The same way, presumably,
>you do. That locomotor efficiency on land would naturally be selected
>for and so, gradually, perfect the morphology for terrestrial
>bipedalism. The difference between us is simply that I propose that
>perfecting occurred in a reduced cost shallow water environment as the
>counter pressure for arboreality was reducing.
So you've got these guys walking back and forth in very shallow water all
damn day such that they need to be more efficient with both feet under the
midline during their stride? Do waders move like this? I certainly don't
when I wade. Wading monkeys certainly don't wade like this. Terestrial
animals do tend to try to get their feet below the midline. You have to
account for this change *long* before your supposed abandonment of the
wading niche.
>The details of how this happenned though, it is fair to say, do need
>fleshing out.
>> You need to account for the fact that apes can,
>> and do walk bipedally on dry land as well.
>
>But only sporadically for a few seconds. Postural feeding, threat and
>sexual displays, the ocassional carrying. Read Hunt's paper. The
>amount of terrestrial bipedalism of extant chimps is not very
>impressive - about 3% max. In water, however, they're bipedal pretty
>much 100% of the time. You belittle that evidence.
I'm not belittling that, but your own data has the bonobos spending much
more time bipedal on the ground (raw time, raw time for which selection to
act upon) than in the water. I question that the motion of a wading ape
leads in any way to the morphology of an apith in the hindlimbs since
there's nothing about the stride of a wader that requires the changes we
see nor have I seen anything sensible that indicates that the stride of an
apith would be an effective or efficient wading stride. I question your
hard-nosed interpretation of your data.
[snip]
>Ok. I agree I've not *shown* anything. It is just a model. I think it
>is a plausible one but it needs testing. I intend to do that. Any
>advice?
A) start by looking at the strides of animals wading. Note where weight
is distributed and note what muscle groups are involved. Compare this
with the muscle groups that the earliest bipeds used and developed. Are
they the same? Is weight distributed in A.afarensis like it is in
Nasalis? In a human wading in a stream at various heights? (I suspect I
know the answer because the footage I've seen of Nasalis wading has a very
wide stride unlike that of an apith or of a human and when I wade, I don't
wade like I walk, but you can find out if my anecdotal evidence is
correct.)
If you note that the way monkeys wade or apes wade of (especially) humans
wade doesn't seem to produce the same need to get the weight under the
midline that terrestrial bipedalism seems to need, you'll need to be
honest and say that you can't seem to produce selective pressures for the
morphological changes we see.
If on the other hand, you see that bipedal apes or monkeys move better
with their legs below the midline, if you see humans showing similar
strides in the water to those they show on land, then you have some
evidence supporting your position that wading might start the ball rolling
in the direction of a human-like gait.
I would study the effects of different substrata on ape posture. What
happens when you lead a chimp on to muddy ground? On to sandy ground?
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that a change in habitual, posture is
the same as a change in locomotor modes initially. I would recognize that
the change in posture, however, is trivial if changes in locomotion don't
follow necessarily.
Long long before you start proposing unknown modes of locomotion, you
should stick with those we already see in extant apes. Only when the data
is exhausted and there's still no progress is it wise to interject the
improbable (e.g. side-to-side wading) and then only if it doesn't
contradict more data than other models (which as you propose it, it does).
>> >> >Wouldn't it be refreshing if some of them actually reconsidered their
>> >> >assumptions for a moment and let that nightmarish thought enter their
>> >> >heads - that they might actually be wrong about this.
>> >>
>> >> Wouldn't it be refreshing if you actually had a workable hypothesis rather
>> >> than the disturbing mish-mash of assumptions, some of which are clearly
>> >> erroneous, that, even in total, don't explain what you claim they explain?
>>
>> >Apes wade bipedally. Of all the motivators for extant ape bipedalism,
>> >wading is the clear number one. The earliest bipeds all lived in
>> >habitats where wading was probable. Stop pretending.
>>
>> And stop pretending that that is clearly connected to the morphological
>> changes we see in the earliest bipeds. You're linking point A with Z
>> without knowing the rest of the alphabet.
>
>It needs looking at that's all I'm saying. I think it's a very
>plausible model and I'm amazed that no-one's looked at it to date. I
>intend to look at it.
>I agree with your A-Z analogy. Someone needs to fill in the gaps.
>
>At least the wading model has an 'A'. Your model has only got 'Z'.
Actually, your A, being able to stand up and walk bipedally, was
accomplished long before since it seems to be common to most primates.
"My" model need not account for that any more than yours does.
Accounting for the ability to do this isn't the big deal. Accounting for
the morphological changes consistent with a facultative biped becoming an
obligate biped is the real trick now, isn't it?
And, the efficiency argument actually *does* have an explanation of how
morphological variation (natural variation in a population--the stuff
selection works upon) is selected for. That's what I see missing in your
explanation. Stop thinking about how all apes will react to water and
start thinking about those who are selected for and those who are selected
against. Consider intrapopulational variation is as important and may
have been more important than anything that gets an ape to stand bipedally
1000% of the time. I've not seen any evidence that you're doing this yet
but it will be critical if you ever expect to survive peer review.
>[..]
>> >You're the one who should be embarassed, Jason. You claim to be a
>> >scientist and yet when presented with the most childishly simple but
>> >obvious observational data presented by one of the most respected
>> >naturalists in the world, you choose to ignore it and instead hide
>> >behind your well rehearsed, pretentious arguments.
>>
>> I make more than the claim to be a scientist, Algis. Was that an insult?
>> If so, you're really frickin' close to the killfile.
>
>I don't mean to be insulting. Sorry if that's the way you took it.
"claim to be" a scientist was meant as a jab, Algis and I think you're
aware of that. Apology accepted however. If I make it to Australia any
time soon maybe you can buy me a beer or something.
>> I'm not ignoring Attenborough. Stop being dishonest. If I was ignoring
>> it, would I be posting. That's rather insulting as well. I've pointed
>> out his mistakes. I've pointed out that he's not an authority and done
>> some not simply by attacking his credentials, but by noting errors that
>> undermine his authority in this realm. Stop pretending that I'm simply
>> engaging in a character assassination. That's damn close to being a lie.
>And your patronising 'we know best' tone and continual reference to
>'AAR' is insulting too. But lets not get over excited here. I accept
>that Attenborough is not a specialist but you should give him a little
>more credit than you do too.
OK, I'll try to refrain from the "R" if you try to refrain from the "T"
and you'll work on actually making a solid hypothesis beyond simply saying
a scenario without accounting for selective elements, is sufficient.
>> Honestly, Algis, your Marc-like accusations are bothersome. You're being
>> dishonest in saying I've ignored things that I've considered and offered
>> you rebuttals about. You're starting to resemble Marc tactics more and
>> more every day. You wanna continue having anything even resembling a
>> dialog? Then you really ought to acknowledge that I've addressed damn
>> near everything you've presented and not hidden for fear of being wrong.
>Ok. I think there's a misunderstanding going on here. You seem to
>expect me to come up with some date or evidence that shows how shallow
>water could have led to terrestrial bipedalism. I cannot do that
>because it has not been studied but I have a model which i think is
>plausible. I accept that I have not *shown* anything. Can you accept
>that the model is worth testing?
Sure. Test it.
Here's the key to why some models get in texts (even if I think the models
are bunk) and some don't. Those in texts have some level of testing to
support at least some facets of their conclusions. What you've
demonstrated to me so far is that you may have some selective pressure for
postural changes in apes. That *may* actually be interesting. Really.
And if you divorce it from the wilder stuff you're really in no position
to support at this point (e.g. new modes of side to side wading) it might
get taken seriously which might mean people in much better positions to
evaluate functional morphology than you might start studying it.
Were I to start studying this with aims of publication (taking the fight
to the general public is a bad move if you ever want to accomplish
anything if for no other reason than that your biggest "allies" will
likely be kooks and will misrepresent you, and will undermine any real
science you try to do at every opportunity) I wouldn't couple all of my
stuff in one big bundle as your thesis seems to do. I wouldn't overstep
what I knew towards a teleological aim (e.g. showing AAH is right) but
would stick with the small stuff (e.g. wading produces a postural change.
I would not waste my time with journals that aren't appropriate like
Nutrition and Health. Peer review isn't just about getting things
accepted. It's a process by which papers become stronger. When I reject
a paper, I explain why hopefully in a way that will allow the author(s) to
improve it on a second round. I explain the shortcomings and the things
I'd need to accept the conclusions. When I get papers rejected (which
happens to most papers on first submission) I take into consideration the
words of the reviewers, change what needs to be changed if I recognize
their criticism was valid or explain in the text or in a letter to the
editor with resubmission, why the criticism is unfounded.
You will not get that from the reviewers in Nutrition and Health as
they're not qualified to render such opinions. Hell, I wouldn't review a
paper offering functional morphology opinions as there's better people who
know far far more who should review the stuff. There are journals that I
would avoid that are not solid enough in their review process to make me
think that the stuff in them worthwhile. Out of professional courtesy, I
don't think I'll care to mention here what those journals are, but you
can take a look at "impact factors" of some of the journals to note which
ones have stuff in them that never gets cited. It's a rough but sound
measure of whether or not the journals have good articles in them and
that's a rough but sound measure of whether or not the journals have a
quality review process..
JHE is a great journal and it's tough to get anything in it (or AJPA) on a
first shot, especially if your submission is as ambitious in its goals of
supporting a grand unification hypothesis (eg "AAH) as your thesis shows
itself to be. There are journals that are respectable though where you
can probably at least get something on postural changes to the review
process. Be aware that it's probably going to be a painful experience at
first. Anonymous reviewers can be brutal.
Take the stuff seriously. Lobbying for popular support and parading
behind seeming popular support (e.g. saying that Attenborough is somehow
vindicating your position; that the childlike simplicity--I know no
children who understand functional anatomy) will undercut *your*
credibility. Citing uncredible sources (e.g. Hardy, Morgan and Verhaegen)
will undercut your credibility. They've done nothing and shown nothing.
They will only hurt you.
>> I *am* a professional physical anthropologist, Algis, and it's actually
>> with considerable trepidation that I bother posting here at all as people
>> in positions to hire me see this stuff. I've got *nothing* to gain and
>> much to lose by wasting my time here. I'm not hiding at all else you'd
>> not know me from Adam because I wouldn't sign my name to a bit of this.
>> There's damn little incentive for me to continue wasting my time with your
>> stuff, and do believe me, if I ignore you here, it's a strong indication
>> of the reception you'll get in a more serious academic setting. Consider
>> this carefully before you jump down Verhaegen's path of intellectual
>> dishonesty coupled with antisocial behavior.
>Well I take my hat off to you for that, Jason. I understand your
>reticence in telling me openly that you were a professional PA before
>but now that you have you've gone up several notches in my estimation.
>That's not because being a professional anthropologist gives you any
>great extra cred in my eyes but because posting to this ng in your
>position is indeed an act of great courage. It's a shame that more
>professional PAs do not share your desire to share your thoughts with
>the world through this fantastic medium.
>
>Ok, now that's clear I just want to apologise for any
>misunderstandings. I never meant to be insulting but there's give and
>take here. How about you stop calling it the AAR?
OK, sounds like a deal.
Marc Verhaegen
"Gerrit Hanenburg" <G.Han...@inter.nl.nomail.net.> wrote in message
news:7rjc4vcruvjq0snh4...@4ax.com...
Yes. I don't think AAT is mentioned anywhere more in (popular & other)
biological publications than in the Low Countries, eg, Hillenius, Roes,
Roede, De Waal, Vroon, Vaneechoutte, Verhaegen... :-)
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
> > > It is also terribly inaccurate and doesn't reflect that there are more
explanations.
> > You have no explanation for bipedality. I thought I was clear enough on
this.
> Marc, neither does anyone else at the moment. With the discovery of older
bipeds that lived before there was a savanah, all of the savanah based
theories are off the table.
> While I happen to think that your Tethys sea shore hypothesis is
intriguing enough that it should get more attention than it does, I don't
think there's nearly enough hard evidence to say that this was the way it
happened.
- My point was that at the moment they're apparently totally incapable of
providing an alternative to our wading-climbing hypothesis for the beginning
of bipedality, yet for some unknown reason (read: bias) they're don't want
to consider this possibility.
- I didn't say bipedality arose at the Tethys coasts, eg, pongids are not
bipedal at all, and Oreopith.bipedality (if it was (partly) bipedal) is
probably a parallel evolution. IMO human locomotion is something that didn't
evolve at once, but in several steps. IMO, first wading-climbing early
hominids (Tethys coasts?? 10-2 Ma??), then coastal early Homo (OoA-1? late
Plio- or early Pleistocene?), then walking sapiens (<300 ka).
> At this point, my best guess based on what little I know is that the
explanation will be a multiple micro-habitat thing, with forest, clearing
and lake or swamp all playing a part, and with the balance between the
various elements being crucial. John Roth
Yes, not unlikely. Or the sequence of the various elements:
climbing+wading+diving.
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
> What the hell are you saying wading did again?
Still incapable of seeing why IOO the early hominids were waders-climbers &
waded frequently bipedally??
- Functional: Why would a wading anthropoid do that quadrupedally??
- Wading bipedally is the easiest way to explain the shift from above
(monkeys) to below-branch locomotion (apes).
- Idem to explain tail loss (unlikely in pure arborealists, see Ateles).
- Idem to explain large body size (unlikely in pure arborealists, for
functional & comparative reasons).
- Comparative: Nasalis are the most-wading as well as the most-bipedal
monkeys.
- Nasalis has several features in parallel to apes: largest colobine, the
only one with short tail, freqently climbs arms overhead.
- Theoretical: humans are not arboreal any more, but are good divers; the
only gradual transition between trees & water is aquarborealism.
- Fossil: the Miocene great ape Oreopith is argued to have waded bipedally
in coastal forests.
- Several Miocene apes are found in coastal or flooded forests (Heliopith,
Austriacopith, Dryopith, Oreopith).
- All apiths are found in wetlands, early ones in forested areas, robusts
later in more open areas.
- All great apes have been seen wading bipedally in the wild (orangs,
lowland gorillas, chimps, bonobos).
- Aquasceptics are unable to give 1 argument why the wading-clmibing
hypothesis would be wrong.
- All alternative just-so "explanations" for bipedality have been proved to
be wrong.
- Apith molar microwear suggests wetland plant feeding.
- Still unable to provide 1 argument against our hypothesis?
Marc Verhaegen
http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Marc Verhaegen
> The sum total of your objections here seems to be that a) he is not a
professional PA (which is true but irrelevant); and b) he's wrong to say
there are only two potential causes for bipedalism plus wading (which he
doesn't). -- Pauline Ross
Don't waste your time with these poor black-white thinkers, Pauline.
Marc
Marc Verhaegen
"Lorenzo L. Love" <lll...@thegrid.net> wrote in message
news:3E459969...@thegrid.net...
> > > Back to the part you edited out from shame and inability to answer
without
> > showing the illogicalness of your "theory": You want to give us a list
of
> > your papers and tell us which ones are not peer reviewed and which ones
are
> > pay for print? How many times will they out number the peer reviewed
ones?
> > Or is it one?
> >
> > Is this an argument or what?
>
> No answer. Ashamed?
Still no answer??
Mario Petrinovic
> > IIRC, I've read somewhere that chimps get scared even of sound
> > of
> > running water. This wading of chimps simply shows that they aren't
> > scared
> > because they are incapable to cross/wade/move in water. Just the
> > opposite.
> > The very thing that they can do it, in spite of their aquaphobia, shows
> > that
> > it isn't a problem for ape to wade, and the only thing why they aren't
> > doing it is their aquaphobia.
> > Why animals are afraid of water? Because you can die in it. It
> > is easy to drown in water. Well, not for us. -- Mario
>
> the leading cause of accidental death in humans under 18.
So, we aren't aquatic because we are drowning. So, we aren't car
drivers because we die in car accidents. How many of humans die from
mushroom poisoning?
One thing I cannot figure out. I can understand why we are driving
cars. One thing I cannot understand is why we are drowning. Is this a
nonsense question?
Jason Eshleman
Your comment, Mario, was that it is not easy for us to drown in water.
That is the interpretation I get from your statement "Why animals
are afraid of water? Because you can die in it. It is easy to drown in
water. Well, not for us." Lorenzo correctly pointed out that it *is* easy
for us to drown and sited evidence to support his position. Your
statement would then appear to be incorrect.
There's some brutal irony in your counter. No one would logically
conclude that our ability to drive is the result of any automotive
adaptation period. Such a point has been raised as objection to the
conclusion of the wet apers that the ability to learn to swim must
indicate aquatic adaptations. Such a conclusion is not necessarily
warranted.
Marc Verhaegen
"Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.03020...@posting.google.com...
> > > Say Marc, can you tell us where we can download a copy of Al's
complete original NS article? I'd love to know how whether you misrepresent
his work as much as you notoriously misrepresent or cite out of context the
work of real scientists.
> > I believe it's quoted in full in Appendix B of Morgan[1981]. At least,
it was 30 seconds ago when I looked it up.
> I have put a copy on the web...
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Hardy/HardyPage1.htm Algis Kuliukas
Thanks, Algis. I always wonder how it's possible that some people who are
sure AAT is wrong never read Hardy's paper. They simply don't know what
they're talking about. Sad & incredible.
Marc
Lorenzo L. Love
To what?
You want to give us a list of your papers and tell us which ones are not
peer reviewed and which ones are pay for print? How many times will they
out number the peer reviewed ones? Or is it one?
And while you are at it, explain why the presence of "aquaphobia" of
chimps can be used as support for the Hypothesis of an Aquatic Human
Ancestor while the absence of "aquaphobia" of chimps can also be used as
support.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
Main Entry: psy·cho·sis
Pronunciation: sI-'kO-s&s
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural psy·cho·ses /-"sEz/
Etymology: New Latin
Date: 1847
: fundamental mental derangement (as schizophrenia) characterized by
defective or lost contact with reality
© 1999 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
Lorenzo L. Love
Sad and incredible that this lame little article has become the basis
for a religion.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence
Lorenzo L. Love
Yes.
Paul Crowley
> Pauline M Ross wrote:
> > Where and when? I'm serious - if there is some in-depth academic
> > refutation somewhere, I would like to see it. The only one I know of
> > is John Langdon's effort, which was very flawed. If there is something
> > else out there, where is it?
>
> Here's one approach:
>
> http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/anth501.html
> Human Thermoregulation and Hair Loss
It is an appallingly bad paper. He
approaches the topic tangentially, making
a variety of unquestioned assumptions.
Note this statement:
" . . it is an important question to ask why the selection
for increased sweating efficiency for heat loss would be
more important than the selection for the heat retention
mechanism of hair cover and the heat prevention
mechanism of solar radiation reflectance."
He assumes that nakedness is caused by
"selection for increased sweating efficiency "
He provides no basis for this 'reasoning'.
It is obviously false. Those members of the
species that need to conserve heat most are
its smallest members -- babies and infants.
Under natural conditions they have a very high
death rate in which the loss of body heat is
commonly a major factor. Furthermore, they
don't need to sweat -- so they don't. As is
routine within PA, Kreger forgets all about
them, working with the standard assumption
that the species consists solely of adult
males.
The nakedness of human infants has
manifestly been selected for -- intensively.
Sweating has no relevance to them. (Nor
does immersion in water.) That selection
is STILL in operation. Its workings should
not be hard to identify.
Paul.