Naledi: Dome Huts and something else

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

Okay, no dome huts.

So if you say Naledi "buried" their dead you
spark up a flame war.

"Buried." Bad word.

"Disposed" of their dead. Good word.

If we say that Naledi "Disposed of" their
dead then suddenly people aren't going to
fight so much...

Look. Naledi were cave dwellers. Living with
their dead maybe wasn't quite so hygienic
while dumping their dead outside the cave is
just going to attract predators. Solution:

Drag them as far back in the cave as you can.

The only ???? is why Naledi, if they were
human, didn't follow the all-too common practice
of cannibalism?

As far as I know, the oldest evidence of cannibalism
goes back much further than Naledi. Right? So why
let a perfectly good pile of protein go to waste like
that?

But, the oldest evidence of cannibalism is from
populations far more advanced than Naledi, so maybe
they hadn't "Invented it" yet?

Hmm?






-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182088925428

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op vrijdag 18 januari 2019 11:18:36 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:

> There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...

Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

The cave may have been a sinkhole/cenote reachable only by an apelike hominin, attracting and entrapping them.

[Pandora]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 03:33:01 -0800 (PST), littor...@gmail.com
wrote:

And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
one stupid layman thinks otherwise.

Now, who should we believe?

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 6:33:02 AM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi, "littor..." [Do you have a preferred way for people to address you?]

I'm a long-time regular at sci.bio.paleontology and talk.origins, but
those two newsgroups seem to be in a state of flux, with s.b.p. at
a crucial crossroads, so I've decided to spend some time here in
s.a.p. as well, for some breaths of fresh air, so to speak.

> Op vrijdag 18 januari 2019 11:18:36 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:
>
> > There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...
>
> Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.

To some extent I agree. From certain human activities in caves
[like the cave art of various continents] it seems that it has
been concluded that some people were dwellers of caves rather than
just living under overhangs. Do you know of any real examples?

At the opposite extreme, what is your beef with at least some Naledi
having descendants in Homo sapiens? Is it not well established
that some Neanderthalers are among our remote ancestors?

> The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.

Ape-sized brain? How many cc's are we talking about here?

And is an adducted hallux typical of apes? I thought the
hallux of the great apes was more separate from the other toes
than in ourselves.

Trivia: in one Halloween party, one of the participants
played the role of a monkey while I played the part of
her organ-grinder. As part of her costume, she wore gloves on her feet.

> Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".

How well established is all this?


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

[Pandora]

I would consult the relevant papers in eLife, and then you'll realise
soon enough that Verhaegen is talking mostly out of his ass.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/09560

https://elifesciences.org/articles/09561

https://elifesciences.org/articles/24232

https://elifesciences.org/articles/24231

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

The one with the best evidence, obviously. Which of the claims
that are posted above do you disagree with?

I've made some probing comments about cranial capacity and "adducted hallux",
and invite you to try to help us separate the wheat from the chaff.

You're somewhat of an old-timer here, and you seem to be more
inclined to engage in one-on-one here than you do in sci.bio.paleontology
[where you are a very welcome "old-timer"] so I hope to hear
more from you on this.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 9:47:52 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:

> Okay, no dome huts.
>
> So if you say Naledi "buried" their dead you
> spark up a flame war.

Not everyone is as trigger-happy as you seem to be, JTEM.

> "Buried." Bad word.
>
> "Disposed" of their dead. Good word.
>
> If we say that Naledi "Disposed of" their
> dead then suddenly people aren't going to
> fight so much...
>
> Look. Naledi were cave dwellers.

Where is the evidence that they actually dwelt there?
"littor...@gmail.com" thinks there isn't any.

> Living with
> their dead maybe wasn't quite so hygienic
> while dumping their dead outside the cave is
> just going to attract predators.

Or scavengers, see below about "Vulture Peak".

> Solution:
>
> Drag them as far back in the cave as you can.
>
> The only ???? is why Naledi, if they were
> human, didn't follow the all-too common practice
> of cannibalism?

Doesn't cannibalism nowadays mostly consist of killing people for meat,
not eating corpses of one's own tribe of those who died of natural causes?

I have heard of one tribe that follows the latter practice, but only one.
And in that case there may have been rituals to express respect
for the deceased.

There are other methods of disposal of corpses of one's tribe
besides burial. It's been claimed that the Inuit have a common
practice of some aged tribe members going off far away to die of starvation.

Then there is the well known case of "Vulture Peak," where corpses are
laid out for vultures to consume. That bespeaks a harmony
with the environment that might be more widely followed,
were there not taboos of most people against it.

> As far as I know, the oldest evidence of cannibalism
> goes back much further than Naledi. Right?

That depends on how far back the Naledi themselves go.
Is there any general agreement on this?

> So why
> let a perfectly good pile of protein go to waste like
> that?

You speak from the perspective of a utilitarian 21st century "None".
Are you able to empathize with the mindset of people outside
that perspective?

> But, the oldest evidence of cannibalism is from
> populations far more advanced than Naledi, so maybe
> they hadn't "Invented it" yet?
>
> Hmm?

Don't some chimps practice cannibalism?


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

[Pandora]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 08:56:47 -0800 (PST), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

>> >> There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...
>> >
>> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
>> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
>> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
>> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
>> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
>>
>> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
>> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
>> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>>
>> Now, who should we believe?
>
>The one with the best evidence, obviously.

You should know that Verhaegen has no evidence other than what's
coming from the original publications about H. naledi. He's just
twisting and shoehorning it into his favourite aquatic ape paradigm.

>Which of the claims that are posted above do you disagree with?

First of all that Berger's interpretations of Homo naledi are
anthropocentric "nonsense". After all we're talking about an academic
multidisciplinary team obviously working with material within the
hominin clade.

Second, obviously the differential diagnosis places this material in
the genus Homo. See the comparative characterlist Table 1 and in the
supplementary 2 material of
https://elifesciences.org/articles/09560

Third, the geology and taphonomy of the site says nothing about the
habitat and paleobiology of this species above ground, in particular
swamp forest, wading, and feeding on herbaceous vegetation.

>I've made some probing comments about cranial capacity and "adducted hallux",
>and invite you to try to help us separate the wheat from the chaff.

The cranial capacity of H. naledi is 542 cc (mean, ranging from 465 cc
in DH3 to 600 cc in LES 1), which compares to 350 cc in Pan.

"The hallucal tarsometatarsal joint is flat and proximodistally
aligned indicating that H. naledi possessed an adducted, non-grasping
hallux.", which is a hallmark of habitually bipedal Homo.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 11:23:51 AM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:

You must admit it is not absolutely clear, and that opposing viewpoints can help see things not obvious to the consensus. "Stupid laymen" is not accurate, MV is extremely experienced and knowledgible, just heavily biased.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 12:53:03 PM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 08:56:47 -0800 (PST), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > Verhaegen (littor...@gmail.com) wrote:

> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
> >>
> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
> >> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
> >>
> >> Now, who should we believe?
> >
> >The one with the best evidence, obviously.
>
> You should know that Verhaegen has no evidence other than what's
> coming from the original publications about H. naledi. He's just
> twisting and shoehorning it into his favourite aquatic ape paradigm.
>
> >Which of the claims that are posted above do you disagree with?
>
> First of all that Berger's interpretations of Homo naledi are
> anthropocentric "nonsense". After all we're talking about an academic
> multidisciplinary team obviously working with material within the
> hominin clade.
>
> Second, obviously the differential diagnosis places this material in
> the genus Homo.

Why not Australopithecus? See below.

> See the comparative characterlist Table 1 and in the
> supplementary 2 material of
> https://elifesciences.org/articles/09560

Thanks. I've started looking at it, and will be looking it over
some more during the weekend, and hope to also get a good look at
the other eLife links you gave me.

> Third, the geology and taphonomy of the site says nothing about the
> habitat and paleobiology of this species above ground, in particular
> swamp forest, wading, and feeding on herbaceous vegetation.
>
> >I've made some probing comments about cranial capacity and "adducted hallux",
> >and invite you to try to help us separate the wheat from the chaff.
>
> The cranial capacity of H. naledi is 542 cc (mean, ranging from 465 cc
> in DH3 to 600 cc in LES 1), which compares to 350 cc in Pan.

In the link you give above, Australopithecus africanus is listed with cranial
capacity 467, and are two species of Paranthropus [sometimes
identified with Australopithecus] even higher. Your link gives
a figure of 513 for H. naledi. Why the discrepancy?

Homo habilis is listed there at 610. Why is Naledi not classified as another
species of Australopithecus?

>
> "The hallucal tarsometatarsal joint is flat and proximodistally
> aligned indicating that H. naledi possessed an adducted, non-grasping
> hallux.", which is a hallmark of habitually bipedal Homo.

What's the situation with the various species of Australopithecus?

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

PS I very rarely post to Usenet groups on the weekends, and see
no reason why this weekend should be an exception. But I'll be
back here on Monday if there is activity on this thread between now and then.

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

REMEMBER: It's awesome to disagree. This is a
discussion group, discuss the opinions! But,
follow some rules. Like, don't resort to childish,
fallacious arguments.

Pandora wrote:

> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>
> Now, who should we believe?

You present two fallacious arguments. The second one
is the appeal to authority...

There's an EXCELLENT case to be made for disposing
of the genus Pan and grouping Chimps under Homo.

"Chimps are human.'

It's all based on DNA, and how similar we are...

There is nothing on God's green earth that says the
physical differences that these 50 or so authors have
latched onto are truly significant, that if & when we
see their DNA it will look any closer to us than
that of the Bonobos...

ALSO: Their conclusions were all based on their
stated believe that Naledi was on the order of
MILLIONS of years old. Now we know that they're *Way*
younger than erectus, younger than heidelberg man
and even potentially younger than "Proto" Neanderthals.

Wait. Assumptions proven wrong... conclusions remains
the same?

Is that good science?

Oh. That was a rhetorical question. It's crappy science.







-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182119026453

[Pandora]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 13:23:40 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> >> There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...
>> >
>> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
>> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
>> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
>> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
>> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
>>
>> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
>> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
>> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>>
>> Now, who should we believe?
>
>You must admit it is not absolutely clear, and that opposing viewpoints can help see
>things not obvious to the consensus.

I'm fine with that as long as the opposition and lack of consensus is
between qualified peers who know what they're talking about.

>"Stupid laymen" is not accurate, MV is extremely experienced and knowledgible,

Experienced in what? Did he ever go out into the field? Did he do
original first-hand research on material in the lab? What are his
credentials in academia? Is he a qualified geologist, paleontologist,
zoologist? Or just an armchair scavenger on other people's work, and
an arrogant condescending prick?

>just heavily biased.

Obsessed.

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> Not everyone is as trigger-happy as you seem to be, JTEM.

Yes they are. In their heads at least. They're
just too timid to speak their minds.

> > Look. Naledi were cave dwellers.

> Where is the evidence that they actually dwelt there?
> "littor...@gmail.com" thinks there isn't any.

#1. I was building on my previous speculation. This is,
after all, a discussion group. Nobody ever came here to
simply copy & paste from a book but, rather, to throw
out ideas/opinions and see where they lead.

#2. There's excellent evidence that they lived in caves
in that things are VERY OFTEN exactly as they appear. And,
how do they appear here?

Look. They were found in caves. They were found in an
environment were climbing skills/adaptations were
necessary. And they have what is identified as climbing
adaptations.

I mean, if they were found in what there the banks of
a forest river everyone would say those adaptations
were obviously for climbing trees. But we find them in
caves, where climbing skills are necessary, so why not
assume that their climbing adaptations are for the
environment we find them in, and NOT for an environment
we don't find them in?

> > Living with
> > their dead maybe wasn't quite so hygienic
> > while dumping their dead outside the cave is
> > just going to attract predators.

> Or scavengers, see below about "Vulture Peak".

Nearly all predators are scavengers, but not all
scavengers are predators...

> Doesn't cannibalism nowadays mostly consist of killing people for meat,
> not eating corpses of one's own tribe of those who died of natural causes?

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

I'm guessing -- and it is only a guess -- that
cannibalism started in Europe or Asia (probably
Asia) in reaction to an ecological disaster that
made food scarce.

A super volcanic eruption or meteor/comet strike
would fit the bill...

This probably led to the radiation of a mutation
that immunized our ancestors from prion disease,
or at least pushed back the onset to a point
beyond a reasonably expected lifespan.

Kuru has an incubation period of 10 to 50 years, so
all but the youngest were virtually guaranteed to
survive to reproduce.

> There are other methods of disposal of corpses of one's tribe
> besides burial. It's been claimed that the Inuit have a common
> practice of some aged tribe members going off far away to die of starvation.

Animals do this. Cats are notorious for running away
when they get very ill. I guess it keeps the den
clean and bigger predators away.

> > As far as I know, the oldest evidence of cannibalism
> > goes back much further than Naledi. Right?

> That depends on how far back the Naledi themselves go.
> Is there any general agreement on this?

None what so ever. But these finds have so far been all
dated to under 400k years, and cannibalism is known to
go back at least twice that far.

> > So why
> > let a perfectly good pile of protein go to waste like
> > that?

> You speak from the perspective of a utilitarian 21st century "None".
> Are you able to empathize with the mindset of people outside
> that perspective?

I don't understand. I'm not a cannibal and I never
met anyone who was a cannibal. I am noting that
cannibalism was once a very common practice, that it
seems to go back much further than this population so
if they were disposing of their dead, why not cannibalism?

NOTE: I also speculated on a possible reason for NOT
cannibalizing their dead. Which is to say, Naledi appears
to be vastly more primitive than the populations which
do display cannibalism, so it's entirely possible that
they never got around to "Inventing" it...

> > But, the oldest evidence of cannibalism is from
> > populations far more advanced than Naledi, so maybe
> > they hadn't "Invented it" yet?
> >
> > Hmm?

> Don't some chimps practice cannibalism?

I know that they eat other primates but...

Yes, but not as a means of disposing of their dead. It's
more like a victory thing, is it not? Killing & eating
their prey? When a chimp in a group dies they do not
cannibalize it.

I know I saw something about Chimps killing a Chimp from
a rival group and cannibalizing it.

If what we're seeing in Naledi is disposal of the dead
it's probably closer to what we see in ants, "Cleaning
up," than ritual.

Of course, there's lots of good reasons to dispose of
your dead so, why not?




-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182119026453

[Pandora]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 14:35:00 -0800 (PST), JTEM is lucky in love AND
money <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:

>REMEMBER: It's awesome to disagree. This is a
>discussion group, discuss the opinions! But,
>follow some rules. Like, don't resort to childish,
>fallacious arguments.
>
> Pandora wrote:
>
>> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
>> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
>> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>>
>> Now, who should we believe?
>
>You present two fallacious arguments. The second one
>is the appeal to authority...

There's nothing fallacious about an appeal to authority when that
authority is evidently qualified and knowledgable in the field in
question. That's obviously the case with the authors of the papers on
Homo naledi. You may wanna check their CVs.

>There's an EXCELLENT case to be made for disposing
>of the genus Pan and grouping Chimps under Homo.
>
>"Chimps are human.'
>
>It's all based on DNA, and how similar we are...

You're probably referring to the work of Morris Goodman et al.
https://www.pnas.org/content/100/12/7181

But that's not in the sense of what Verhaegen means when he wants to
put H. naledi on the branch of Pan. If everything is lumped into Homo
down to the common ancestor of Homo and Pan then that's no problem,
but such a renaming of a clade doesn't change its internal branching.

>There is nothing on God's green earth that says the
>physical differences that these 50 or so authors have
>latched onto are truly significant, that if & when we
>see their DNA it will look any closer to us than
>that of the Bonobos...

naledi clusters with Homo on the basis of a whole suite of shared
derived characters. Those are the data that indicate shared ancestry.
What else?

>ALSO: Their conclusions were all based on their
>stated believe that Naledi was on the order of
>MILLIONS of years old. Now we know that they're *Way*
>younger than erectus, younger than heidelberg man
>and even potentially younger than "Proto" Neanderthals.
>
>Wait. Assumptions proven wrong... conclusions remains
>the same?

The inclusion of naledi within Homo is irrelevant of chronological
age, because shared ancestry isn't based on stratigraphic position.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 5:55:41 PM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 13:23:40 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
> note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> >> There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...
> >> >
> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
> >>
> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
> >> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
> >>
> >> Now, who should we believe?
> >
> >You must admit it is not absolutely clear, and that opposing viewpoints can help see
> >things not obvious to the consensus.
>
> I'm fine with that as long as the opposition and lack of consensus is
> between qualified peers who know what they're talking about.
>
> >"Stupid laymen" is not accurate, MV is extremely experienced and knowledgible,
>
> Experienced in what?

Comparative anatomy, for one.

Did he ever go out into the field? Did he do
> original first-hand research on material in the lab?

He wouldn't last a day in the natural rainforest. But he knows many things that traditional paleo-anthropologists are not aware of.

What are his
> credentials in academia? Is he a qualified geologist, paleontologist,
> zoologist? Or just an armchair scavenger on other people's work, and
> an arrogant condescending prick?

AAH is extraordinarily sensible, to a degree.

> >just heavily biased.
>
> Obsessed.

Of course.

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

Pandora wrote:

> There's nothing fallacious about an appeal to authority

Of course it's fallacious.

"The Priest told me!" is not an argument. It doesn't
rescind any facts, alter any of the evidence.

> >There's an EXCELLENT case to be made for disposing
> >of the genus Pan and grouping Chimps under Homo.
> >
> >"Chimps are human.'
> >
> >It's all based on DNA, and how similar we are...

> You're probably referring to the work of Morris Goodman et al.
> https://www.pnas.org/content/100/12/7181

There's not just one piece to a puzzle. Here's an old
story:

https://www.rawstory.com/2013/10/skull-discovery-suggests-early-man-was-single-species/

They thought they were "so different" that they must be
looking at different species, and now they think they
were one species...

And, quite frankly, our lifestyle choices not only can
but do shape out bodies!

https://www.businessinsider.com/using-cutlery-has-changed-the-human-face-2015-3

But the Chimpanzee DNA is the most striking evidence,
as they're not switching the species but the genus!

> naledi clusters with Homo on the basis of a whole suite of shared
> derived characters. Those are the data that indicate shared ancestry.
> What else?

DNA.

Look. DNA is lousy for a lot of things, but showing a
relationship is not one of them.

> >ALSO: Their conclusions were all based on their
> >stated believe that Naledi was on the order of
> >MILLIONS of years old. Now we know that they're *Way*
> >younger than erectus, younger than heidelberg man
> >and even potentially younger than "Proto" Neanderthals.
> >
> >Wait. Assumptions proven wrong... conclusions remains
> >the same?

> The inclusion of naledi within Homo is irrelevant of chronological
> age, because shared ancestry isn't based on stratigraphic position.

Shard ancestry is a given. We share ancestry with moths.
It's the relationship that matters.




-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182119026453

[Pandora]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 18:55:37 -0800 (PST), JTEM is lucky in love AND
money <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> There's nothing fallacious about an appeal to authority
>
>Of course it's fallacious.
>
>"The Priest told me!" is not an argument. It doesn't
>rescind any facts, alter any of the evidence.

If you snip my argument as to why it isn't always fallacious to appeal
to authority then we're done talking.

Take an everyday example, when you consult your home physician because
you don't feel too well that's a reasonable appeal to authority,
because he/she evidently knows more than you do about matters of
health and disease.

>> >There's an EXCELLENT case to be made for disposing
>> >of the genus Pan and grouping Chimps under Homo.
>> >
>> >"Chimps are human.'
>> >
>> >It's all based on DNA, and how similar we are...
>
>> You're probably referring to the work of Morris Goodman et al.
>> https://www.pnas.org/content/100/12/7181
>
>There's not just one piece to a puzzle. Here's an old
>story:
>
>https://www.rawstory.com/2013/10/skull-discovery-suggests-early-man-was-single-species/
>
>They thought they were "so different" that they must be
>looking at different species, and now they think they
>were one species...
>
>And, quite frankly, our lifestyle choices not only can
>but do shape out bodies!
>
>https://www.businessinsider.com/using-cutlery-has-changed-the-human-face-2015-3
>
>But the Chimpanzee DNA is the most striking evidence,
>as they're not switching the species but the genus!

Even Morris Goodman et al. still distinguish a Pan and Homo clade
within Homo, but now at the subgenus level, because that's what the
DNA is telling them. Like I said, changing the level of inclusiveness
of the classification doesn't change the branching pattern.

>> naledi clusters with Homo on the basis of a whole suite of shared
>> derived characters. Those are the data that indicate shared ancestry.
>> What else?
>
>DNA.
>
>Look. DNA is lousy for a lot of things, but showing a
>relationship is not one of them.

DNA is subject to the same problems as morphological data
(convergence, reversal, etc.).
And if you don't have DNA data, as in the case of Homo naledi, then
morphology is the most reasonable proxy of heritable data.

>> >ALSO: Their conclusions were all based on their
>> >stated believe that Naledi was on the order of
>> >MILLIONS of years old. Now we know that they're *Way*
>> >younger than erectus, younger than heidelberg man
>> >and even potentially younger than "Proto" Neanderthals.
>> >
>> >Wait. Assumptions proven wrong... conclusions remains
>> >the same?
>
>> The inclusion of naledi within Homo is irrelevant of chronological
>> age, because shared ancestry isn't based on stratigraphic position.
>
>Shard ancestry is a given. We share ancestry with moths.
>It's the relationship that matters.

All at the appropriate level of analysis. When you wish to resolve the
relationships among hominins you don't need to go outside Primates, or
even Hominoidea.

[Pandora]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:08:08 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka

note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> >> >> There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...
>> >> >
>> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
>> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
>> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
>> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
>> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
>> >>
>> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
>> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
>> >> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>> >>
>> >> Now, who should we believe?
>> >
>> >You must admit it is not absolutely clear, and that opposing viewpoints can help see
>> >things not obvious to the consensus.
>>
>> I'm fine with that as long as the opposition and lack of consensus is
>> between qualified peers who know what they're talking about.
>>
>> >"Stupid laymen" is not accurate, MV is extremely experienced and knowledgible,
>>
>> Experienced in what?
>
>Comparative anatomy, for one.

No, he doesn't, otherwise he wouldn't compare humans with flamingo's
and on the basis of some perceived similarity of long legs conclude
that the former were also waders.

Comparative anatomy is when you go into the lab and study the material
in every detail, work like this:
https://www.crcpress.com/Comparative-Anatomy-and-Phylogeny-of-Primate-Muscles-and-Human-Evolution/Diogo-Wood/p/book/9781578087679

>Did he ever go out into the field? Did he do
>> original first-hand research on material in the lab?
>
>He wouldn't last a day in the natural rainforest. But he knows many things that
>traditional paleo-anthropologists are not aware of.

Like what?

>What are his
>> credentials in academia? Is he a qualified geologist, paleontologist,
>> zoologist? Or just an armchair scavenger on other people's work, and
>> an arrogant condescending prick?
>
>AAH is extraordinarily sensible, to a degree.

Yes, too the degree that humans are dependent on water, like all life.

[Pandora]

The figures I mentioned are from a more recent paper (Table 5 on page
102 in Darryl J. De Ruiter, Keely B. Carlson, Juliet K. Brophy, Steven
E. Churchill, Kristian J. Carlson, and Lee R. Berger (2018) "Special
Issue: Australopithecus sediba --- The Skull of Australopithecus
sediba" PaleoAnthropology 2018:56-155, at
http://www.paleoanthro.org/journal/volumes/2018/)

>Homo habilis is listed there at 610. Why is Naledi not classified as another
>species of Australopithecus?

Because the distinction between Australopithecus and Homo doesn't
hinge on cranial capacity.

>> "The hallucal tarsometatarsal joint is flat and proximodistally
>> aligned indicating that H. naledi possessed an adducted, non-grasping
>> hallux.", which is a hallmark of habitually bipedal Homo.
>
>What's the situation with the various species of Australopithecus?

Specimens that preserve enough of the first ray of the foot skeleton,
such as StW 573 ("Little Foot") and BRT-VP-2/73 ("Burtele Foot"), have
a divergent hallux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Foot

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

Pandora wrote:

> If you snip my argument

It was fallacious. I did you a solid favor and
you need to thank me.

> Take an everyday example, when you consult your home physician because
> you don't feel too well that's a reasonable appeal to authority

Paleoanthropology is NOT and NEVER has been a real
science. There are many threads on this topic, here
in this group and elsewhere, discussing various
real-world illustrations of this fact.

> Even Morris Goodman et al. still distinguish a Pan and Homo clade
> within Homo, but now at the subgenus level, because that's what the
> DNA is telling them. Like I said, changing the level of inclusiveness
> of the classification doesn't change the branching pattern.

All that matters is the DNA. The physical differences
just plain aren't that telling.

> DNA is subject to the same problems as morphological data

It's better than morphology at determining how close
two populations are.

> >Shard ancestry is a given. We share ancestry with moths.
> >It's the relationship that matters.

> All at the appropriate level of analysis.

That's circular. You're just full of fallacious arguments,
aren't you!

It's extremely common for the fossil & DNA evidence
to not agree. As the DNA would be the more telling,
you can't claim that any analysis is appropriate
without it.








-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182117037768

[Pandora]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 06:12:44 -0800 (PST), JTEM is lucky in love AND
money <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> If you snip my argument
>
>It was fallacious. I did you a solid favor and
>you need to thank me.

Oh well, in that case, fuck you very much.

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

Pandora wrote:

> Oh well, in that case, fuck you very much.

Your Uncle dad & Aunt mom raised you wrong.

No wonder you squat on fallacious arguments!



-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182117037768

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

On Saturday, January 19, 2019 at 5:35:17 AM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:08:08 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
> note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> >> >> There is no evidence for or against the use of dome huts by naledi. The use of caves & rock shelters by hominins is not clear, some went to them when dying not living (cf.many other animals), bones do get washed into ground holes & caves, fossil preservation in caves is far higher than outside, and finally roundshields/domes can be used in caves as huts and as doors to exclude others to the cave entrance. Extremely long intergenerational cave dwelling would deselect for dome huts, and possibly result in either no huts (hyena, cave bear) or rectangular housing structures designed to maximize usable space (bunk beds, 2nd stories, Pueblo-style cave villages). Quarrying of minerals (rocksalt, ochre, flint) etc. probably induced in- or near- cave short-term occupation. And so on...
> >> >> >
> >> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> >> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
> >> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> >> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> >> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
> >> >>
> >> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> >> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
> >> >> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
> >> >>
> >> >> Now, who should we believe?
> >> >
> >> >You must admit it is not absolutely clear, and that opposing viewpoints can help see
> >> >things not obvious to the consensus.
> >>
> >> I'm fine with that as long as the opposition and lack of consensus is
> >> between qualified peers who know what they're talking about.
> >>
> >> >"Stupid laymen" is not accurate, MV is extremely experienced and knowledgible,
> >>
> >> Experienced in what?
> >
> >Comparative anatomy, for one.
>
> No, he doesn't,

Yeah, he does, but he cherry-picks-it-apart and reattaches parts to fit his paradigm.

otherwise he wouldn't compare humans with flamingo's
> and on the basis of some perceived similarity of long legs conclude
> that the former were also waders.

While ignoring dietary differences.

> Comparative anatomy is when you go into the lab and study the material
> in every detail, work like this:
> https://www.crcpress.com/Comparative-Anatomy-and-Phylogeny-of-Primate-Muscles-and-Human-Evolution/Diogo-Wood/p/book/9781578087679

Which does not answer why/where/how.

> >Did he ever go out into the field? Did he do
> >> original first-hand research on material in the lab?
> >
> >He wouldn't last a day in the natural rainforest. But he knows many things that
> >traditional paleo-anthropologists are not aware of.
>
> Like what?

Like wading parallels.

>
> >What are his
> >> credentials in academia? Is he a qualified geologist, paleontologist,
> >> zoologist? Or just an armchair scavenger on other people's work, and
> >> an arrogant condescending prick?
> >
> >AAH is extraordinarily sensible, to a degree.
>

> Yes, to the degree that humans are dependent on water, like all life.

Exactly, and salt & trace Iodine.

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op zaterdag 19 januari 2019 19:20:58 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:

...

> > >> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> > >> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
> > >> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> > >> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> > >> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".

> > >> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> > >> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
> > >> >> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.

Stupid layman = you, not me, see my publications in Nature, NS, TREE, Hum.Evol., Nutr.Heath etc.etc. - in spite of the boycott by more than 50 well-educated authors...

Only fools can believe that naledi buried their dead in caves.
The biology is clear: naledi were (google) "orthograde aquarboreals".

...

> Yeah, he does, but he cherry-picks-it-apart and reattaches parts to fit his paradigm.

I may miss a few things, but cherry-picking is what you do, DD.

> > otherwise he wouldn't compare humans with flamingo's
> > and on the basis of some perceived similarity of long legs conclude
> > that the former were also waders.

Only imbeciles misrepresent ideas they don't like, and deny that flamingoes & herons have rel.longer legs than ostriches.

Why not get some information before trying to say something relevant?
Google e.g. "ape and human evolution 2018 Verhaegen"

[Pandora]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 17:02:00 -0800 (PST), littor...@gmail.com
wrote:

>> > >> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
>> > >> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
>> > >> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
>> > >> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
>> > >> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
>
>> > >> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
>> > >> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
>> > >> >> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>
>Stupid layman = you, not me, see my publications in Nature, NS, TREE, Hum.Evol., Nutr.Heath etc.etc.

How many researchpapers did you publish in Nature? (a few lines of
scientific correspondence doesn't count).

>- in spite of the boycott by more than 50 well-educated authors...

When more than 50 well-educated authors reject your papers it's
probably because it doesn't represent original research or because it
doesn't comply to standards of scientific quality.

>Only fools can believe that naledi buried their dead in caves.
>The biology is clear: naledi were (google) "orthograde aquarboreals".

None of the original researchpapers on H. naledi mention the term.
The concept appears only in the context of a fringe theory entertained
by a few nonspecialists.

>> Yeah, he does, but he cherry-picks-it-apart and reattaches parts to fit his paradigm.
>
>I may miss a few things, but cherry-picking is what you do, DD.
>
>> > otherwise he wouldn't compare humans with flamingo's
>> > and on the basis of some perceived similarity of long legs conclude
>> > that the former were also waders.
>
>Only imbeciles misrepresent ideas they don't like, and deny that flamingoes & herons have rel.longer legs than ostriches.

In that case you should be able to provide us with the comparative
metrics. Or did you just eyeball a few illustrations in a birdguide?
And please, also include terrestrial taxa such as Secretary Bird,
seriemas, bustards, etc.

>Why not get some information before trying to say something relevant?
>Google e.g. "ape and human evolution 2018 Verhaegen"

Selfreference?
Try something independent for a change.

[Pandora]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 10:20:56 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> >> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
>> >> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to Homo,
>> >> >> one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Now, who should we believe?
>> >> >
>> >> >You must admit it is not absolutely clear, and that opposing viewpoints can help see
>> >> >things not obvious to the consensus.
>> >>
>> >> I'm fine with that as long as the opposition and lack of consensus is
>> >> between qualified peers who know what they're talking about.
>> >>
>> >> >"Stupid laymen" is not accurate, MV is extremely experienced and knowledgible,
>> >>
>> >> Experienced in what?
>> >
>> >Comparative anatomy, for one.
>>
>> No, he doesn't,
>
>Yeah, he does, but he cherry-picks-it-apart and reattaches parts to fit his paradigm.

Yeah, a little bit of pinniped here, some wading bird there, some
seacow, a little cetacean, and a whiff of seaotter, and then you get a
chimaera that exists nowhere in reality.

And with regard to his knowledge about comparative anatomy, he
probably had a medical education, but everything he knows outside that
field is simply autodidactic booksmart. He never had a formal
education in vertebrate comparative anatomy, not even at the one
semester level of Kardong or Hildebrand.

>otherwise he wouldn't compare humans with flamingo's
>> and on the basis of some perceived similarity of long legs conclude
>> that the former were also waders.
>
>While ignoring dietary differences.

And all the rest that distinguishes such widely divergent clades as
Aves and Primates.

>> Comparative anatomy is when you go into the lab and study the material
>> in every detail, work like this:
>> https://www.crcpress.com/Comparative-Anatomy-and-Phylogeny-of-Primate-Muscles-and-Human-Evolution/Diogo-Wood/p/book/9781578087679
>
>Which does not answer why/where/how.

With proper comparative material in a phylogenetic context you can
begin to answer questions about the environment of evolutionary
adaptedness.

>> >Did he ever go out into the field? Did he do
>> >> original first-hand research on material in the lab?
>> >
>> >He wouldn't last a day in the natural rainforest. But he knows many things that
>> >traditional paleo-anthropologists are not aware of.
>>
>> Like what?
>
>Like wading parallels.

Most people at some point in theiir life get to know flamingo's.

>> >What are his
>> >> credentials in academia? Is he a qualified geologist, paleontologist,
>> >> zoologist? Or just an armchair scavenger on other people's work, and
>> >> an arrogant condescending prick?
>> >
>> >AAH is extraordinarily sensible, to a degree.
>>
>> Yes, to the degree that humans are dependent on water, like all life.
>
>Exactly, and salt & trace Iodine.

Proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins.

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op zondag 20 januari 2019 11:22:35 UTC+1 schreef Pandora:

...

> >> > >> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> >> > >> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
> >> > >> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> >> > >> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> >> > >> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".

> >> > >> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> >> > >> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to
> >> > >> >> Homo, one stupid layman thinks otherwise.

> > Stupid layman = you, not me, see my publications in Nature, NS, TREE, Hum.Evol., Nutr.Heath etc.etc.

> How many researchpapers did you publish in Nature? (a few lines of
> scientific correspondence doesn't count).

> >- in spite of the boycott by more than 50 well-educated authors...

> When more than 50 well-educated authors reject your papers it's
> probably because it doesn't represent original research or because it
> doesn't comply to standards of scientific quality.

Because they're as outdated & anthropocentric as you are.

> >Only fools can believe that naledi buried their dead in caves.
> >The biology is clear: naledi were (google) "orthograde aquarboreals".

> None of the original researchpapers on H. naledi mention the term.
> The concept appears only in the context of a fringe theory entertained
> by a few nonspecialists.

Sigh. Why not get some information before talking??
Non-specialists?? :-D
Dirks ... Berger 2015 eLife 4, e09561:
"our preferred explanation for the accumulation of H.naledi fossils in the Dinaledi Chamber is deliberate body disposal".

I repeat:

Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.

I have great admiration for their discoveries & descriptions, but not for their interpretations.

The biology is clear: we predicted how Naledi & other australopiths lived in swamp forests & wetlands years ago, google e.g. "bonobo wading" or "aquarboreal TREE 2002".

Now waste your own time, my boy.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Sunday, January 20, 2019 at 5:57:50 PM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:
> Op zondag 20 januari 2019 11:22:35 UTC+1 schreef Pandora:
>
> ...
>
> > >> > >> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> > >> > >> >> >The biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.
> > >> > >> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> > >> > >> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> > >> > >> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".
>
> > >> > >> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> > >> > >> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs to
> > >> > >> >> Homo, one stupid layman thinks otherwise.
>
> > > Stupid layman = you, not me, see my publications in Nature, NS, TREE, Hum.Evol., Nutr.Heath etc.etc.
>
> > How many researchpapers did you publish in Nature? (a few lines of
> > scientific correspondence doesn't count).
>
> > >- in spite of the boycott by more than 50 well-educated authors...
>
> > When more than 50 well-educated authors reject your papers it's
> > probably because it doesn't represent original research or because it
> > doesn't comply to standards of scientific quality.
>
> Because they're as outdated & anthropocentric as you are.
>
> > >Only fools can believe that naledi buried their dead in caves.
> > >The biology is clear: naledi were (google) "orthograde aquarboreals".

> > None of the original research papers on H. naledi mention the term.

> > The concept appears only in the context of a fringe theory entertained
> > by a few nonspecialists.

The concept is a valid one but where is the evidence for "aquaboreal"
applying to the Naledi?

>
> Sigh. Why not get some information before talking??
> Non-specialists?? :-D
> Dirks ... Berger 2015 eLife 4, e09561:
> "our preferred explanation for the accumulation of H.naledi fossils in the Dinaledi Chamber is deliberate body disposal".

Do you agree or disagree with the statement you've quoted? I
see no connection with the claim of "aquaboreal".

>


> I repeat:
> Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> I have great admiration for their discoveries & descriptions, but not for their interpretations.
>
> The biology is clear: we predicted how Naledi & other australopiths lived in swamp forests & wetlands years ago, google e.g. "bonobo wading" or "aquarboreal TREE 2002".

Begging the question: you are assuming that Naledi deserve
to be listed under the genus "Pan", rather than inferring their
habitat from direct evidence.

> Now waste your own time, my boy.

The pseudonym "Pandora" suggests that you are talking to a woman.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS Have you overlooked my earlier reply to you? You haven't answered
me so far.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 6:09:15 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:

> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>> On Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 9:47:52 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
>>> Okay, no dome huts.
>
>>> So if you say Naledi "buried" their dead you
>>> spark up a flame war.

> > Not everyone is as trigger-happy as you seem to be, JTEM.
>
> Yes they are. In their heads at least. They're
> just too timid to speak their minds.

There is no point in getting hung up on semantics. If someone
persists in informally referring to disposal through a narrow
opening and letting fall to a cave floor far below as "burial,"
I'd humor them for the sake of discussing something more important.

As for timidity... I've caught you being timid back in November
on the thread "The Big Splits In Hominidae" in sci.bio.paleontology.
You had your arch-nemesis, John Harshman, on the ropes, and
instead of pressing your advantage, you disappeared from the
thread and have never returned to s.b.p. since then.

Harshman, Simpson, and "Oxyaena" were insisting that you
were a "notorious troll" but could never give me any evidence
of that. In your long back and forth with Harshman on that
thread, it was John who was trolling and you were "feeding the troll,"
and I kept pointing that out, too. Such evidence is better than
any "Truth by Blatant Assertion" by the three of them.

I'm reminded of something one of Hannibal's generals said to him:
"You know how to win victories, but you don't know how to follow them up."

> > > Look. Naledi were cave dwellers.
>
> > Where is the evidence that they actually dwelt there?
> > "littor...@gmail.com" thinks there isn't any.
>
> #1. I was building on my previous speculation. This is,
> after all, a discussion group. Nobody ever came here to
> simply copy & paste from a book but, rather, to throw
> out ideas/opinions and see where they lead.

That's the ideal, and for two brief shining years, we
came close to it in sci.bio.paleontology: May 2015 through
part of 2017. By the time of the thread to which I am referring
up there, this "Era of Good Feeling" was but a distant memory.

>
> #2. There's excellent evidence that they lived in caves
> in that things are VERY OFTEN exactly as they appear. And,
> how do they appear here?
>
> Look. They were found in caves.

Their corpses were found deep in caves. Do you have any evidence
that the actually lived any further in than the mouth of the cave?
Do you even have any evidence for THAT in the form of artifacts?

> They were found in an
> environment were climbing skills/adaptations were
> necessary. And they have what is identified as climbing
> adaptations.

We all have climbing adaptations. Until I was an adult,
I had such a great fear of heights that I never climbed
a tree further up than two meters -- and that was a
belly crawl on the trunk of a pine tree that was more
nearly horizontal than vertical.

Then when I finally screwed up my courage to really climb one,
I was amazed at what good instincts I had for where I
placed my feet and knees and hands. Much of it went
automatically.

On the other hand, swimming did NOT come to me automatically.
Which is why I'm skeptical of the claims of our Dutch correspondent.

>
> I mean, if they were found in what there the banks of
> a forest river everyone would say those adaptations
> were obviously for climbing trees. But we find them in
> caves, where climbing skills are necessary,

Where did climbing skills come in for the journey
towards that narrow entrance through which they
shoved the cadavers they were carrying?

> so why not
> assume that their climbing adaptations are for the
> environment we find them in, and NOT for an environment
> we don't find them in?

Because some of OUR ancestors were tree climbers.
And evolution has not bred those instincts out
of our bodies.

> > > Living with
> > > their dead maybe wasn't quite so hygienic
> > > while dumping their dead outside the cave is
> > > just going to attract predators.
>
> > Or scavengers, see below about "Vulture Peak".
>
> Nearly all predators are scavengers, but not all
> scavengers are predators...

Vultures do not commonly act as predators.

Anyway, until you provide me with evidence that they
actually lived in that cave, I could go on entertaining
the hypothesis that they lived some distance away from it,
perhaps as far as humans live from Vulture Peak.

> > Doesn't cannibalism nowadays mostly consist of killing people for meat,
> > not eating corpses of one's own tribe of those who died of natural causes?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannibalism

Thanks for the link.

I've snipped the rest for the sake of brevity. I see there is much
for me to learn about cannibalism.

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

U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> There is no point in getting hung up on semantics. If someone
> persists in informally referring to disposal through a narrow
> opening and letting fall to a cave floor far below as "burial,"
> I'd humor them for the sake of discussing something more important.

Oh, that is the opposite of correct...

This is excessively important. Prepared burials are
the earliest evidence for "Symbolic Thinking," which
is a super-duper mega hyper important development in
human evolution, some might even argue that it is
the true mark of "Modern" humans as opposed to
"Anatomically Modern" humans.

> As for timidity... I've caught you being timid back in November
> on the thread "The Big Splits In Hominidae" in sci.bio.paleontology.

I wasn't the least bit timid.

Just because you can swap handles and pretend you're
someone & something you aren't doesn't mean Google
no longer exist.

People pretending to have an educational & professional
background relevant to a topic, who pretend to have held
a personal interest in a top (as a hobby) for decades,
do not as a rule need to be educated over usenet on a
topic, and even if they were ignorant they would just
immediately Google matter and educate themselves.

> Harshman, Simpson, and "Oxyaena" were

You can flip your sock puppets but the stupid always
remains the same.

> > #1. I was building on my previous speculation. This is,
> > after all, a discussion group. Nobody ever came here to
> > simply copy & paste from a book but, rather, to throw
> > out ideas/opinions and see where they lead.
>
> That's the ideal, and for two brief shining years, we
> came close to it in

Do you have anything to say on the topic of this thread, or
are you just taking your disorder out for a walk, again?

> > #2. There's excellent evidence that they lived in caves
> > in that things are VERY OFTEN exactly as they appear. And,
> > how do they appear here?
> >
> > Look. They were found in caves.

> Their corpses were found deep in caves. Do you have any evidence
> that the actually lived any further in

Oh shut up.

You have the remains of a population that looks to have
climbing adaptations within an environment where such a
population would be under selective pressure to acquire
climbing adaptations.

If we found them in a forest paleontology would demand
that everyone agree they were climbing in trees. We do
find them in a climbing environment though, but it's a
cave environment.

Science is consistent.

> > They were found in an
> > environment were climbing skills/adaptations were
> > necessary. And they have what is identified as climbing
> > adaptations.

> We all have climbing adaptations.

You're an idiot. No, wait, I'm serious. You are an idiot.

> On the other hand, swimming did NOT come to me automatically.

Who cares?

Aquatic Ape -- our ancestors living on & adapting
to the sea shore -- is accepted by all. It is the
very means by which they spread across the planet.

They didn't fly. They didn't ride on buses. They
lived on the shore, exploiting the sea. They didn't
have a map, they weren't looking for an all-night
Burger King. They ate when they could, moved on when
they couldn't.

Again, this is accepted by all of science.

What isn't accepted is the idea by savanna morons is
the idea that evolution could happen anyplace other
than a savanna.






-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182191582326










-- --

[Pandora]

On Sun, 20 Jan 2019 14:57:49 -0800 (PST), littor...@gmail.com
wrote:

>> >Only fools can believe that naledi buried their dead in caves.
>> >The biology is clear: naledi were (google) "orthograde aquarboreals".
>
>> None of the original researchpapers on H. naledi mention the term.
>> The concept appears only in the context of a fringe theory entertained
>> by a few nonspecialists.
>
>Sigh. Why not get some information before talking??
>Non-specialists?? :-D
>Dirks ... Berger 2015 eLife 4, e09561:
>"our preferred explanation for the accumulation of H.naledi fossils in the Dinaledi Chamber is deliberate body disposal".

Yes, after they found that "the occupation, predator accumulation and
water transport hypotheses cannot adequately explain the fossil
assemblage."

But they're not adamant about it:

"Using multiple lines of evidence, we have excluded hypotheses that
are inconsistent with current geological and taphonomic data. As
stated (Dirks et al., 2015:30), the deliberate body disposal
hypothesis provides the most plausible explanation, but we recognize
that mass mortality of groups of hominins within the Dinaledi Chamber,
due to a death trap scenario, is possible. We will continue to test
these hypotheses by searching for new evidence and collecting
additional data."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248416300094

(and they have found additional data in the sediment cone below the
Chute indicating that at least some of the hominin remains, some
articulated, must have entered the Dinaledi system via this route)

>I repeat:
>Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
>I have great admiration for their discoveries & descriptions, but not for their interpretations.
>
>The biology is clear: we predicted how Naledi & other australopiths lived in swamp forests & wetlands years ago, google e.g. "bonobo wading" or "aquarboreal TREE 2002".

The biology would be clear if you could have studied the living
species in its natural habitat. And even then it may take many years
of continuous observation for a species with a complex behavioral
repertoire, such as chimpansees, before the biology is clear in all
its details.

So, here's a thought experiment: what could/would we know of chimps if
none of the extant species of Pan were alive and was only known from a
few fossil skeletal individuals (adult and juvenile) from a single
site (presumably a fluviatile sediment indicating a tropical forest
paleoenvironment)?

How much of its biology would be clear with regard to its diet,
locomotion, mating system, sleeping behavior, tool use, etc.?

>Now waste your own time, my boy.

I would rather waste yours, because you seem to have too much time
engaging in paleofantasy.

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op maandag 21 januari 2019 17:19:01 UTC+1 schreef nyi...@bellsouth.net:

...

> > > >> > >> >> >Prof.Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.

> > > >> > >> >> >Naledi's biology is clear: slightly elongated hands, slightly curved phalanges, flat feet with longer & adducted hallux, orthograde spine, ape-sized brain, fossilization in not fully consolidated mud-stone etc.

> > > >> > >> >> >Naledi were simply one of the many fossil relatives of chimpanzees or bonobos.
> > > >> > >> >> >They lived (at least seasonally) in swamp forests, where they waded, floated & climbed habitually vertically, possibly partly comparable to extant lowland gorillas or bonobos wading in forest swamps in search for aquatic herbaceous vegetation, waterlilies & other wetland foods etc.
> > > >> > >> >> >Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2018 Verhaegen".

> > > >> > >> >> And while more than 50 authors, all well-educated in the biological
> > > >> > >> >> sciences, agree that the Dinaledi and Lesedi material belongs
> > > >> > >> >> to Homo, one stupid layman thinks otherwise.

> > > > Stupid layman = you, not me, see my publications in Nature, NS, TREE, Hum.Evol., Nutr.Heath etc.etc.

> > > How many researchpapers did you publish in Nature? (a few lines of
> > > scientific correspondence doesn't count).

> > > >- in spite of the boycott by more than 50 well-educated authors...

> > > When more than 50 well-educated authors reject your papers it's
> > > probably because it doesn't represent original research or because it
> > > doesn't comply to standards of scientific quality.

> > Because they're as outdated & anthropocentric as you are.

> > > >Only fools can believe that naledi buried their dead in caves.
> > > >The biology is clear: naledi were (google) "orthograde aquarboreals".

> > > None of the original research papers on H.naledi mention the term.

> > > The concept appears only in the context of a fringe theory entertained
> > > by a few nonspecialists.

> The concept is a valid one but where is the evidence for "aquaboreal"
> applying to the Naledi?

Which concept is valid IYO?

The biological evidence for aquarboreal Mio-Pliocene hominoids is clear.
Have you seen our papers & PPTs?

For Naledi specifically, again:
-Naledi's curved & slightly elongated hand phalanges indicate frequent vertical climbing.
-Their apelike calcanei & flat feet with rel.long & adducted halluces are seen in prenatal chimps.
-Full plantigrady is never seen in cursorials, not in pure arboreals, but is typical of waders/swimmers (IOW, human feet evolved from climbing-feet to wading-swimming-feet to walking-feet).
-Naledi's fossilization in (not fully consolidated) mudstone suggests wetlands or swamp forests.
-Naledi had ape-sized brains.
-A vertical spine (as in e.g.gibbons) does not suggest running (as traditionally assumed by many PAs), but rather vertical climbing, bipedal wading and/or vertical floating.
-Many monkeys, most fossil hominoids (incl.australop!iths & Naledi) & humans have generally more primitive hands than apes: in no way does Naledi's rel.long thumb indicate regular tool manufacture as Berger cs believe.
-Cave formation is a natural & rel."fast" process.
-Etc.etc. Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2017 Verhaegen"

IOW, there's no need for far-fetched idiotic ideas about Naledi being human ancestors who ran over savannas, made tools & buried their dead in caves.
Naledi's fossilization was apparently a completely natural process of fossil apes who spent an important part of their life in forest swamps, probably mostly in seach of sedges, frogbit, waterlily parts etc., as still often seen in bobonos & lowland gorillas, google e.g. "bonobo wading" & "gorilla bai". I predicted such lifestyles (trees + water = swamp/mangrove/flooded forests = aquarboreal) already (1985) a few years before the wading gorillas were discovered in Ndoki Bai & Mbeli Bai, and later the orangutans in Suaq Balimbing etc.

> > Sigh. Why not get some information before talking??
> > Non-specialists?? :-D
> > Dirks ... Berger 2015 eLife 4, e09561:
> > "our preferred explanation for the accumulation of H.naledi fossils in the Dinaledi Chamber is deliberate body disposal".

> Do you agree or disagree with the statement you've quoted? I
> see no connection with the claim of "aquaboreal".

Not sure what you mean, but again:
- I disagree of course with "deliberate body disposal",
- aquarboreal = natural fossilization.

> > I repeat:
> > Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
> > I have great admiration for their discoveries & descriptions, but not for their interpretations.
> > The biology is clear: we predicted how Naledi & other australopiths lived in swamp forests & wetlands years ago, google e.g. "bonobo wading" or "aquarboreal TREE 2002".

> Begging the question: you are assuming that Naledi deserve
> to be listed under the genus "Pan", rather than inferring their
> habitat from direct evidence.

I think yo have to read first my Human Evolution & other papers, e.g.
1990 Hum.Evol.5:295-7
African ape ancestry
1992 Hum.Evol.7:63-64
Did robust australopithecines partly feed on hard parts of Gramineae?
1994 Hum.Evol.9:121-139 Australopithecines: ancestors of the African apes?
1996 Hum.Evol.11:35-41
Morphological distance between australopithecine, human and ape skulls
2013 Hum.Evol.28:237-266
The aquatic ape evolves: common misconceptions and unproven assumptions about the so-called Aquatic Ape Hypothesis

> > Now waste your own time, my boy.

> The pseudonym "Pandora" suggests that you are talking to a woman.

:-) Indeed possible, but women are usu.less agressive than this Pandora.

> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
> PS Have you overlooked my earlier reply to you? You haven't answered
> me so far.

Sorry, I must have overlooked it, I can't read everything.
I sometimes read here what DD writes, but usually not what others write.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

MV notes the long leg parallel in Homo and wading birds but ignores the long toes not in Homo but rather in Pan which he then claims are aquarboreal though Pan has short legs. Pure cherry-picking.

[alouatta....@gmail.com]

On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 9:14:48 AM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 6:09:15 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> > nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> >> On Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 9:47:52 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> >>> Okay, no dome huts.
> >
> >>> So if you say Naledi "buried" their dead you
> >>> spark up a flame war.
>
> > > Not everyone is as trigger-happy as you seem to be, JTEM.
> >
> > Yes they are. In their heads at least. They're
> > just too timid to speak their minds.
>
> There is no point in getting hung up on semantics. If someone
> persists in informally referring to disposal through a narrow
> opening and letting fall to a cave floor far below as "burial,"
> I'd humor them for the sake of discussing something more important.
>
> As for timidity... I've caught you being timid back in November
> on the thread "The Big Splits In Hominidae" in sci.bio.paleontology.
> You had your arch-nemesis, John Harshman, on the ropes, and
> instead of pressing your advantage, you disappeared from the
> thread and have never returned to s.b.p. since then.
>

Well, well. It looks like JTEM has you "on the ropes" this time. It also seems that your tormentors in s.b.p. are actually just your sock puppets in a long-running Punch & Judy show. Well done! Are you and "Daud Deden" the only "contributors" to that farce?

I'd say the time has come for you to learn of many things, but Dodgson has already said it much better.

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op maandag 21 januari 2019 23:46:32 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:

...

> MV notes the long leg parallel in Homo and wading birds but ignores the long toes not in Homo but rather in Pan which he then claims are aquarboreal though Pan has short legs. Pure cherry-picking.

DD, don't be ridiculous.
Get informed before writing nonsense.
See what I wrote on this in
Nutr.Health.9:165-191, 1993
"Aquatic versus savanna:
comparative and paleo-environmental evidence"

It's not difficult:

Pan
- leg length +-as in most primates
- prenatal: humanlike feet flat (but narrow calcaneus)
- arm-hand-finger lengthening after H/P split

Homo
- leg lengthening esp. in sapiens (tibia)
- flat feet, probably already early-hominid
- toe shortening (shorter forefoot & longer hindfoot): archaic Homo?
- hand primitive, but broader
- thumb, index & 3 fingers +-independent: archaic Homo?

This perfectly fits our view (based also on other data):
1) most Mio-Plio-early-Pleistocene hominoids & hominids (incl.Gorilla-Pan-australopiths-most"habilis"): aquarboreal, vertical,
2) early-Pleistocene archaic Homo (erectus cs): littoral,
3) late-Pleistocene sapiens: wading->walking.

Not diffucult, but you have to know the facts & use your brain a bit (comparative anatomy).

[Pandora]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 13:53:10 -0800 (PST), littor...@gmail.com
wrote:

>> > > >Only fools can believe that naledi buried their dead in caves.
>> > > >The biology is clear: naledi were (google) "orthograde aquarboreals".
>
>> > > None of the original research papers on H.naledi mention the term.
>> > > The concept appears only in the context of a fringe theory entertained
>> > > by a few nonspecialists.
>
>> The concept is a valid one but where is the evidence for "aquaboreal"
>> applying to the Naledi?
>
>Which concept is valid IYO?
>
>The biological evidence for aquarboreal Mio-Pliocene hominoids is clear.
>Have you seen our papers & PPTs?
>
>For Naledi specifically, again:
>-Naledi's curved & slightly elongated hand phalanges indicate frequent vertical climbing.

Which would only account for the arboreal aspect of "aquarboreal".

>-Their apelike calcanei & flat feet with rel.long & adducted halluces are seen in prenatal chimps.

Such early developmental stages generally are not representative of
adult function.

>-Full plantigrady is never seen in cursorials, not in pure arboreals, but is typical of waders/swimmers
>(IOW, human feet evolved from climbing-feet to wading-swimming-feet to walking-feet).

The foot of Homo naledi shares 19 characters with modern humans, 5 are
intermediate, and only 2 are ape-like. See table 1 in:
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9432

In the context of a proper phylogenetic bracket (human and
chimp/bonobo) this suggests foot functionality mostly like humans,
i.e. upright walking on terra firma, with wading only facultative.

>-Naledi's fossilization in (not fully consolidated) mudstone suggests wetlands or swamp forests.

No, it only tells you something about the geology inside the cave
(such as entry of water through cracks filtering coarser material, and
periodic reworking through changes in the water table)

The mammalian fauna of the Lesedi chamber also is not suggestive of a
wetland environment. See table 3:
https://elifesciences.org/articles/24232/figures#tables

>-Naledi had ape-sized brains.

Ranging from 465 cc to 610 cc, well above the chimpanzee mean of 350
cc. (within the range of gorilla's, but these have much larger body
size).

>-A vertical spine (as in e.g.gibbons) does not suggest running (as traditionally assumed by many PAs),
>but rather vertical climbing, bipedal wading and/or vertical floating.

But the alternate curvature of lordosis and kyphosis is typical of
upright bipedal Homo, and the dorsally wedged shape of the H. naledi
L5 suggets lumbar lordosis.

>-Many monkeys, most fossil hominoids (incl.australop!iths & Naledi) & humans have generally more
>primitive hands than apes: in no way does Naledi's rel.long thumb indicate regular tool manufacture as Berger cs believe.

It's not just the relatively long thumb, but also the modern humanlike
wrist and palm that suggest a degree of dexterity significantly
greater than chimps.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9431

>-Cave formation is a natural & rel."fast" process.

And yet often slow enough for specialized (blind) cave species to
evolve.

>-Etc.etc. Google e.g. "not Homo but Pan naledi? 2017 Verhaegen"
>
>IOW, there's no need for far-fetched idiotic ideas about Naledi being human
>ancestors who ran over savannas, made tools & buried their dead in caves.

There's nothing idiotic about that, because at some point hominins
began to manufacture tools (at least 3.3 mya, Lomekwian) and dispose
of the dead. Excluding that possibility at between 335,000 and 236,000
years ago in a member of Homo and calling it idiotic is just the
arrogant, condescending prick speaking.

>Naledi's fossilization was apparently a completely natural process of fossil apes
>who spent an important part of their life in forest swamps, probably mostly in
>seach of sedges, frogbit, waterlily parts etc., as still often seen in bobonos &
>lowland gorillas

That the fossilization process was natural is without much doubt. This
doesn't seem to be a case of piltdowning. But the deposition of the
hominin remains, their paleoenvironment and diet are far from settled,
unless one is a member of that strange dogmatic cult shoehorning all
of human evolution into a soaked paradigm.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

It would be helpful to distinguish between littoral & aquarboreal.

What are mangrove oysters?
What are abalone in kelp forest?
What are coconut crabs?
What are New Zealand penguins that sleep in rainforests?
What are herons/egrets that wade in shallows and sleep in arboreal nests?
What are AMHs Pygmies that live in domiciles along rainforest crystalline streams but never in swamps or at coastal shores?

[Pandora]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 14:46:31 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:

>MV notes the long leg parallel in Homo and wading birds but ignores the long toes
>not in Homo but rather in Pan which he then claims are aquarboreal though Pan has
>short legs. Pure cherry-picking.

MV also ignores the long legs in non-wading birds such as the
Secretary Bird,

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

seriema's,

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

bustards,

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

etc.

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op dinsdag 22 januari 2019 21:28:22 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:

...

> > > MV notes the long leg parallel in Homo and wading birds but ignores the long toes not in Homo but rather in Pan which he then claims are aquarboreal though Pan has short legs. Pure cherry-picking.

> > DD, don't be ridiculous.
> > Get informed before writing nonsense.
> > See what I wrote on this in
> > Nutr.Health.9:165-191, 1993
> > "Aquatic versus savanna:
> > comparative and paleo-environmental evidence"
> > It's not difficult:
> > Pan:

> > - leg length +-as in most primates,
> > - prenatal: humanlike feet flat (but narrow calcaneus),
> > - arm-hand-finger lengthening after H/P split.
> > Homo:
> > - leg lengthening esp. in sapiens (tibia),
> > - flat feet, probably already early-hominid,

> > - toe shortening (shorter forefoot & longer hindfoot): archaic Homo?

> > - hand primitive, but broader,

> > - thumb, index & 3 fingers +-independent: archaic Homo?
> > This perfectly fits our view (based also on other data):
> > 1) most Mio-Plio-early-Pleistocene hominoids & hominids (incl.Gorilla-Pan-australopiths-most"habilis"): aquarboreal, vertical,
> > 2) early-Pleistocene archaic Homo (erectus cs): littoral,
> > 3) late-Pleistocene sapiens: wading->walking.
> > Not diffucult, but you have to know the facts & use your brain a bit (comparative anatomy).

> It would be helpful to distinguish between littoral & aquarboreal.

Didn't you know??
2) Littoral (biological term) includes diving: platycephaly, pachyosteosclerosis (POS), flat feet etc.
1) Aquarboreal (obvious term, coined by Marcel William) includes (vertical in hominoids) climbing: light build, curved phalanges, grasping-feet etc.
Aquarboreal can be inland or coastal.
Littoral & aquarboreal can overlap e.g. in beach-combing?



> What are mangrove oysters?

Collected by arboreal (capuchins) & aquarboreal primates?

> What are abalone in kelp forest?

Collected by 2)

> What are coconut crabs?

Can be collected by arboreal & aquarboreal primates?

> What are New Zealand penguins that sleep in rainforests?

About as aquatic as most pinnipeds.

> What are herons/egrets that wade in shallows and sleep in arboreal nests?

1)

> What are AMHs Pygmies that live in domiciles along rainforest crystalline streams but never in swamps or at coastal shores?

3)

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

Littoral Homo: divers
Aquarboreal Hominoids: climbers?

> 2) Littoral (biological term) includes diving: platycephaly, pachyosteosclerosis (POS), flat feet etc.
> 1) Aquarboreal (obvious term, coined by Marcel William) includes (vertical in hominoids) climbing: light build, curved phalanges, grasping-feet etc.
> Aquarboreal can be inland or coastal.
> Littoral & aquarboreal can overlap e.g. in beach-combing?

That seems to be problematic, vertical climbing POS?

>
>
>
> > What are mangrove oysters?
>
> Collected by arboreal (capuchins) & aquarboreal primates?
>
> > What are abalone in kelp forest?
>
> Collected by 2)
>
> > What are coconut crabs?
>
> Can be collected by arboreal & aquarboreal primates?
>
> > What are New Zealand penguins that sleep in rainforests?
>
> About as aquatic as most pinnipeds.
>
> > What are herons/egrets that wade in shallows and sleep in arboreal nests?
>
> 1)
>
> > What are AMHs Pygmies that live in domiciles along rainforest crystalline streams but never in swamps or at coastal shores?
>
> 3)

Thanks for clarifying. Littoral & aquarboreal as specifically applied to Hominoids - Homo.

[littor...@gmail.com]

Op woensdag 23 januari 2019 07:09:32 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:

> > 2) Littoral (biological term) includes diving: platycephaly, pachyosteosclerosis (POS), flat feet etc.
> > 1) Aquarboreal (obvious term, coined by Marcel William) includes (vertical in hominoids) climbing: light build, curved phalanges, grasping-feet etc.
> > Aquarboreal can be inland or coastal.
> > Littoral & aquarboreal can overlap e.g. in beach-combing?

> That seems to be problematic, vertical climbing POS?

Of course, not!!!
You very much misunderstood apparently.
Please re-read.

> > > What are mangrove oysters?

> > Collected by arboreal (capuchins) & aquarboreal primates?

> > > What are abalone in kelp forest?

> > Collected by 2)

> > > What are coconut crabs?

> > Can be collected by arboreal & aquarboreal primates?

> > > What are New Zealand penguins that sleep in rainforests?

> > About as aquatic as most pinnipeds.

> > > What are herons/egrets that wade in shallows and sleep in arboreal nests?

> > 1)

> > > What are AMHs Pygmies that live in domiciles along rainforest crystalline streams but never in swamps or at coastal shores?

> > 3)

> Thanks for clarifying. Littoral & aquarboreal as specifically applied to Hominoids - Homo.

Not necessarily: see penguins & herons.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 6:52:45 PM UTC-5, alouatta....@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 9:14:48 AM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 6:09:15 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> > > nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > >> On Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 9:47:52 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> > >>> Okay, no dome huts.
> > >
> > >>> So if you say Naledi "buried" their dead you
> > >>> spark up a flame war.
> >
> > > > Not everyone is as trigger-happy as you seem to be, JTEM.
> > >
> > > Yes they are. In their heads at least. They're
> > > just too timid to speak their minds.
> >
> > There is no point in getting hung up on semantics. If someone
> > persists in informally referring to disposal through a narrow
> > opening and letting fall to a cave floor far below as "burial,"
> > I'd humor them for the sake of discussing something more important.
> >
> > As for timidity... I've caught you being timid back in November
> > on the thread "The Big Splits In Hominidae" in sci.bio.paleontology.
> > You had your arch-nemesis, John Harshman, on the ropes, and
> > instead of pressing your advantage, you disappeared from the
> > thread and have never returned to s.b.p. since then.
> >
>
> Well, well. It looks like JTEM has you "on the ropes" this time.

Only if you are stupid enough to believe the following:

> It also seems that your tormentors in s.b.p. are actually just your sock puppets in a long-running Punch & Judy show.

The part-time "tormentors" would call you a conspiracy theorist,
as loony as those who think the Apollo project never made it to the moon,
and they would be spot on target -- except that you are a full-time
troll [in my experience, anyway] and thus as "crazy as a fox."

By the way, those three "tormentors" [your word, not mine] are only
part-time trolls. Sometimes they are downright civil and helpful.

> Well done! Are you and "Daud Deden" the only "contributors" to that farce?

Every time you show up, you make it a pure farce. Even the
part-time trolls I listed below don't have a very good opinion of you.

[Appearances can be deceiving: Simpson made a friendly
"long time no see" gesture in reply to you, but he has
backpedaled from the connotations of that each time
I've reminded him of it.]

>
>
> > Harshman, Simpson, and "Oxyaena" were insisting that you
> > were a "notorious troll" but could never give me any evidence
> > of that. In your long back and forth with Harshman on that
> > thread, it was John who was trolling and you were "feeding the troll,"
> > and I kept pointing that out, too. Such evidence is better than
> > any "Truth by Blatant Assertion" by the three of them.
> >
> > I'm reminded of something one of Hannibal's generals said to him:
> > "You know how to win victories, but you don't know how to follow them up."

Sadly, JTEM couldn't bear to be praised by me as I did
above, and deleted the whole long narrative.

But such things only encourage the anti-Peter troll in you, don't they?
Next thing you know, you'll be accusing me of being a sock puppet
of JTEM. Or maybe JTEM of being a sock puppet of myself.

> I'd say the time has come for you to learn of many things, but Dodgson has already said it much better.

METAPHOR/ANALOGY:

Ddgson leaped high buildings in a single bound. A bar a millimeter
off the ground is a high one for the likes of you.


HAND.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 8:13:02 AM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:

> Op maandag 21 januari 2019 23:46:32 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:
>
> ...
>
> > MV notes the long leg parallel in Homo and wading birds but ignores the long toes not in Homo but rather in Pan which he then claims are aquarboreal though Pan has short legs. Pure cherry-picking.
>
> DD, don't be ridiculous.
> Get informed before writing nonsense.

Like [some] penguins being aquaboreal? With those flippers,
how could they climb trees?

[Deden:]

Thanks for clarifying. Littoral & aquarboreal as specifically
applied to Hominoids - Homo.

[MV:]

Not necessarily: see penguins & herons.

Herons generally fly, not climb, to perch on trees, in my experience.

> See what I wrote on this in
> Nutr.Health.9:165-191, 1993
> "Aquatic versus savanna:
> comparative and paleo-environmental evidence"
>
> It's not difficult:
>
> Pan
> - leg length +-as in most primates
> - prenatal: humanlike feet flat (but narrow calcaneus)
> - arm-hand-finger lengthening after H/P split

- "reversion" to feet with hallux partly opposable post-natal.

- "reversion" to large canines, especially in males

- "reversion" to shape of tooth row being very far from a V

- "reversion" to cranial capacity well below that of Australopithecines

AFAIK the only thing going for chimps descending from A. or P.
is the dearth of fossils. But that can be attibuted to the difficulty
of finding fossils in typical chimp habitats. One doesn't just start
turning over shovelfuls of dirt in hopes of finding fossils after
hitting bedrock.

>
> Homo
> - leg lengthening esp. in sapiens (tibia)
> - flat feet, probably already early-hominid
> - toe shortening (shorter forefoot & longer hindfoot): archaic Homo?
> - hand primitive, but broader
> - thumb, index & 3 fingers +-independent: archaic Homo?
>
> This perfectly fits our view (based also on other data):
> 1) most Mio-Plio-early-Pleistocene hominoids & hominids (incl.Gorilla-Pan-australopiths-most"habilis"): aquarboreal, vertical,

Where's the aqua in habilis?

> 2) early-Pleistocene archaic Homo (erectus cs): littoral,

Huh? Where's the beach near "Peking Man"? or any other erectus,
for that matter?

> 3) late-Pleistocene sapiens: wading->walking.

Come off it: walking was a well established characteristic
in the early Pleistocene.

>
> Not diffucult, but you have to know the facts & use your brain a bit (comparative anatomy).

I'm skeptical about your brain comparing favorably with those of researchers
closer to mainstream opinions about human evolution. Thinking outside
the box is great, but your opinions have to be well founded.

Are you a professional anthropologist, or an amateur? What are your
scientific/mathematical credentials?

Are you affiliated with any university? If so, what do your
colleagues think of your ideas?

Possibly relevant: Deden called himself a "dedicated research biologist"
just the other day in sci.bio.paleontology, but it soon transpired that
he was an amateur, the way he tried to bill all kinds of interests
as biological:

My interest in Paleo-etymology (word-prehistory) is just
biological communication.

My interest in architecture & spatial geometry just extensions
of body covering, etc.

Buckminster Fuller claimed that specialization results in obsolescence
and extinction, I agree.

Seen many buggy-whip makers lately?

-- https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/sdGjUKuSxZM/1epzArs9FAAJ
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 17:40:57 -0800 (PST)


By the way: are you going to respond to Pandora's long 22 Jan critique
of your long reply to me on 21 Jan? I'm not familiar enough with
the relevant data to disagree with her assessment. Are you?

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

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

Well, I guess that ends the trust. Bye Peter.

[alouatta....@gmail.com]

You are either suffering from autism or are one of the most obtuse individuals I have ever seen. Your notion that I believed JTEM that your adversaries are you sock puppets is evidence for the latter. Can it be that you have never heard of Verhaegen? (He's not Dutch, by the way, he's Belgian. He's a doctor, general prectice.) He is an acolyte of the fringe theory of the "aquatic ape"
(aquaRboreal) in his terminology. Those admirers of this notion, mostly non-scientists, are sometimes almost cult-like in their advocacy.

If you value whatever reputation you still may have with fellow acedemic snobs, you will run, not walk, away from any communication with him. You seem to be adept at insult in any case, so that should be easy for you.

>
> By the way: are you going to respond to Pandora's long 22 Jan critique
> of your long reply to me on 21 Jan? I'm not familiar enough with
> the relevant data to disagree with her assessment. Are you?
>

Pandora is out of your league (as a *mere* amateur; cue obsequiousness).

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On the contrary, you are trolling because you know I am a frequent
target of trolls who get off scot-free, and you figure you
can post any crap about me that you want to. Such as the following:

> Your notion that I believed JTEM that your adversaries are you sock puppets

You are lying. I called you a full time troll for PRETENDING
to believe that. Keywords: "crazy as a fox."

> Can it be that you have never heard of Verhaegen?

I've only started posting intensively to sci.anthropology.paleo
last week, and I never learned the name of "littoral..." until then.

> (He's not Dutch, by the way, he's Belgian.

He *posts* from Belgium. What is he, a Flamand or a Walloon? or
a Hollander who moved to Belgium?

Trivia: there once was a Belgian chess master named O'Kelly de Galway.
Care to guess at his ethnicity?

> He's a doctor, general prectice.) He is an acolyte of the fringe theory of the "aquatic ape"
> (aquaRboreal) in his terminology. Those admirers of this notion, mostly non-scientists, are sometimes almost cult-like in their advocacy.

You are cult-like in your pursuit of Internet Troll polemic.
As are a number of trolls who preceded you in taking delight
in trolling me.

>
> If you value whatever reputation you still may have with fellow acedemic snobs, you will run, not walk, away from any communication with him.

Why aren't you giving the same advice to Pandora?

>You seem to be adept at insult in any case, so that should be easy for you.

Said the man in the glass house, throwing stones.

>
>
> >
> > By the way: are you going to respond to Pandora's long 22 Jan critique
> > of your long reply to me on 21 Jan? I'm not familiar enough with
> > the relevant data to disagree with her assessment. Are you?
> >
>
> Pandora is out of your league (as a *mere* amateur; cue obsequiousness).

That's EXACTLY why I asked Marc what I did, bozo.

By the way, I suggest you drop by alt.atheism. I told someone
who was much less of a troll than you about an old song
of the sixties with the refrain:

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.
You gotta have a something
If you want to be with me.

The shoe fits him, and I hope he wears it. It fits you,
but your agenda forbids you to admit that, doesn't it?


Peter Nyikos

[alouatta....@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 3:29:26 PM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 5:16:14 PM UTC-5, alouatta....@gmail.com wrote:

> > You are either suffering from autism or are one of the most obtuse individuals I have ever seen.
>

> > Pandora is out of your league (as a *mere* amateur; cue obsequiousness).
>
> That's EXACTLY why I asked Marc what I did, bozo.
>

Another spectacular example of your obtusity. You ask serious questions of cranks because you have no ability to see their obvious flags. Deden, Petrinovich, Verhaegen,...

The principle reason people criticize you is your pomposity and sanctimony. A "polymath" indeed!


> Peter Nyikos

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 8:09:02 PM UTC-5, alouatta....@gmail.com,

with the pseudonym Howler Monkey, wrote:

> On Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 3:29:26 PM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 5:16:14 PM UTC-5, alouatta....@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > You are either suffering from autism or are one of the most obtuse individuals I have ever seen.

The insincerity of the above comment has been exposed in the
post to which "Howler Monkey" is replying here. True to form
as a member of the Internet Troll Cult, he deleted the refutation.

> > > Pandora is out of your league (as a *mere* amateur; cue obsequiousness).

True to said membership, "Howler" also deleted the challenge with which I
hit Marc Verhaegen, so he could pretend that I was naively asking
Marc for information, as follows.

> >
> > That's EXACTLY why I asked Marc what I did, bozo.
> >
> Another spectacular example of your obtusity.

No, of giving people enough rope to hang themselves, if they
are insincere or dishonest.

[Interested readers will note that Marc did NOT respond to the challenge
in any way, shape, or form.]

> You ask serious questions of cranks

I also ask serious questions of trolls from time to time,
for the same reason as above.

The following is an example, with Howler Monkey's words in the first
line:

> (He's not Dutch, by the way, he's Belgian.

He *posts* from Belgium. What is he, a Flamand or a Walloon? or
a Hollander who moved to Belgium?

I even went on as follow:

Trivia: there once was a Belgian chess master named O'Kelly de Galway.
Care to guess at his ethnicity?

True again to his membership in said cult, Howler deleted all hint
of my having asked serious questions of himself, and continued thus:

> because you have no ability to see their obvious flags. Deden, Petrinovich, Verhaegen,...

I see the obvious flags, but some flags are obvious only after
close scrutiny. I'm pretty sure that Howler Monkey, who is trolling
above, couldn't refute Verhaegen in a way that makes in obvious
that he is a crank. Howler is a polemicist through and through,
and his knowledge and understanding of the relevant background
material is nowhere in evidence.

>
> The principle reason people criticize you is your pomposity and sanctimony.

Pompous, sanctimonious comments are what Howler Monkey is making
all through this post. In the fun house mirror of his mind,
everything I've written here is probably "pompous and
sanctimonious." The mileage of other readers may vary.


Peter Nyikos

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 1:43:18 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>>On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 6:09:15 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
>>> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>>>>> On Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 9:47:52 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:

>>>>> So if you say Naledi "buried" their dead you
>>>>> spark up a flame war.

>>> > Not everyone is as trigger-happy as you seem to be, JTEM.
>>>
>>> Yes they are. In their heads at least. They're
>>> just too timid to speak their minds.

> > There is no point in getting hung up on semantics. If someone
> > persists in informally referring to disposal through a narrow
> > opening and letting fall to a cave floor far below as "burial,"
> > I'd humor them for the sake of discussing something more important.
>
> Oh, that is the opposite of correct...

Enough the opposite to spark a flame war? Hardly, judging from
what comes next, except for a few trigger-happy people.

> This is excessively important. Prepared burials are
> the earliest evidence for "Symbolic Thinking,"

Smuggling of "Prepared" without it having been said before, noted.

One does not have to be autistic to think of taking
a corpse into a cave and climbing to a narrow chimney
opening as "preparing" for what I'd humoringly call a burial.

> which
> is a super-duper mega hyper important development in
> human evolution, some might even argue that it is
> the true mark of "Modern" humans as opposed to
> "Anatomically Modern" humans.

So those whose bodies are cremated, with ashes scattered
to the winds at their request, are NOT Modern humans???

An awful lot of atheists might wonder whether you are
trolling, hoping to suss out closet theists.

>
> > As for timidity... I've caught you being timid back in November
> > on the thread "The Big Splits In Hominidae" in sci.bio.paleontology.
>
> I wasn't the least bit timid.

You are being quite timid right here. You deleted the entire
narrative of HOW you had Harshman on the ropes and then
let him off the hook by abruptly disappearing.

Here is the last post in that exchange, by Harshman:

_______________________ repost ______________________

On 11/7/18 9:18 PM, JTEM wrote:

> What was your search criteria again? I somehow missed
> your answer...

I tried "human chimpanzee Y chromosome divergence", which found a Nature
paper you might conceivably be basing all this on. How about you?

============================= end of post archived at

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/dpR_mOvZ5Q4/V2YExu4PBQAJ
Subject: Re: The Big Splits In Hominidae
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2018 05:24:41 -0800
Message-ID: <GbOdnYYWXvGHpHnG...@giganews.com>


Harshman had stoutly resisted googling for the paper you
said you were talking about, and here he finally
swallowed his monumental pride long enough to LOOK
and tell you what he found.

Either he or one of his toadies might say that you turned
tail and ran at this point. You never posted to sci.bio.paleontology
after Harshman posted that.

How would you answer that charge?

> Just because you can swap handles and pretend you're
> someone & something you aren't

You claim that Harshman is not his real name, but that's
beside the point here.

> doesn't mean Google
> no longer exist.

But Harshman belatedly used it. You had him looking like a troll
because, for a long time, he not only refused to do so, but also dared not
ask you what search criteria you used. But then,
it looks like he called a bluff of yours.

>
> People pretending to have an educational & professional
> background relevant to a topic, who pretend to have held
> a personal interest in a top (as a hobby) for decades,
> do not as a rule need to be educated over usenet on a
> topic, and even if they were ignorant they would just
> immediately Google matter and educate themselves.

It's not that simple. Before Harshman swallowed his pride,
*I* tried googling for it but couldn't find anything explicitly
supporting what you wrote. I told you in detail about my
search, but you completely ignored me.

You and Harshman were both more interested in making the
other look like a fool, than in being educated or educating others
in such a highly specialized arcane concept as "sperm competition."

> > Harshman, Simpson, and "Oxyaena" were
>
> You can flip your sock puppets but the stupid always
> remains the same.

Howler, an obvious troll, had a gleeful moment over this
idiotic claim of "sock puppets," and one way everyone could
tell he was trolling is that he didn't tell YOU how idiot it is.

You are either incredibly naive about how scoundrels
support each other all over the internet, or YOU are trolling.

>
> > > #1. I was building on my previous speculation. This is,
> > > after all, a discussion group. Nobody ever came here to
> > > simply copy & paste from a book but, rather, to throw
> > > out ideas/opinions and see where they lead.

But the exchange of those ideas sometimes leads to two grownups playing a game
of "chicken," as you and Harshman did. And then the ideas themselves
are left high and dry.

> > That's the ideal, and for two brief shining years, we
> > came close to it in
>
> Do you have anything to say on the topic of this thread,

I already have, in reply to other participants, and to you.
Stop pretending otherwise.

> or are you just taking your disorder out for a walk, again?

Keep up this spewing of baseless insults, and you might amass
enough evidence that you ARE a troll, just like a number
of people claim you are.


Concluded in next reply, to be done soon after I see that this
one has posted.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 1:43:18 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>>On Friday, January 18, 2019 at 6:09:15 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:

>

> > > #2. There's excellent evidence that they lived in caves
> > > in that things are VERY OFTEN exactly as they appear. And,
> > > how do they appear here?
> > >
> > > Look. They were found in caves.
>
> > Their corpses were found deep in caves. Do you have any evidence
> > that the actually lived any further in
>
> Oh shut up.

Just as I suspected. You have no direct evidence they
lived within 100 meters of the caves.

> You have the remains of a population that looks to have
> climbing adaptations

Inherited from remote ancestors. Does the word "plesimorphy"
mean anything to you?

> within an environment where such a
> population would be under selective pressure to acquire
> climbing adaptations.

AND to not lose the ones they have genetically inherited.

> If we found them in a forest paleontology would demand
> that everyone agree they were climbing in trees.

Are you really this naive about what paleontology demands?
Do you really believe every inhabitant of a forest climbs trees?

> We do
> find them in a climbing environment though, but it's a
> cave environment.
>
> Science is consistent.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
You seem to be foolishly consistent.

> > > They were found in an
> > > environment were climbing skills/adaptations were
> > > necessary. And they have what is identified as climbing
> > > adaptations.
>
> > We all have climbing adaptations.
>
> You're an idiot. No, wait, I'm serious. You are an idiot.

No, you are not serious, otherwise you would try to refute
what I wrote instead of doing an unmarked snip of my detailed justification.

You are too timid to attempt to reason with me.


<marked snip here>

> Aquatic Ape -- our ancestors

All of them? You are going off the deep end here:

> living on & adapting
> to the sea shore -- is accepted by all.

By all the devotees of the Verhaegen speculation. Anyone else?

> It is the
> very means by which they spread across the planet.

Except when they walked or rode on dry land instead.
Otherwise they would still be littoral or riparian.
And that's assuming that you are correct about
humans evolving on or near beaches.

And of course, no human being ever to to New Zealand by swimming
from anywhere except a few nearby islands, all of which
were part of New Zealand at the height of the Ice Age.

>
> They didn't fly. They didn't ride on buses. They
> lived on the shore, exploiting the sea. They didn't
> have a map, they weren't looking for an all-night
> Burger King. They ate when they could, moved on when
> they couldn't.
>
> Again, this is accepted by all of science.

...about a small minority of modern humans. But the Naledi weren't modern
humans, and so I wonder whether YOU have anything to say on the topic
of this thread, or are just taking various disorders out for a walk, again.

> What isn't accepted is the idea by savanna morons is
> the idea that evolution could happen anyplace other
> than a savanna.

Straw man "savanna moron" noted. I don't think a single
professional anthropologist is a savannah moron, and I
defy you to document one.

Besides, you are now referring to humans that predated
the Naledi by a million years or more, and so I suggest you
look at my preceding paragraph again.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math.

U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[alouatta....@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 1:13:53 PM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 1:43:18 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:

- deleted idiotic exchange

>
> Straw man "savanna moron" noted. I don't think a single
> professional anthropologist is a savannah moron, and I
> defy you to document one.
>
> Besides, you are now referring to humans that predated
> the Naledi by a million years or more, and so I suggest you
> look at my preceding paragraph again.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math.
> U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
> http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

Congratulations, Nyikos! You seem to have, rather belatedly, recognized JTEM for his true nature. Well done, indeed! As for your "sincerity" with respect to the silly questions you presented to me earlier, I've no answer for you, but I will agree to take no offence, they being irrelevant and, as I said, silly.

As for my own sincerity, I assure you it is real. You've been making a fool of yourself here and elsewhere for some months now, with your incessant complaints of unfair treatment at the hands of nearly everyone withwhom you correspond.

If I were more sadistic, I would question your qualifications, as you often do with others, but I shall refrain.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 5:18:39 PM UTC-5, alouatta....@gmail.com,

a.k.a. Howler Monkey, wrote:
> On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 1:13:53 PM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 1:43:18 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:

> - deleted idiotic exchange

It takes WORK to make sure where a person is coming from,
and the Truth by Blatant Assertion that seems to be your
stock in trade cannot do that. Either people are inclined
to believe you or they are not, but you seem to
have no evidence to show them.

You may think it is idiotic to amass evidence, but there is
a huge amount of virtual reality in places like talk.origins
that passes for reality, and it needs to be convincingly
exposed for what it is.

Is your fun house mirror telling you that I am
being pompous and sanctimonious above?
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn if it does.

> >
> > Straw man "savanna moron" noted. I don't think a single
> > professional anthropologist is a savannah moron, and I
> > defy you to document one.
> >
> > Besides, you are now referring to humans that predated
> > the Naledi by a million years or more, and so I suggest you
> > look at my preceding paragraph again.
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Department of Math.
> > U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
> > http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>
> Congratulations, Nyikos! You seem to have, rather belatedly, recognized JTEM for his true nature.

It does look that way. Unfortunately, the internet is full of
part-time trolls who are far more dangerous than full-time trolls.
These are the kind that have a mutual "see no evil, hear no evil,
speak no evil" relationship with other part-time trolls. There
is a cluster of three in sci.bio.paleontology and of half a dozen
or more in talk.origins.

JTEM looks to me at the moment like a part time troll, but also one that
is too isolated to be dangerous.

By the way, how come you pretended to think JTEM had recognized
MY true nature? How come you didn't breathe down JTEM's back the way
you did down mine?

Was all that a form of "professional courtesy"
among members of the Internet Troll Cult?

> Well done, indeed! As for your "sincerity" with respect to the silly questions you presented to me earlier,

Just giving you enough rope to hang yourself with, troll.

> I've no answer for you, but I will agree to take no offence, they being irrelevant and, as I said, silly.

Why would a troll like you take offence at anything? The more
people attack you, the more they "feed the troll." That's what
trolling is mostly about.

Why am I continuing to feed you, you may ask. The answer should
be obvious by now. You may start with my opening two paragraphs.

>
> As for my own sincerity, I assure you it is real.

As real as an offer to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, by the looks of it.

> You've been making a fool of yourself here and elsewhere for some months now,

Either it is "some 11 years now" or it is "almost never," depending on
what standards you are using. You are just revealing that you know
very little about me.

> with your incessant complaints of unfair treatment at the hands of nearly everyone with whom you correspond.

"incessant...nearly everyone" is typical troll talk. As is "complaint about
unfair treatment" without noting that most of those "complaints" were actually
EVIDENCE of cowardice, hypocrisy, dishonesty, etc. not just against
myself, but sometimes against others.

Near the end of last year, I even defended one of the worst scoundrels in
talk.origins against unfair charges by another, far less dagerous
scoundrel. As I said in regard to this incident,

NOBODY deserves to be lied about. Not __________ [name of scoundrel
I was defending]. Not Stalin. Not Hitler. Not even Satan, if such
an entity exists. If someone can be discredited honestly, so be it.
If he cannot, it can't be helped honestly.

Also, a little over a year ago, I made a list of 25 people I've had
dealings with in talk.origins, whose treatment I never complained about,
and I don't recall a single one of them who treated me in bad faith, the way JTEM and you have done.

That's more than the number I have "complained" about, as you
amorally put it.

> If I were more sadistic, I would question your qualifications, as you often do with others, but I shall refrain.

"often" = of four others in the last six months, and with two of
those just once. You've seen two of those cases right on this thread
[well, actually, the aftermath of one of them, in the case of Deden.

Never before.

If you are sincere, you are a shockingly superficial person.


HAND.


Peter Nyikos

[alouatta....@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 3:27:19 PM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 5:18:39 PM UTC-5, alouatta....@gmail.com,
> a.k.a. Howler Monkey, wrote:
> > On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 1:13:53 PM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 1:43:18 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
>
> > - deleted idiotic exchange
>

>

> It does look that way. Unfortunately, the internet is full of
> part-time trolls who are far more dangerous than full-time trolls.
> These are the kind that have a mutual "see no evil, hear no evil,
> speak no evil" relationship with other part-time trolls. There
> is a cluster of three in sci.bio.paleontology and of half a dozen
> or more in talk.origins.
>
> JTEM looks to me at the moment like a part time troll, but also one that
> is too isolated to be dangerous.
>

"Dangerous trolls on the internet"? What elaborate fantasies you have!

> By the way, how come you pretended to think JTEM had recognized
> MY true nature? How come you didn't breathe down JTEM's back the way
> you did down mine?
>

"Pretended to think"? Of course he recognizes your nature. You make your nature abundantly clear with your every post. Why should I have anything to say to JTEM? He's a troll, as you say.

How Quixotic of you! You are indeed a most pompous man.

> Also, a little over a year ago, I made a list of 25 people I've had
> dealings with in talk.origins, whose treatment I never complained about,
> and I don't recall a single one of them who treated me in bad faith, the way JTEM and you have done.
>
> That's more than the number I have "complained" about, as you
> amorally put it.
>

You have 25 people you've never complained about - wonderful! You must consider yourself blessed, but of course you do.

>

> > If I were more sadistic, I would question your qualifications, as you often do with others, but I shall refrain.
>
> "often" = of four others in the last six months, and with two of
> those just once. You've seen two of those cases right on this thread
> [well, actually, the aftermath of one of them, in the case of Deden.
>
> Never before.
>
> If you are sincere, you are a shockingly superficial person.

I don't doubt your sincerity, unless you're probing suspected "dangerous possible trolls" with loaded questions. Your self-regard is legendary.

>
>
> HAND.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> > nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > > There is no point in getting hung up on semantics. If someone
> > > persists in informally referring to disposal through a narrow
> > > opening and letting fall to a cave floor far below as "burial,"
> > > I'd humor them for the sake of discussing something more important.
> >
> > Oh, that is the opposite of correct...

> Enough the opposite to spark a flame war? Hardly, judging from
> what comes next, except for a few trigger-happy people.

In academic terms? More so than most points of
disagreement. Like I said, prepared burials, as
opposed to mere disposal of the dead, is the
earliest sign of "Symbolic Thought." It's a hyper
major important plateau in human development, a
significant step in evolution.

> > This is excessively important. Prepared burials are
> > the earliest evidence for "Symbolic Thinking,"

> Smuggling of "Prepared" without it having been said before, noted.

No. Wrong. You were reacting to my suggestion that
we use "Disposed of" as opposed to "Buried" in order
to avoid confusion with prepared burials. You said
we shouldn't get held up on semantics, which is wrong.
Words are for communications. There's no point in
them if you can't or won't communicate what you mean
instead of something else.

> > which
> > is a super-duper mega hyper important development in
> > human evolution, some might even argue that it is
> > the true mark of "Modern" humans as opposed to
> > "Anatomically Modern" humans.

> So those whose bodies are cremated, with ashes scattered
> to the winds at their request, are NOT Modern humans???

See? You are proving how incredibly wrong you are! You
know that what you're saying is shit, it's just that
twats will say shit simply for the joy of being twats...

> You are

Seriously, stop trolling. Stay on topic or beat off.






-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182282429538

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> Just as I suspected. You have no direct evidence they
> lived within 100 meters of the caves.

Finding them in a cave is evidence that they lived
in a cave.

Imagine some trolling twat saying that about a
forest, or any other environment... "Well, you
have no direct evidence that they lived where we
found them!"

It's trolling.




-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182282429538

[Pandora]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 19:57:06 +0100, Pandora <pan...@knoware.nl>
wrote:

>>I repeat:
>>Berger's interpretations of Naledi (deliberate burial, cave dwelling, tool manufacture, savanna running, human ancestors...) are anthropocentric nonsense.
>>I have great admiration for their discoveries & descriptions, but not for their interpretations.
>>
>>The biology is clear: we predicted how Naledi & other australopiths lived in swamp forests & wetlands years ago, google e.g. "bonobo wading" or "aquarboreal TREE 2002".
>
>The biology would be clear if you could have studied the living
>species in its natural habitat. And even then it may take many years
>of continuous observation for a species with a complex behavioral
>repertoire, such as chimpansees, before the biology is clear in all
>its details.
>
>So, here's a thought experiment: what could/would we know of chimps if
>none of the extant species of Pan were alive and was only known from a
>few fossil skeletal individuals (adult and juvenile) from a single
>site (presumably a fluviatile sediment indicating a tropical forest
>paleoenvironment)?
>
>How much of its biology would be clear with regard to its diet,
>locomotion, mating system, sleeping behavior, tool use, etc.?

Not up to the task? Then I'll do the excercise.

Of course you would not proceed without a proper extant phylogenetic
bracket. In this case (Gorilla (Pan, Homo)).

Locomotion: on the basis of hand and wrist morphology similar to that
of Gorilla the inference would be that Pan was also a terrestrial
knucklewalker. Hand, arm, shoulder and foot morphology would justify
the conclusion that Pan would also have been a good, slow, climber,
possibly a little more than Gorilla given the smaller body size of
Pan.
Agile hunting of monkeys in the tree canopy would not be evident.

Diet: jaw morphology and tooth morphology, with thin enamel, and
microwear and isotopic analyses would justify the conclusion that Pan,
like Gorilla, was C3 dominated frugivorous with some fraction of
herbacious vegetation. Meat eating would not be evident, nor the
consumption of arthropods such as termites.

Mating system: given the moderate size dimorphism the conclusion would
be that Pan, like Homo, was monogamous are perhaps serially
polygynous/polyandrous.
The fission/fusion community structure of Pan would not be evident.

Tool use: small brain size and hand morphology similar to Gorilla
would justify the conclusion that Pan was probably not a tool user.
Nut cracking and termite fishing with prepared tools would not be
evident.

Sleeping behavior: Both Gorilla and Homo are primarily ground
sleepers. That would justify the inference that Pan was also a ground
sleeper. Habitual tree nesting would not be evident.

Would we infer that Pan was (semi)aquatic on the basis of its recovery
from a fluviatile sediment? Of course not, because most fossils are
recovered from waterlaid sediments.

In conclusion: significant aspects of the biology of Pan would not be
clear on the basis of skeletal fossils from a single site. The same
would probably apply to Homo naledi.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

I've found no evidence that any ape (ever?) sleeps/slept primarily at night on the ground except large adult (young and older) males; and infants and young apes sleep primarily in tree bowl nests constructed by their mothers, later by themselves. Qualifier: montane cloud forests (and far northern forests) have low thin bushy trees which cannot support much weight, gorillas interlace branches of these as ground nests.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 10:02:24 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> > > nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> > > > There is no point in getting hung up on semantics. If someone
> > > > persists in informally referring to disposal through a narrow
> > > > opening and letting fall to a cave floor far below as "burial,"
> > > > I'd humor them for the sake of discussing something more important.
> > >
> > > Oh, that is the opposite of correct...
>
> > Enough the opposite to spark a flame war? Hardly, judging from
> > what comes next, except for a few trigger-happy people.
>
> In academic terms?

What's "a flame war in academic terms" supposed to look like?

> More so than most points of
> disagreement. Like I said, prepared burials, as
> opposed to mere disposal of the dead, is the
> earliest sign of "Symbolic Thought."

Now you are really loading down the word "prepared"
with a lot of baggage that it can hardly bear in
the eyes of non-specialists.

"earliest" presumably has to do with artifacts that go beyond immediate
utility. Are you sure that prepared burials are the first
such artifacts that we have discovered?

> It's a hyper
> major important plateau in human development, a
> significant step in evolution.
>
> > > This is excessively important. Prepared burials are
> > > the earliest evidence for "Symbolic Thinking,"
>
> > Smuggling of "Prepared" without it having been said before, noted.
>
> No. Wrong. You were reacting to my suggestion that
> we use "Disposed of" as opposed to "Buried" in order
> to avoid confusion with prepared burials.

No, I was reacting to your OP which said diddly-squat about
avoiding confusion with anything more elaborate than throwing a bunch of
dirt on top of a corpse. And I'm inferring even THAT much from
your OP.

Have you ever buried stinking vegetable or animal remains?
It's amazing how an inch or two of dirt will keep the smells
from assailing your nostrils as you stand next to the place of burial.

> You said we shouldn't get held up on semantics,

I said "hung up on", meaning one person wants to use one
word while the other insists on the use of another word
even after learning the meaning the first person attaches to it.

You aren't very good at Symbolic Language, it seems.

> which is wrong. Words are for communications.

And if the ideas are conveyed, who but a prick will insist
on using one word instead of another that conveys them,
as long as it isn't insulting to the speaker?

And who but a troll would find the word "burial" insulting
as long as "prepared" is not hinted at in the sense of
"conveying a symbolic meaning"?

> There's no point in
> them if you can't or won't communicate what you mean
> instead of something else.

You are setting up a straw man here.

And you made an unmarked snip of some words of mine that
were made in order to promote communication between us:

One does not have to be autistic to think of taking
a corpse into a cave and climbing to a narrow chimney
opening as "preparing" for what I'd humoringly call a burial.

So much for your pretense of caring about communication.

> > > which
> > > is a super-duper mega hyper important development in
> > > human evolution, some might even argue that it is
> > > the true mark of "Modern" humans as opposed to
> > > "Anatomically Modern" humans.
>
> > So those whose bodies are cremated, with ashes scattered
> > to the winds at their request, are NOT Modern humans???

> See? You are proving how incredibly wrong you are! You
> know that what you're saying is shit,

I know nothing of the sort. I was simply focused on burials
instead of the more encompassing category of symbolic language.
See my words above which you deleted.

I know that many atheists are doing something symbolic with requests
like that, but you seem to be assuming that EVERYONE who cremates a
corpse is doing something symbolic.

> it's just that
> twats will say shit simply for the joy of being twats...

That's what you are doing right now, hypocrite. ["twats" instead
of "twits" and "beat off" below.]

>>> > As for timidity... I've caught you being timid back in November
>>> > on the thread "The Big Splits In Hominidae" in sci.bio.paleontology.
>
>>> I wasn't the least bit timid.

>>You are being quite timid right here. You deleted the entire
>>narrative of HOW you had Harshman on the ropes and then
>>let him off the hook by abruptly disappearing.

>

> > You are

See restoration above for a bit of the sequel AND the context of
those two words.

> Seriously, stop trolling.

I wasn't trolling; I was reacting to your false claim that
you weren't the least bit timid. And the topic on which you
were timid is on topic for sci.anthropology.paleo, and actually originated
here in s.a.p. In fact, YOU were the one who initiated it here, IIRC.

But you deleted all hint of that.

> Stay on topic or beat off.
>

Said the man in the glass house, throwing stones.

Peter Nyikos

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

U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Pandora]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 07:45:07 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:

>I've found no evidence that any ape (ever?) sleeps/slept primarily at night on the ground
>except large adult (young and older) males; and infants and young apes sleep primarily in
>tree bowl nests constructed by their mothers, later by themselves. Qualifier: montane cloud
>forests (and far northern forests) have low thin bushy trees which cannot support much
>weight, gorillas interlace branches of these as ground nests.

This study found that in eastern lowland gorillas in
Kahuzi-Biega National Park the proportion of ground nests was 87.6 %
(n=3547), though with some differences between age and sex classes.
And the presence of a silverback male has a significant influence.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248400904445

Chimpanzees also exhibit night ground nesting, but to a considerably
lesser degree.
https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/353172

In the light of smaller body size in our hypothetical fossil Pan we
would probably have reassess its sleeping habit as mainly tree
nesting, an inferrence which would also be supported by inclusion of
Pongo in the extant phylogenetic bracket. Groundnesting in Gorilla
would be a derived condition related to large body size.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 10:04:08 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > Just as I suspected. You have no direct evidence they
> > lived within 100 meters of the caves.
>
> Finding them in a cave is evidence that they lived
> in a cave.

Finding a pile of their remains in a cave room with no access except with
ropes or stout vines, and with no artifacts, is evidence that they were thrown there for disposal. Perhaps even alive, as a form of punishment for evil deeds.

In your OP you insisted on the use of "Disposed of" instead of "Buried":

If we say that Naledi "Disposed of" their
dead then suddenly people aren't going to
fight so much...

But you sure are fighting about it below:

> Imagine some trolling twat saying that about a
> forest, or any other environment...

... in a pile, in a place as inaccessible as that cave room? Tell me about
THAT kind of forest remains, you trolling amateur.

> "Well, you
> have no direct evidence that they lived where we
> found them!"


> It's trolling.

You are, but I'm sure Howler Monkey is too ignorant to be able
to show you that--or too hopeful that sci.anthropology.paleo
will turn into a playground for trolls, the way
so many other serious groups have gone.

Did you notice that Howler Monkey did NOT put you on his list of cranks,
like he did Verhaegen, Deden, and Petinovich? And that he never
replied to any of your posts while breathing down my back?

At this point, it looks to me like that was a form of "professional
courtesy" from one troll to another. You seem to be even more of
a crank than Verhaegen.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math.

U. of South Carolina in Columbia -- standard disclaimer --
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[alouatta....@gmail.com]

On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 9:24:26 AM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 10:04:08 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> > nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> >

> Finding a pile of their remains in a cave room with no access except with
> ropes or stout vines, and with no artifacts, is evidence that they were thrown there for disposal. Perhaps even alive, as a form of punishment for evil deeds.
>
> In your OP you insisted on the use of "Disposed of" instead of "Buried":
>
> If we say that Naledi "Disposed of" their
> dead then suddenly people aren't going to
> fight so much...
>
> But you sure are fighting about it below:
>
> > Imagine some trolling twat saying that about a
> > forest, or any other environment...
>
> ... in a pile, in a place as inaccessible as that cave room? Tell me about
> THAT kind of forest remains, you trolling amateur.
>
>
> > "Well, you
> > have no direct evidence that they lived where we
> > found them!"
>
>
> > It's trolling.
>
> You are, but I'm sure Howler Monkey is too ignorant to be able
> to show you that--or too hopeful that sci.anthropology.paleo
> will turn into a playground for trolls, the way
> so many other serious groups have gone.

Of course he's trolling. My ignorance is far short of what you might prefer to believe. In fact, I'm quite certain my "credentials" as you prefer to call them outweigh your own, as I doubt you have any. It's a shame he's here, but there's nothing I or you or anyone else can do about it.

>
> Did you notice that Howler Monkey did NOT put you on his list of cranks,
> like he did Verhaegen, Deden, and Petinovich? And that he never
> replied to any of your posts while breathing down my back?
>

He's not a crank, you obtuse fool. He's a troll, as you have finally come to realize.

> At this point, it looks to me like that was a form of "professional
> courtesy" from one troll to another. You seem to be even more of
> a crank than Verhaegen.
>

And you now also acknowledge that! That's progress, of a sort. "Professional courtesy"? You still wallow in self-absorption, I have no concern for JTEM. He's simply an annoyance over which I have no control.

The essence of trolling is the presentation of things, generally known to the troll as untrue, simply for the purpose of stimulating foolishness on the part of his target. Since what I have been saying here is NOT untrue, it must a peculiar sort of trolling. But you are an inviting target, as you generally respond to any arguments conflicting with you opinions with outrage, condescension and extraneous material relating to your imagined triumphs in the past, or boasts of your precosity.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 1:02:49 PM UTC-5, alouatta....@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 9:24:26 AM UTC-8, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 10:04:08 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> > > nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > >
>
> > Finding a pile of their remains in a cave room with no access except with
> > ropes or stout vines, and with no artifacts, is evidence that they were thrown there for disposal. Perhaps even alive, as a form of punishment for evil deeds.
> >
> > In your OP you insisted on the use of "Disposed of" instead of "Buried":
> >
> > If we say that Naledi "Disposed of" their
> > dead then suddenly people aren't going to
> > fight so much...
> >
> > But you sure are fighting about it below:
> >
> > > Imagine some trolling twat saying that about a
> > > forest, or any other environment...
> >
> > ... in a pile, in a place as inaccessible as that cave room? Tell me about
> > THAT kind of forest remains, you trolling amateur.
> >
> >
> > > "Well, you
> > > have no direct evidence that they lived where we
> > > found them!"
> >
> >
> > > It's trolling.
> >
> > You are, but I'm sure Howler Monkey is too ignorant to be able
> > to show you that--or too hopeful that sci.anthropology.paleo
> > will turn into a playground for trolls, the way
> > so many other serious groups have gone.
>
> Of course he's trolling. My ignorance is far short of what you might prefer to believe.

Of on-topic material? You have shown NO evidence of that, in
any of the posts of yours that I have seen.

> In fact, I'm quite certain my "credentials" as you prefer to call them outweigh your own, as I doubt you have any. It's a shame he's here, but

...at least he posts on topic.

> there's nothing I or you or anyone else can do about it.
>
> >
> > Did you notice that Howler Monkey did NOT put you on his list of cranks,
> > like he did Verhaegen, Deden, and Petinovich? And that he never
> > replied to any of your posts while breathing down my back?
> >
>
> He's not a crank, you obtuse fool. He's a troll, as you have finally come to realize.
>
> > At this point, it looks to me like that was a form of "professional
> > courtesy" from one troll to another. You seem to be even more of
> > a crank than Verhaegen.
> >
>
> And you now also acknowledge that! That's progress, of a sort. "Professional courtesy"? You still wallow in self-absorption,

You are trolling.

> I have no concern for JTEM. He's simply an annoyance over which I have no control.
>
> The essence of trolling is the presentation of things, generally known to the troll as untrue,

...and otherwise making wild stabs in the dark...

simply for the purpose of stimulating foolishness on the part of his target. Since what I have been saying here is NOT untrue,

Trolling.

>it must a peculiar sort of trolling. But you are an inviting target, as you generally respond to any arguments conflicting with you opinions with outrage,

Trolling.

> condescension and extraneous material relating to your imagined triumphs in the past, or boasts of your precosity.

I'm done with feeding you here, troll. If you want to go on trolling me, try
switching over to the thread to which I did the following post:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.anthropology.paleo/OPTXjEaCxks/bA3nudzSFgAJ
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2019 10:01:10 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <35da70e4-3b6f-472d...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: What do you think about my theory of the origins of bipedality?

But don't expect a reply from me in January. Maybe groundhog day
will be a good time to show your shadow to you.


Peter Nyikos

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 12:11:53 PM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 07:45:07 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
> note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I've found no evidence that any ape (ever?) sleeps/slept primarily at night on the ground
> >except large adult (young and older) males; and infants and young apes sleep primarily in
> >tree bowl nests constructed by their mothers, later by themselves. Qualifier: montane cloud
> >forests (and far northern forests) have low thin bushy trees which cannot support much
> >weight, gorillas interlace branches of these as ground nests.
>
> This study found that in eastern lowland gorillas in
> Kahuzi-Biega National Park the proportion of ground nests was 87.6 %
> (n=3547),

Infant & young gorillas sleep in trees normally. Were drones used in counting arboreal nests?

3% amongst chimps in predator-free area.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 12:11:53 PM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:

Here is an excerpt from a post on a thread on which you did
not participate, in reply to a post by Deden:

Up to 3.5 ma there were many species
of large omnivore ranging on the ground in
African tropical forests. Their presence made it
very different, especially at night. That's why
chimps (and all other primates) slept high up in
the trees at night. There was no conceiveable
way that a population of primates would
attempt to sleep on the ground. Nor would
they stay on the ground for other than a quick
visit during the day. The presence of those
large omnivores (as well as even larger
herbivores) is one very obvious reason why
your evolutionary scenario could not possibly
work.

--https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.anthropology.paleo/OPTXjEaCxks/TZel7GfKCQAJ
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2018 16:06:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <8b357843-7759-45d4...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: What do you think about my theory of the origins of bipedality?

From: yelw...@gmail.com

The url I'm using takes you to a page where you see every post to that thread.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math.

U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 12:11:53 PM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 07:45:07 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
> note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I've found no evidence that any ape (ever?) sleeps/slept primarily at night on the ground
> >except large adult (young and older) males; and infants and young apes sleep primarily in
> >tree bowl nests constructed by their mothers, later by themselves. Qualifier: montane cloud
> >forests (and far northern forests) have low thin bushy trees which cannot support much
> >weight, gorillas interlace branches of these as ground nests.
>
> This study found that in eastern lowland gorillas in
> Kahuzi-Biega National Park the proportion of ground nests was 87.6 %
> (n=3547), though with some differences between age and sex classes.

Kahuzi-Biega National Park
A vast area of primary tropical forest dominated by two spectacular extinct volcanoes, Kahuzi and Biega, the park has a diverse and abundant fauna. One of the last groups of eastern lowland (graueri) gorillas (consisting of only some 250 individuals) lives at between 2,100 and 2,400 m above sea-level.

Who would call that elevation "lowlands"?

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> Now you are really loading down the word "prepared"

So you're hanging yourself up on semantics even as
you pretend to believe that nobody should get hung
up on semantics... Check.

It's called "Trolling."

Say "Disposed of" and there's no confusion.







-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/157071024343

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 3:55:38 PM UTC-5, DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:
> On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 12:11:53 PM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:
> > On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 07:45:07 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka
> > note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >I've found no evidence that any ape (ever?) sleeps/slept primarily at night on the ground
> > >except large adult (young and older) males; and infants and young apes sleep primarily in
> > >tree bowl nests constructed by their mothers, later by themselves. Qualifier: montane cloud
> > >forests (and far northern forests) have low thin bushy trees which cannot support much
> > >weight, gorillas interlace branches of these as ground nests.
> >
> > This study found that in eastern lowland gorillas in
> > Kahuzi-Biega National Park the proportion of ground nests was 87.6 %
> > (n=3547), though with some differences between age and sex classes.
>
>
> Kahuzi-Biega National Park
> A vast area of primary tropical forest dominated by two spectacular extinct volcanoes, Kahuzi and Biega, the park has a diverse and abundant fauna. One of the last groups of eastern lowland (graueri) gorillas (consisting of only some 250 individuals) lives at between 2,100 and 2,400 m above sea-level.
>
> Who would call that elevation "lowlands"?
>

"The following are lists of mountains in New Zealand ordered by .... These are all the mountains over 2,400 m with a topographic prominence (drop) of at least .."

Mountainous New Zealand is "lowlands"? Better tell Sir Edmond Hillary!

[Pandora]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 12:55:36 -0800 (PST), "DD'eDeN aka

note/nickname/alas_my_loves" <daud....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> >I've found no evidence that any ape (ever?) sleeps/slept primarily at night on the ground
>> >except large adult (young and older) males; and infants and young apes sleep primarily in
>> >tree bowl nests constructed by their mothers, later by themselves. Qualifier: montane cloud
>> >forests (and far northern forests) have low thin bushy trees which cannot support much
>> >weight, gorillas interlace branches of these as ground nests.
>>
>> This study found that in eastern lowland gorillas in
>> Kahuzi-Biega National Park the proportion of ground nests was 87.6 %
>> (n=3547), though with some differences between age and sex classes.
>
>
>Kahuzi-Biega National Park
>A vast area of primary tropical forest dominated by two spectacular extinct volcanoes, Kahuzi
>and Biega, the park has a diverse and abundant fauna. One of the last groups of eastern lowland
>(graueri) gorillas (consisting of only some 250 individuals) lives at between 2,100 and 2,400 m above sea-level.
>
>Who would call that elevation "lowlands"?

"lowland" refers here to the common name, Eastern Lowland Gorilla, of
the subspecies Gorilla beringei graueri Matschie, 1914, not the
habitat of this particular population. This subspecies occurs at
600-2900 m above sea level in dense mature and secondary lowland,
submontane, and montane forest, whereas the other subspecies, G. b.
beringei Matschie, 1903, the Mountain Gorilla, occurs at elevations
1400-3800 m asl.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

Correct. This remnant population does not represent typical lowland gorillas, it is a highland variety that behaves like other montane gorillas. The trees at highland elevation are not the typical Giants of the typical tropical rainforest.
That should be noted.

[Pandora]

Today there are still large herbivores and omnivores roaming the
forest floor in Africa, such as Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis),
Forest Buffalo (Syncerus nanus), Forest Hog (Hylochoerus
meinertzhageni), and yet chimps and gorillas come to the ground.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

Yes and antelope in tiny to large sizes. Bears before they went extinct.

As I said, apes tend to live near swamps and murky water, while Pygmies live near crystalline streams at slightly higher elevation. This is affected by seasonal wet/dry microclimate. Being nomadic, rather than stuck in the muck, Pygmies move their camps higher. Orangutans at Suaq Swamp also move to higher elevation then. Probably mountain gorillas did the same, but found higher basins favorable to year-round living, so never returned to the low swamps.

I guess apes never make ground nests in the long rainy season unless on a hillside.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Saturday, January 26, 2019 at 10:04:18 AM UTC-5, Pandora wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 12:25:26 -0800 (PST), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> > Pandora wrote:

Presumably these do not pose the kind of threat
as bears did before they became extinct in Africa.
If they were as frequently carnivorous as grizzlies, there
was ample reason to fear them.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 4:04:21 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money ripped one line out of context:

> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > Now you are really loading down the word "prepared"
>
> So you're hanging yourself up on semantics

No, I am not. You are trying to start the very sort of flamewar
that you predicted in your OP, by ripping one line
out of the long post to which you are replying.

You are so happy with the prospect of a flamewar that you didn't
even quote the rest of my sentence. Nor did you leave in anything
YOU had said about "prepared burial". Here is the one line in a
bigger context:

++++++++++++++++++++++ first repost of snipped material ++++++++++++

> Like I said, prepared burials, as
> opposed to mere disposal of the dead, is the
> earliest sign of "Symbolic Thought."

Now you are really loading down the word "prepared"

with a lot of baggage that it can hardly bear in
the eyes of non-specialists.

"earliest" presumably has to do with artifacts that go beyond immediate
utility. Are you sure that prepared burials are the first
such artifacts that we have discovered?

+++++++++++++++++++++ end of first repost+++++++++++++++++++++++

You are running away from the question at the end of the repost,
presumably because you haven't the foggiest idea as to WHICH
alternative to be "sure of".

I'm reminded of a little exchange

> even as
> you pretend to believe that nobody should get hung
> up on semantics...

There is no such pretense: I was very careful to explain what
I meant by "hung up":

___________________________ repost of tiny bit of context_______________

I said "hung up on", meaning one person wants to use one
word while the other insists on the use of another word
even after learning the meaning the first person attaches to it.

=================== end of repost ==============================

I kept trying to find out what you meant by "prepared burial"
using various questions and comments, but you have evidently
decided to make up the rules (about what YOU want it to mean)
as you go along.


>Check.

In your irresponsible mind.


> It's called "Trolling."

What you are doing is indeed called that. And you've succeeded in
inciting me to "feed the troll."

> Say "Disposed of" and there's no confusion.

Say "burial," amend it to "prepared burial" after the fact
while LYING about what I had been responding to, and you are cultivating
confusion. Here was how you lied:

______________________ begin third repost ________________________

> > Smuggling of "Prepared" without it having been said before, noted.
>
> No. Wrong. You were reacting to my suggestion that
> we use "Disposed of" as opposed to "Buried" in order
> to avoid confusion with prepared burials.

No, I was reacting to your OP which said diddly-squat about
avoiding confusion with anything more elaborate than throwing a bunch of
dirt on top of a corpse. And I'm inferring even THAT much from
your OP.

____________________ end of third repost --------------------

Even your "No. Wrong." qualified as a lie. You proceeded
to embellish it, as seen above.


You are afraid of the truth about yourself. And that is just
about the worst form of cowardice there is.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math.

Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:


> No, I am not. You are

Speaking of "Trying," why don't you "Try" to stick to
the subject. You can even "Try" to read the initial
post, if you're having trouble keeping track.




-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182383713206

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Monday, January 28, 2019 at 9:54:13 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
>
> > No, I am not. You are
>
> Speaking of "Trying," why don't you "Try" to stick to
> the subject.

Here, you are behaving like a clone of John Harshman. Whenever
I have him nailed on some act of dishonesty, hypocrisy, cowardice
etc. he acts as though on topic discussion were all he is
interested in. But you've made quite a number of personal
attacks on me, far more aggressive than the following:

> You can even "Try" to read the initial
> post, if you're having trouble keeping track.

I answered it in full, twit. [Note the spelling -- you wrote
a much more derogatory insult of me with a similar spelling,
and far less justification. See my parting line in my PS.]


There is one respect in which Harshman has it all over you:
he'll pretend to be even MORE interested in on-topic discussion
when I've got the goods on his loyal comrades Erik Simpson
and "Oxyaena".

You, on the other hand, are too much of a loose cannon
to have any loyal comrades -- at least, I haven't
seen hide nor hair of any -- or even people with whom
you have the kind of rapport that I have with Mario Petrinovic.


Peter Nyikos

PS you still owe me a reply to a solidly on-topic rebuttal
that I did to you on January 25.

It was a stinging rebuttal to your inane post which began:

Finding them in a cave is evidence that they lived in a cave.

That was the only sane sentence of yours in that post, yet I dealt
with it decisively, as with all the other lines. This was where
you used the word "twat", by the way.

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> Here, you are behaving like

Stick to the subject.





-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/172228630558

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Tuesday, January 29, 2019 at 6:46:40 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money but not in behaving like an adult wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > Here, you are behaving like
>
> Stick to the subject.

That's something you aren't doing. You still owe me a response to
a solidly on-topic reply that I did to you on January 25.

It was a stinging rebuttal to your inane post which began:

Finding them in a cave is evidence that they lived in a cave.

That was the only sane sentence of yours in that post, yet I dealt
with it decisively, as with all the other lines. This was where

you used the word "twat", by the way, you insufferable twit.


Peter Nyikos

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 5:01:15 PM UTC-5, DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 4:51:06 PM UTC-5, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 8:13:02 AM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > Op maandag 21 januari 2019 23:46:32 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:
> > >
> > > ...
> > >
> > > > MV notes the long leg parallel in Homo and wading birds but ignores the long toes not in Homo but rather in Pan which he then claims are aquarboreal though Pan has short legs. Pure cherry-picking.
> > >
> > > DD, don't be ridiculous.
> > > Get informed before writing nonsense.
> >
> > Like [some] penguins being aquaboreal? With those flippers,
> > how could they climb trees?
> >
> > [Deden:]
> > Thanks for clarifying. Littoral & aquarboreal as specifically
> > applied to Hominoids - Homo.
> > [MV:]
> > Not necessarily: see penguins & herons.
> >
> > Herons generally fly, not climb, to perch on trees, in my experience.
> >
> > > See what I wrote on this in
> > > Nutr.Health.9:165-191, 1993
> > > "Aquatic versus savanna:
> > > comparative and paleo-environmental evidence"
> > >
> > > It's not difficult:
> > >
> > > Pan
> > > - leg length +-as in most primates
> > > - prenatal: humanlike feet flat (but narrow calcaneus)
> > > - arm-hand-finger lengthening after H/P split
> >
> > - "reversion" to feet with hallux partly opposable post-natal.
> >
> > - "reversion" to large canines, especially in males
> >
> > - "reversion" to shape of tooth row being very far from a V
> >
> > - "reversion" to cranial capacity well below that of Australopithecines
> >
> > AFAIK the only thing going for chimps descending from A. or P.
> > is the dearth of fossils. But that can be attibuted to the difficulty
> > of finding fossils in typical chimp habitats. One doesn't just start
> > turning over shovelfuls of dirt in hopes of finding fossils after
> > hitting bedrock.
> >
> > >
> > > Homo
> > > - leg lengthening esp. in sapiens (tibia)
> > > - flat feet, probably already early-hominid
> > > - toe shortening (shorter forefoot & longer hindfoot): archaic Homo?
> > > - hand primitive, but broader
> > > - thumb, index & 3 fingers +-independent: archaic Homo?
> > >
> > > This perfectly fits our view (based also on other data):
> > > 1) most Mio-Plio-early-Pleistocene hominoids & hominids (incl.Gorilla-Pan-australopiths-most"habilis"): aquarboreal, vertical,
> >
> > Where's the aqua in habilis?
> >
> > > 2) early-Pleistocene archaic Homo (erectus cs): littoral,
> >
> > Huh? Where's the beach near "Peking Man"? or any other erectus,
> > for that matter?
> >
> > > 3) late-Pleistocene sapiens: wading->walking.
> >
> > Come off it: walking was a well established characteristic
> > in the early Pleistocene.
> >
> > >
> > > Not diffucult, but you have to know the facts & use your brain a bit (comparative anatomy).
> >
> > I'm skeptical about your brain comparing favorably with those of researchers
> > closer to mainstream opinions about human evolution. Thinking outside
> > the box is great, but your opinions have to be well founded.
> >
> > Are you a professional anthropologist, or an amateur? What are your
> > scientific/mathematical credentials?
> >
> > Are you affiliated with any university? If so, what do your
> > colleagues think of your ideas?
> >
> > Possibly relevant: Deden called himself a "dedicated research biologist"
> > just the other day in sci.bio.paleontology, but it soon transpired that
> > he was an amateur,
>
> Well, I guess that ends the trust. Bye Peter.

You and I never warmed to each other the way Mario Petrinovic and I
did, so I'm not sure what you mean by "the trust."


Speaking of trust, how far would you trust someone who calls himself
a "dedicated research biologist" -- and an extremely busy one at that --
and only describes what he means by that when questioned?

...and whose description does not match the term "biologist" as
generally understood? in a forum which often deals with anthropology
from a classically biological perspective?


>
>
> the way he tried to bill all kinds of interests
> > as biological:
> >
> > My interest in Paleo-etymology (word-prehistory) is just
> > biological communication.
> >
> > My interest in architecture & spatial geometry just extensions
> > of body covering, etc.
> >
> > Buckminster Fuller claimed that specialization results in obsolescence
> > and extinction, I agree.
> >
> > Seen many buggy-whip makers lately?
> >
> > -- https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/sdGjUKuSxZM/1epzArs9FAAJ
> > Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 17:40:57 -0800 (PST)
> >
> >
> > By the way: are you going to respond to Pandora's long 22 Jan critique
> > of your long reply to me on 21 Jan? I'm not familiar enough with
> > the relevant data to disagree with her assessment. Are you?
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

> > U. of South Carolina in Columbia

> > http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

I was told by "Howler Monkey" that Marc Verhaegen was an M.D.
Since HM is a troll of the variety Gloating Gargoyle,
I don't trust what he said about Verhaegen
and I wouldn't trust anything he would say about
you. [FWIW, he said both of you are "cranks".]

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

Subject. Stick. You.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Saturday, January 19, 2019 at 12:45:40 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> Pandora wrote:
>
> > Oh well, in that case, fuck you very much.
>
> Your Uncle dad & Aunt mom raised you wrong.

Says someone who used the word "twat" to suggest that
anyone who disagreed that the Naledi *lived* *in* caves was one.


> No wonder you squat on fallacious arguments!

Said the twit, throwing stones from his glass house.

You haven't shown the backbone/aptitude to reply to my
thorough rebuttal to that fallacious post of yours. Here is a
documentation of that rebuttal:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.anthropology.paleo/Nc49-LB4VnY/8KeJlNvQFgAJ
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2019 09:24:26 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <085930d4-8f82-4833...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Naledi: Dome Huts and something else

>
> -- --
>
> http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182117037768

Off topic-- no surprise there.

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

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> Says someone who

Topic. Try to follow along with & post on the
topic. Try.






-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182418527251

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Wednesday, January 30, 2019 at 1:25:38 PM UTC-5, JTEM is lucky in love AND money wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > Says someone who
>
> Topic. Try to follow along with & post on the
> topic. Try.

"Do as I say, not as I do."

Just like Harshman.

[JTEM is lucky in love AND money]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> "Do

Doo wah diddy diddy... and you're still not on
topic.





-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/182483876943