Stone throwing, tool making, clothing and monuments
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
to virtually any potential carnivorous threat early hominids would face on land. To me,
it's clear that early hominids in the form of even gracile a'piths used these to survive
in those open areas where grazing animals were predated by lions and other large felines
that stalked the open savanna.
The interesting thing in all this is how, merely by proximity, these simple hand sized
stones became early tools. First we all know about stone being used to break open bones to
get at the marrow that. Now how did an ape, with a brain no larger than a chimp, go about
making the connection of breaking bones with stones? He didn't travel any great distance
to get a hand sized stone to break open the bones. The answer is simple and right in front
of you; they used the stones that they threw in the first place in order to take
possession of the carcass. Quite elementary.
As far as making tools from stones. It is my contention that sharp tools were a byproduct
of an even more basic need. The need to have stones that would be of the proper size to
throw. In order to fill this need some ape would eventually begin the practice of through
over sized stones to find handy sized stones. Eventually to would had been noticed that
discarded stones occasionally broke against an outcropping or other stone and made for a
good-sized projectile. The light went on and then began the practice of throwing over
sized stones against others in order to make good-sized objects.
Every so often a descent-sized stone would be made but it would cut threw their little
hands, cause a wound, and would be discarded. Eventually after many cuts some bright
a'pith figured out that these bad stones that were good for cutting flesh of bones. Most
likely one of these stones would have been in close proximity of a carcass. For instance a
kill on top of one of the areas that they made handy stones out of larger stones. Then as
the ape attempted to break open a bone. It grabbed a sharp stone and instead of breaking
open the bone it's aimed missed and it sliced a tasty piece of meat off the bone. Ahhhhhh
the early food network!!!!!! Would have been nice with a Chianti and some fava beans fuh
fuh fuh fuh fuh. With all this, said I have little doubt that, on re-examination, that
many of the vast collection an early man made "tool" of pristine condition was merely
rejected stones that were too sharp to handle for throwing.
As or ancestors roamed far and wide it found its range was restricted to areas rich in
stones. A smart a'pith wouldn't dare go into an area with predators without knowing that a
stone was always handy. I doubt that carrying stones even crossed their minds until one
day one or more stones at a kill became wrapped up in such a way that the combination of
hide and stone formed, quite accidentally, the first sling. Eventually one of our bright
little ancestors used this combination and used it to carry precious objects… throwing
stones. Eventually female chimps used this technique to carry a slightly lager object.
Their infants and it was eventually noted that these slings kept the infants warm. They
kept the infants not only close to the mothers bosom but also wrapped in these slings the
first article of clothes were those worn by infants.
Our little a'pith ancestors probably like many of us were compulsive in gathering items
that they found useful. Perhaps many gathered stones for throwing or stones that they made
for throwing? All this weight couldn't be easily carried and sometime it would take an
inordinate amount to time to find a source of stones. No doubt, accidentally, our little
friends made piles of these orbs. Some small, some large. These piles of rocks were most
likely made as he stood or crouched in one place and just dropped them in front of him in
a haphazard fashion. As chance would have it, even at a foot or so in height they would
stand out on the plain. Eventually one bright little fellow realized that if he piled up
his cache of stone, he would be able to find them far away. Perhaps afterwards an a'pith
made the leap of the imagination to pile stones anywhere he found an object of interest. A
pool of water, a source of tubers or another source of handy stones. Yes the first
monuments were throwing stones.
All this you see came from stonethrowing. I'm sorry that some of you never thought of this
before. It is plain to see that stone throwing created us and what we are today.
Marc Verhaegen
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:405657F3...@earthlink.net...
> Throwing a dense object at high velocity is obviously a dangerous if not
deadly projectile to virtually any potential carnivorous threat early
hominids would face on land. To me, it's clear that early hominids in the
form of even gracile a'piths used these to survive in those open areas where
grazing animals were predated by lions and other large felines that stalked
the open savanna.
You still believe in fairy tales? My dear Ed Johnson, there's no evidence
whatsoever that human ancestors ever lived in open savanna. Some hominid
populations might have lived there along the water courses, but they did not
venture into dry open savanna. Humans are completely different from savanna
inhabitants. Our thermo-insulative subcutaneous fat layers are never seen in
savanna mammals. We have a water-& sodium-wasting cooling system of abundant
sweat glands, totally unfit for a dry environment. Our maximal urine
concentration is much lower than in savanna-dwelling mammals. We need more
water than other primates, have to drink more often than savanna
inhabitants, yet we cannot drink large quantities at a time.
Marc Verhaegen
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Jim McGinn
> to virtually any potential carnivorous threat early hominids would face on land. To me,
> it's clear that early hominids in the form of even gracile a'piths used these to survive
> in those open areas where grazing animals were predated by lions and other large felines
> that stalked the open savanna.
You obviously haven't thought this through. Humans
are pretty good with projectiles. And if us humans
take the time to fashion them just so we can even be
deadly with projectiles. Humans can't do much damage
with rocks and sticks. And our earliest chimpanzee-
like ancestors surely could not do any damage at all
against larger predators. The supposition that our
chimpanzee-like ancestors would have ventured out into
treeless habitat with rocks and sticks in hand is
equally as ridiculous as them wading or swimming in
crocodile invested waters. I mean, get real. It's
not like this is hard to figure out.
>
> The interesting thing in all this is how, merely by proximity, these simple hand sized
> stones became early tools. First we all know about stone being used to break open bones to
> get at the marrow that. Now how did an ape, with a brain no larger than a chimp, go about
> making the connection of breaking bones with stones? He didn't travel any great distance
> to get a hand sized stone to break open the bones. The answer is simple and right in front
> of you; they used the stones that they threw in the first place in order to take
> possession of the carcass. Quite elementary.
Quite dimwitted.
>
> As far as making tools from stones. It is my contention that sharp tools were a byproduct
> of an even more basic need. The need to have stones that would be of the proper size to
> throw. In order to fill this need some ape would eventually begin the practice of through
> over sized stones to find handy sized stones. Eventually to would had been noticed that
> discarded stones occasionally broke against an outcropping or other stone and made for a
> good-sized projectile. The light went on and then began the practice of throwing over
> sized stones against others in order to make good-sized objects.
>
> Every so often a descent-sized stone would be made but it would cut threw their little
> hands, cause a wound, and would be discarded. Eventually after many cuts some bright
> a'pith figured out that these bad stones that were good for cutting flesh of bones. Most
> likely one of these stones would have been in close proximity of a carcass. For instance a
> kill on top of one of the areas that they made handy stones out of larger stones. Then as
> the ape attempted to break open a bone. It grabbed a sharp stone and instead of breaking
> open the bone it's aimed missed and it sliced a tasty piece of meat off the bone. Ahhhhhh
> the early food network!!!!!! Would have been nice with a Chianti and some fava beans fuh
> fuh fuh fuh fuh. With all this, said I have little doubt that, on re-examination, that
> many of the vast collection an early man made "tool" of pristine condition was merely
> rejected stones that were too sharp to handle for throwing.
Overlooking the nonsense about apes suddenly
transitioning into being primarily carnivorous, you
make some good points about rock throwing being a
precursor to more sophisticated tool usage (not that
these points haven't been made before by others).
<snip>
> All this you see came from stonethrowing. I'm sorry that some of you never thought of this
> before. It is plain to see that stone throwing created us and what we are today.
Pull your head out of your ass. Stonethrowing, in
and of itself, couldn't possibly explain the social
complexity of humans. And don't pretend that this
isn't as obvious to you as it is to everybody else.
Jim
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
As I stated in another post. I said that our ancestors needed also to have a permanent
source of water in their territory. Open plains and flowing water are not necessarily
mutually exclusive. As for the fairytale comment. Keep your grade school insults to
yourself and your kind. ahem
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
>
> EdJohns...@earthlink.net wrote in message news:<405657F3...@earthlink.net>...
> > Throwing a dense object at high velocity is obviously a dangerous if not deadly projectile
> > to virtually any potential carnivorous threat early hominids would face on land. To me,
> > it's clear that early hominids in the form of even gracile a'piths used these to survive
> > in those open areas where grazing animals were predated by lions and other large felines
> > that stalked the open savanna.
>
> You obviously haven't thought this through. Humans
> are pretty good with projectiles. And if us humans
> take the time to fashion them just so we can even be
> deadly with projectiles. Humans can't do much damage
> with rocks and sticks. And our earliest chimpanzee-
> like ancestors surely could not do any damage at all
> against larger predators. The supposition that our
> chimpanzee-like ancestors would have ventured out into
> treeless habitat with rocks and sticks in hand is
> equally as ridiculous as them wading or swimming in
> crocodile invested waters. I mean, get real. It's
> not like this is hard to figure out.
>
Please this constant reference to sticks has nothing to do with what I am saying. A stick
lacks the density or hardness required to concentrate energy into a very small area the
way a throw rock does. In addition, a sufficiently heavy stick or log cannot be handed
properly as a thrown device. Even if a wooden club could be fashioned and employed. It's
use as a short range weapon would be laughable against virtually any predator. Also, I
made no pretense to say that a'piths fashioned wooden clubs. In fact I think the opposite
is true. That would be too sophisticated a device for our stone throwing friends. I am
talking strictly about the stone as a projectile weapon.
Another thing, you paint a completely false picture. Venture into the treeless habitat?
Second point first, the savanna is not necessarily treeless and some good points can be
made as to why at least some trees would be almost a necessity in their habitat. Such as
the need for shade during the midday. In addition, the requirement for a permanent water
source also makes it likely that trees would exist. My point is that in general they would
had existed in a habitat that did not lend itself to ambush. The open savanna fits this
bill well. It just isn't the Hollywood open savanna that you are thinking about. I'm
talking about the real thing. As for the first point, using a term like venture is really
using the wrong type of thought process. They didn't venture. That was the habitat that
they existed in. They evolved there, that was their home. venture??? please.
> >
> > The interesting thing in all this is how, merely by proximity, these simple hand sized
> > stones became early tools. First we all know about stone being used to break open bones to
> > get at the marrow that. Now how did an ape, with a brain no larger than a chimp, go about
> > making the connection of breaking bones with stones? He didn't travel any great distance
> > to get a hand sized stone to break open the bones. The answer is simple and right in front
> > of you; they used the stones that they threw in the first place in order to take
> > possession of the carcass. Quite elementary.
>
> Quite dimwitted.
That is rather childish of you. Instead of giving a reason you give an insult. Sad.
>
> >
> > As far as making tools from stones. It is my contention that sharp tools were a byproduct
> > of an even more basic need. The need to have stones that would be of the proper size to
> > throw. In order to fill this need some ape would eventually begin the practice of through
> > over sized stones to find handy sized stones. Eventually to would had been noticed that
> > discarded stones occasionally broke against an outcropping or other stone and made for a
> > good-sized projectile. The light went on and then began the practice of throwing over
> > sized stones against others in order to make good-sized objects.
> >
> > Every so often a descent-sized stone would be made but it would cut threw their little
> > hands, cause a wound, and would be discarded. Eventually after many cuts some bright
> > a'pith figured out that these bad stones that were good for cutting flesh of bones. Most
> > likely one of these stones would have been in close proximity of a carcass. For instance a
> > kill on top of one of the areas that they made handy stones out of larger stones. Then as
> > the ape attempted to break open a bone. It grabbed a sharp stone and instead of breaking
> > open the bone it's aimed missed and it sliced a tasty piece of meat off the bone. Ahhhhhh
> > the early food network!!!!!! Would have been nice with a Chianti and some fava beans fuh
> > fuh fuh fuh fuh. With all this, said I have little doubt that, on re-examination, that
> > many of the vast collection an early man made "tool" of pristine condition was merely
> > rejected stones that were too sharp to handle for throwing.
>
> Overlooking the nonsense about apes suddenly
> transitioning into being primarily carnivorous, you
> make some good points about rock throwing being a
> precursor to more sophisticated tool usage (not that
> these points haven't been made before by others).
Gracile a'piths did not have the large digestive tracts of the robusts. IOW's they were
not herbivore. they were omnivores that depended of kills for their protein requirements.
>
> <snip>
>
> > All this you see came from stonethrowing. I'm sorry that some of you never thought of this
> > before. It is plain to see that stone throwing created us and what we are today.
>
> Pull your head out of your ass. Stonethrowing, in
> and of itself, couldn't possibly explain the social
> complexity of humans. And don't pretend that this
> isn't as obvious to you as it is to everybody else.
>
> Jim
Once again insults instead of reasoning. All I did was to point out the obvious importance
ands centrality of stone throwing in the development of man. You insult instead of reason.
I just glad that i'm not within throwing distance of you. If I was you would probably
throw a rock.
;^)
Rich Travsky
> [...]
> Please this constant reference to sticks has nothing to do with what I am saying. A stick
> lacks the density or hardness required to concentrate energy into a very small area the
> way a throw rock does. In addition, a sufficiently heavy stick or log cannot be handed
> properly as a thrown device. Even if a wooden club could be fashioned and employed. It's
> use as a short range weapon would be laughable against virtually any predator. Also, I
> made no pretense to say that a'piths fashioned wooden clubs. In fact I think the opposite
> is true. That would be too sophisticated a device for our stone throwing friends. I am
> talking strictly about the stone as a projectile weapon.
Cited in Kortlandt's 1980 paper "How Might Early Hominids have
Defended Themselves Against Large Predators and Food Competitors"
JHE (1980) 9, 79-112 involving animated leopard dummy:
...the apes used sticks up to 2 m long and 4 cm thick as clubs to attack the same
dummy. They inflicted heavy blows with hitting speeds up to at least 70 km/h,
probably much higher, possibly even 150 km/h, i.e. sufficient to cause serious injury.
...
> [...]
L Solomon
Not exactly what I had in mind. A device such as a hand sized stone that can be used in
its natural state is a better candidate for the first weapon used against predators and
competitors alike. With the in mind, I believe that the thrown stone is is a much more
pivotal technique in man's evolution. It can be used repeatedly at relatively great
distance and its unique character would be at the very least be perplexing and frightening
to virtually animal save a rhino or elephant or other gigantic herbivore of that time. A
club on the other hand is more of a last option weapon since it can only be used at close
quarters. The thrown stone is what allowed man to exist in an open savanna with permanent
water and some sparse shade trees.
In any case, thanks for the civil reply. Much appreciated.
Jim McGinn
Marc Verhaegen
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:405E16A4...@earthlink.net...
> As I stated in another post. I said that our ancestors needed also to have
a permanent source of water in their territory. Open plains and flowing
water are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As for the fairytale comment.
Keep your grade school insults to yourself and your kind.
ahem. You miss the point. One must be stupid to believe that human ancestors
(before sapiens) ever lived in open plains. There's not the slightest
evidence for that far-fetched supposition. Humans are completely different
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
Marc Verhaegen wrote:
>
> <EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:405E16A4...@earthlink.net...
>
> > As I stated in another post. I said that our ancestors needed also to have
> a permanent source of water in their territory. Open plains and flowing
> water are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As for the fairytale comment.
> Keep your grade school insults to yourself and your kind.
>
> ahem. You miss the point. One must be stupid to believe that human ancestors
> (before sapiens) ever lived in open plains. There's not the slightest
> evidence for that far-fetched supposition.
Yes that fossil evidence found in savanna conditions is far fetched. Not rain forest nor
semi aquatic.
> Humans are completely different
> from savanna inhabitants. Our thermo-insulative subcutaneous fat layers are
> never seen in savanna mammals. We have a water-& sodium-wasting cooling
> system of abundant sweat glands, totally unfit for a dry environment. Our
> maximal urine concentration is much lower than in savanna-dwelling mammals.
> We need more water than other primates.
We probably need more and are less capable of surviving a severe environment than a'piths.
In any case I said that shade from the noon day sun and a permanent water source were also
a requirement. If you have been to at the western U.S. you would know what kind of
environment I am talking about. A open wide flat plain with little or seasonal rainfall
yet has some sparse trees and most likely a river flowing through it. That is the type of
savanna environment I am talking about. An environment where ambush is less likely. Yet
you persist on saying that I am talking about a waterless, treeless hardpan. Sounds like a
lack of reading comprehension on your part. Not an insult, just an observation.
Nor am I denying that A'piths also used the bush. That is so elementary that is goes
without saying. What I am saying is that the bush was a much more dangerous habitat for
them when compared to a realatively ambush free environment such as savanna. Being forced
to forage in the ambush prone bush was a dangerous and desperate survival technique for
such a small creature. That is so simple to understand.
BTW, you don't do very much for your AAT side with YOUR insults. Now here's a question for
you. What makes you think that an AAT existence made our ancestors such tremendous and
lethal stone throwers. Personally I don't get it.
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
IIRC those were chimpanzees and one could only guess at how much stronger a modern
chimpanzee is than a 60 lb a'pith. I think the idea of a 4 foot tall a'pith wielding a 6
foot long club sounds a little less likely than an a'pith taking a baseball sized stone
and throwing with high velocity at a predator. In any case, point well taken, thanks for
the reply and thanks for informing the group.
firstjois
>>
[snip]
>> BTW, you don't do very much for your AAT side with YOUR insults.
[snip]
As far as I've been able to tell, Marco has never done much of anything at
all for his AAT business. But I've only gone back in the SAP files for
about 5-6 years. Infact even his insults aren't originals, he copies those
from other posters. Boring.
Jois
--
I used to hear this fairly often -- I would bring out some facts and point
out that the AAT proponent's "facts" were actually "false facts", and the
AAT proponent would say it was simply a matter of "interpretation". It's a
shame to see that the level of argument for the AAT hasn't grown at all in
the past decade.
JMoore sbe 012104
Marc Verhaegen
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:405F7AA8...@earthlink.net...
> > > As I stated in another post. I said that our ancestors needed also to
have a permanent source of water in their territory. Open plains and flowing
water are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As for the fairytale comment.
Keep your grade school insults to yourself and your kind.
> > ahem. You miss the point. One must be stupid to believe that human
ancestors (before sapiens) ever lived in open plains. There's not the
slightest evidence for that far-fetched supposition.
> Yes that fossil evidence found in savanna conditions is far fetched.
Twisting your own words? You said: "To me, it's clear that early hominids in
the form of even gracile a'piths used these to survive in those open areas
where grazing animals were predated by lions and other large felines that
stalked the open savanna." That some people still take such nonsense for
granted makes me sick. Early hominids lived in rainforests, gallery forests
etc. "From Sterkfontein, suggestions of greater woodland cover at the time
when Australopithecus was deposited in Member 4, had emerged from studies on
fossil pollen, but these were not compelling. Then Wits team member Marian
Bamford identified fossil vines or lianas of Dichapetalum in the same Member
4: such vines hang from forest trees and would not be expected in open
savannah. The team at Makapansgat found floral and faunal evidence that the
layers containing Australopithecus reflected forest or forest margin
conditions. From Hadar, in Ethiopia, where "Lucy" was found, and from Aramis
in Ethiopia, where Tim White's team found Ardipithecus ramidus, possibly the
oldest hominid ever discovered, well-wooded and even forested conditions
were inferred from the fauna accompanying the hominid fossils. All the
fossil evidence adds up to the small-brained, bipedal hominids of four to
2.5 million years ago having lived in a woodland or forest niche, not
savannah." Tobias http://archive.outthere.co.za/98/dec98/disp1dec.html
Enough said? Snipped the rest of your irrelevancies.
Marc Verhaegen
http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Marc Verhaegen
"firstjois" <firstj...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:6ZOdnUObtpn...@comcast.com...
- is still incapable of giving us 1 argument against AAT that human anestors
once lived at seacoasts,
- is still incapable of telling us why early Homo could not have followed
the Mediterranean & Indian Ocean coasts.
Luckily, there are a lot more intelligent PAs, eg, Phillip Tobias
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm & Chris Stringer: "I have
agreed that we lack plausible models for the origins of bipedalism and have
agreed that wading in water can facilitate bipedal locomotion (as observed
in other normally quadrupedal primates). I have never said that this must
have been the forcing mechanism in hominids, but I do consider it plausible.
As for coastal colonisation, I argued in my Nature News & Views last year
that this was an event in the late Pleistocene that may have facilitated the
spread of modern humans."
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
I'm sorry that I underestimated your understanding of what open savanna means. To a person
of even average experience of the world. They realize that it doesn't mean a vast unending
arid flat landscape of nothing but nothing. I didn't realize that a person with such a
cardboard cutout cartoon worldview would post here. I'm sorry that your understanding of
habitat comes from roadrunner cartoons.
Then again what other sort of person would support something like AAT?
Rick Wagler
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:406220E8...@earthlink.net...
Indeed. Anyone who would like to reliably inform themselves about what
real working scientists are referring to when using the term 'savannah'
would
be well advised to seek out
Bourliere, Francois (ed) (1983) Tropical Savannas Amsterdam : Ecosysterms
of the World 13, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company
especially the article by Jean-Claude Menaut "The Vegetation of African
Savannas" wherein he identifies five different forest types found within the
broader, properly defined savanna ecosystem. Sadly most of these forests
have been destroyed and the relatively treeless nature of the East-African
savannah is a function of human ecocide.
Rick Wagler
Marc Verhaegen
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:406220E8...@earthlink.net...
> Then again what other sort of person would support something like AAT?
What sort of person would not support something like AAT?
- Phillip Tobias http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm
- Chris Stringer: "I have agreed that we lack plausible models for the
origins of bipedalism and have agreed that wading in water can facilitate
bipedal locomotion (as observed in other normally quadrupedal primates). I
have never said that this must have been the forcing mechanism in hominids,
but I do consider it plausible. As for coastal colonisation, I argued in my
Nature News & Views last year that this was an event in the late Pleistocene
that may have facilitated the spread of modern humans."
Marc Verhaegen
http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Marc Verhaegen
"Rick Wagler" <taxi...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:HLu8c.902912$X%5.654499@pd7tw2no...
> ... broader, properly defined savanna ecosystem. Sadly most of these
forests have been destroyed and the relatively treeless nature of the
East-African savannah is a function of human ecocide.
Yes, sad, but:
1) Forgot where the savanna idea came from? Dart (1925): "South Africa, by
providing a vast open country with occasional wooded belts and a relatively
scarcity of water, together with a fierce and bitter mammalian competition,
furnished a laboratory such as was essential to this penultimate phase of
human evolution." - vast open country - scarcity of water - fierce
mamm.competition... :-D
2) Forgot Wheeler's nonsense about human ancestors becoming bipedal to
minimise solar radiation (= no trees)??
Point is: human ancestors didn't evolve diving skills in some "savanna"...
Be a bit realistic instead of wasting your time with talking about throwing
stones at lions & such rubbish.
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
Marc Verhaegen wrote a haha:
>
> <snip>
>
> Point is: human ancestors didn't evolve diving skills in some "savanna"...
> Be a bit realistic instead of wasting your time with talking about throwing
> stones at lions & such rubbish.
Yes oh great one. You're so right. It's much more likely that these diving 60 lb a'piths
scared away 1200 lb crocodiles while diving in turbid water than a klan of a'piths chasing
away a pride of lions by lobbing baseball sized stones at the pride from 200 or more feet
away. In no way over hundreds and thousands of years would these creatures come to
recognize a'piths as stone throwers and more than likely leave a kill just to avoid a
chance at injury by these little buggers. Nope not a chance. In fact I wouldn't be
surprised that all those rounded baseball sized stones founds at ancient kills were really
just ballast that the a'piths carried around with them to improve their diving. Perhaps
they even used these rocks to jam into the jaws of crocs to prevent them from biting down.
The a'piths were on top of the pyramid in the river systems and lakes of Africa. Why
hippos would keel over in fright from the sight of one. The AAT theory is ever so
compelling.
*smirk*
firstjois
Michael Clark
> EdJohns...@earthlink.net wrote:
> >> Marc Verhaegen wrote a haha:
> >>>
> >>> <snip>
> >>>
> >>> Point is: human ancestors didn't evolve diving skills in some
> >>> "savanna"... Be a bit realistic instead of wasting your time with
> >>> talking about throwing stones at lions & such rubbish.
> >>
> >>
> >> *smirk*
Yea, when you put all the doofai in the bit bucket, you miss
out on all these goodies. I'm left with the rain of Jabriol and
the odd newbie suckin' up to Phil D. :-( Say, whatever happened
to Algis' point-by-point rebuttal of Moore's website?
I suppose it aint April yet so we'll just have to wait. (tick-tock)
I am tempted (occasionally) to dump the loon bin out on the table
and watch 'em skitter around. :-)
"Repeating imbecilities doesn't make them true."
--The Macro Man
Philip Deitiker
sednZNUaNg...@comcast.com:
>>> *smirk*
I have nothing really to say except I want to see if some
odd newbie will suck up to me.
--
DNApaleoAnth at Att dot net
Bob Keeter
"Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
Snip. . . .
> the odd newbie suckin' up to Phil D. :-(
I think that the proper USENET term for those newbies might just be
"sock puppets". You know, a "created for the purpose" worshiper?
Only guessing of course, but its been a while since I've identified one
of his cute little alter-egos. ;-)
Regards
bk
firstjois
Heck, I thought he meant Seppo.
Jois
Marc Verhaegen
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> completely fails to give 1 argument against
AAT in message news:4064C63C...@earthlink.net...
AAT situates the seaside episode late Plio- or early Pleistocene when early
Homo followed the Mediterranean & Indian Ocean coasts: Homo fossils or tools
~1.8 Ma have "suddenly" been found in Israel, Algeria, Iran, Kenya, Georgia,
Java... In spite of sea level changes (Ice Ages), Homo (but not
australopith) remains have frequently been found amid shells, corals,
barnacles etc., throughout the Pleistocene, in coasts all over the Old World
(eg, Mojokerto, Terra Amata, Table Bay, Eritrea), even on islands that could
only be reached by sea (Flores 0.8 Ma
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm ).
For a scientific discussion of AAT (pro & contra) see
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
________
Marc Verhaegen
"Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> is still unable to give 1 argument
against AAT in message news:1069n4e...@corp.supernews.com...
At some time after the human/chimp split ~6-4 Ma, human ancestors were
seaside omnivores: collecting coconuts, shellfish, turtles & turtle eggs,
bird eggs, crabs, seaweeds etc. explains many human traits (absent in
chimps) much better than dry savanna scenarios do: brain enlargement (but
olfactory bulb reduction), improved breathing control & diving skills,
varied vocality, handiness & tool use, reduction of climbing, reduction of
fur, more subcutaneous fat, very long legs & straight body build, reduction
of sense of smell, late puberty, high needs of water, iodine, sodium &
poly-unsaturated fatty acids etc. So far, no arguments against this seaside
phase happening late Plio- early Pleistocene have been forwarded.
_________
Marc Verhaegen
Bob Keeter
8-)
Well, as with all of the rest of us, Seppo has his own issues, but I really
don't think that THIS is one of them. There's another couple that I'm
really not all that sure about, but. . . .havent bothered to develop the
"history" to make sure. Anyway, Philip's favorite phrases and sentence
constructions might have changed in the last few months, who knows
what "fingerprints" he leaves these days (matching the bathtub rings of
course!)! 8-)
Regards
bk
Spiznet
> In sci.anthropology.paleo, firstjois created a message ID news:-
>
> >>> *smirk*
>
> I have nothing really to say except I want to see if some
> odd newbie will suck up to me.
Probably not likely.
Philip Deitiker
wrote:
Its rhetoric, I am making *smirk* and Michael Clark's
comment.
BTW, I do think you guys unfairly attack the 'fire ape' guy.
I have seen much more pathetic ideas enter here.
Bob Keeter
"Spiznet" <ma...@spiznet.com> wrote in message
news:cb2e44af.04032...@posting.google.com...
Spiz ole boy, I must most humbly concede that you have captured the gold
medal for profound statements on this day, if not week. . . month. . .
year.. . . . .
;-)
Regards
bk
Rich Travsky
>
> Club, as in a wooden object that was hand tooled to provide maximum benefit to the user.
> Not exactly what I had in mind. A device such as a hand sized stone that can be used in
> its natural state is a better candidate for the first weapon used against predators and
> competitors alike. With the in mind, I believe that the thrown stone is is a much more
> pivotal technique in man's evolution. It can be used repeatedly at relatively great
Used repeatedly? You mean they went out and retrieved it?
> distance and its unique character would be at the very least be perplexing and frightening
> to virtually animal save a rhino or elephant or other gigantic herbivore of that time. A
> club on the other hand is more of a last option weapon since it can only be used at close
> quarters. The thrown stone is what allowed man to exist in an open savanna with permanent
> water and some sparse shade trees.
The chimps in Kortlandt's study did not look for stones; they went for sticks. What does
that tell us?
Rich Travsky
A chimp has more upper body strength than a human despite being smaller and had
no problem using a 2 m stick. Accuracy is less of an issue and the stick is far
more visible to the predator. Makes the wielder appear bigger. (This is, after all,
similar to what one is supposed to do when confronted by dogs or cougars: wave your
arms, yell, etc.)
Algis Kuliukas
> I suppose it aint April yet so we'll just have to wait. (tick-tock)
I said it would take a long time and I set myself a deadline of April
and I met it even though Moore's unwillingness to cite hardly any
references to the AAH claims he made meant that the research to do
this took far longer than I'd anticipated.
It was posted up on the web on April 1st.
In a nutshell...
Moore's web site does not seriously dent any of the major arguments in
favour of a mild form of the AAH in my opinion.
At best it acts as a source of counter-arguments to the idea of a
distinct post-LCA, pre H. sapeiens aquatic phase and many of the more
marginal speculations in Elaine Morgan's work. Moore does make some
good points on predation too which is, in my view, the strongest case
against the AAH.
At worst it appears to be some kind of sad, bitter attempt at a
character assination of Elaine Morgan.
The main thrust of his argument, that the quality of research of AAH
proponents (Morgan, almost always) is poor at best, and is not
trustworthy at worst, does not stand up to close scrutiny. Most of the
claims made about misquotations and/or misrepresentations that could
be verified turned out to be minor errors and sometimes revealed
misrepresentations in Moore's own research. In this regard, the
quality of his research when it came to giving clear and verifiable
sources for the claims he was attributing to AAH proponents was almost
always non existent and, as this was one of his main criticisms of the
AAH, it revealed a rather nauseating double standard. This
hypocritical position is perhaps best illustrated by his use of URL, a
web site called www.aquaticape.org, but dedicated to its ridicule.
Most of his points are in the form 'AAH proponents believe trait x is
explained by aquatic factor y' but almost never are such claims backed
up by references. So, to check them I had to spend hours reading
through the entire AAH literature again and again to see if anyone had
actually said what Moore claimed. Almost always Moore exagaterates the
claim to some absolutist, exclusive argument that was never intended
when, perhaps, they'd used it as *part* of their argument or in a
certain situation. Moore never reports accurately any such moderately
argued point. Quite often the claims are taken from conversations on
internet newsgroups and occasionally I couldn't find anyone who had
said Moore's claims at all at all.
It is probably true that Morgan may, on occasions, have been guilty of
being too enthusiastic and uncritical in endorsing pieces of data
which she thought supported the AAH (such as the salt tears argument)
but Moore is even more gung-ho at finding any tiny error in her work
to discredit it, to blow it up out of all proportion and report it as
some great shock-horror deliberate deception. (On the salt tears
argument, for example, Morgan abandonned her support for it seven
years ago, yet Moore continues to stress this argument as if it were a
major pillar of the AAH, writing over 10,000 words about the salt
argument compared to, say, 2,000 words on major AAH arguments like
hairlessness.)
It could be argued that Moore makes a good case against extreme
versions of the AAH but it is unlikely that many people would support
such views any more today. Moore, then, hardly addresses, let alone
refutes the, far milder, hypothesis that water has acted as an agency
of selection in human evolution more than it has in the evolution of
our great ape cousins.
The fact that aquasceptics continue promote the web site as some great
rebutal ('Magnus opus' even) shows the paucity of the
counter-arguments arguments or reluctance to consider a moderate
version of the hypothesis.
See..
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm
for the full critique.
Algis Kuliukas
firstjois
"Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.04040...@posting.google.com...
: > Say, whatever happened to Algis' point-by-point rebuttal of Moore's
website?
: > I suppose it aint April yet so we'll just have to wait. (tick-tock)
:
: I said it would take a long time and I set myself a deadline of April
: and I met it even though Moore's unwillingness to cite hardly any
: references to the AAH claims he made meant that the research to do
: this took far longer than I'd anticipated.
:
: It was posted up on the web on April 1st.
:
: In a nutshell...
*Nut*shell
Hum.
Jois
Marc Verhaegen
"Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.04040...@posting.google.com...
Nice to have you back, Algis.
> ... Moore's web site does not seriously dent any of the major arguments in
favour of a mild form of the AAH in my opinion. ...
The mild form of AAT (Homo living along coasts late Plio or early Pleisto)
is obvious except to some dry savanna-biased people.
> http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm
Thanks, I'll have a look.
--Marc
Marc Verhaegen
"firstjois" <firstj...@hotmail.com> even snipped
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm in message
news:0pKdnQ-rJpS...@comcast.com...
Jim McGinn
> It was posted up on the web on April 1st.
An appropriate date.
> In a nutshell...
An appropriate analogy.
> Moore's web site does not seriously dent any
> of the major arguments in favour of a mild form
> of the AAH in my opinion.
It's like trying to put a dent in a beachball.
<snip>
> At worst it appears to be some kind of sad, bitter
> attempt at a character assassination of Elaine
> Morgan.
Which is completely unneccessary since Elaine
seems to achieve this all on her own.
> . . . always Moore exagaterates the claim to some
> absolutist, exclusive argument that was never
> intended when, perhaps, they'd used it as *part*
> of their argument or in a certain situation.
It's your own fault for actually making your thinking
clear. You'll noticed that Moore and the other
defenders of conventional vagueness are careful not
to fall into that trap.
> Moore never reports accurately any such moderately
> argued point.
From now on you should include disclaimers in your
arguments to the effect that they are "moderately
argued" and therefore not to be held up to the light
of scientific scrutiny.
Jim
Lorenzo L. Love
[snip]
> It could be argued that Moore makes a good case against extreme
> versions of the AAH but it is unlikely that many people would support
> such views any more today.
Is this anything other then a extreme versions of the Hypothesis of an
Aquatic Human Ancestor?
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove/SFs.jpg
It's a full out delusional psychotic exemplar of net-loonism promoted by
your hero the grand high priest of wet apes. Until you condemn this
nonsense for what it is, you will be lumped into the same cracked pot.
Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove
"One must not assume that an understanding of science is present in
those who borrow its language"
Louis Pasteur
Bob Keeter
"Lorenzo L. Love" <lll...@thegrid.net> wrote in message
news:tkYbc.15600$lt2....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> Algis Kuliukas wrote:
> [snip]
> > It could be argued that Moore makes a good case against extreme
> > versions of the AAH but it is unlikely that many people would support
> > such views any more today.
> [snip]
>
> Is this anything other then a extreme versions of the Hypothesis of an
> Aquatic Human Ancestor?
> http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove/SFs.jpg
> It's a full out delusional psychotic exemplar of net-loonism promoted by
> your hero the grand high priest of wet apes. Until you condemn this
> nonsense for what it is, you will be lumped into the same cracked pot.
>
Yep. That IS the shame of it, when a PERSON so shames an idea that
all those who hold to that believe (whatever it might be), get tarred with
the same brush. The AAx is, in all likelihood, a bunch of hooey, but so
long as everyone espousing it is bound and determined to worship at
the altar of Verhaugen, . . . . . . . . . very few are even willing to try
to
discuss it on a scientific basis. Of course the same could easily be said
about the sociopaths on our side of the fence you know.
Regards
bk
J Moore
Naturally, no one particularly likes having someone go over your work, but
that's the best way for mistakes to be found and corrected. That's why I
have that Carl Sagan quote on my opening page ("Valid criticism does you a
favor."). I only hope that most of your criticisms are more substansive
than complaining about the URL.
We're getting ready for a trip next month, and then another trip soon after
we get back from that, so don't expect any major changes for at least a
couple of months, but I'll be reading it with interest.
JMoore
--
For a scientific critque of the aquaticape theory, go to www.aquaticape.org
Marc Verhaegen
"Lorenzo L. Love" <lll...@thegrid.net> wrote in message
news:tkYbc.15600$lt2....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> Algis Kuliukas wrote: [snip]
> > It could be argued that Moore makes a good case against extreme versions
of the AAH but it is unlikely that many people would support such views any
more today. [snip]
Sigh. Snipping is all these savanna fanatics can...
Here it is again:
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm>
> Is this anything other then a extreme versions of the Hypothesis of an
Aquatic Human Ancestor?
What amazes me is that these savanna people believe the most fantastic &
ridiculous so-called "explanations" for human or hominids traits (eg, bee
brood eating, head banging or eating carnivore livers "explains" thick
bones, eating bone marrow "explains" bigger brains, running under the midday
sun "explains" bipedality, sweating "explains" nakedness, a lot of SC fat
"explains" larger brains, etc.) & dogmatically declare that a seaside
evolution can't be possible... Meanwhile they're unable to give 1 argument
against AAT that human anestors once lived at seacoasts, they can't even
tell why early Homo could not have followed the Mediterranean & Indian Ocean
coasts.
Luckily, a lot of PAs have more open minds than these fanatics, eg, Tobias
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm & Stringer: "I have agreed
that we lack plausible models for the origins of bipedalism and have agreed
that wading in water can facilitate bipedal locomotion (as observed in other
normally quadrupedal primates). I have never said that this must have been
the forcing mechanism in hominids, but I do consider it plausible."
For a serious scientific discussion of AAT (pro & contra) see
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
Marc Verhaegen
http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Marc Verhaegen
"J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:BKZbc.23516$oR5.15527@pd7tw3no...
> For a scientific critque of the aquaticape theory, go to
www.aquaticape.org
Don't be silly. For some blabla on what AAT not is, you mean?? Man, grow up.
Yet found 1 single argument against the hypothesis that early Homo late
Pliocene or early Pleistoce dispersed along the coasts?
For a scientific discussion of AAT (pro & contra) see
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
Marc Verhaegen
http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Algis Kuliukas
Good. I hope you will be as open to at least some of the criticisms as
Elaine has been to yours.
> Naturally, no one particularly likes having someone go over your work, but
> that's the best way for mistakes to be found and corrected.
Exactly and that's why critiques are a big part of the scientific
process.
> That's why I
> have that Carl Sagan quote on my opening page ("Valid criticism does you a
> favor."). I only hope that most of your criticisms are more substansive
> than complaining about the URL.
Indeed they are.
> We're getting ready for a trip next month, and then another trip soon after
> we get back from that, so don't expect any major changes for at least a
> couple of months, but I'll be reading it with interest.
Thanks for responding to my posting so quickly, Jim. I really do think
this debate is in desperate need of some moderate and reasoned debate
on both sides including a willingness to admit fault and compromise.
I hope you see my review of your critique in that light and not just
another round of escalation in some kind of war of words.
Algis Kuliukas
Marc Verhaegen
are stupid & blind. You can as well talk to creationists. These fanatics
state that a seaside evolution can't be possible, but they can't give a
serious argument why early Homo could not have followed the Indian Ocean
coasts when they trekked to Java 1.8 Ma. Unbelievable. And some of them call
themselves scientists...
____________
"Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.04040...@posting.google.com...
J Moore
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.04040...@posting.google.com...
> "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<BKZbc.23516$oR5.15527@pd7tw3no>...
> > Thanks Algis, I'm looking forward to seeing a critique of my site.
>
> Good. I hope you will be as open to at least some of the criticisms as
> Elaine has been to yours.
My god, I would hope we could set our bar a bit higher than that I don't
intend to call you a Joe McCarthy or the like, and I would certainly credit
you with changing my mind on something if you do so. .
Rick Wagler
"Marc Verhaegen" <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message
news:4071a006$0$1957$ba62...@news.skynet.be...
> Algis, you're much too nice. I think you're wasting your time: these guys
> are stupid & blind. You can as well talk to creationists. These fanatics
> state that a seaside evolution can't be possible, but they can't give a
> serious argument why early Homo could not have followed the Indian Ocean
> coasts when they trekked to Java 1.8 Ma. Unbelievable. And some of them
call
> themselves scientists...
>
the Indian Ocean coasts when they trekked to Java 1.8 Ma" ?
What is rejected is your silly assertion that early Homo were
confined to waterside environments rather than ranging far
and wide through a great variety of habitat-types which is
clearly indicated by the archaeological record which you blatantly
ignore except for Terra Amata, Moejoekerto and a few others.
Hightly selctive use of data is the clear sign of a pre-formed
conclusion on a quest for 'evidence'. Not a good sign.
Rick Wagler
Marc Verhaegen
"Rick Wagler" <taxi...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:WYjcc.32265$oR5.15266@pd7tw3no...
> > Algis, you're much too nice. I think you're wasting your time: these
guys are stupid & blind. You can as well talk to creationists. These
fanatics state that a seaside evolution can't be possible, but they can't
give a serious argument why early Homo could not have followed the Indian
Ocean coasts when they trekked to Java 1.8 Ma. Unbelievable. And some of
them call themselves scientists...
> And where is it said that "early Homo could not have followed the Indian
Ocean coasts when they trekked to Java 1.8 Ma" ?
You agree? :-) Welcome to AAT.
> What is rejected is your silly assertion that early Homo were confined to
waterside environments
?? I never said this, Wagler! Inform a bit before talking.
Rick Wagler
but this. Perhaps you are a remarkably unclear writer
or you don't actually understand the import of the words
you write. Either is a problem worth attending to
Rick Wagler
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
>
> "Lorenzo L. Love" <lll...@thegrid.net> wrote in message
> news:tkYbc.15600$lt2....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
> > Algis Kuliukas wrote: [snip]
>
> > > It could be argued that Moore makes a good case against extreme versions
> of the AAH but it is unlikely that many people would support such views any
> more today. [snip]
>
> Sigh. Snipping is all these savanna fanatics can...
> Here it is again:
> http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm>
>
> > Is this anything other then a extreme versions of the Hypothesis of an
> Aquatic Human Ancestor?
>
> What amazes me is that these savanna people believe the most fantastic &
> ridiculous so-called "explanations" for human or hominids traits (eg, bee
> brood eating, head banging or eating carnivore livers "explains" thick
> bones, eating bone marrow "explains" bigger brains, running under the midday
> sun "explains" bipedality, sweating "explains" nakedness, a lot of SC fat
> "explains" larger brains, etc.) & dogmatically declare that a seaside
> evolution can't be possible...
Where does Marc get this stuff? He thinks that anyone that isn't a card carrying slavish
devotee of AAT is someone that believes that a'piths lived on a treeless billiard table
without a source of water or without shade from the noonday Sun. It tis to laugh. He just
can't understand that a'piths tended to live in areas with potable water, had trees for
shade but was not good ambush territory for predators like leopards. Generally this could
can be called savanna. Might even be along some coastline as long as potable water was
available. Since the above description is not typical of coastlines, in general they
didn't live on the coast. Something these AATites seem to ignore is the need for potable
water.
Neither the doggie paddle nor the backstroke not even the cannon ball lead to mankind.
That was reserved for stonethrowing.
No it wasn't the shell ppl that led to us. It was a furry little Nolan Ryan and his fellow
teammates.
EdJohns...@earthlink.net
Marc Verhaegen wrote:
>
> Algis, you're much too nice. I think you're wasting your time: these guys
> are stupid & blind. You can as well talk to creationists. These fanatics
> state that a seaside evolution can't be possible, but they can't give a
> serious argument why early Homo could not have followed the Indian Ocean
> coasts when they trekked to Java 1.8 Ma. Unbelievable. And some of them call
> themselves scientists...
>
> Marc Verhaegen
> http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT
> http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Verhaegen.html
Potable water is the reason. Your Coastal Only Dispersion Hypothesis CODH is obviously
failed due to coastlines that lack fresh water for any appreciable distant. You are
certainly the little fanatic, aren't you? A little flexibility is called for here. You
probably think that stonethrowing was started by evil white men to oppress the peoples of
color. Before that it was all fresh shell fish and happiness. Weeeeeee... Sounds more
like the SpongeBob Ape Hypothesis
Nope that's not it at all. Our journey started when some very hungry and nasty little
primates found out that they could throw rocks at lions and such to chase them away under
any circumstances. Including at a kill. Sorta takes the mystery out of how these little
creatures could defend themselves in the big bad world. I certainly wouldn't want to meet
up with them. Unless I was armed with a Kalashnikov.
Oops, my evil straight white maleness is showing.
firstjois
>> "Marc Verhaegen" <fa20...@skynet.be> wrote in message
>> news:4071a006$0$1957$ba62...@news.skynet.be...
>>> Algis, you're much too nice. I think you're wasting your time:
>>> these guys are stupid & blind. You can as well talk to
>>> creationists.
[snip]
Algis, this is one of these times when you should take Marco's advice and
go talk to creationists! Please!
Jois
Jim McGinn
> Potable water is the reason. Your Coastal Only
> Dispersion Hypothesis CODH is obviously failed due
> to coastlines that lack fresh water for any
> appreciable distant.
Good point.
<snip>
> Nope that's not it at all. Our journey started when
> some very hungry and nasty little primates found out
> that they could throw rocks at lions and such to
> chase them away under any circumstances. Including
> at a kill. Sorta takes the mystery out of how these
> little creatures could defend themselves in the big
> bad world.
For the behavior of rock throwing to have evolved it
would have had to have been part of a larger, mob-oriented
communal strategy and it would have had to have provided
group (communal) benefits.
Like yourself I realize/believe that the roots of
bipedalism lie in rock-throwing (and, for me, stick
wielding). Obviously bipedalism is complimentary to an
ape for whom rock throwing (stick-wielding) are
selectively advantageous. But unlike yourself I
realize/believe that the real conceptual difficulties of
early hominid evolution don't end with rock-throwing,
they begin there. There are two main reason for this
last realization/belief. Firstly, throwing rocks is
largely ineffective against predators. Secondly, if our
species had evolved as a result of such a simplistic
scenario there would have been no reason for us to have
evolved into the psychologically/intellectally complex
species that we certainly are. For the behavior of rock
throwing to have evolved it would have had to have been
part of a larger, mob-oriented communal strategy and it
would have had to have provided group (communal) benefits.
The hard part is figuring out the situational factors by
which our earliest hominid ancestors would have regularly
begun to be selected as such.
If the only problem our ancestors faced was predators
then rock throwing could not have evolved. And if it did
we'd hardly expect recognize the end result of such as
being human.
Nick Maclaren
In article <ac6a5059.04040...@posting.google.com>,
jimm...@yahoo.com (Jim McGinn) writes:
|> EdJohns...@earthlink.net wrote
|> > Potable water is the reason. Your Coastal Only
|> > Dispersion Hypothesis CODH is obviously failed due
|> > to coastlines that lack fresh water for any
|> > appreciable distant.
|>
Well, not really. Are we certain that there WERE such coastlines
in the relevant path at the relevant time? If we are then, yes,
that is a killer fact. If we are uncertain, then it is merely
an issue that the Coastal Only Dispersion Hypothesis (as well as
any other Dispersion Hypothesis) must address.
It certainly isn't obvious.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.
Marc Verhaegen
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:407204F7...@earthlink.net...
> > Algis, you're much too nice. I think you're wasting your time: these
guys are stupid & blind. You can as well talk to creationists. These
fanatics state that a seaside evolution can't be possible, but they can't
give a serious argument why early Homo could not have followed the Indian
Ocean coasts when they trekked to Java 1.8 Ma. Unbelievable. And some of
them call themselves scientists...
> Potable water is the reason.
1) Never heard of the Bombard experience?
2) Why assume that our ancestors' metabolism was the same as ours today?
3) Why do you believe our ancestors could not have lived in river deltas?
Marc Verhaegen
"Nick Maclaren" <nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:c4u9s2$63d$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
> Well, not really. Are we certain that there WERE such coastlines in the
relevant path at the relevant time? If we are then, yes, that is a killer
fact. If we are uncertain, then it is merely an issue that the Coastal Only
Dispersion Hypothesis (as well as any other Dispersion Hypothesis) must
address. It certainly isn't obvious. Regards, Nick Maclaren
Good thinking, Nick.
--Marc
Marc Verhaegen
<EdJohns...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:4072000C...@earthlink.net...
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm>
> > What amazes me is that these savanna people believe the most fantastic &
ridiculous so-called "explanations" for human or hominids traits (eg, bee
brood eating, head banging or eating carnivore livers "explains" thick
bones, eating bone marrow "explains" bigger brains, running under the midday
sun "explains" bipedality, sweating "explains" nakedness, a lot of SC fat
"explains" larger brains, etc.) & dogmatically declare that a seaside
evolution can't be possible...
> Where does Marc get this stuff? He thinks that anyone that isn't a card
carrying slavish devotee of AAT is someone that believes that a'piths lived
on a treeless billiard table without a source of water or without shade from
the noonday Sun.
It tis to laugh. For the Xth time: AAT is about Homo. Not about apiths. Be
relevant.
Mario Petrinovich
> Our journey started when some very hungry and nasty little
> primates found out that they could throw rocks at lions and such to chase
> them away under
> any circumstances. Including at a kill. Sorta takes the mystery out of
> how these little
> creatures could defend themselves in the big bad world. I certainly
> wouldn't want to meet
> up with them. Unless I was armed with a Kalashnikov.
First, how come we cannot eat raw meat (except seaside raw meat)?
Secondly, are you comparing stone throwing with Kalasnhikov bullets?
Rolling on the floor, laughing my big ass out. Are you shure you are aware
of the things you are telling? How much effective Palestinians are, with
their rock throwing? You can see it every day on TV. And, you are right. If
we were rock throwers, our arms would be effective just like Kalashnikovs.
Our arms wouldn't become weaker. It would become even stronger. And much
faster. We would be able to hit rock in a blink. Not needing to invent
weapons. To do this job. -- Mario
J Moore
Mario Petrinovich <mario.pe...@zg.htnet.hr> wrote in message
news:c595ej$ack$1...@ls219.htnet.hr...
> First, how come we cannot eat raw meat (except seaside raw meat)?
Humans today and in the recent past do (and did) eat some raw meat from
"non-seaside" sources, in particular internal organs. And of course our
earliest ancestors almost certainly ate raw meat just as chimps, bonobos,
and gorillas do.
JMoore
Bob Keeter
mean many things, but to some of us, it means that the outside is nice
and hot, seared to a tasty hot crispy crust and the inside is cool and red.
Other references, in fancy dining circles, you can have "steak tartare",
in less fancy dining situations, you are expected to eat the still warm
heart of the first deer or buffalo you bring down.
As you say, I can not exactly imagine that chimps send those colobus
monkeys back to the chef for a little more time on the grill! ;-)
As far as I know, there is only one carnivore that even pretends to
prefer its meat cooked!
Mario apparently has heard of sushi! 8-) Unfortunately, he tends to
blow smoke at times. I just hope he realizes just how
foolish it sounds and gets a chuckle out of it as well.
Regards
bk
"J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:KWXdc.72538$oR5.586@pd7tw3no...
Algis Kuliukas
> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.04040...@posting.google.com...
> > "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<BKZbc.23516$oR5.15527@pd7tw3no>...
> > > Thanks Algis, I'm looking forward to seeing a critique of my site.
> >
> > Good. I hope you will be as open to at least some of the criticisms as
> > Elaine has been to yours.
>
> My god, I would hope we could set our bar a bit higher than that I don't
> intend to call you a Joe McCarthy or the like, and I would certainly credit
> you with changing my mind on something if you do so.
The acid test will be if you provide a link on your web site to my critique of it.
By the way, how *do* you justify that URL?
Algis Kuliukas
Michael Clark
I think that's a wonderful idea, Algis. Then folks can see
what sort of unabashed filibuster passes as the standard
AAT apologetics. I think you start out with gusto --arguing
about whether of if Jim understands the difference between
"human" and "human ancestor". This has ~got~ to get your
supporters all riled up, eh? Talk about the evil intent of those
savanna bastards! Then there's your "Hypothesis". Is it bigger
than a bread box? Smaller than a refrigerator? What?
I think Jim ~should~ provide a link to your "rebuttal" --just
so long as he labels it properly. How about "Lessons in
critical thinking --what *not* to do".
> By the way, how *do* you justify that URL?
What? Isn't Moore's site about the aquatic ape nonsense?
I suppose he could have named it "wetapebilge.org" and
been closer to the point but hey, that one was probably
taken. Your riverapes serves you in good stead, doesn't it?
It's kind of a metaphor for your life. There you are, standing
on the bank, waving bye-bye to any chance you might have
had for respectability and recognition. Wave bye-bye, Algis.
> Algis Kuliukas
--
Yada, yada, yada.
J Moore
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
>
> By the way, how *do* you justify that URL?
>
> Algis Kuliukas
I find this particular complaint of yours to be bizarre at best. I've been
using the "aquaticape" phrase as the URL since I put my site back up (it had
lapsed during the years I was travelling full time in our motorhome and
wasn't online). It's a site about the subject of the "aquatic ape" and
therefore it's a sensible URL. You're acting as if we were talking about a
commercial enterprise called "Aquatic Ape" and this was a site offering
customer complaints, which is a bizarre view.
J Moore
news:107q7kr...@corp.supernews.com...
As I mentioned before, the actual "acid test" of whether I will be, in
Algis' words, "as open to at least some of the criticisms as Elaine has been
to yours" is whether I refrain from using some of Elaine's "openness"
responses to my critiques when I speak of Algis. For the record, I have no
intention of ever saying any of those things about Algis that Elaine said
about me in her responses to my critiques (ie. "just smearing like the worst
kinds of politicians"; calling me a "Joe McCarthy"; or saying the critiques
are "all trumped-up imaginary statements made up out of your head. You
really are a shocker."). That's Elaine's techniques, not mine. And, also
unlike Elaine, if Algis does change my mind about something, I will mention
him as I do so, again unlike Elaine's methods (especially regarding those --
sadly few -- critiques that Phil Nicholls and I made which she responded
more appropriately to).
I probably will link to Algis' criticism as well; as I mentioned before,
we've got several month long trips coming up, so all this probably won't be
happening until the fall at least.
Jim McGinn
> > The acid test will be if you provide a link on
> > your web site to my critique of it.
>
> I think that's a wonderful idea, Algis. Then folks
> can see what sort of unabashed filibuster passes as
> the standard AAT apologetics.
Algis,
I read your website. Mikey's description seems
accurate to me. What I read seemed almost completely
content free. You didn't seem to make any attempt to
counter Jim's contentions that you AAT theorist play
rather fast and loose with the evidence. It wasn't
until I was done readng it that I realized that what
I'd read wasn't just the introduction.
Jim
Algis Kuliukas
> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
>
> >
> > By the way, how *do* you justify that URL?
> >
> > Algis Kuliukas
>
> I find this particular complaint of yours to be bizarre at best. I've been
> using the "aquaticape" phrase as the URL since I put my site back up (it had
> lapsed during the years I was travelling full time in our motorhome and
> wasn't online). It's a site about the subject of the "aquatic ape" and
> therefore it's a sensible URL. You're acting as if we were talking about a
> commercial enterprise called "Aquatic Ape" and this was a site offering
> customer complaints, which is a bizarre view.
>
> JMoore
I'm acting as if you had a URL called www.HumanEvolution.org written
by a creationist trying to discredit it. I think it's bizarre that
anyone could try to defend what you've done.
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> Michael Clark <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
> news:107q7kr...@corp.supernews.com...
> > "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
> > > "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<0khcc.31760$oR5.2614@pd7tw3no>...
> > > > Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > > > news:77a70442.04040...@posting.google.com...
> > > > > "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<BKZbc.23516$oR5.15527@pd7tw3no>...
> > > > > > Thanks Algis, I'm looking forward to seeing a critique of my site.
> > > > >
> > > > > Good. I hope you will be as open to at least some of the criticisms
> as
> > > > > Elaine has been to yours.
> > > >
> > > > My god, I would hope we could set our bar a bit higher than that I
> don't
> > > > intend to call you a Joe McCarthy or the like, and I would certainly
> credit
> > > > you with changing my mind on something if you do so.
> > >
> > > The acid test will be if you provide a link on your web site to my
> > critique of it.
[snipped, MC's usual crap]
> As I mentioned before, the actual "acid test" of whether I will be, in
> Algis' words, "as open to at least some of the criticisms as Elaine has been
> to yours" is whether I refrain from using some of Elaine's "openness"
> responses to my critiques when I speak of Algis.
> For the record, I have no
> intention of ever saying any of those things about Algis that Elaine said
> about me in her responses to my critiques (ie. "just smearing like the worst
> kinds of politicians"; calling me a "Joe McCarthy"; or saying the critiques
> are "all trumped-up imaginary statements made up out of your head. You
> really are a shocker."). That's Elaine's techniques, not mine. And, also
> unlike Elaine, if Algis does change my mind about something, I will mention
> him as I do so, again unlike Elaine's methods (especially regarding those --
> sadly few -- critiques that Phil Nicholls and I made which she responded
> more appropriately to).
I can understand Elaine's reaction to your web site. It is pretty much
an unabashed attempt at a character assasination. From the first page
you imply that her research is not trustworthy and yet if you go to
the trouble to examine the actual substance of your allegations, as I
did, they amount to, at worst, tiny errors. However, you exaggerate
them in a shock-horror way to insinuate that they were meant as some
kind of deliberate deception.
In doing this your pages wreak with heavy double-standards. You accuse
her of not citing references properly and yet almost all of your
claims about what 'AAH proponents believe' are totally unreferenced. I
had to re-read all my AAH related literature again and again to try to
find out if anyone had actually written what you said they had. When I
managed to find them, almost always your claims were exaggerated or,
conveniently, missed out part of the argument or the context - so as
to make them appear less sensible. You accuse her of using a
'creationist Darwin-quoting style' picking out bits of sentences that
you like to best respresent your arguments and yet this is precisely
what you do, over and over again, when quoting Morgan's work. You
accuse her of misquoting and misrepresnting original data and yet you
do precisely the same thing yourself in trying to discredit her.
See http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/arguments/JimMoore/Quotes.htm for
some examples of these methods.
At best, you have misunderstood the hypothesis. At worst, you are
deliberately exaggerating and misrepresenting it. Yes, I htink
Elaine's right. "Just smearing like the worst kinds of politicians"
just about sums it all up. I think it's a disgrace, Jim. I'm just left
wondering what on earth caused you to have built up such apparent
hatred for such an admirable woman.
> I probably will link to Algis' criticism as well; as I mentioned before,
> we've got several month long trips coming up, so all this probably won't be
> happening until the fall at least.
How long would it take to do that Jim? Two minutes? Certainly a lot
less time than it might take you to reply to this posting. A good
'scientific' critique should offer an alternative view, wouldn't you
say?
Here, let me make it easy for you...
Just cut and paste this text into any of your pages...
<p>For an alternative view click <a
href="http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm">
here</a>.</p>
...The acid test is whether you have the scientific objectivity and
moral courage to do so.
Algis Kuliukas
Michael Clark
Moral courage? Moral courage, Algis? When are you going
to get the intellectual honesty to answer your critics? Your data
is buffoonery and your rebuttals smell of elderberries. Just listen
to youself. In these pages you have said that our ancestors stood
up to avoid drowning, hairy proto-apes were removed from our
ancestral gene pool by hungry crocs, the origin of our valgus knee
can be traced to wading sideways, that big heal of ours got that
way to better gain purchase on muddy substrates --the list goes on
and on.
You now have the temerity to question someone's "moral courage"?
Oh, and BTW, I think it the pinnacle of irony that you should
be mentioning "scientific objectivity". Will you ever defend yourself?
Or will the readers of this group be forever kept in the dark?
Finally, Algis, is it bigger than a bread box, smaller than a refrigerator?
firstjois
[snip]
>> Finally, Algis, is it bigger than a bread box, smaller than a
>> refrigerator?
Michael, I suspect that you won't get any answers at all. The bread is out
and the light bulb in the refirig has been eaten.
Jois
firstjois
[snip]
Dear Jehovahs' Witnesses,
Algis is ready now. Please come and get him.
Sincerely,
Jois
J Moore
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
None of the Elaine comments I mentioned were in reaction to my web site, not
the present site nor the old one I put up in 1996. They were in reaction to
newsgroup posts where I pointed out that she had facts wrong, altered
quotes, and ignored information that was on the same pages as information
she didn't ignore. She didn't like that.
Jim McGinn
> Algis Kuliukas wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> Dear Jehovahs' Witnesses,
>
> Algis is ready now. Please come and get him.
Congratulations, Jois,
You've just taken the lead as the most content-free
poster in this newsgroup!
But don't rest on your laurels. Lorenzo is napping
and Clark, with his reference to gibbons walking on
branches, is at the end of his very short rope of
content.
This is your time in the spotlight. Enjoy it while
it lasts!
Jim
Algis Kuliukas
> "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
> > "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<egffc.113695$Pk3.57509@pd7tw1no>...
> > > Michael Clark <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
> > > news:107q7kr...@corp.supernews.com...
> > > > "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > > > news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
> > > > > "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<0khcc.31760$oR5.2614@pd7tw3no>...
> > > > > > Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > > > > > news:77a70442.04040...@posting.google.com...
> > > > > > > "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<BKZbc.23516$oR5.15527@pd7tw3no>...
[..]
> > > I probably will link to Algis' criticism as well; as I mentioned before,
> > > we've got several month long trips coming up, so all this probably won't
> be
> > > happening until the fall at least.
> >
> > How long would it take to do that Jim? Two minutes? Certainly a lot
> > less time than it might take you to reply to this posting. A good
> > 'scientific' critique should offer an alternative view, wouldn't you
> > say?
> >
> > Here, let me make it easy for you...
> >
> > Just cut and paste this text into any of your pages...
> >
> > <p>For an alternative view click <a
> > href="http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm">
> > here</a>.</p>
> >
> > ...The acid test is whether you have the scientific objectivity and
> > moral courage to do so.
>
> Moral courage? Moral courage, Algis? When are you going
> to get the intellectual honesty to answer your critics? Your data
> is buffoonery and your rebuttals smell of elderberries. Just listen
> to youself. In these pages you have said that our ancestors stood
> up to avoid drowning, hairy proto-apes were removed from our
> ancestral gene pool by hungry crocs, the origin of our valgus knee
> can be traced to wading sideways, that big heal of ours got that
> way to better gain purchase on muddy substrates --the list goes on
> and on.
Taking a leaf out of Jim Moore's book, I see: Take tiny parts of
peripheral arguments you read your opponents making on internet
newsgroups at some time in the past out of context and string them
together to make them look as ridiculous as possible. And *never* take
on the main thrust of the basic idea: that water has acted as an
agency of selection in human evolution more than it has in the
evolution of our great apes cousins. When that argument is made, the
response is just the usual: yada, yada, yada.
> You now have the temerity to question someone's "moral courage"?
And you have the nerve to question mine?
> Oh, and BTW, I think it the pinnacle of irony that you should
> be mentioning "scientific objectivity". Will you ever defend yourself?
> Or will the readers of this group be forever kept in the dark?
Another Jim Moore tactic... try whip up mistrust and an atmosphere of
suspicion. 'Will I ever defend myself?' What are you on about? That's
what I've been doing for the last seven years.
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
> > I can understand Elaine's reaction to your web site.
>
> None of the Elaine comments I mentioned were in reaction to my web site, not
> the present site nor the old one I put up in 1996. They were in reaction to
> newsgroup posts where I pointed out that she had facts wrong, altered
> quotes, and ignored information that was on the same pages as information
> she didn't ignore. She didn't like that.
Facts wrong: You mean like representing the Elsner & Gooden (1983)
data incorrectly? So? It was hardly a big deal. She mistakenly
referred to their data as evidence for breathing control when it was
for bradycardia. It didn't effect the main thrust of her argument that
diving mammals clearly are able to breathe in air in anticipation of
the dive. As far as I can tell this is the biggest factual error you
found in Morgan's rseearch. But even this is hardly earth shattering,
is it?
People should know that Elaine Morgan's not the only one who can get
facts wrong. You say (on www.aquaticape.org/leaflist.html) about the
infamous, but unattributed and unreferenced AAH leaflet in the section
'skin-bonded fat deposits' that this was "Wrong: Our fat deposits are
like other primates and very unlike fatty aquatic mammals, both in
pattern and life history", yet on this subject William Montagna writes
"Together with the loss of a furry cover, human skin acquired a
hypodermal fatty layer (panniculus adiposus) which is considerably
thicker than that found in other primates, or mammals for that
matter." (Montagna 1985:p14).
Altered Quotes: Oh yeah, Elaine's terrible for that. You mean,
presumably, writing 'selective' instead of 'selection' and omitting
one word 'appetite' without making it clear to the reader that she has
done so when citing Denton (1982). These were clearly simple errors
and not the shock-horror deception your attempted smear implies.
Or, perhaps you mean her 'creationist style Darwin quoting' technique
when she only takes parts of sentences to strengthen her argument. But
then you do that yourself all over the place when trying to discredit
Morgan so no big deal there either.
Ignored Information on the same page as information she didn't ignore:
Presumably you mean the aldosterone page now. Another piece of Morgan
deception? Not really actually, just Moore trying to stir things up as
usual. Morgan missed out a few, rather irrelevant details, from a
table printed in Ganong. Big deal.
How about letting readers see another example of this, one you did
yourself. You accuse Morgan of "a complete fabrication" in placing
Denton's (1982:70) quote, mentioned above, in a savannah context.
"Denton neither says it, nor implies it" you tell us. You quote
several paragraphs from that page to prove your point but, surprise,
surprise, you stop quoting just before Denton writes this very next
sentence...
"If the deductions of hunter-gatherer societies based on the Kalahari
bushmen and the Hadza are valid in relation to hominids, then diet may
have also been predominantly vegetarian over the last five million
years, though there was considerable variation in diet according to
the prevailing climate and conditions" Denton (1982:70)
Hold on. Isn't that 'Kalahari bushmen' reference rather *implying* the
very savannah context you assure us that Morgan has trwisted Denton's
words to imply? Really, Jim, your hypocracy is astounding.
I'm sure Morgan didn't like her work being misrepresented and smeared
in the way you have done. Now, how do you like it when I point out
similar but, in my opinion, worse errors in your work?
How about that link on your www.aquaticape.org web site to an
alternative view? Got twenty seconds spare to do that? Just cut and
paste this into any of your web pages and post it up there and you're
done.
<p>For an alternative view click <a
href="http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm">
here</a>.</p>
Somehow I get the feeling that you're not going to do it. Some
'scientific critique', that.
Refs:
Denton, Derek. (1982) The Hunger for Salt. Springer-Verlag: Berlin,
Heidelberg, New York.
Ganong, William F (1979). Review of Medical Physiology (9th Edition).
LANGE Medical Publications (Los Altos)
Elsner, R & Gooden B (1983) Diving and Asphyxia. Cambridge University
Press (1987)
Montagna, William (1985). The evolution of human skin. Journal of
Human Evolution Vol:14 Pages:13-22
Algis Kuliukas
firstjois
[snip]
>> Taking a leaf out of Jim Moore's book, I see:
[snip]
>> Another Jim Moore tactic...
[snip]
>> Algis Kuliukas
Moore says he will discuss with you (a total waste of time yet he's still
willing to do so) and look at your response. Are you sure you know what you
want?
The whining never stops.
Jois
--
Hypothesis of an Aquatic Human Ancestor (HAHA),
Lorenzo 2003
Algis Kuliukas
Really? You read the whole Jim Moore critique? Content free? How can
you say that? It critiques his pages one by one. It investigates his
allegations and finds that he is guilty of doing the very things he
accuses Elaine Morgan doing. If you think I didn't make any attempt to
counter Jim's allegations I just don't believe you've read it at all.
Algis Kuliukas
For a critique of www.aquaticape.org go to
www.RiverApes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm
Michael Clark
[slop]
> > > ...The acid test is whether you have the scientific objectivity and
> > > moral courage to do so.
> >
> > Moral courage? Moral courage, Algis? When are you going
> > to get the intellectual honesty to answer your critics? Your data
> > is buffoonery and your rebuttals smell of elderberries. Just listen
> > to youself. In these pages you have said that our ancestors stood
> > up to avoid drowning, hairy proto-apes were removed from our
> > ancestral gene pool by hungry crocs, the origin of our valgus knee
> > can be traced to wading sideways, that big heal of ours got that
> > way to better gain purchase on muddy substrates --the list goes on
> > and on.
>
> Taking a leaf out of Jim Moore's book, I see: Take tiny parts of
> peripheral arguments you read your opponents making on internet
> newsgroups at some time in the past out of context and string them
> together to make them look as ridiculous as possible. And *never* take
> on the main thrust of the basic idea: that water has acted as an
> agency of selection in human evolution more than it has in the
> evolution of our great apes cousins. When that argument is made, the
> response is just the usual: yada, yada, yada.
It isn't a leaf out of anybody's book, doofus, it's your argument.
These are your contentions. Plain and simple. Do you want me
to list the URL's?
> > You now have the temerity to question someone's "moral courage"?
>
> And you have the nerve to question mine?
I'll question your moral courage and your personal integrity and
your "scientific objectivity" all day long, thank you very much, and
I won't be asking your permission to do so.
> > Oh, and BTW, I think it the pinnacle of irony that you should
> > be mentioning "scientific objectivity". Will you ever defend yourself?
> > Or will the readers of this group be forever kept in the dark?
>
> Another Jim Moore tactic... try whip up mistrust and an atmosphere of
> suspicion. 'Will I ever defend myself?' What are you on about? That's
> what I've been doing for the last seven years.
What I'm on about is your refusal to stand behind what you've
said --as you did above, you simply sidestep any confrontation
with "..Take tiny parts of peripheral arguments you read your
opponents making on internet newsgroups at some time in the
past out of context and string them together to make them look
as ridiculous as possible." Like hell they're tiny or peripheral or
out of context and I don't need to ~make~ them look ridiculous.
What you consider "defending your hypothesis" is the most
disgusting and rank series of fillibusters to come down the pike
in years. Try making a hypothesis that is clear, cogent, and
~testable~ and then *defend it*. What you've been doing for
7 years is whining about your critics. STOP IT and get serious.
Marc Verhaegen
"firstjois" <firstj...@hotmail.com> is till too stupid in message
news:evqdnYU3w-l...@comcast.com... to give 1 argument against AAT.
What amazes me is that these closed-minded savanna believers believe the
most fantastic & far-fetched so-called "explanations" for human or hominids
traits (eg, bee brood eating, head banging or eating carnivore livers would
"explain" thick bones, eating bone marrow "explains" bigger brains, running
under the midday sun "explains" bipedality, sweating "explains" nakedness, a
lot of SC fat "explains" larger brains, etc.) & dogmatically declare that a
argument against AAT that human anestors once lived at seacoasts. They can't
even tell why early Homo could not have followed the Mediterranean & Indian
Ocean coasts, when they spread to Algeria & Java (Aīn-Hanech & Mojokerto 1.8
Ma).
Luckily, a lot of PAs have more open minds than these fanatics, eg,
- Tobias http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm
- Stringer: "I have agreed that we lack plausible models for the origins of
bipedalism and have agreed that wading in water can facilitate bipedal
locomotion (as observed in other normally quadrupedal primates). I have
never said that this must have been the forcing mechanism in hominids, but I
do consider it plausible."
For a serious scientific discussion of AAT (pro & contra) see
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
____________
Algis Kuliukas
> "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
> news:<107sr4b...@corp.supernews.com>...
>
> [slop]
>
> > > > ...The acid test is whether you have the scientific objectivity and
> > > > moral courage to do so.
> > >
> > > Moral courage? Moral courage, Algis? When are you going
> > > to get the intellectual honesty to answer your critics? Your data
> > > is buffoonery and your rebuttals smell of elderberries. Just listen
> > > to youself. In these pages you have said that our ancestors stood
> > > up to avoid drowning, hairy proto-apes were removed from our
> > > ancestral gene pool by hungry crocs, the origin of our valgus knee
> > > can be traced to wading sideways, that big heal of ours got that
> > > way to better gain purchase on muddy substrates --the list goes on
> > > and on.
> >
> > Taking a leaf out of Jim Moore's book, I see: Take tiny parts of
> > peripheral arguments you read your opponents making on internet
> > newsgroups at some time in the past out of context and string them
> > together to make them look as ridiculous as possible. And *never* take
> > on the main thrust of the basic idea: that water has acted as an
> > agency of selection in human evolution more than it has in the
> > evolution of our great apes cousins. When that argument is made, the
> > response is just the usual: yada, yada, yada.
Ok let's take em one by one...
1. 'Stood up to avoid drowning' - Ok this one's not peripheral, it's
bleeding obvious. In waist deep water an ape has not choice but to
move bipedally. Do you dispute it?
2. 'Hairy proto-apes were removed from our ancestral gene pool by
hungry crocs'... This one is typical Jim Moore. I offered that
argument as a possible additional factor, yes. In addition to other
swimming scenarios like surviving flash floods, tides and crossing
wide stretches of water. Also, I've always accepted that hair loss is
also probably in part explained by improvement in sweat cooling too.
As sweat cooling is fueled by water this is hardly an argument against
a water-side existance. But, like JM, you're not interested in those
other arguments are you? Just find the bit that sounds least likely,
exaggerate it, stitch it together with others and pretend that's all
the argument says. If Elaine Morgan would have done that JM would have
used it as one of his examples of 'Creationist style Darwin quoting'
but, of course, aquasceptics *never* do that, do they?
3. 'the origin of our valgus knee can be traced to wading sideways'
... Another Moorism. I was *speculating*. The fact that the bicondylar
angle is greater in a'piths than in humans seems to indicate that it
probably wasn't due to pur, perfect human-like bipedalism. What else
could it be for? Who knows. I'm interested in wading as a behavioural
context for early bipedalism and anyone that has waded through chest
deep water will know that lateral motion seems to offer less drag than
full frontal motion. If the earliest bipeds were waders you'd expect
them to have adopted a gait that used significant lateral motion. This
might include sideways wading, but is more likely, in my opinion to
have been a side-to-side, twisting gait. Again, never mind the
subtelties or the complexities - just stick up the catchy headline and
take the Mick: Exactly like a sub-editor would in a trashy British
tabloid newspaper.
4. 'That big heal of ours got that way to better gain purchase on
muddy substrates' Ditto above.
Why did you ignore my counter-point?
Tell me, please, any tiny scrap of evidence which indicates that water
has acted as an agency in human evolution less than in those of our
ape cousins.
[..]
> > Another Jim Moore tactic... try whip up mistrust and an atmosphere of
> > suspicion. 'Will I ever defend myself?' What are you on about? That's
> > what I've been doing for the last seven years.
>
> What I'm on about is your refusal to stand behind what you've
> said --as you did above, you simply sidestep any confrontation
> with "..Take tiny parts of peripheral arguments you read your
> opponents making on internet newsgroups at some time in the
> past out of context and string them together to make them look
> as ridiculous as possible." Like hell they're tiny or peripheral or
> out of context ...
They're only parts of the argument, only speculations.
> and I don't need to ~make~ them look ridiculous.
By isolating them from the other arguments - like stressing croc
predation rather than flash floods, like ignoring the fact that I
accept sweat cooling was part of it - you make them look more
ridiculous than they would be. As Elaine Morgan apparently said about
Jim Moore's stuff, it's "smearing like the worst kind of
policitician." Nothing to do with science.
> What you consider "defending your hypothesis" is the most
> disgusting and rank series of fillibusters to come down the pike
> in years. Try making a hypothesis that is clear, cogent, and
> ~testable~ and then *defend it*. What you've been doing for
> 7 years is whining about your critics. STOP IT and get serious.
I am testing the hypothesis that water acted as an agency of selection
in the evolution of bipedalism. I'm taking the hypothesis and I make
some predictions about it. Then, I test them. It's called the
hypothetico-deductive method. Can you tell me any other model of human
bipedalism that has been tested in this way?
Algis Kuliukas
J Moore
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<DGzfc.122816$Pk3.104567@pd7tw1no>...
> > Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
> > > I can understand Elaine's reaction to your web site.
> >
> > None of the Elaine comments I mentioned were in reaction to my web site,
not
> > the present site nor the old one I put up in 1996. They were in
reaction to
> > newsgroup posts where I pointed out that she had facts wrong, altered
> > quotes, and ignored information that was on the same pages as
information
> > she didn't ignore. She didn't like that.
>
> Facts wrong: You mean like representing the Elsner & Gooden (1983)
> data incorrectly? So? It was hardly a big deal. She mistakenly
> referred to their data as evidence for breathing control when it was
> for bradycardia. It didn't effect the main thrust of her argument that
> diving mammals clearly are able to breathe in air in anticipation of
> the dive. As far as I can tell this is the biggest factual error you
> found in Morgan's rseearch. But even this is hardly earth shattering,
> is it?
I certainly wouldn't call that Morgan's largest factual error, although it
does offer an example of someone who provides a ref that has nothing
whatever to do with what they claim it has to do with. That in turn
bespeaks of someone who either doesn't know what they're talking about, or
who simply provided a ref that they hoped no one would bother to check --
either is a serious thing, and especially so as this is a pattern with
Morgan. This either shows she is deliberately misleading her readers or is
seriously ignorant of the subject -- and remember she is saying that people
should accept her ideas in place of the ideas of a great many scholars.
The point that Morgan was making there, using as support a ref that had
nothing to do with what she said, was that seals gauge their breathing in
anticipation of how long they are going to dive. Her sentence was, as I
explain on my site: "A diving mammal like a seal or a dolphin purposefully
regulates its breathing in relation to actions it intends to perform, as
explained in a report by R. Elsner and B. Gooden on diving asphyxia:" Then,
imeediately after that line, she offers the Elsner and Gooden quote as
support for this statement, and as you can see from her statement, she
clearly thinks (or wants the reader to think) that the Elsner and Gooden
quote has something to do with breathing even though it doesn't. (BTW, as a
point of information, trivia for most, seals don't hold their breath before
they dive -- like cetaceans, they exhale before they dive and collapse their
lungs. They avoid getting the bends that way; their oxygen is held in very
large blood vessels in extremely myoglobin-rich blood -- the whole system is
incredibly unlike humans.)
> People should know that Elaine Morgan's not the only one who can get
> facts wrong. You say (on www.aquaticape.org/leaflist.html) about the
> infamous, but unattributed and unreferenced AAH leaflet in the section
> 'skin-bonded fat deposits' that this was "Wrong: Our fat deposits are
> like other primates and very unlike fatty aquatic mammals, both in
> pattern and life history", yet on this subject William Montagna writes
> "Together with the loss of a furry cover, human skin acquired a
> hypodermal fatty layer (panniculus adiposus) which is considerably
> thicker than that found in other primates, or mammals for that
> matter." (Montagna 1985:p14).
Caroline Pond has many times pointed out that our fat deposits are quite
like those of other primates if those primates are allowed to get fat. We
also show a life pattern of fat that is very unlike aquatic mammals -- they
get fat extremely quickly when young and both sexes are similar in their fat
deposits; we start out very fat as babies (unlike any mammal, aquatic or
not) then enter our leanest period through childhood, then rapidly build up
fat deposits during puberty, with females and males differing considerably
both in amount of fat and where it's built up. Pond points out that the fat
we see under our skin is like what we see with other primates which are
allowed to get fat. (If folks want to know more about this, there's more
about fat on my site.)
> Altered Quotes: Oh yeah, Elaine's terrible for that. You mean,
> presumably, writing 'selective' instead of 'selection' and omitting
> one word 'appetite' without making it clear to the reader that she has
> done so when citing Denton (1982). These were clearly simple errors
> and not the shock-horror deception your attempted smear implies.
> Or, perhaps you mean her 'creationist style Darwin quoting' technique
> when she only takes parts of sentences to strengthen her argument. But
> then you do that yourself all over the place when trying to discredit
> Morgan so no big deal there either.
No, as I mentioned on my site, I'm talking about things like her leaving 27
words out of the middle of an 86 word Darwin quote without indicating the
words are missing, and changing words in those quotes to words more her
liking. Please direct me to any place where I've done that -- I'd like to
correct that if I've done it. Please do oblige me with an example.
The part where I refer to the similarity of Morgan's quote of Darwin with
creationists' methods is that she takes one of Darwin's introductions to a
section as if that introduction was indicative of his whole thought --
people familiar with Darwin's literary style will know that he often would
introduce a topic by suggesting the difficulty of explaining such and such a
feature, using (as I say on my site) a "devil's advocate approach to set up
his detailed explanation". People familiar with creationist writing will
recognise this method of quoting only Darwin's opening "devil's advocate"
section while ignoring the explanation -- a famous example is creationists'
use of Darwin's quote about the evolution of the eye. It is indeed
disturbing to see Morgan doing this as it's such a common and dishonest
creationist tactic and of course seems in her case too to be deliberately
misleading. But then your explanation above seems to be deliberately
misleading, as I explained this thoroughly on my site.
There are of course other examples of Morgan altering quotes, usually by
leaving out words without indicating they've been left out (all the better
to distort the meaning).
> Ignored Information on the same page as information she didn't ignore:
> Presumably you mean the aldosterone page now. Another piece of Morgan
> deception? Not really actually, just Moore trying to stir things up as
> usual. Morgan missed out a few, rather irrelevant details, from a
> table printed in Ganong. Big deal.
Actually, the most glaring may be the crying animals claims, which, in order
to miss the non-aquatic ones amidst the aquatic ones, she would have to have
read a chapter of a book by somehow managing to skip pretty much every other
paragraph. The aldosterone example though, is also one -- I won't go into
it in detail because I explain it quite thoroughly on the site (the direct
link to that page is http://www.aquaticape.org/aldosterone.html). The gist
is that the list, as seen in both Ganong's 1993 Review of Medical Physiology
and the Encyclopedia Britannica (where she got her list from; the lists are
the same in both sources) offers two quite different things, normal everyday
bodily functions (like standing up) and serious emergencies (like surgery,
anxiety, physical trauma, and hemorrhage) and shows two quite different
bodily reactions (as we might expect). Morgan lumps the "standing up" in
with the actual emergencies and claims that this list claims the body reacts
to standing up just as it does to the actual emergencies. This of course is
nonsense, and more to the point here, it's not what the list says at all --
she just altered it to suit her wishes, and that's not kosher.
> How about letting readers see another example of this, one you did
> yourself. You accuse Morgan of "a complete fabrication" in placing
> Denton's (1982:70) quote, mentioned above, in a savannah context.
> "Denton neither says it, nor implies it" you tell us. You quote
> several paragraphs from that page to prove your point but, surprise,
> surprise, you stop quoting just before Denton writes this very next
> sentence...
>
> "If the deductions of hunter-gatherer societies based on the Kalahari
> bushmen and the Hadza are valid in relation to hominids, then diet may
> have also been predominantly vegetarian over the last five million
> years, though there was considerable variation in diet according to
> the prevailing climate and conditions" Denton (1982:70)
>
> Hold on. Isn't that 'Kalahari bushmen' reference rather *implying* the
> very savannah context you assure us that Morgan has trwisted Denton's
> words to imply? Really, Jim, your hypocracy is astounding.
The context of Denton's sentence is the senetences preceding it in the
paragraph it's in -- it does not refer to savannah or indeed any specific
environment, only the general type of "environmental, dietetic and metabolic
conditions" which determine an animal's "behavior toward salt". Denton
makes clear in many places in his book that humans' behavior toward salt
shows that humans evolved in a salt deplete environment, which is precisely
the opposite of what Morgan claims he said.
That particular paragraph about the Kalahari bushmen and Hadza is (rather
clearly) talking about the diet of those people, not their environment.
This is made even clearer by the fact that the paragraph you mention
specifically talked about "predominantly vegetarian" diets not only in the
Kahahari bushmen and Hadza but also the peoples of highland New Guinea and
the Amazon, contrasting all these with diets of predominately "animal
products" such as Eskimos and the Maasai (guess you missed that part, or
just forgot to tell us about it). His point about the Kalahari bushmen and
Hadza was that most of their diet was vegetable sources rather than meat.
The reason that's imporant is that primarily carnivorous mammals, and those
living in saltwater environments such as Morgan was pushing at the time, do
not demonstrate salt appetite, while animals living in salt deplete
environments with salt deplete diets do exhibit salt hunger. In this way
you can demonstrate whether our ancestors lived in a salt replete
enviornment (like the seaside like Morgan was claiming at that time) or a
salt deplete environment (as paleoanthropologists claimed).
The parts of Denton's book that pertained to humans and human evolution do
say the opposite of what Morgan claimed they said -- she claimed that Denton
said that humans had no salt appetite, when the main thrust of this book was
to point out that they do; she claimed that his work showed that humans
evolved in or around a saltwater enviroment, when he was at pains to point
out that his work showed that we evolved in an environment where salt was
rare. This includes savannah and desert conditions like those the bushmen
live(d) in, it includes forests, it includes everywhere except for the
seashore where Morgan was placing our ancestors at that time (and for which
she offered Denton's work as support, even though his work was very clear
about saying that such a place was the one place where our ancestors could
not have evolved).
> I'm sure Morgan didn't like her work being misrepresented and smeared
> in the way you have done. Now, how do you like it when I point out
> similar but, in my opinion, worse errors in your work?
I had hoped you'd have something of substance after your previous posts. I
can only hope you have such on your site's critique.
> How about that link on your www.aquaticape.org web site to an
> alternative view? Got twenty seconds spare to do that? Just cut and
> paste this into any of your web pages and post it up there and you're
> done.
>
> <p>For an alternative view click <a
> href="http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm">
> here</a>.</p>
>
>
> Somehow I get the feeling that you're not going to do it. Some
> 'scientific critique', that.
As I've mentioned several times, I am going on several month long trips soon
and have a lot of preparations to make yet; I haven't had a chance yet to go
over the critique on your site and probably won't for a while. Naturally, I
want to mention what I think of your critique when I link to it, but I don't
want to assume it's all so insignificant as what you've mentioned so far. I
would have hoped you'd appreciate my not wanting to make such an assumption.
Michael Clark
news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
news:<107vf9p...@corp.supernews.com>...
> > "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > > "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
> > news:<107sr4b...@corp.supernews.com>...
[More slop]
> Ok let's take em one by one...
> 1. 'Stood up to avoid drowning' - Ok this one's not peripheral, it's
> bleeding obvious. In waist deep water an ape has not choice but to
> move bipedally. Do you dispute it?
All day long. This ape of yours, who finds him or herself
in this situation, has at least two other choices: 1) swim, 2) get out
of the water. So your insistence that this scenario produces
bipedalism is ludicrous in the extreme. Bipedal stance is
already available to this ape and he/she uses it when the need
arises --as when standing in waist deep water, or looking over
the tall grass/underbrush, or engaging in threat displays, or
carrying objects.
> 2. 'Hairy proto-apes were removed from our ancestral gene pool by
> hungry crocs'... This one is typical Jim Moore. I offered that
> argument as a possible additional factor, yes.
Oh, now it's a "possible additional factor". Then ? guess I won't
be seeing you trot out your *swimming speed as a function
of hair loss* reference again. Since you're in Australia, you
could easily test it, you know. Just take your nearly hairless
body out amongst your local salties. I'll be watching your
local newspaper for the results.
>In addition to other
> swimming scenarios like surviving flash floods, tides and crossing
> wide stretches of water. Also, I've always accepted that hair loss is
> also probably in part explained by improvement in sweat cooling too.
In part? You mean you'll grudgingly accept the mountains of
data accumulated in support of evaporative sweat cooling just
as long as you get to keep your swimming advantage nonsense?
How do you manage that with a straight face?
> As sweat cooling is fueled by water this is hardly an argument against
> a water-side existance. But, like JM, you're not interested in those
> other arguments are you?
"JM", like myself, is interested in any valid argument you
can muster. Trouble is, you can't muster any. *What* other
arguments!? You mean because I need water to sweat, I
can't get ten feet away from it? Why don't *you* get ten
feet away from water, Algis? Are you afraid? If you weren't
so busy proselytizing you might consider that it is easy to make ten
miles on foot with no water on a hot day. Easy, Algis --and
our hypothetical hiker isn't even an acclimated proto-hominid.
> Just find the bit that sounds least likely,
> exaggerate it, stitch it together with others and pretend that's all
> the argument says. If Elaine Morgan would have done that JM would have
> used it as one of his examples of 'Creationist style Darwin quoting'
> but, of course, aquasceptics *never* do that, do they?
I see Jim Moore has calmly eviscerated you in another post.
You'll deny it, of course. You'll have to deny it to keep some
semblage of integrity in your own head. The rest of the readers
of this group are not so blinded.
> 3. 'the origin of our valgus knee can be traced to wading sideways'
> ... Another Moorism. I was *speculating*.
Excuse me, I am *not* Jim Moore. If you want to link
your deconstruction with Jim Moore then that's fine but
kindly leave that filibuster out of this discussion. JM has
nothing to do with your history of defending the idea that
the valgus knee is such because of some adaptation to
the stresses inherent in lateral wading. You've done this
all by your lonesome. Further, you've been downright
righteous and combative about it, ignoring, as you so
predictably do, any simpler explanations.
> The fact that the bicondylar
> angle is greater in a'piths than in humans seems to indicate that it
> probably wasn't due to pur, perfect human-like bipedalism. What else
> could it be for? Who knows.
Certainly not anyone who reads what passes for your web page.
> I'm interested in wading as a behavioural
> context for early bipedalism and anyone that has waded through chest
> deep water will know that lateral motion seems to offer less drag than
> full frontal motion. If the earliest bipeds were waders you'd expect
> them to have adopted a gait that used significant lateral motion.
If the earliest bipeds were waders, and this has certainly NOT
been established, by you or anyone else, then I would expect
them to wade just like I do --straight forward. Please stop
supplying what you think that I would expect. I will not be
burdened by your expectations.
>This
> might include sideways wading, but is more likely, in my opinion to
> have been a side-to-side, twisting gait. Again, never mind the
> subtelties or the complexities - just stick up the catchy headline and
> take the Mick: Exactly like a sub-editor would in a trashy British
> tabloid newspaper.
Again, please can your characterizations of what you think
is going on. I'm challenging your opinion --where you say
early bipedalism consists of "a side-to-side, twisting gait"
I couldn't care less what you think of "..trashy British
tabloid newspaper[s]".
> 4. 'That big heal of ours got that way to better gain purchase on
> muddy substrates' Ditto above.
>
> Why did you ignore my counter-point?
WHAT counterpoint!?
> Tell me, please, any tiny scrap of evidence which indicates that water
> has acted as an agency in human evolution less than in those of our
> ape cousins.
What's this? You want me to get in the water with you?
I *don't* think it's a dichotomy, remember? That's your spiel.
> [..]
> > > Another Jim Moore tactic... try whip up mistrust and an atmosphere of
> > > suspicion. 'Will I ever defend myself?' What are you on about? That's
> > > what I've been doing for the last seven years.
> >
> > What I'm on about is your refusal to stand behind what you've
> > said --as you did above, you simply sidestep any confrontation
> > with "..Take tiny parts of peripheral arguments you read your
> > opponents making on internet newsgroups at some time in the
> > past out of context and string them together to make them look
> > as ridiculous as possible." Like hell they're tiny or peripheral or
> > out of context ...
>
> They're only parts of the argument, only speculations.
Is this some kind of crack I see in your stony exterior?
Are you now qualifying your 7-year pontification in this
NG as "mere speculations"?
> > and I don't need to ~make~ them look ridiculous.
>
> By isolating them from the other arguments - like stressing croc
> predation rather than flash floods, like ignoring the fact that I
> accept sweat cooling was part of it - you make them look more
> ridiculous than they would be.
No, and again, it is YOU who vociferously defends your
swimming speed advantage as a selective factor in the
reduction of hair in our ancestors. You do so by trotting
out the swimming speed reference --as you did just a few
days ago. Yea, "..make them look more ridiculous than they
would be.", as if that were possible.
>As Elaine Morgan apparently said about
> Jim Moore's stuff, it's "smearing like the worst kind of
> policitician." Nothing to do with science.
Message-ID: <pI3gc.149114$oR5.77996@pd7tw3no>
> > What you consider "defending your hypothesis" is the most
> > disgusting and rank series of fillibusters to come down the pike
> > in years. Try making a hypothesis that is clear, cogent, and
> > ~testable~ and then *defend it*. What you've been doing for
> > 7 years is whining about your critics. STOP IT and get serious.
>
> I am testing the hypothesis that water acted as an agency of selection
> in the evolution of bipedalism. I'm taking the hypothesis and I make
> some predictions about it. Then, I test them. It's called the
> hypothetico-deductive method. Can you tell me any other model of human
> bipedalism that has been tested in this way?
You are doing no such thing. You have a "hypothesis" (which
is about as meaningless as a belch) from which you derive the
most ludicrous series of corollaries that you then defend by
lambasting anyone who offers the slightest criticism. Pure,
unadulterated bullshit promulgated by a rank amateur bullshit
artist. That aint science, that's religion.
Jim McGinn
an example of someone who provides a ref that has nothing
> whatever to do with what they claim it has to do with. \
she
> clearly thinks (or wants the reader to think) that the Elsner and Gooden
> quote has something to do with breathing even though it doesn't.
Pond points out that the fat
> we see under our skin is like what we see with other primates which are
> allowed to get fat. (If folks want to know more about this, there's more
> about fat on my site.)
leaving 27
> words out of the middle of an 86 word Darwin quote without indicating the
> words are missing, and changing words in those quotes to words more her
> liking.
she takes one of Darwin's introductions to a
> section as if that introduction was indicative of his whole thought --
People familiar with creationist writing will
> recognise this method of quoting only Darwin's opening "devil's advocate"
> section while ignoring the explanation
the most glaring may be the crying animals claims, which, in order
> to miss the non-aquatic ones amidst the aquatic ones, she would have to have
> read a chapter of a book by somehow managing to skip pretty much every other
> paragraph.
Morgan lumps the "standing up" in
> with the actual emergencies and claims that this list claims the body reacts
> to standing up just as it does to the actual emergencies. This of course is
> nonsense,
> she just altered it to suit her wishes, and that's not kosher.
>
Denton
> makes clear in many places in his book that humans' behavior toward salt
> shows that humans evolved in a salt deplete environment, which is precisely
> the opposite of what Morgan claims he said.
she claimed that Denton
> said that humans had no salt appetite, when the main thrust of this book was
> to point out that they do; she claimed that his work showed that humans
> evolved in or around a saltwater enviroment, when he was at pains to point
> out that his work showed that we evolved in an environment where salt was
> rare. This includes savannah and desert conditions like those the bushmen
> live(d) in, it includes forests, it includes everywhere except for the
> seashore where Morgan was placing our ancestors at that time (and for which
> she offered Denton's work as support, even though his work was very clear
> about saying that such a place was the one place where our ancestors could
> not have evolved).
> I had hoped you'd have something of substance after your previous posts. I
> can only hope you have such on your site's critique.
Excellent post, Jim.
I snipped around the potatoes leaving the meat.
Hey Algis,
How's about you give us a break from your whining and actually respond
to these points in detail?
Jim
Algis Kuliukas
> "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
> news:<107vf9p...@corp.supernews.com>...
> > > "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > > news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > > > "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
> > > news:<107sr4b...@corp.supernews.com>...
> > Ok let's take em one by one...
> > 1. 'Stood up to avoid drowning' - Ok this one's not peripheral, it's
> > bleeding obvious. In waist deep water an ape has not choice but to
> > move bipedally. Do you dispute it?
>
> All day long. This ape of yours, who finds him or herself
> in this situation, has at least two other choices: 1) swim, 2) get out
> of the water.
If the water is waist deep it is almost certainly too shallow to swim.
If the habitat is flooded then it probably hasn't got anywhere to get
out to.
> So your insistence that this scenario produces
> bipedalism is ludicrous in the extreme.
Oh yeah - it's ludicrous that an ape would ever live in a situation
where they'd be exposed to a flooded wetland habitat.
> Bipedal stance is
> already available to this ape and he/she uses it when the need
> arises --as when standing in waist deep water, or looking over
> the tall grass/underbrush, or engaging in threat displays, or
> carrying objects.
Yes it is 'already' available. Yes, I accept that those other factors
would also encourage them to move bipedally sometimes. I know it's
hard for you to think in anything but binary terms but I'm not
actually arguing that they *only* ever moved in water and that they
*never* moved bipedally on land or in trees, it's just that whilst
moving though shallow water they have pretty much no choice, wheras in
other substrates they do have a choice. So, the more they moved in
water, the more they'd move bipedally. Simple.
> > 2. 'Hairy proto-apes were removed from our ancestral gene pool by
> > hungry crocs'... This one is typical Jim Moore. I offered that
> > argument as a possible additional factor, yes.
>
> Oh, now it's a "possible additional factor".
It always was, Michael. But your blinkered black & white binary
thinking never recognised it. Point to any posting I've ever made that
claims anything like exclusivity for this argument. It's just a smear
to pretend otherwise.
> Then ? guess I won't
> be seeing you trot out your *swimming speed as a function
> of hair loss* reference again. Since you're in Australia, you
> could easily test it, you know. Just take your nearly hairless
> body out amongst your local salties. I'll be watching your
> local newspaper for the results.
Are you listening to anything? Swimming speed was part of it, swimming
efficiency was another part. Tides, flash floods and crossing wide
stretches of water would all act to enhance the selective pressure for
better swimming. Again you use Moore's tactics - take a tiny part of
the argument, isolate it, exaggerate it and pretend it's the whole
thing. Just like the sleaziest policitician or tabliod sub-editor.
> >In addition to other
> > swimming scenarios like surviving flash floods, tides and crossing
> > wide stretches of water. Also, I've always accepted that hair loss is
> > also probably in part explained by improvement in sweat cooling too.
>
> In part? You mean you'll grudgingly accept the mountains of
> data accumulated in support of evaporative sweat cooling just
> as long as you get to keep your swimming advantage nonsense?
> How do you manage that with a straight face?
There's nothing grudging about it. Of course I accept that nakedness
helps sweat cooling. Can you point to any post where I've tried to
deny it? More slimey smearing - it's all you have.
Try telling all the competitive swimmers that shave their body hair
before a big meet that it's nonsense. The Sharp & Costil paper's very
clear that it isn't nonsense. But, of course, you just ignore that
data or cite another paper (Kruger et al 2000) that shows the same
thing but, because JE used it to claim that it wasn't the *amount* of
body hair that was removed, to twist the argument around.
> > As sweat cooling is fueled by water this is hardly an argument against
> > a water-side existance. But, like JM, you're not interested in those
> > other arguments are you?
>
> "JM", like myself, is interested in any valid argument you
> can muster. Trouble is, you can't muster any. *What* other
> arguments!? You mean because I need water to sweat, I
> can't get ten feet away from it? Why don't *you* get ten
> feet away from water, Algis? Are you afraid? If you weren't
> so busy proselytizing you might consider that it is easy to make ten
> miles on foot with no water on a hot day. Easy, Algis --and
> our hypothetical hiker isn't even an acclimated proto-hominid.
That sweat cooling evolved heavily implies that our ancestors lived
close to very reliable water sources. If this was the only explanation
and it didn't involve water how come only one out of 200 primate
species evolved it and so few other mammals?
> > Just find the bit that sounds least likely,
> > exaggerate it, stitch it together with others and pretend that's all
> > the argument says. If Elaine Morgan would have done that JM would have
> > used it as one of his examples of 'Creationist style Darwin quoting'
> > but, of course, aquasceptics *never* do that, do they?
>
> I see Jim Moore has calmly eviscerated you in another post.
> You'll deny it, of course. You'll have to deny it to keep some
> semblage of integrity in your own head. The rest of the readers
> of this group are not so blinded.
Oh yeah, I'm 'eviscerated', sure. Just like his web site's a 'magnus
opus'. The phrase 'self deluding' comes to mind. Honestly, you're
arguments are so weak whenever enyone comes up with *anything* against
this idea you have to champion it as if it were some kind of
demolition. Just like a creationist would.
What about my point, the one you just skipped? Much of JM's criticism
of EM is that she picks bits of arguments and doesn't report on them
in the full, original context. Presumably you'd agree with that bit.
But then you do exactly the same thing yourself here with my
arguments. You picked out only the speculation about croc predation
and pretended that that is my whole argument. You conveneiently forget
that I also argued for swimming efficiency, in tides, flash floods and
wide stretches of water and that I actually also favour the sweat
cooling idea too. A bit convenient that.
> > 3. 'the origin of our valgus knee can be traced to wading sideways'
> > ... Another Moorism. I was *speculating*.
>
> Excuse me, I am *not* Jim Moore. If you want to link
> your deconstruction with Jim Moore then that's fine but
> kindly leave that filibuster out of this discussion. JM has
> nothing to do with your history of defending the idea that
> the valgus knee is such because of some adaptation to
> the stresses inherent in lateral wading.
I know that. I was merely highlighting that, once again, you use the
same tactics of the sleazy politician that Jim Moore does.
> You've done this
> all by your lonesome. Further, you've been downright
> righteous and combative about it, ignoring, as you so
> predictably do, any simpler explanations.
I've tried to argue against the idea that it's a done deal, that we
*know* it was due to human-like fully-upright bipedalism and I've
*speculated* that it might be due to wading. You have to smear that
and exagerate it to the point where you pretend my argument is 100%
behind that and nothing else. More smear.
> > The fact that the bicondylar
> > angle is greater in a'piths than in humans seems to indicate that it
> > probably wasn't due to pur, perfect human-like bipedalism. What else
> > could it be for? Who knows.
>
> Certainly not anyone who reads what passes for your web page.
More smear.
> > I'm interested in wading as a behavioural
> > context for early bipedalism and anyone that has waded through chest
> > deep water will know that lateral motion seems to offer less drag than
> > full frontal motion. If the earliest bipeds were waders you'd expect
> > them to have adopted a gait that used significant lateral motion.
>
> If the earliest bipeds were waders, and this has certainly NOT
> been established, by you or anyone else, then I would expect
> them to wade just like I do --straight forward.
Why would you expect that? Straight forward wading generates
considerably more drag. Next time you'r wading in the sea or in a fast
flowing river compare standing in waist deep water full on with
sideways. Have you never done that?
> Please stop
> supplying what you think that I would expect. I will not be
> burdened by your expectations.
I meant 'you' in the general sense, not 'you' in the personal sense,
you great plonker. ('You' here, was in the personal sense, however.)
> >This
> > might include sideways wading, but is more likely, in my opinion to
> > have been a side-to-side, twisting gait. Again, never mind the
> > subtelties or the complexities - just stick up the catchy headline and
> > take the Mick: Exactly like a sub-editor would in a trashy British
> > tabloid newspaper.
>
> Again, please can your characterizations of what you think
> is going on. I'm challenging your opinion --where you say
> early bipedalism consists of "a side-to-side, twisting gait"
> I couldn't care less what you think of "..trashy British
> tabloid newspaper[s]".
It's just another example of your sleazy tactics. Take the bit of the
argument that sounds the weakest, dissect it out from the rest of it
and the context and exaggerate. Then, stitch it together with other
bits extracted from other areas and write it in 5cm bold print in a
stupid headline.
Oh, so you're challenging my opinion now, that it was a "a
side-to-side, twisting gait". Why didn't you say so? I thought you
were taking the Mick of my "wading sideways" idea.
> > 4. 'That big heal of ours got that way to better gain purchase on
> > muddy substrates' Ditto above.
> >
> > Why did you ignore my counter-point?
>
> WHAT counterpoint!?
Read on...
> > Tell me, please, any tiny scrap of evidence which indicates that water
> > has acted as an agency in human evolution less than in those of our
> > ape cousins.
>
> What's this? You want me to get in the water with you?
> I *don't* think it's a dichotomy, remember? That's your spiel.
Huh? But, *that's* the hypothesis, as I've made clear a hundred times.
But you just don't want to engage on that one, do you? All you can do
is carefully edit out the little pieces of arguments out of context
you think are the most ridiculous, exagerate them, stitch them all
together and pretetend that it's the argument, the whole argument and
nothing but the argument. Exactly as Jim Moore did, and, exactly as
Langdon did. It's pathetic, it really is. It is just what creationists
do with Darwinism. It's intellectual cowardice.
"Let's just not engage the opponents in the actual substance of their
argument(because we might lose), instead let's try to re-interpret
what they're saying so that we can rubbish that bit."
> > [..]
> > > > Another Jim Moore tactic... try whip up mistrust and an atmosphere of
> > > > suspicion. 'Will I ever defend myself?' What are you on about? That's
> > > > what I've been doing for the last seven years.
> > >
> > > What I'm on about is your refusal to stand behind what you've
> > > said --as you did above, you simply sidestep any confrontation
> > > with "..Take tiny parts of peripheral arguments you read your
> > > opponents making on internet newsgroups at some time in the
> > > past out of context and string them together to make them look
> > > as ridiculous as possible." Like hell they're tiny or peripheral or
> > > out of context ...
> >
> > They're only parts of the argument, only speculations.
>
> Is this some kind of crack I see in your stony exterior?
> Are you now qualifying your 7-year pontification in this
> NG as "mere speculations"?
See? You've completely misunderstood everything. Doesn't that make you
feel a bit stupid? Of course they're speculations. Speculations that
need testing. What did you think they were?
> > > and I don't need to ~make~ them look ridiculous.
> >
> > By isolating them from the other arguments - like stressing croc
> > predation rather than flash floods, like ignoring the fact that I
> > accept sweat cooling was part of it - you make them look more
> > ridiculous than they would be.
>
> No, and again, it is YOU who vociferously defends your
> swimming speed advantage as a selective factor in the
> reduction of hair in our ancestors. You do so by trotting
> out the swimming speed reference --as you did just a few
> days ago. Yea, "..make them look more ridiculous than they
> would be.", as if that were possible.
Yes, swimming speed *and efficiency* as selective factors. You keep
letting the 'efficiency' bit slip out don't you - another Moorism. I
wonder why that would be - presumably because you'd have to concede
that it makes some sense.
Yeah, sure, it's not possible to make it look more ridiculous is it,
Michael? After all, no human ancestor *ever* went in the water, did
they? The idea that water might have acted as an agency of selection
in our evolution more than in apes is ludicrous, right? Because,
presumably, we never spent a second in the water longer than their
ancestors did. But then how do you explain this: humans can swim but
chimpanzees, bonobos, and orang-utans cannot? Funny that.
> >As Elaine Morgan apparently said about
> > Jim Moore's stuff, it's "smearing like the worst kind of
> > policitician." Nothing to do with science.
>
> Message-ID: <pI3gc.149114$oR5.77996@pd7tw3no>
>
> > > What you consider "defending your hypothesis" is the most
> > > disgusting and rank series of fillibusters to come down the pike
> > > in years. Try making a hypothesis that is clear, cogent, and
> > > ~testable~ and then *defend it*. What you've been doing for
> > > 7 years is whining about your critics. STOP IT and get serious.
> >
> > I am testing the hypothesis that water acted as an agency of selection
> > in the evolution of bipedalism. I'm taking the hypothesis and I make
> > some predictions about it. Then, I test them. It's called the
> > hypothetico-deductive method. Can you tell me any other model of human
> > bipedalism that has been tested in this way?
>
> You are doing no such thing.
Oh, but I am....
> You have a "hypothesis" (which is about as meaningless as a belch)
It's quite simple... "Water acted as an agency of selection in the
evolution of hominid bipedalism." Which bit of the meaning are you
having trouble understanding, Michael? Just tell me and I'll spell it
out for you in ever simpler terms if you like.
> from which you derive the most ludicrous series of corollaries
Ok, if you don't like my predictions, why don't you make some that I
can test. I'm all ears. Can you do that? You know, it's called
science. I've outlined my hypothesis, now all you have to do is come
up with something that might test it. I've three or four already but
I'm open to more.
> that you then defend by
> lambasting anyone who offers the slightest criticism.
Lambasting? It's you guys, and you in particular, who hurl the
childish abuse at every opportunity. Just look at the Langdon critique
thread I started. It was a serious attempt to write a critique of the
only paper published in a top anthropology journal to rebut the AAH
and all I get is 'ner, ner n-ner ner... you are a troll and so is Ni -
ick, ner, ni-ner-ne-ner-ner'. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so
pathetic.
> Pure, unadulterated bullshit promulgated by a rank amateur bullshit
> artist. That aint science, that's religion.
I'm doing the hypothetico-deductive method. You know? You make an
observation (humans are bipeds, apes aren't), you make a hypothesis
(wading was a factor in its origin), you make some predictions (extant
apes should be at their most bipedal in shallow water; the
paleohabitats of the earliest bipeds should be consistent with
habitats where regular wading could have taken place; the efficiency
of bipedal wading should be reflected in the morphology of the
earliest biped fossil record) and then you test them.
I ask again, how many of the other models of bipedalism have used that
logical approach? Can you name one, or are you just going to change
the subject again?
It's you guys who are doing the religion. It's you guys who are in the
AAH-can't-be-right-because-our-great-and-wise-leaders-would-have-told-us-therwise-by-now
camp, who refuse to think and ask questions for yourselves.
In the other thread you said you were an atheist but in this area you
have shown yourslf to be a believer. The hypothesis that water acted
as an agency of selection in human evolution more than in the
evolution of our ape cousins hasn't even been addressed by science
yet, but somehow you just *know* it's wrong. Spooky, that, Michael.
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<DGzfc.122816$Pk3.104567@pd7tw1no>...
> > > Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > > news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
> > > > I can understand Elaine's reaction to your web site.
> > >
> > > None of the Elaine comments I mentioned were in reaction to my web site,
> not
> > > the present site nor the old one I put up in 1996. They were in
> reaction to
> > > newsgroup posts where I pointed out that she had facts wrong, altered
> > > quotes, and ignored information that was on the same pages as
> information
> > > she didn't ignore. She didn't like that.
> >
> > Facts wrong: You mean like representing the Elsner & Gooden (1983)
> > data incorrectly? So? It was hardly a big deal. She mistakenly
> > referred to their data as evidence for breathing control when it was
> > for bradycardia. It didn't effect the main thrust of her argument that
> > diving mammals clearly are able to breathe in air in anticipation of
> > the dive. As far as I can tell this is the biggest factual error you
> > found in Morgan's rseearch. But even this is hardly earth shattering,
> > is it?
>
Ok. What *would* you call her biggest error, then? Which, out of all
the hundreds of claims and arguments in her five books would you say
is the most damning, the most deceitful or the most illustrative of
her lack of trustworthiness. Tell you what... why don't you give us
your 'top 5?'
It's odd because I would have though that your web site would have put
out the strongest case you have (not that it's very strong) but here,
and the on web site itself you heavily imply that there are other,
even worse examples that you're secretly holding on to. Why would you
do that, Jim? Or is it just more smear?
> ... although it
> does offer an example of someone who provides a ref that has nothing
> whatever to do with what they claim it has to do with.
Nothing? Bradycardia and breathing are surely related in mammals when
they dive in water.
> That in turn
> bespeaks of someone who either doesn't know what they're talking about, or
> who simply provided a ref that they hoped no one would bother to check --
> either is a serious thing, and especially so as this is a pattern with
> Morgan.
A bit hypocritical that. Morgan has made a few mistakes, I'll grant
you that, but her latest work is better referenced than most of your
web site, to make a simple comparison. I'm thinking of your pages
where you say thing like 'AAH proponents think the moon is made of
cheese'. You hope no-one will bother to check if they ever did say
that and usually provide no clue to help them to do so if they wanted
to. We're supposed to just take your word for it, I suppose.
> This either shows she is deliberately misleading her readers or is
> seriously ignorant of the subject -- and remember she is saying that people
> should accept her ideas in place of the ideas of a great many scholars.
No, that's at best an exaggeration at worse a sleazy smear. Of course
everyone is ignorant about the subject to a degree. Human evolution is
a very broad subject and no-one knows everything. Morgan demonstrates
a very good understanding of most of the generalities of the subject
but, of course, in some areas she's cited evidence that others have
written and assumed they were correct. To imply that she's
deliberately misleading her readers is just a cheap smear. She makes
some very good points which you don't even mention on your web site.
People like Philip Tobias, Daniel Denton and Colin Groves have been
very complementary about her books, but you don't mention that either.
You're a little bit convenient in what you report, aren't you? Not the
hallmark of a good 'scientific critique' is it?
> The point that Morgan was making there, using as support a ref that had
> nothing to do with what she said, was that seals gauge their breathing in
> anticipation of how long they are going to dive. Her sentence was, as I
> explain on my site: "A diving mammal like a seal or a dolphin purposefully
> regulates its breathing in relation to actions it intends to perform, as
> explained in a report by R. Elsner and B. Gooden on diving asphyxia:" Then,
> imeediately after that line, she offers the Elsner and Gooden quote as
> support for this statement, and as you can see from her statement, she
> clearly thinks (or wants the reader to think) that the Elsner and Gooden
> quote has something to do with breathing even though it doesn't.
Yes, yes. I've read the web page. Ok, it's an error. It's quite a bad
error. But it doesn't really change the main thrust of her argument
does it? At worst, it removes a piece of evidence in support of the
idea that diving mammals increase their inhalation before a big dive.
But does anyone seriously dispute that this is precisely what humans
do?
> (BTW, as a
> point of information, trivia for most, seals don't hold their breath before
> they dive -- like cetaceans, they exhale before they dive and collapse their
> lungs. They avoid getting the bends that way; their oxygen is held in very
> large blood vessels in extremely myoglobin-rich blood -- the whole system is
> incredibly unlike humans.)
Fine but the seals analogy is just that - an analogy - humans hold
their breath when diving don't they? Therefore, the argument that this
would have been an ideal preadaption for speech holds true. Much of
your web site exagerates these analogies in order to try to pour
ridicule on the AAH. That's just not fair, Jim.
> > People should know that Elaine Morgan's not the only one who can get
> > facts wrong. You say (on www.aquaticape.org/leaflist.html) about the
> > infamous, but unattributed and unreferenced AAH leaflet in the section
> > 'skin-bonded fat deposits' that this was "Wrong: Our fat deposits are
> > like other primates and very unlike fatty aquatic mammals, both in
> > pattern and life history", yet on this subject William Montagna writes
> > "Together with the loss of a furry cover, human skin acquired a
> > hypodermal fatty layer (panniculus adiposus) which is considerably
> > thicker than that found in other primates, or mammals for that
> > matter." (Montagna 1985:p14).
>
> Caroline Pond has many times pointed out that our fat deposits are quite
> like those of other primates if those primates are allowed to get fat. We
> also show a life pattern of fat that is very unlike aquatic mammals -- they
> get fat extremely quickly when young and both sexes are similar in their fat
> deposits; we start out very fat as babies (unlike any mammal, aquatic or
> not) then enter our leanest period through childhood, then rapidly build up
> fat deposits during puberty, with females and males differing considerably
> both in amount of fat and where it's built up. Pond points out that the fat
> we see under our skin is like what we see with other primates which are
> allowed to get fat. (If folks want to know more about this, there's more
> about fat on my site.)
Ok, but even her own data makes it clear that even the fattest,
un-exercised captive primates are almost always leaner than typical
humans. What did Pond say 'Comparisons with other mammals show that
Homo is clearly the odd man out', right?
So, do you dispute the Montagna quote? You seem to be selectively
choosing the quotes you like that back your view (that Elaine Morgan
is a fraud) but, conveniently, ignore other quotes which show that she
makes some very good points. This, of course, is a tactic you
criticise Morgan for doing herself but here you are, again, doing
worse yourself.
> > Altered Quotes: Oh yeah, Elaine's terrible for that. You mean,
> > presumably, writing 'selective' instead of 'selection' and omitting
> > one word 'appetite' without making it clear to the reader that she has
> > done so when citing Denton (1982). These were clearly simple errors
> > and not the shock-horror deception your attempted smear implies.
> > Or, perhaps you mean her 'creationist style Darwin quoting' technique
> > when she only takes parts of sentences to strengthen her argument. But
> > then you do that yourself all over the place when trying to discredit
> > Morgan so no big deal there either.
>
> No, as I mentioned on my site, I'm talking about things like her leaving 27
> words out of the middle of an 86 word Darwin quote without indicating the
> words are missing, and changing words in those quotes to words more her
> liking.
Oh yes, sorry. I forgot about those 27 (22 words, actually) words in
the Darwin quote. Ok, it was an error. I agree. But you never reported
what the words actually were, though, Jim. Here they are, by the way,
so everyone judge for themselves whether Morgan *did* change them to
meet her liking...
"...As Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to
protect their naked backs and shoulders with some slight covering."
How, please tell us, does this change the sentence to "her liking"?
Are you now suggesting that Morgan was anti-Wallace? As a Welsh native
I hardly think she'd do that.
Please let's be honest, Jim. Morgan's ommission had zero effect on the
meaning of her argument, didn't it? So why the hell are you wasting
all of our time having to check this stuff out? It's just more sleazy
politician style smearing, isn't it? It's another attempt at character
assasination.
> Please direct me to any place where I've done that -- I'd like to
> correct that if I've done it. Please do oblige me with an example.
I never claimed that you did actually misquote anyone, Jim. But I *do*
claim that you snip out bits of Morgan's work though, in order to make
her case look worse and yours better, exactly as you accuse her of
doing 'Creationist-style Darwin quoting' I believe you call it.
Example? Ok. Here's just one from the latest Morgan book page
http://www.aquaticape.org/aahbook.html
On the subject of fat you try to ridicule Morgan because she expressed
surprise that Pond described the AAH insulation [of fat] hypothesis as
'a major tenet of the Aquatic Ape Theory'. You quoted the sentence in
which she did that word for word but then, conveniently, missed out
completely the context of what she wrote in the immediately following
sentences...
'... It was, as we have seen, equally a tenet of the savannah theory
that hominids lapped themselves in a coat of fat to keep them warm at
night. As for the AAT, if buoyancy is included as an auxiliary
function of the fat layer, that can only be good news. Water is the
only habitat in which it would be relevant" (Morgan 1997:97.)
Here, as always, you snip out the the buoyancy part of the argument,
which is precisely what Morgan was complaining about. This massaging
of quotations is not what one expects from a 'scientific critique', is
it? But here you are, doing it again and again. Worse, however, you
then have the nerve to use the same allegation to attempt to discredit
Morgan's work.
> The part where I refer to the similarity of Morgan's quote of Darwin with
> creationists' methods is that she takes one of Darwin's introductions to a
> section as if that introduction was indicative of his whole thought --
> people familiar with Darwin's literary style will know that he often would
> introduce a topic by suggesting the difficulty of explaining such and such a
> feature, using (as I say on my site) a "devil's advocate approach to set up
> his detailed explanation". People familiar with creationist writing will
> recognise this method of quoting only Darwin's opening "devil's advocate"
> section while ignoring the explanation -- a famous example is creationists'
> use of Darwin's quote about the evolution of the eye. It is indeed
> disturbing to see Morgan doing this as it's such a common and dishonest
> creationist tactic and of course seems in her case too to be deliberately
> misleading. But then your explanation above seems to be deliberately
> misleading, as I explained this thoroughly on my site.
That's just waffle, Jim. Morgan's misquote didn't change one iota of
her argument and you know it. You are just attempting a smear. Did you
always work in politics?
> There are of course other examples of Morgan altering quotes, usually by
> leaving out words without indicating they've been left out (all the better
> to distort the meaning).
And where, exactly, are those other examples? Do you mean the one from
the newsgroup forum? Scraping the barrel again, Jim.
> > Ignored Information on the same page as information she didn't ignore:
> > Presumably you mean the aldosterone page now. Another piece of Morgan
> > deception? Not really actually, just Moore trying to stir things up as
> > usual. Morgan missed out a few, rather irrelevant details, from a
> > table printed in Ganong. Big deal.
>
> Actually, the most glaring may be the crying animals claims, which, in order
> to miss the non-aquatic ones amidst the aquatic ones, she would have to have
> read a chapter of a book by somehow managing to skip pretty much every other
> paragraph.
The salt tears arguments were completely withdrawn in Morgan's 1997
book, Jim. You know that but how come you haven't withdrawn the 10,000
words of your web site that pretend that it's still a major pillar of
the AAH? It was never a major argument in the first place, but never
mind that, eh? As long as your readers are hoodwinked into thinking
the AAH is a fraud, who cares?
> The aldosterone example though, is also one -- I won't go into
> it in detail because I explain it quite thoroughly on the site (the direct
> link to that page is http://www.aquaticape.org/aldosterone.html). The gist
> is that the list, as seen in both Ganong's 1993 Review of Medical Physiology
> and the Encyclopedia Britannica (where she got her list from; the lists are
> the same in both sources) offers two quite different things, normal everyday
> bodily functions (like standing up) and serious emergencies (like surgery,
> anxiety, physical trauma, and hemorrhage) and shows two quite different
> bodily reactions (as we might expect). Morgan lumps the "standing up" in
> with the actual emergencies and claims that this list claims the body reacts
> to standing up just as it does to the actual emergencies. This of course is
> nonsense, and more to the point here, it's not what the list says at all --
> she just altered it to suit her wishes, and that's not kosher.
Oh come off it, Jim. You're really scraping the barrel here. Is this
really the biggest shock-horror story you've got on her work?
The key point she made holds good. It was simply this: That the act of
standing has required humans to evolve compensatory mechanisms to help
support blood volumes reaching the brain. Are you denying that this is
one of the functions of aldosterone, that this is what Ganong says?
Morgan's argument is merely that our bipedalism had some extra costs
not incurred by quadrupeds which means that it must have provided some
real adaptive benefit to overcome those costs and that wading in water
might offer some of those benefits. You didn't discuss the
complexities and subtelties of that argument though because you were
too busy looking for 'dirt'.
> > How about letting readers see another example of this, one you did
> > yourself. You accuse Morgan of "a complete fabrication" in placing
> > Denton's (1982:70) quote, mentioned above, in a savannah context.
> > "Denton neither says it, nor implies it" you tell us. You quote
> > several paragraphs from that page to prove your point but, surprise,
> > surprise, you stop quoting just before Denton writes this very next
> > sentence...
> >
> > "If the deductions of hunter-gatherer societies based on the Kalahari
> > bushmen and the Hadza are valid in relation to hominids, then diet may
> > have also been predominantly vegetarian over the last five million
> > years, though there was considerable variation in diet according to
> > the prevailing climate and conditions" Denton (1982:70)
> >
> > Hold on. Isn't that 'Kalahari bushmen' reference rather *implying* the
> > very savannah context you assure us that Morgan has trwisted Denton's
> > words to imply? Really, Jim, your hypocracy is astounding.
>
> The context of Denton's sentence is the senetences preceding it in the
> paragraph it's in
Well that's a convenient interpretation, Jim. How do you know that?
Why shouldn't the very next sentence be part of the context too?
Because that would show you were guilty of misleading the public in a
worse way than you accused Morgan of doing?
> -- it does not refer to savannah or indeed any specific
> environment, only the general type of "environmental, dietetic and metabolic
> conditions" which determine an animal's "behavior toward salt". Denton
> makes clear in many places in his book that humans' behavior toward salt
> shows that humans evolved in a salt deplete environment, which is precisely
> the opposite of what Morgan claims he said.
>
> That particular paragraph about the Kalahari bushmen and Hadza is (rather
> clearly) talking about the diet of those people, not their environment.
> This is made even clearer by the fact that the paragraph you mention
> specifically talked about "predominantly vegetarian" diets not only in the
> Kahahari bushmen and Hadza but also the peoples of highland New Guinea and
> the Amazon, contrasting all these with diets of predominately "animal
> products" such as Eskimos and the Maasai (guess you missed that part, or
> just forgot to tell us about it). His point about the Kalahari bushmen and
> Hadza was that most of their diet was vegetable sources rather than meat.
Honestly, that's just the sort of answer a politician would give when
trying to squirm out of an awkward question... full of waffle.
Look, you say, quite explicitly, that Denton "neither says it, nor
implies" a savannah context for hominid evolution but in the very next
sentence he's talking about kalahari bushmen and Hadza people. That's
a bit of a misrepresentation, isn't it? Be honest.
> The reason that's imporant is that primarily carnivorous mammals, and those
> living in saltwater environments such as Morgan was pushing at the time, do
> not demonstrate salt appetite, while animals living in salt deplete
> environments with salt deplete diets do exhibit salt hunger. In this way
> you can demonstrate whether our ancestors lived in a salt replete
> enviornment (like the seaside like Morgan was claiming at that time) or a
> salt deplete environment (as paleoanthropologists claimed).
>
> The parts of Denton's book that pertained to humans and human evolution do
> say the opposite of what Morgan claimed they said -- she claimed that Denton
> said that humans had no salt appetite, when the main thrust of this book was
> to point out that they do; she claimed that his work showed that humans
> evolved in or around a saltwater enviroment, when he was at pains to point
> out that his work showed that we evolved in an environment where salt was
> rare. This includes savannah and desert conditions like those the bushmen
> live(d) in, it includes forests, it includes everywhere except for the
> seashore where Morgan was placing our ancestors at that time (and for which
> she offered Denton's work as support, even though his work was very clear
> about saying that such a place was the one place where our ancestors could
> not have evolved).
Look, this particular argument was always peripheral to the AAH, at
best. As you rightly, in my opinion, point out on your web site, it
kind of strongly alludes to a seaside habitat when much of the fossil
evidence would appear to place our ancestors next to fresh water. I
agree that this idea is largely irrelevant. I'd even concede that
Morgan might have made a few errors in taking Denton's work as pro-AAH
evidence, but my point here was to show that you misrepresented his
work to try to further taint Morgan's with mistrust. I think anyone
who's objective will see that.
> > I'm sure Morgan didn't like her work being misrepresented and smeared
> > in the way you have done. Now, how do you like it when I point out
> > similar but, in my opinion, worse errors in your work?
>
> I had hoped you'd have something of substance after your previous posts. I
> can only hope you have such on your site's critique.
There's plenty of substance, Jim. You rarely reference those AAH
proponents' claims you critique with clear citations, even though this
is one of your main cases against Morgan. This makes it difficult to
find out that actually you tend to take out just the bits of
arguments, often out of context, and exaggerate them to breaking point
and that you pick and choose from quotes, cutting them to meet your
liking exactly as (but actually far worse than) you claim Morgan does.
This all results in you critiquing only an exagerated version the
hypothesis, one you feel you can easily dismiss, and all but ignore
other, more moderate versions which are clearly harder, if not
impossible, to refute. Your web site is called www.aquaticape.org but
it is very unbalanced, giving only the very worst 'dirt' on the
hypothesis and never any of its positive points. The fact you have no
links to pro-AAH sites or ever quote any positive refernces to
Morgan's work or the AAH leaves the overwhelming impression that it
has been written in order to rubbish the hypothesis and smear the work
of Elaine Morgan. You should be ashamed of yourself, Jim.
> > How about that link on your www.aquaticape.org web site to an
> > alternative view? Got twenty seconds spare to do that? Just cut and
> > paste this into any of your web pages and post it up there and you're
> > done.
> >
> > <p>For an alternative view click <a
> > href="http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm">
> > here</a>.</p>
> > Somehow I get the feeling that you're not going to do it. Some
> > 'scientific critique', that.
>
> As I've mentioned several times, I am going on several month long trips soon
> and have a lot of preparations to make yet; I haven't had a chance yet to go
> over the critique on your site and probably won't for a while. Naturally, I
> want to mention what I think of your critique when I link to it, but I don't
> want to assume it's all so insignificant as what you've mentioned so far. I
> would have hoped you'd appreciate my not wanting to make such an assumption.
So you keep saying, Jim. But my site offers an alternative view to
yours. I have a link on my pro-AAH site to your (anti-) site and did
so from the very beginning - even before I'd bothered to read it.
A web site purporting to give a scientific critique should offer an
alternative view shouldn't it. You could meet that requirement in
about thirty seconds (a bit less than the half an hour it took you to
write this response) if you had the will. Do you?
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> Excellent post, Jim.
"Excellent post, Jim"? Now I know you're a plonker.
> I snipped around the potatoes leaving the meat.
>
> Hey Algis,
>
> How's about you give us a break from your whining and actually respond
> to these points in detail?
Er, I did. Easy. Jim Moore's web site is a sleazy politician-style
attempt at rubbishing a reasonable hypothesis and smearing the good
work of Elaine Morgan. In doing so he shows himself to be guilty of
exactly the same 'crimes' as the allegations he makes (but which upon
close examination don't stand up to scrutiny) against Morgan.
That you have chosen to defend him just makes you part of the same,
sleazy, process. I thought you were, at least, independently minded
but it seems you're just another sheep bleating to the same, dry,
ignorant rythm.
Algis Kuliukas
firstjois
If you don't like the response here, why post here?
Jois
Michael Clark
news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
[..]
>
> > > Ok let's take em one by one...
> > > 1. 'Stood up to avoid drowning' - Ok this one's not peripheral, it's
> > > bleeding obvious. In waist deep water an ape has not choice but to
> > > move bipedally. Do you dispute it?
> >
> > All day long. This ape of yours, who finds him or herself
> > in this situation, has at least two other choices: 1) swim, 2) get out
> > of the water.
>
> If the water is waist deep it is almost certainly too shallow to swim.
> If the habitat is flooded then it probably hasn't got anywhere to get
> out to.
Is this the best you can do? You're arguing now just
to make your mouth move, right? So let me get this straight:
you're saying that we're bipedal today because some putative
ape couldn't figure out that he could swim in waist deep water
(like you) or that this major feature of our physical self
can be traced to flooded habitat? Is that what you're saying?
I just wanna be sure.
> > So your insistence that this scenario produces
> > bipedalism is ludicrous in the extreme.
>
> Oh yeah - it's ludicrous that an ape would ever live in a situation
> where they'd be exposed to a flooded wetland habitat.
That's not what you're arguing. Try to follow your own
argument here for once. You're saying that bipedalism
arose out of a desire on the part of some proto human to
stand up --and thus avoid drowning. I have no problem
accepting that some apes at some distant point in the past
were exposed to flooded terrain. I ~do~ have a problem
with your idea that this water ~forced~ the adoption of
a behavior that ~everyone else~ regards as part and parcel
of the normal range of behaviors shared by ~all~ large-bodied
extant apes. That would include me --remember out little
tete-a-tete regarding the hylobates?
> > Bipedal stance is
> > already available to this ape and he/she uses it when the need
> > arises --as when standing in waist deep water, or looking over
> > the tall grass/underbrush, or engaging in threat displays, or
> > carrying objects.
>
> Yes it is 'already' available. Yes, I accept that those other factors
> would also encourage them to move bipedally sometimes. I know it's
> hard for you to think in anything but binary terms but I'm not
> actually arguing that they *only* ever moved in water and that they
> *never* moved bipedally on land or in trees, it's just that whilst
> moving though shallow water they have pretty much no choice, wheras in
> other substrates they do have a choice. So, the more they moved in
> water, the more they'd move bipedally. Simple.
Simple minded, you mean. If apes are moving bipedally in other
venues, then what's ~forcing~ them there?
> > > 2. 'Hairy proto-apes were removed from our ancestral gene pool by
> > > hungry crocs'... This one is typical Jim Moore. I offered that
> > > argument as a possible additional factor, yes.
> >
> > Oh, now it's a "possible additional factor".
>
> It always was, Michael. But your blinkered black & white binary
> thinking never recognised it. Point to any posting I've ever made that
> claims anything like exclusivity for this argument. It's just a smear
> to pretend otherwise.
I would point to the volume of posts you make trotting out
your various and sundry defenses of your predation/efficiency
argument. You apparantly throw these smoke screens up
without thinking of the impact they make among your readers.
The predation argument doesn't hold water. Africa is full of
crocs --who hunt by stealth and a murderous explosion of teeth
and bone snapping jaws. Out swimming a croc is a non-question
as this just aint the way it works. You've been gently and not-so-
gently reminded of this many times. So many times, in fact, that
you've now decided to call it "speculation". Now, we get the
"efficiency" deal. What, if I may be so bold as to ask, is the
~selective advantage~ of being a .00004% faster swimmer than
my neighbor? Why would I leave more descendants than the
person who is slightly hairier than I am? Why, Algis? Stop
calling me names and questioning my motives long enough to
supply an answer free from "speculation" and dodging qualifiers.
> > Then ? guess I won't
> > be seeing you trot out your *swimming speed as a function
> > of hair loss* reference again. Since you're in Australia, you
> > could easily test it, you know. Just take your nearly hairless
> > body out amongst your local salties. I'll be watching your
> > local newspaper for the results.
>
> Are you listening to anything? Swimming speed was part of it, swimming
> efficiency was another part. Tides, flash floods and crossing wide
> stretches of water would all act to enhance the selective pressure for
> better swimming. Again you use Moore's tactics - take a tiny part of
> the argument, isolate it, exaggerate it and pretend it's the whole
> thing. Just like the sleaziest policitician or tabliod sub-editor.
I'm listening to everything you say --you may not have noticed.
And apart from the cheap editorializing, I'm not getting the answers
to the questions that result. I'll ask again: What is the selective
adantage
for a *terrestrial biped* of being a better swimmer --when that advantage
(your hairless speed study) is measured in some fraction of a percent?
Or, if you're now ready to concede the predation issue, when better/worse
swimmer has no visible connection to reproductive fitness. Face it, Algis,
drowning is an accident today and has very little connection to the victim's
ability.
> > >In addition to other
> > > swimming scenarios like surviving flash floods, tides and crossing
> > > wide stretches of water. Also, I've always accepted that hair loss is
> > > also probably in part explained by improvement in sweat cooling too.
> >
> > In part? You mean you'll grudgingly accept the mountains of
> > data accumulated in support of evaporative sweat cooling just
> > as long as you get to keep your swimming advantage nonsense?
> > How do you manage that with a straight face?
>
> There's nothing grudging about it. Of course I accept that nakedness
> helps sweat cooling. Can you point to any post where I've tried to
> deny it? More slimey smearing - it's all you have.
I'd say it was grudging --especially in light of the fact that it
has nothing to do with splashing about ~in~ the *water*.
You're such an easy target, Algis.
> Try telling all the competitive swimmers that shave their body hair
> before a big meet that it's nonsense. The Sharp & Costil paper's very
> clear that it isn't nonsense. But, of course, you just ignore that
> data or cite another paper (Kruger et al 2000) that shows the same
> thing but, because JE used it to claim that it wasn't the *amount* of
> body hair that was removed, to twist the argument around.
Here you are with your Sharp & Costil paper. Right on time.
What does it mean, Algis? Does it mean that our ancestors were
competitive swimmers? Does it mean that the winner got the girl
or stiffed the croc? Does it mean that the winner had more offspring?
Come on, say something.
> > > As sweat cooling is fueled by water this is hardly an argument against
> > > a water-side existance. But, like JM, you're not interested in those
> > > other arguments are you?
> >
> > "JM", like myself, is interested in any valid argument you
> > can muster. Trouble is, you can't muster any. *What* other
> > arguments!? You mean because I need water to sweat, I
> > can't get ten feet away from it? Why don't *you* get ten
> > feet away from water, Algis? Are you afraid? If you weren't
> > so busy proselytizing you might consider that it is easy to make ten
> > miles on foot with no water on a hot day. Easy, Algis --and
> > our hypothetical hiker isn't even an acclimated proto-hominid.
>
> That sweat cooling evolved heavily implies that our ancestors lived
> close to very reliable water sources. If this was the only explanation
> and it didn't involve water how come only one out of 200 primate
> species evolved it and so few other mammals?
You need to slow down and think about what you're saying.
We are not cacti or camels. We cannot go long without fresh
water. Fortunately for us, growing up in Africa did not exclude
us from such access. Again, if I can walk all day in the hot sun
without a drink (and I can) I can cover at least 20 miles. If that
twenty miles is on either side of a water sources (say, a stream)
then that territory is 20 x 2 or 40 miles. If that stream is 50 miles
long, then the territory at my disposal is 50 X 40 or 2000 square
miles. Do you think that maybe there are other available sources
in that 2000 square miles?
> > > Just find the bit that sounds least likely,
> > > exaggerate it, stitch it together with others and pretend that's all
> > > the argument says. If Elaine Morgan would have done that JM would have
> > > used it as one of his examples of 'Creationist style Darwin quoting'
> > > but, of course, aquasceptics *never* do that, do they?
> >
> > I see Jim Moore has calmly eviscerated you in another post.
> > You'll deny it, of course. You'll have to deny it to keep some
> > semblage of integrity in your own head. The rest of the readers
> > of this group are not so blinded.
>
> Oh yeah, I'm 'eviscerated', sure. Just like his web site's a 'magnus
> opus'. The phrase 'self deluding' comes to mind. Honestly, you're
> arguments are so weak whenever enyone comes up with *anything* against
> this idea you have to champion it as if it were some kind of
> demolition. Just like a creationist would.
I'd say he showed you pretty conclusively where the bear
pooped. And yes, the phrase 'self deluding' does come to mind
when I read your replies.
> What about my point, the one you just skipped? Much of JM's criticism
> of EM is that she picks bits of arguments and doesn't report on them
> in the full, original context. Presumably you'd agree with that bit.
Yes, I'd agree.
> But then you do exactly the same thing yourself here with my
> arguments. You picked out only the speculation about croc predation
> and pretended that that is my whole argument. You conveneiently forget
> that I also argued for swimming efficiency, in tides, flash floods and
> wide stretches of water and that I actually also favour the sweat
> cooling idea too. A bit convenient that.
Yes, I rail against your predation silliness, and your efficiency
arguments as well. Why does a wading ape need to develop
sweat cooling? Isn't he/she/it always close to the water?
> > > 3. 'the origin of our valgus knee can be traced to wading sideways'
> > > ... Another Moorism. I was *speculating*.
> >
> > Excuse me, I am *not* Jim Moore. If you want to link
> > your deconstruction with Jim Moore then that's fine but
> > kindly leave that filibuster out of this discussion. JM has
> > nothing to do with your history of defending the idea that
> > the valgus knee is such because of some adaptation to
> > the stresses inherent in lateral wading.
>
> I know that. I was merely highlighting that, once again, you use the
> same tactics of the sleazy politician that Jim Moore does.
I'm from the US. We know a few things about sleazy
politicians. If you ask me, it is you who says "I'm glad
you asked that question." and then answers with a fillibuster
that has nothing to do with the orginal question. Is it bigger
that a breadbox, Algis?
> > You've done this
> > all by your lonesome. Further, you've been downright
> > righteous and combative about it, ignoring, as you so
> > predictably do, any simpler explanations.
>
> I've tried to argue against the idea that it's a done deal, that we
> *know* it was due to human-like fully-upright bipedalism and I've
> *speculated* that it might be due to wading. You have to smear that
> and exagerate it to the point where you pretend my argument is 100%
> behind that and nothing else. More smear.
Again, you have done so such thing. Your "speculations" border
on some kind of fatwa. You've been treated to a myriad of
counter proposals --all of which you have roundly rejected because
you think it ~most parsimonious~ to support the wet apes. Deny
it, I can use google.
> > > The fact that the bicondylar
> > > angle is greater in a'piths than in humans seems to indicate that it
> > > probably wasn't due to pur, perfect human-like bipedalism. What else
> > > could it be for? Who knows.
> >
> > Certainly not anyone who reads what passes for your web page.
>
> More smear.
Just an observation of fact.
> > > I'm interested in wading as a behavioural
> > > context for early bipedalism and anyone that has waded through chest
> > > deep water will know that lateral motion seems to offer less drag than
> > > full frontal motion. If the earliest bipeds were waders you'd expect
> > > them to have adopted a gait that used significant lateral motion.
> >
> > If the earliest bipeds were waders, and this has certainly NOT
> > been established, by you or anyone else, then I would expect
> > them to wade just like I do --straight forward.
>
> Why would you expect that? Straight forward wading generates
> considerably more drag. Next time you'r wading in the sea or in a fast
> flowing river compare standing in waist deep water full on with
> sideways. Have you never done that?
Then why do people wade forward if it's so darned difficult?
> > Please stop
> > supplying what you think that I would expect. I will not be
> > burdened by your expectations.
>
> I meant 'you' in the general sense, not 'you' in the personal sense,
> you great plonker. ('You' here, was in the personal sense, however.)
Great Plonker? Is that some kind of pejorative?
> > >This
> > > might include sideways wading, but is more likely, in my opinion to
> > > have been a side-to-side, twisting gait. Again, never mind the
> > > subtelties or the complexities - just stick up the catchy headline and
> > > take the Mick: Exactly like a sub-editor would in a trashy British
> > > tabloid newspaper.
> >
> > Again, please can your characterizations of what you think
> > is going on. I'm challenging your opinion --where you say
> > early bipedalism consists of "a side-to-side, twisting gait"
> > I couldn't care less what you think of "..trashy British
> > tabloid newspaper[s]".
>
> It's just another example of your sleazy tactics. Take the bit of the
> argument that sounds the weakest, dissect it out from the rest of it
> and the context and exaggerate. Then, stitch it together with other
> bits extracted from other areas and write it in 5cm bold print in a
> stupid headline.
It's your argument, doofus. What part of your predation/efficiency/
avoid drowning spiel do you find the least repugnant? And you've
said all this before. I'm not interested in your efforts to whine,
obfuscate, bait-and-switch etc. You read like some intro student
who has a 30 word idea that he has to make into a 1000 word essay
by 8:00 o'clock tomorrow.
> Oh, so you're challenging my opinion now, that it was a "a
> side-to-side, twisting gait". Why didn't you say so? I thought you
> were taking the Mick of my "wading sideways" idea.
>
> > > 4. 'That big heal of ours got that way to better gain purchase on
> > > muddy substrates' Ditto above.
> > >
> > > Why did you ignore my counter-point?
> >
> > WHAT counterpoint!?
>
> Read on...
>
> > > Tell me, please, any tiny scrap of evidence which indicates that water
> > > has acted as an agency in human evolution less than in those of our
> > > ape cousins.
> >
> > What's this? You want me to get in the water with you?
> > I *don't* think it's a dichotomy, remember? That's your spiel.
>
> Huh? But, *that's* the hypothesis, as I've made clear a hundred times.
> But you just don't want to engage on that one, do you? All you can do
> is carefully edit out the little pieces of arguments out of context
> you think are the most ridiculous, exagerate them, stitch them all
> together and pretetend that it's the argument, the whole argument and
> nothing but the argument. Exactly as Jim Moore did, and, exactly as
> Langdon did. It's pathetic, it really is. It is just what creationists
> do with Darwinism. It's intellectual cowardice.
>
> "Let's just not engage the opponents in the actual substance of their
> argument(because we might lose), instead let's try to re-interpret
> what they're saying so that we can rubbish that bit."
I'm gonna start snipping your bullshit if you don't cut it out yourself.
This is really tiresome. You are wasting tons of bandwidth with
your silly little games. A dichotomy is a two-part argument. You
make it so when you compare us and our ape cousins and suggest
that water meant less or more to one or the other. It's a stupid
argument, an unsupported argument, and just more of the same
dodge and feint I have come to expect from you. Talk about
intellectual cowardice --you have yet to respond to the objections
of your critics.
> > > [..]
> > > > > Another Jim Moore tactic... try whip up mistrust and an atmosphere
of
> > > > > suspicion. 'Will I ever defend myself?' What are you on about?
That's
> > > > > what I've been doing for the last seven years.
> > > >
> > > > What I'm on about is your refusal to stand behind what you've
> > > > said --as you did above, you simply sidestep any confrontation
> > > > with "..Take tiny parts of peripheral arguments you read your
> > > > opponents making on internet newsgroups at some time in the
> > > > past out of context and string them together to make them look
> > > > as ridiculous as possible." Like hell they're tiny or peripheral or
> > > > out of context ...
> > >
> > > They're only parts of the argument, only speculations.
> >
> > Is this some kind of crack I see in your stony exterior?
> > Are you now qualifying your 7-year pontification in this
> > NG as "mere speculations"?
>
> See? You've completely misunderstood everything. Doesn't that make you
> feel a bit stupid? Of course they're speculations. Speculations that
> need testing. What did you think they were?
I thought they were wanton, bald-faced, navel-gazing hallucinations.
And the only time I feel stupid is shortly after having replied to
your posts in this NG --although not for the reasons that you infer
above.
> > > > and I don't need to ~make~ them look ridiculous.
> > >
> > > By isolating them from the other arguments - like stressing croc
> > > predation rather than flash floods, like ignoring the fact that I
> > > accept sweat cooling was part of it - you make them look more
> > > ridiculous than they would be.
> >
> > No, and again, it is YOU who vociferously defends your
> > swimming speed advantage as a selective factor in the
> > reduction of hair in our ancestors. You do so by trotting
> > out the swimming speed reference --as you did just a few
> > days ago. Yea, "..make them look more ridiculous than they
> > would be.", as if that were possible.
>
> Yes, swimming speed *and efficiency* as selective factors. You keep
> letting the 'efficiency' bit slip out don't you - another Moorism. I
> wonder why that would be - presumably because you'd have to concede
> that it makes some sense.
I asked about the efficiency thing above. I predict that you didn't
answer it to anyone's satisfaction up there and that you will miss
this opportunity as well.
> Yeah, sure, it's not possible to make it look more ridiculous is it,
> Michael? After all, no human ancestor *ever* went in the water, did
> they? The idea that water might have acted as an agency of selection
> in our evolution more than in apes is ludicrous, right? Because,
> presumably, we never spent a second in the water longer than their
> ancestors did. But then how do you explain this: humans can swim but
> chimpanzees, bonobos, and orang-utans cannot? Funny that.
Yes, funny that, allright. I guess it's settled then: we're bipedal
because chimps can't swim. I asked you once before if you
realized how patently ridiculous that was and you didn't answer.
Can you ditch the whining long enough to answer it today?
> > >As Elaine Morgan apparently said about
> > > Jim Moore's stuff, it's "smearing like the worst kind of
> > > policitician." Nothing to do with science.
> >
> > Message-ID: <pI3gc.149114$oR5.77996@pd7tw3no>
> >
> > > > What you consider "defending your hypothesis" is the most
> > > > disgusting and rank series of fillibusters to come down the pike
> > > > in years. Try making a hypothesis that is clear, cogent, and
> > > > ~testable~ and then *defend it*. What you've been doing for
> > > > 7 years is whining about your critics. STOP IT and get serious.
> > >
> > > I am testing the hypothesis that water acted as an agency of selection
> > > in the evolution of bipedalism. I'm taking the hypothesis and I make
> > > some predictions about it. Then, I test them. It's called the
> > > hypothetico-deductive method. Can you tell me any other model of human
> > > bipedalism that has been tested in this way?
> >
> > You are doing no such thing.
>
> Oh, but I am....
>
> > You have a "hypothesis" (which is about as meaningless as a belch)
>
> It's quite simple... "Water acted as an agency of selection in the
> evolution of hominid bipedalism." Which bit of the meaning are you
> having trouble understanding, Michael? Just tell me and I'll spell it
> out for you in ever simpler terms if you like.
You could just as well say "air" instead of water and it will
make as much sense. Or try "soil" --maybe that will work.
How does this "selection" work? ~I'm~ all ears and eagerly
await your "simpler terms".
> > from which you derive the most ludicrous series of corollaries
>
> Ok, if you don't like my predictions, why don't you make some that I
> can test. I'm all ears. Can you do that? You know, it's called
> science. I've outlined my hypothesis, now all you have to do is come
> up with something that might test it. I've three or four already but
> I'm open to more.
You've outlined your hypothesis, alright. It's silly --to be polite.
Now you're asking me to test it. Isn't that your job? Why don't
you list those "three or four already".
> > that you then defend by
> > lambasting anyone who offers the slightest criticism.
>
> Lambasting? It's you guys, and you in particular, who hurl the
> childish abuse at every opportunity. Just look at the Langdon critique
> thread I started. It was a serious attempt to write a critique of the
> only paper published in a top anthropology journal to rebut the AAH
> and all I get is 'ner, ner n-ner ner... you are a troll and so is Ni -
> ick, ner, ni-ner-ne-ner-ner'. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so
> pathetic.
It certainly is pathetic. You want a pat on the head, you'll have to go
whining to the Macro Man.
> > Pure, unadulterated bullshit promulgated by a rank amateur bullshit
> > artist. That aint science, that's religion.
>
[more of the same]
Jim McGinn
> > ... although it
> > does offer an example of someone who provides a ref that has nothing
> > whatever to do with what they claim it has to do with.
>
> Nothing? Bradycardia and breathing are surely related in mammals when
> they dive in water.
Note that Algis, conveniently, snips the content of Jim's thoughts.
>
> > That in turn
> > bespeaks of someone who either doesn't know what they're talking about, or
> > who simply provided a ref that they hoped no one would bother to check --
> > either is a serious thing, and especially so as this is a pattern with
> > Morgan.
>
> A bit hypocritical that. Morgan has made a few mistakes, I'll grant
> you that, but her latest work is better referenced
Yes, I also note that O.J. hasn't killed anybody for quite some time
now.
than most of your
> web site, to make a simple comparison. I'm thinking of your pages
> where you say thing like 'AAH proponents think the moon is made of
> cheese'. You hope no-one will bother to check if they ever did say
> that and usually provide no clue to help them to do so if they wanted
> to. We're supposed to just take your word for it, I suppose.
Be specific or shut your trap.
>
> > This either shows she is deliberately misleading her readers or is
> > seriously ignorant of the subject -- and remember she is saying that people
> > should accept her ideas in place of the ideas of a great many scholars.
>
> No, that's at best an exaggeration at worse a sleazy smear. Of course
> everyone is ignorant about the subject to a degree. Human evolution is
> a very broad subject and no-one knows everything. Morgan demonstrates
> a very good understanding of most of the generalities of the subject
> but, of course, in some areas she's cited evidence that others have
> written and assumed they were correct.
Uh, what does this tell you?
To imply that she's
> deliberately misleading her readers is just a cheap smear. She makes
> some very good points which you don't even mention on your web site.
> People like Philip Tobias, Daniel Denton and Colin Groves have been
> very complementary about her books, but you don't mention that either.
> You're a little bit convenient in what you report, aren't you? Not the
> hallmark of a good 'scientific critique' is it?
>
> > The point that Morgan was making there, using as support a ref that had
> > nothing to do with what she said, was that seals gauge their breathing in
> > anticipation of how long they are going to dive. Her sentence was, as I
> > explain on my site: "A diving mammal like a seal or a dolphin purposefully
> > regulates its breathing in relation to actions it intends to perform, as
> > explained in a report by R. Elsner and B. Gooden on diving asphyxia:" Then,
> > imeediately after that line, she offers the Elsner and Gooden quote as
> > support for this statement, and as you can see from her statement, she
> > clearly thinks (or wants the reader to think) that the Elsner and Gooden
> > quote has something to do with breathing even though it doesn't.
>
> Yes, yes. I've read the web page. Ok, it's an error. It's quite a bad
> error. But it doesn't really change the main thrust of her argument
> does it?
It destroys her argument altogether.
At worst, it removes a piece of evidence in support of the
> idea that diving mammals increase their inhalation before a big dive.
> But does anyone seriously dispute that this is precisely what humans
> do?
As Jim pointed out, this was not her argument.
>
> > (BTW, as a
> > point of information, trivia for most, seals don't hold their breath before
> > they dive -- like cetaceans, they exhale before they dive and collapse their
> > lungs. They avoid getting the bends that way; their oxygen is held in very
> > large blood vessels in extremely myoglobin-rich blood -- the whole system is
> > incredibly unlike humans.)
>
> Fine but the seals analogy is just that - an analogy - humans hold
> their breath when diving don't they? Therefore, the argument that this
> would have been an ideal preadaption for speech holds true.
Humans don't necessarily hold their breath before they speak.
Much of
> your web site exagerates these analogies in order to try to pour
> ridicule on the AAH. That's just not fair, Jim.
You admit Morgan is wrong then you berate Jim for pointing it out.
Algis, you put the wack in wacko.
Uh, I guess. But how does this support your aquatic premise (which,
afterall is the point here, isn't it)?
>
> So, do you dispute the Montagna quote? You seem to be selectively
> choosing the quotes you like that back your view (that Elaine Morgan
> is a fraud) but, conveniently, ignore other quotes which show that she
> makes some very good points.
Why don't you show us these, "very good points."
It's a specious argument in that you can't separate fat from buoyancy
regardless of the habitat. So the fact that they main proponent of
AAT would describe this as, "good news," for AAT indicates the
desperation of AAT.
I'd guess that upwards of 50% of everything she's presented has been
subsequently withdrawn.
You know that but how come you haven't withdrawn the 10,000
> words of your web site that pretend that it's still a major pillar of
> the AAH? It was never a major argument in the first place,
Duck, dodge, weave. It doesn't seem you have *any* major arguments
left.
but never
> mind that, eh? As long as your readers are hoodwinked into thinking
> the AAH is a fraud, who cares?
>
> > The aldosterone example though, is also one -- I won't go into
> > it in detail because I explain it quite thoroughly on the site (the direct
> > link to that page is http://www.aquaticape.org/aldosterone.html). The gist
> > is that the list, as seen in both Ganong's 1993 Review of Medical Physiology
> > and the Encyclopedia Britannica (where she got her list from; the lists are
> > the same in both sources) offers two quite different things, normal everyday
> > bodily functions (like standing up) and serious emergencies (like surgery,
> > anxiety, physical trauma, and hemorrhage) and shows two quite different
> > bodily reactions (as we might expect). Morgan lumps the "standing up" in
> > with the actual emergencies and claims that this list claims the body reacts
> > to standing up just as it does to the actual emergencies. This of course is
> > nonsense, and more to the point here, it's not what the list says at all --
> > she just altered it to suit her wishes, and that's not kosher.
>
> Oh come off it, Jim. You're really scraping the barrel here. Is this
> really the biggest shock-horror story you've got on her work?
Morgan is scraping the barrel to even include this in her argument.
>
> The key point she made holds good. It was simply this: That the act of
> standing has required humans to evolve compensatory mechanisms to help
> support blood volumes reaching the brain. Are you denying that this is
> one of the functions of aldosterone, that this is what Ganong says?
> Morgan's argument is merely that our bipedalism had some extra costs
> not incurred by quadrupeds which means that it must have provided some
> real adaptive benefit to overcome those costs and that wading in water
> might offer some of those benefits.
Would these benefits not be the same regardless of wether their feet
were wet?
You didn't discuss the
> complexities and subtelties of that argument though because you were
> too busy looking for 'dirt'.
Back atcha on this one, dude.
>
> > > How about letting readers see another example of this, one you did
> > > yourself. You accuse Morgan of "a complete fabrication" in placing
> > > Denton's (1982:70) quote, mentioned above, in a savannah context.
> > > "Denton neither says it, nor implies it" you tell us. You quote
> > > several paragraphs from that page to prove your point but, surprise,
> > > surprise, you stop quoting just before Denton writes this very next
> > > sentence...
> > >
> > > "If the deductions of hunter-gatherer societies based on the Kalahari
> > > bushmen and the Hadza are valid in relation to hominids, then diet may
> > > have also been predominantly vegetarian over the last five million
> > > years, though there was considerable variation in diet according to
> > > the prevailing climate and conditions" Denton (1982:70)
> > >
> > > Hold on. Isn't that 'Kalahari bushmen' reference rather *implying* the
> > > very savannah context you assure us that Morgan has trwisted Denton's
> > > words to imply? Really, Jim, your hypocracy is astounding.
> >
> > The context of Denton's sentence is the senetences preceding it in the
> > paragraph it's in
>
> Well that's a convenient interpretation, Jim.
It's also an accurate interpretation.
One point for Algis. Score: Moore - 17; Algis - 1.
>
> > The reason that's imporant is that primarily carnivorous mammals, and those
> > living in saltwater environments such as Morgan was pushing at the time, do
> > not demonstrate salt appetite, while animals living in salt deplete
> > environments with salt deplete diets do exhibit salt hunger. In this way
> > you can demonstrate whether our ancestors lived in a salt replete
> > enviornment (like the seaside like Morgan was claiming at that time) or a
> > salt deplete environment (as paleoanthropologists claimed).
> >
> > The parts of Denton's book that pertained to humans and human evolution do
> > say the opposite of what Morgan claimed they said -- she claimed that Denton
> > said that humans had no salt appetite, when the main thrust of this book was
> > to point out that they do; she claimed that his work showed that humans
> > evolved in or around a saltwater enviroment, when he was at pains to point
> > out that his work showed that we evolved in an environment where salt was
> > rare. This includes savannah and desert conditions like those the bushmen
> > live(d) in, it includes forests, it includes everywhere except for the
> > seashore where Morgan was placing our ancestors at that time (and for which
> > she offered Denton's work as support, even though his work was very clear
> > about saying that such a place was the one place where our ancestors could
> > not have evolved).
>
> Look, this particular argument was always peripheral to the AAH, at
> best.
The more we look at the details of AAT thinking the more peripheral
they become.
As you rightly, in my opinion, point out on your web site, it
> kind of strongly alludes to a seaside habitat when much of the fossil
> evidence would appear to place our ancestors next to fresh water.
Which is hardly surprising in consideration of the fact that in the
context of the monsoon (dry season, wet season) habitat associated
with hominid evolution the location of this fossil evidence--close to
fresh water--is where the trees are, which coincides perfectly with
the fact that fossils of early hominids seem to indicate that they
maintained tree climbing adaptations. So the fact that you'd even
refer to this as supportive of AAT indicates, again, the desperation
of your cause.
I
> agree that this idea is largely irrelevant. I'd even concede that
> Morgan might have made a few errors in taking Denton's work as pro-AAH
> evidence, but my point here was to show that you misrepresented his
> work to try to further taint Morgan's with mistrust. I think anyone
> who's objective will see that.
>
> > > I'm sure Morgan didn't like her work being misrepresented and smeared
> > > in the way you have done. Now, how do you like it when I point out
> > > similar but, in my opinion, worse errors in your work?
> >
> > I had hoped you'd have something of substance after your previous posts. I
> > can only hope you have such on your site's critique.
>
> There's plenty of substance, Jim. You rarely reference those AAH
> proponents' claims you critique with clear citations, even though this
> is one of your main cases against Morgan. This makes it difficult to
> find out that actually you tend to take out just the bits of
> arguments, often out of context, and exaggerate them to breaking point
> and that you pick and choose from quotes, cutting them to meet your
> liking exactly as (but actually far worse than) you claim Morgan does.
> This all results in you critiquing only an exagerated version the
> hypothesis, one you feel you can easily dismiss, and all but ignore
> other, more moderate versions which are clearly harder, if not
> impossible, to refute.
Well, Algis, it does seem you're learning something from conventional
theorists. Yes, you are correct, if you keep your thinking vague it
is harder to dispute.
Your web site is called www.aquaticape.org but
> it is very unbalanced, giving only the very worst 'dirt' on the
> hypothesis and never any of its positive points.
It's positive points seem to have evaporated.
The fact you have no
> links to pro-AAH sites or ever quote any positive refernces to
> Morgan's work or the AAH leaves the overwhelming impression that it
> has been written in order to rubbish the hypothesis and smear the work
> of Elaine Morgan. You should be ashamed of yourself, Jim.
"bailiff, whack is pee pee." (Cheech and Chong)
>
> > > How about that link on your www.aquaticape.org web site to an
> > > alternative view? Got twenty seconds spare to do that? Just cut and
> > > paste this into any of your web pages and post it up there and you're
> > > done.
> > >
> > > <p>For an alternative view click <a
> > > href="http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm">
> > > here</a>.</p>
>
> > > Somehow I get the feeling that you're not going to do it. Some
> > > 'scientific critique', that.
> >
> > As I've mentioned several times, I am going on several month long trips soon
> > and have a lot of preparations to make yet; I haven't had a chance yet to go
> > over the critique on your site and probably won't for a while. Naturally, I
> > want to mention what I think of your critique when I link to it, but I don't
> > want to assume it's all so insignificant as what you've mentioned so far. I
> > would have hoped you'd appreciate my not wanting to make such an assumption.
>
> So you keep saying, Jim. But my site offers an alternative view to
> yours. I have a link on my pro-AAH site to your (anti-) site and did
> so from the very beginning - even before I'd bothered to read it.
How gracious of you.
>
> A web site purporting to give a scientific critique should offer an
> alternative view shouldn't it. You could meet that requirement in
> about thirty seconds
Considering the vaguer, pared down version of AAT, I think this
comment is accurate.
(a bit less than the half an hour it took you to
> write this response) if you had the will. Do you?
Algis, have you no pride? Do you have any idea how desperate this
makes you look?
Jim
J Moore
Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<pI3gc.149114$oR5.77996@pd7tw3no>...
<Snipped various -- not actually as many as I should have -- bits throughout
the post for sake of brevity>
> > I certainly wouldn't call that Morgan's largest factual error, ...
>
> Ok. What *would* you call her biggest error, then? Which, out of all
> the hundreds of claims and arguments in her five books would you say
> is the most damning, the most deceitful or the most illustrative of
> her lack of trustworthiness. Tell you what... why don't you give us
> your 'top 5?'
>
> It's odd because I would have though that your web site would have put
> out the strongest case you have (not that it's very strong) but here,
> and the on web site itself you heavily imply that there are other,
> even worse examples that you're secretly holding on to. Why would you
> do that, Jim? Or is it just more smear?
I don't think there's any one "smoking gun" type of error; that would be
simply a case of someone making a foolish mistake. What we see in Morgan's
work is a long history of errors or things done wrong. Since I can't rwead
her mind, I can't of course, know whether these things are accidental or
deliberate, but either is serious. If they are deliberate, then she is
intentionally misleading people; if they are accidental, then she is an
incredibly poor and sloppy researcher -- either way, her work cannot be
trusted to be accurate, which of course imapirs (at the very least) her
argument.
> > ... although it
> > does offer an example of someone who provides a ref that has nothing
> > whatever to do with what they claim it has to do with.
>
> Nothing? Bradycardia and breathing are surely related in mammals when
> they dive in water.
She quoted them and said they were talking about breathing when they were
very clearly not talking about breathing. That's either incredibly sloppy
or dishonest.
> > That in turn
> > bespeaks of someone who either doesn't know what they're talking about,
or
> > who simply provided a ref that they hoped no one would bother to
check --
> > either is a serious thing, and especially so as this is a pattern with
> > Morgan.
>
> A bit hypocritical that. Morgan has made a few mistakes, I'll grant
> you that, but her latest work is better referenced than most of your
> web site, to make a simple comparison. I'm thinking of your pages
> where you say thing like 'AAH proponents think the moon is made of
> cheese'. You hope no-one will bother to check if they ever did say
> that and usually provide no clue to help them to do so if they wanted
> to. We're supposed to just take your word for it, I suppose.
I would like to get more refs for every statement on my site; you are
correct that I should. There are, however, a great many things various AAT
proponents have claimed, such as their claims that a water environment led
to us being bipedal or having more fat, etc., and it should hardly be
controversial that they have stated these things. However, I do think it
would be helpful for me to have some refs pointing out actual instances of
them saying these things, especially since in my experience AAT proponents
sometimes deny saying things they themselves have said (much less some other
AATer). Morgan has done that, for instance.
> > This either shows she is deliberately misleading her readers or is
> > seriously ignorant of the subject -- and remember she is saying that
people
> > should accept her ideas in place of the ideas of a great many scholars.
>
> No, that's at best an exaggeration at worse a sleazy smear. Of course
> everyone is ignorant about the subject to a degree. Human evolution is
> a very broad subject and no-one knows everything. Morgan demonstrates
> a very good understanding of most of the generalities of the subject
> but, of course, in some areas she's cited evidence that others have
> written and assumed they were correct. To imply that she's
> deliberately misleading her readers is just a cheap smear. She makes
> some very good points which you don't even mention on your web site.
> People like Philip Tobias, Daniel Denton and Colin Groves have been
> very complementary about her books, but you don't mention that either.
> You're a little bit convenient in what you report, aren't you? Not the
> hallmark of a good 'scientific critique' is it?
I really don't care how many people like Elaine's books -- as I explained to
Mario earlier, science is not a popularity contest. All I care about is
whether or not she gets her facts right. And my points are often that she
finds an extremely good reference source, often the best in their field,
then completely misrepresents what they said, as she did with Denton. He
said humans exhibit salt hunger, she said that he said they didn't. No
matter how many people like her saying that, I don't care -- she's wrong.
> > (BTW, as a
> > point of information, trivia for most, seals don't hold their breath
before
> > they dive -- like cetaceans, they exhale before they dive and collapse
their
> > lungs. They avoid getting the bends that way; their oxygen is held in
very
> > large blood vessels in extremely myoglobin-rich blood -- the whole
system is
> > incredibly unlike humans.)
>
> Fine but the seals analogy is just that - an analogy - humans hold
> their breath when diving don't they? Therefore, the argument that this
> would have been an ideal preadaption for speech holds true. Much of
> your web site exagerates these analogies in order to try to pour
> ridicule on the AAH. That's just not fair, Jim.
She said it was about breathing -- it wasn't. Get over it.
Please, don't put words in my mouth. I have never said that Elaine is a
fraud. I have said, and backed it up, that she is either dishonest or an
incredibly sloppy researchers, and that I don't know which it is. It's
quite obviously one or the other.
On your claim about Pond's work on fat -- well, actually no. Humans vary
quite a lot in amount of body fat, and some people are incredibly fat --
it's hard to say what's "typical" in body fat among humans. For instance,
she's found that Canadians living in cities are typically fatter than Arctic
natives; we'd expect people in industrilized societies to be fatter than
peasants in places like Africa. Who do you use to say what is "typical"?
Pond's quote you're using is, of course, about number of adipocytes, not
total amount of fat, which may be why you quoted only part of the statement.
The full statement is "But, however you compare them, Homo is clearly the
odd man out. In proportion to body mass, we have at least 10 times as many
adipocytes as expected from this comparison with wild and captive mammals."
The article that's from (the one with the sidebar entitled "Not an aquatic
ape -- just an exceptionally fat mammal") is about why rats and mice are
poor models for human fat studies, because they have large fat cells
(adipocytes) which expand and contract as they put on and use up fat, while
humans have small and very numerous fat cells which cannot easily expand and
contract, so we get more fat cells as we fatten, and it's also harder to
lose fat cells than to make them smaller. In that article, she suggests
that instead of rats and mice as animal models in fat studies regarding
humans, we use animals which exhibit similar characterisitics -- her
suggestion is that "On present knowledge, fin whales, hedgehogs, monkeys or
possibly badgers would be better than rats as animal models of human
obesity, because they develop relatively large numbers of adipocytes."
And as Montagna said, humans which are relatively fat do have considerable
fat under our skin, just as other primates do when they get fat. This of
course excludes children, who, except when theyve been stuffed to the gills
as so many are lately, are extremely lean, quite unlike adolescent aquatic
mammals in those species which are relatively fat.
> > > Altered Quotes: Oh yeah, Elaine's terrible for that. You mean,
> > > presumably, writing 'selective' instead of 'selection' and omitting
> > > one word 'appetite' without making it clear to the reader that she has
> > > done so when citing Denton (1982). These were clearly simple errors
> > > and not the shock-horror deception your attempted smear implies.
> > > Or, perhaps you mean her 'creationist style Darwin quoting' technique
> > > when she only takes parts of sentences to strengthen her argument. But
> > > then you do that yourself all over the place when trying to discredit
> > > Morgan so no big deal there either.
> >
> > No, as I mentioned on my site, I'm talking about things like her leaving
27
> > words out of the middle of an 86 word Darwin quote without indicating
the
> > words are missing, and changing words in those quotes to words more her
> > liking.
>
> Oh yes, sorry. I forgot about those 27 (22 words, actually) words in
> the Darwin quote. Ok, it was an error. I agree. But you never reported
> what the words actually were, though, Jim. Here they are, by the way,
> so everyone judge for themselves whether Morgan *did* change them to
> meet her liking...
I'll have to dig it out, perhaps between trips I can get to that. In the
meantime, there are several examples on my site, and face it, there
shouldn't be any, since altering quotes is a big time no-no for very good
reasons.
> "...As Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to
> protect their naked backs and shoulders with some slight covering."
>
> How, please tell us, does this change the sentence to "her liking"?
> Are you now suggesting that Morgan was anti-Wallace? As a Welsh native
> I hardly think she'd do that.
Beg pardon? This isn't from my site, now is it? So why are you asking me
to defend my actions in something I didn't do?
> Please let's be honest, Jim. Morgan's ommission had zero effect on the
> meaning of her argument, didn't it? So why the hell are you wasting
> all of our time having to check this stuff out? It's just more sleazy
> politician style smearing, isn't it? It's another attempt at character
> assasination.
Quoting Darwin's opening "devil's advocate" statement and omitting his
following explanation has the effect of making him seem to be saying the
opposite of what he said -- I think that's a big difference.
Naturally, one first has to point out that Morgan's "savannah theory" and
the tenets thereof, are Morgan's invention. I can well believe, however,
that some people have sugegsted that fat was primarily adapted as
insulation. Pond, however, points out that human fat patterns show that it
is not adapted for insulation, and is in fact a sexually selected trait,
whatever side benefits it may have. She also points out that in wild
animals, any animal that can afford to get fat does so, and that the main
thing keeping them from geting fat is predators -- humans have, since we
came up with fire and good weapons about 1-1.5 million years ago, laregly
solved our predator problem, leaving us free to become fatter than our
relatives, just as we see done in animals which live in relatively
predator-free places.
In Morgan's 1997 book, she found it "hard to understand" how Pond could've
gotten the idea that any AAT proponent thought that fat had developed as an
adaptation for insulation, and I simply pointed out several places Pond
might well and quite reasonably have gotten that idea -- 3 of Morgan's books
and her article in another book. That I didn't go into other ideas Morgan
also has is hardly the point -- I wasn't referring to anything other than
Morgan's plerplexity at Pond saying that even though Morgan has in fact
written that idea in several books.
The proper, legitimate, and honest use of quotes would leave nothing on the
barrel to scrape. How many dishonestly altered quotes should be acceptable
in a hypothesis that the author wants to have replace legitimate science?
How many would you suggest be acceptable, for instance, in a doctoral
dissertation? in a masters' thesis? in a student paper? There should be
ZERO.
> > > Ignored Information on the same page as information she didn't ignore:
> > > Presumably you mean the aldosterone page now. Another piece of Morgan
> > > deception? Not really actually, just Moore trying to stir things up as
> > > usual. Morgan missed out a few, rather irrelevant details, from a
> > > table printed in Ganong. Big deal.
> >
> > Actually, the most glaring may be the crying animals claims, which, in
order
> > to miss the non-aquatic ones amidst the aquatic ones, she would have to
have
> > read a chapter of a book by somehow managing to skip pretty much every
other
> > paragraph.
>
> The salt tears arguments were completely withdrawn in Morgan's 1997
> book, Jim. You know that but how come you haven't withdrawn the 10,000
> words of your web site that pretend that it's still a major pillar of
> the AAH? It was never a major argument in the first place, but never
> mind that, eh? As long as your readers are hoodwinked into thinking
> the AAH is a fraud, who cares?
I've always had a section on on my second page explaining why I document the
falseness of even those arguments which have been withdrawn by one or more
of the AAT's proponents. One of the biggest reasons is that these old false
ideas and discredited falsehoods (which even the person who first put them
forth has admitted they're phoney) are continually brought up in forums,
discussions, and articles as evidence for the AAT. These people need a
place where these "false facts" can be refuted, since they obviously don't
know they've been refuted or they wouldn't keep bring them up as evidence.
That's the point of the Darwin quote on my opening page -- the continuing
legacy of the AAT is largely that it is a fountain of "false facts" which as
Darwin pointed out "often endure long".
And I don't say the AAT is a "fraud"; I say it has little if any evidence
for it that isn't distorted or simply made up.
She took two lists -- of items with two separate causes and effects -- and
pretended they were one list and that "standing up" had been included on a
list of emergencies like surgery and haemorrhage. That's incredibly
dishonest. And the idea that wading in water would relieve these effects is
nonsense, since they are only relieved in water when in up to your neck or
above, and only after an hour or more in the water. For that to help, we
would have to wriggle into the water and stand up after an hour -- is that
anybody's scenario?
> > > How about letting readers see another example of this, one you did
> > > yourself. You accuse Morgan of "a complete fabrication" in placing
> > > Denton's (1982:70) quote, mentioned above, in a savannah context.
> > > "Denton neither says it, nor implies it" you tell us. You quote
> > > several paragraphs from that page to prove your point but, surprise,
> > > surprise, you stop quoting just before Denton writes this very next
> > > sentence...
> > >
> > > "If the deductions of hunter-gatherer societies based on the Kalahari
> > > bushmen and the Hadza are valid in relation to hominids, then diet may
> > > have also been predominantly vegetarian over the last five million
> > > years, though there was considerable variation in diet according to
> > > the prevailing climate and conditions" Denton (1982:70)
> > >
> > > Hold on. Isn't that 'Kalahari bushmen' reference rather *implying* the
> > > very savannah context you assure us that Morgan has trwisted Denton's
> > > words to imply? Really, Jim, your hypocracy is astounding.
As I pointed out, Denton is referring to diets and the amount of salt one
intakes as part of one's living, and he included not only those
savannah-dwellers, but also people of highland New Guinea and the Amazon --
those are not savannahs.
> > The context of Denton's sentence is the senetences preceding it in the
> > paragraph it's in
>
> Well that's a convenient interpretation, Jim. How do you know that?
> Why shouldn't the very next sentence be part of the context too?
> Because that would show you were guilty of misleading the public in a
> worse way than you accused Morgan of doing?
The next sentence was part of a short paragraph which talked about salt
intake of peoples in various places, not just savannahs -- if it were
appropriate as far as context goes, why then did Morgan only use the
savannah part, not the forest part or the jungle part? If, as you suggest,
Denton's talking about diet was actually meant to be talking about
environment instead of diet (despite the fact that he repeatedly refers to
diet -- 4 times in as many sentences in the paragraph in question) if he
wasn't actually talking about diet, but instead about environment, and that
was the context of the preceding sentence, then you are suggesting that
Morgan left out 2/3s of the context,which doesn't actually do much to defend
her.
And he continues by talking about other people's in non-savannah areas,
which you omitted despite your insistence that this following material was a
critical part of the context. But of course he's talking about diet, not
what type of area they live in.
He said one thing, she claimed he said the exact opposite -- that's not "a
few errors"; it's a serious misrepresentation of what he said. And it fits
a pattern which indicates that her work cannot be trusted to be accurate,
yet she wants it to replace actual science.
> > > I'm sure Morgan didn't like her work being misrepresented and smeared
> > > in the way you have done. Now, how do you like it when I point out
> > > similar but, in my opinion, worse errors in your work?
> >
> > I had hoped you'd have something of substance after your previous posts.
I
> > can only hope you have such on your site's critique.
>
> There's plenty of substance, Jim. You rarely reference those AAH
> proponents' claims you critique with clear citations, even though this
> is one of your main cases against Morgan. This makes it difficult to
> find out that actually you tend to take out just the bits of
> arguments, often out of context, and exaggerate them to breaking point
> and that you pick and choose from quotes, cutting them to meet your
> liking exactly as (but actually far worse than) you claim Morgan does.
> This all results in you critiquing only an exagerated version the
> hypothesis, one you feel you can easily dismiss, and all but ignore
> other, more moderate versions which are clearly harder, if not
> impossible, to refute. Your web site is called www.aquaticape.org but
> it is very unbalanced, giving only the very worst 'dirt' on the
> hypothesis and never any of its positive points. The fact you have no
> links to pro-AAH sites or ever quote any positive refernces to
> Morgan's work or the AAH leaves the overwhelming impression that it
> has been written in order to rubbish the hypothesis and smear the work
> of Elaine Morgan. You should be ashamed of yourself, Jim.
As I said (even on my own site's opening page) I'd like to have more refs on
it. I am critiquing only what AAT proponents say; if what they say seems
exaggerated it's their fault, not mine.
As I said (and there it is quoted right above here) I don't want to assume
your critique is all as gossamer and mkisleading as what you've presented.
I would hope you'd appreciate my not simply saying that it is without
checking it out. It's true you've had a link to my site for some time, and
I notice that you do just as I would and say something about my site as you
link to it -- why should I not be expected to do the same as you do? I just
don't want to do it via an assumption without looking at it first.
For those who haven't been to Algis' site and don't know what I mean here,
he links to various sites, generally without any comment about them. Here's
his link to my site: "Jim Moore's particularly critical anti-AAH web site
<http://aquaticape.topcities.com/firstpage.html>. Very hostile to Elaine
Morgan, personally." Ignore the fact that his link is an old one and
therefore doesn't actually work; my point is that it's perfectly sensible to
expect someone to offer some opinion about a link, and I like to do the same
when I link to a site -- I just want to know what I actually think about the
link before I tell people what I think. I don't think that's wrong. If he
actually did do that link without reading my site, well... I just don't like
to make those kinds of assumptions.
Algis Kuliukas
> "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.04041...@posting.google.com...
> > "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
> news:<1082htt...@corp.supernews.com>...
> [..]
> >
> > > > Ok let's take em one by one...
> > > > 1. 'Stood up to avoid drowning' - Ok this one's not peripheral, it's
> > > > bleeding obvious. In waist deep water an ape has not choice but to
> > > > move bipedally. Do you dispute it?
> > >
> > > All day long. This ape of yours, who finds him or herself
> > > in this situation, has at least two other choices: 1) swim, 2) get out
> > > of the water.
> >
> > If the water is waist deep it is almost certainly too shallow to swim.
> > If the habitat is flooded then it probably hasn't got anywhere to get
> > out to.
>
> Is this the best you can do? You're arguing now just
> to make your mouth move, right? So let me get this straight:
> you're saying that we're bipedal today because some putative
> ape couldn't figure out that he could swim in waist deep water
> (like you) or that this major feature of our physical self
> can be traced to flooded habitat? Is that what you're saying?
> I just wanna be sure.
No. What I'm saying, I've made clear again and again but you snip it
out so that you can continue in this silly game of
'shock-horror-gosh-look-at-what-Algis-is-proposing-folks' game. Let me
repeat: In waist deep water and ape has no choice but to move
bipedally, therefore the more an ape moves through waist deep water
the more it would have moved bipedally. Get it?
> > > So your insistence that this scenario produces
> > > bipedalism is ludicrous in the extreme.
> >
> > Oh yeah - it's ludicrous that an ape would ever live in a situation
> > where they'd be exposed to a flooded wetland habitat.
>
> That's not what you're arguing.
Oh isn't it? Well I suppose if all else fails you can always try that
tactic. I can't argue with what you said, so let me put the words in
your mouth, then I might be able to beat you.
> Try to follow your own
> argument here for once. You're saying that bipedalism
> arose out of a desire on the part of some proto human to
> stand up --and thus avoid drowning.
You just can't stop yourself, can you? It's much more complicated than
that. Read the previous quote again. But you don't seem to have the
mental capacity to absorbe anything more complicated that just 'trait
x evolved for reason y, the whole of y and nothing but y'.
> I have no problem
> accepting that some apes at some distant point in the past
> were exposed to flooded terrain. I ~do~ have a problem
> with your idea that this water ~forced~ the adoption of
> a behavior that ~everyone else~ regards as part and parcel
> of the normal range of behaviors shared by ~all~ large-bodied
> extant apes. That would include me --remember out little
> tete-a-tete regarding the hylobates?
Why do you have a problem with it? Do you not accept that in shallow
water apes move bipedally? that our hominoid ancestors lived in
woodland? that E Africa underwent significant aridification? that this
would cause the distribution of forests ever closer to rivers and
lakes? That, as a consequence, E African hominids would be exposed to
signficantly more water-side niches than their cousins?
> > > Bipedal stance is
> > > already available to this ape and he/she uses it when the need
> > > arises --as when standing in waist deep water, or looking over
> > > the tall grass/underbrush, or engaging in threat displays, or
> > > carrying objects.
> >
> > Yes it is 'already' available. Yes, I accept that those other factors
> > would also encourage them to move bipedally sometimes. I know it's
> > hard for you to think in anything but binary terms but I'm not
> > actually arguing that they *only* ever moved in water and that they
> > *never* moved bipedally on land or in trees, it's just that whilst
> > moving though shallow water they have pretty much no choice, wheras in
> > other substrates they do have a choice. So, the more they moved in
> > water, the more they'd move bipedally. Simple.
>
> Simple minded, you mean. If apes are moving bipedally in other
> venues, then what's ~forcing~ them there?
The point is they don't move bipedally *much* there, right? If all the
arboreal/terrestrial contexts alone provided enough 'pressure' for
bipedalism how do you explain why only humans and not chimps etc
became bipedal? There's something missing from such models, something
that very strongly encourages bipedalism in one line but not in
others. I suspect that 'something' was simply water. What's 'forcing'
them is, I suspect, the aridification of E Africa.
> > > > 2. 'Hairy proto-apes were removed from our ancestral gene pool by
> > > > hungry crocs'... This one is typical Jim Moore. I offered that
> > > > argument as a possible additional factor, yes.
> > >
> > > Oh, now it's a "possible additional factor".
> >
> > It always was, Michael. But your blinkered black & white binary
> > thinking never recognised it. Point to any posting I've ever made that
> > claims anything like exclusivity for this argument. It's just a smear
> > to pretend otherwise.
>
> I would point to the volume of posts you make trotting out
> your various and sundry defenses of your predation/efficiency
> argument. You apparantly throw these smoke screens up
> without thinking of the impact they make among your readers.
So, will you point to any post where I argue that it was croc
predation exclusively? or not?
> The predation argument doesn't hold water. Africa is full of
> crocs --who hunt by stealth and a murderous explosion of teeth
> and bone snapping jaws. Out swimming a croc is a non-question
> as this just aint the way it works. You've been gently and not-so-
> gently reminded of this many times. So many times, in fact, that
> you've now decided to call it "speculation". Now, we get the
> "efficiency" deal. What, if I may be so bold as to ask, is the
> ~selective advantage~ of being a .00004% faster swimmer than
> my neighbor? Why would I leave more descendants than the
> person who is slightly hairier than I am? Why, Algis? Stop
> calling me names and questioning my motives long enough to
> supply an answer free from "speculation" and dodging qualifiers.
People drown of lots of things. Getting eaten by a croc is not, I
suspect, a big factor in the death toll of humans who die in water,
even in Africa and, I propose, it never was, even if humans went
through a significant 'more aquatic' phase. Is that clear? Avoiding
predators is not a big factor. Staying alive in water is.
However, if even 0.00004% advantage can be gained by some traits or
other in such situations then its effect is likely to be amplified by
the predation. Therefore predation is likely to have had an effect
that is greater than zero.
If our ancestors swam more than our ape cousins then it is entirely
predictable that we would have evolved *better* (but not perfect)
swimming abilities and, guess what, so we have. You'd expect to find
them manifest is certain physical traits and, guess what, that's what
seems to be the case. We're more buoyant, we can cup our hands, we
have big paddle-like feet, we have lost our body hair, we have facial
structures (like noses) which appear to be better streamlined than
theirs.
Sorry I called you a plonker. That must have really hurt. I want you
to know that I am extremely frustrated at the tedium of your posting.
Unlike you guys, however, I'm determined not to slip into hurling
obscenitites.
> > > Then ? guess I won't
> > > be seeing you trot out your *swimming speed as a function
> > > of hair loss* reference again. Since you're in Australia, you
> > > could easily test it, you know. Just take your nearly hairless
> > > body out amongst your local salties. I'll be watching your
> > > local newspaper for the results.
> >
> > Are you listening to anything? Swimming speed was part of it, swimming
> > efficiency was another part. Tides, flash floods and crossing wide
> > stretches of water would all act to enhance the selective pressure for
> > better swimming. Again you use Moore's tactics - take a tiny part of
> > the argument, isolate it, exaggerate it and pretend it's the whole
> > thing. Just like the sleaziest policitician or tabliod sub-editor.
>
> I'm listening to everything you say --you may not have noticed.
No, you make it difficult because you start by arguing against
'swimming speed as a function of hair loss' and when I try to correct
you to include other factors other than speed, like efficiency and
durability, you just repeat the initial position again: 'swimming
speed as a function of hair loss.
See, I know why you do that. Because of the three swimming speed is
the weakest point. You must think it's kind of hard to defend the idea
that humans are fast swimmers so that's the one you go for. (Actually
it's not hard as long as you remember what the AAH is proposing -
*more* aquatic than an ape.)
> And apart from the cheap editorializing, I'm not getting the answers
> to the questions that result. I'll ask again: What is the selective
> adantage
> for a *terrestrial biped* of being a better swimmer --when that advantage
> (your hairless speed study) is measured in some fraction of a percent?
It wasn't speed at all, actually. Please, let's drop 'speed' from
this. Can you do that Michael? The Costil & Sharp paper was actually
testing 'same speed' conditions for shaved and unshaved swimmers. The
differnces were in their efficiency and in drag reduction.
But to try to answer your question anyway... Ever swam out to sea a
little too far? Ever started to panic a bit feeling that there are
currents taking you out? Is it really so hard to see where the ability
to swim a bit faster might actually be a big survival advantage? Of
course if you imagine (laughably) that hominids *never* swam (is that
what you're arguing) or that they swam not one jot more than a typical
chimp, then I can see how you might think this would be no advantage
at all. But then... how come we do swim better than chimps?
> Or, if you're now ready to concede the predation issue, when better/worse
> swimmer has no visible connection to reproductive fitness.
I'm not conceding it, I'm just trying to get you to stop exaggerating
it to the point when it looks like my whole argument. It's only a part
of my argument. I think it adds to it but perhaps only slightly and
perhaps it is not even needed, but I think it's there.
> Face it, Algis, drowning is an accident today and has very little connection
> to the victim's ability.
What? So two folks swimming out at sea... one's an olympic swimmer,
the other's never been in the water... they're equally likely to
drown? See? This is the crazy position you end up having to defend
rather than just accept that some mild pressure for better swimming
has been part of our evolution. It's a religion, Michael, I think you
should renounce it before more people notice.
> > > In part? You mean you'll grudgingly accept the mountains of
> > > data accumulated in support of evaporative sweat cooling just
> > > as long as you get to keep your swimming advantage nonsense?
> > > How do you manage that with a straight face?
> >
> > There's nothing grudging about it. Of course I accept that nakedness
> > helps sweat cooling. Can you point to any post where I've tried to
> > deny it? More slimey smearing - it's all you have.
>
> I'd say it was grudging --especially in light of the fact that it
> has nothing to do with splashing about ~in~ the *water*.
> You're such an easy target, Algis.
Not grudging at all. I claim the sweat cooling argument squarely in
the AAH camp, thank you. Splashing about in water, you might have
noticed, is the best possible way for a human to cool down. Sweat
cooling acts as a perfect adjunct to that.
> > Try telling all the competitive swimmers that shave their body hair
> > before a big meet that it's nonsense. The Sharp & Costil paper's very
> > clear that it isn't nonsense. But, of course, you just ignore that
> > data or cite another paper (Kruger et al 2000) that shows the same
> > thing but, because JE used it to claim that it wasn't the *amount* of
> > body hair that was removed, to twist the argument around.
>
> Here you are with your Sharp & Costil paper. Right on time.
> What does it mean, Algis? Does it mean that our ancestors were
> competitive swimmers? Does it mean that the winner got the girl
> or stiffed the croc? Does it mean that the winner had more offspring?
> Come on, say something.
It means, obviously, that body hair reduction (hair loss even)
significantly reduces drag in water. This makes it easier to swim
further, for longer and faster. There are all sorts of scenarios of
hominids living in water-side niches where that would give an
obvious-to-an-eight-year-old-but-not-to-blinkered-aquasceptics
advantage.
See the tactic? Again? (Get's very boring doesn't it) 'Stick to the
croc predation argument because I think I might have him there.
Ignore, at all costs, any other argument because we lose if we go
there. Just keep bleating on about croc predation, hopefully no-one
will notice.)
People drown, hominids drowned. The genes that built hominids that
were less able to swim, to some extent, got selected out in human
ancestors but, clearly, not in chimps. Funny that.
Yes, maybe. But it's not a good strategy to rely on, is it? Over 7my
of evolution one would expect that if we'd spent so much time
wandering around in the tropical heat we'd have been a little more
economical with it, like almost all the other E African fauna are.
Our hominids ancestors probably evolved in E Africa. If you look at
the fauna of E Africa today they are, generally, very conservative
with their water sources. They don't sweat to keep cool, pass water
with dilute urine or defecate moist stools. We do all of those things.
Doesn't it strike you as odd that of all the E African fauna we alone
appear to have stuck the finger up to nature and decided to waste the
precious stuff?
> > > > Just find the bit that sounds least likely,
> > > > exaggerate it, stitch it together with others and pretend that's all
> > > > the argument says. If Elaine Morgan would have done that JM would have
> > > > used it as one of his examples of 'Creationist style Darwin quoting'
> > > > but, of course, aquasceptics *never* do that, do they?
> > >
> > > I see Jim Moore has calmly eviscerated you in another post.
> > > You'll deny it, of course. You'll have to deny it to keep some
> > > semblage of integrity in your own head. The rest of the readers
> > > of this group are not so blinded.
> >
> > Oh yeah, I'm 'eviscerated', sure. Just like his web site's a 'magnus
> > opus'. The phrase 'self deluding' comes to mind. Honestly, you're
> > arguments are so weak whenever enyone comes up with *anything* against
> > this idea you have to champion it as if it were some kind of
> > demolition. Just like a creationist would.
>
> I'd say he showed you pretty conclusively where the bear
> pooped. And yes, the phrase 'self deluding' does come to mind
> when I read your replies.
He's like(?, or maybe he *is* one) a politician. He twists and smears
his opponents and when you put an awkward fact to him he squirms and
bullshits out of it. His reply, like his web site, makes zero impact
on the AAH.
> > What about my point, the one you just skipped? Much of JM's criticism
> > of EM is that she picks bits of arguments and doesn't report on them
> > in the full, original context. Presumably you'd agree with that bit.
>
> Yes, I'd agree.
>
> > But then you do exactly the same thing yourself here with my
> > arguments. You picked out only the speculation about croc predation
> > and pretended that that is my whole argument. You conveneiently forget
> > that I also argued for swimming efficiency, in tides, flash floods and
> > wide stretches of water and that I actually also favour the sweat
> > cooling idea too. A bit convenient that.
>
> Yes, I rail against your predation silliness, and your efficiency
> arguments as well.
Ok, let's hear an argument against the efficiency evidence. Sharp &
Costil showed that shaving hair increases energetic efficiecny of
swimming. Why, then, is it so absurd that hominids might (gasp) have
swam and that body hair reduction might have been an adaptive trait
which evolved to help in that process?
> Why does a wading ape need to develop
> sweat cooling? Isn't he/she/it always close to the water?
Close to the water, yes, but Michael I'm arguing that hominids lived
by the water *side* not *in* the water, right? I understand why you
have to pretend to keep forgetting this point. The idea that hominids
lived on the land but close to water is pretty boringly obvious, I
know. So, in order to keep your waggon of anti-AAH hostility rolling
you have to keep conveniently forgetting that we are not arguing that
humans lived on land most of the time, you have to keep twisting
everything we say to a more extreme, 'more aquatic than we intended'
view.
This is why I've tried to define it, as clearly and as unambiguously
as I can. AAH: The hypothesis that water has acted as an agency of
selection in human evolution more than it did in the evolution of our
great ape cousins.
> > > > 3. 'the origin of our valgus knee can be traced to wading sideways'
> > > > ... Another Moorism. I was *speculating*.
> > >
> > > Excuse me, I am *not* Jim Moore. If you want to link
> > > your deconstruction with Jim Moore then that's fine but
> > > kindly leave that filibuster out of this discussion. JM has
> > > nothing to do with your history of defending the idea that
> > > the valgus knee is such because of some adaptation to
> > > the stresses inherent in lateral wading.
> >
> > I know that. I was merely highlighting that, once again, you use the
> > same tactics of the sleazy politician that Jim Moore does.
>
> I'm from the US. We know a few things about sleazy
> politicians. If you ask me, it is you who says "I'm glad
> you asked that question." and then answers with a fillibuster
> that has nothing to do with the orginal question. Is it bigger
> that a breadbox, Algis?
I've answered every question as fully and as honestly as I can. If you
can point out where I've avoided a question then I'll apologise and
try to answer it.
What's a breadbox got to do with it?
> > > You've done this
> > > all by your lonesome. Further, you've been downright
> > > righteous and combative about it, ignoring, as you so
> > > predictably do, any simpler explanations.
> >
> > I've tried to argue against the idea that it's a done deal, that we
> > *know* it was due to human-like fully-upright bipedalism and I've
> > *speculated* that it might be due to wading. You have to smear that
> > and exagerate it to the point where you pretend my argument is 100%
> > behind that and nothing else. More smear.
>
> Again, you have done so such thing. Your "speculations" border
> on some kind of fatwa. You've been treated to a myriad of
> counter proposals --all of which you have roundly rejected because
> you think it ~most parsimonious~ to support the wet apes. Deny
> it, I can use google.
Perhaps I've been too gung ho in this area. If I have it's only in
response to the apparent confidence some workers seems to have that
Lucy walked like a man even when their pelvic morphology is so
radically different from our own. Let me try to spell it out here: I
don't know the specific nature of Lucy's bipedalism but I'm trying to
test the hypothesis that she waded regularly.
[..]
> > > > I'm interested in wading as a behavioural
> > > > context for early bipedalism and anyone that has waded through chest
> > > > deep water will know that lateral motion seems to offer less drag than
> > > > full frontal motion. If the earliest bipeds were waders you'd expect
> > > > them to have adopted a gait that used significant lateral motion.
> > >
> > > If the earliest bipeds were waders, and this has certainly NOT
> > > been established, by you or anyone else, then I would expect
> > > them to wade just like I do --straight forward.
> >
> > Why would you expect that? Straight forward wading generates
> > considerably more drag. Next time you'r wading in the sea or in a fast
> > flowing river compare standing in waist deep water full on with
> > sideways. Have you never done that?
>
> Then why do people wade forward if it's so darned difficult?
Good question. Clearly humans are terrestrial bipeds today. Our
gluteal musculature is 'designed' almost totally for forward
propulsion. Therefore we have the power to propel ourselves forward
even in quite deep water. The strength of the muscles to propel us
laterally (adduction/abduction) are comparatively weak. Ok? But this
does not mean that the situation was the same in the earliest bipeds,
right? If you look at the a'pith pelvis they seem to be geared more
towards ad/ab and the pelvis is more platypelloid increasing the
benefit for such movement. The hypothesis is, remember, that wading
was a significant factor in the early adoption of bipedalism, not that
Homo sapiens regularly waded.
> > > Please stop
> > > supplying what you think that I would expect. I will not be
> > > burdened by your expectations.
> >
> > I meant 'you' in the general sense, not 'you' in the personal sense,
> > you great plonker. ('You' here, was in the personal sense, however.)
>
> Great Plonker? Is that some kind of pejorative?
Where I come from, it's a very mild insult.
> > > >This
> > > > might include sideways wading, but is more likely, in my opinion to
> > > > have been a side-to-side, twisting gait. Again, never mind the
> > > > subtelties or the complexities - just stick up the catchy headline and
> > > > take the Mick: Exactly like a sub-editor would in a trashy British
> > > > tabloid newspaper.
> > >
> > > Again, please can your characterizations of what you think
> > > is going on. I'm challenging your opinion --where you say
> > > early bipedalism consists of "a side-to-side, twisting gait"
> > > I couldn't care less what you think of "..trashy British
> > > tabloid newspaper[s]".
> >
> > It's just another example of your sleazy tactics. Take the bit of the
> > argument that sounds the weakest, dissect it out from the rest of it
> > and the context and exaggerate. Then, stitch it together with other
> > bits extracted from other areas and write it in 5cm bold print in a
> > stupid headline.
>
> It's your argument, doofus. What part of your predation/efficiency/
> avoid drowning spiel do you find the least repugnant? And you've
> said all this before. I'm not interested in your efforts to whine,
> obfuscate, bait-and-switch etc. You read like some intro student
> who has a 30 word idea that he has to make into a 1000 word essay
> by 8:00 o'clock tomorrow.
But I've done this. My masters thesis laid it out, the Nutrition &
Health paper did so and I've laid it all out here too. Each time you
have to feign confusion and pretend it's all so crazy when actually
it's so simple and obvious an eight-year-old can see it.
Which part to I find least repugnant? I find none of it repugnant. The
part I find strongest is that, obviously, moving in shallow water is
the only naturally occuring situation on the planet where extant apes
are pretty much guarranteed to move bipedally. It's so clear and
simple you have to be mad not to see it, and yet it is the one factor
which, bizarrely, has not even been considered as a driver for hominid
bipedality.
But then I've written that argument out at leats fifty times before,
Michael. So, why are you wasting each others time by asking me to
repeat it again?
[..]
> > > > Tell me, please, any tiny scrap of evidence which indicates that water
> > > > has acted as an agency in human evolution less than in those of our
> > > > ape cousins.
> > >
> > > What's this? You want me to get in the water with you?
> > > I *don't* think it's a dichotomy, remember? That's your spiel.
> >
> > Huh? But, *that's* the hypothesis, as I've made clear a hundred times.
> > But you just don't want to engage on that one, do you? All you can do
> > is carefully edit out the little pieces of arguments out of context
> > you think are the most ridiculous, exagerate them, stitch them all
> > together and pretetend that it's the argument, the whole argument and
> > nothing but the argument. Exactly as Jim Moore did, and, exactly as
> > Langdon did. It's pathetic, it really is. It is just what creationists
> > do with Darwinism. It's intellectual cowardice.
> >
> > "Let's just not engage the opponents in the actual substance of their
> > argument(because we might lose), instead let's try to re-interpret
> > what they're saying so that we can rubbish that bit."
Now this next bit is interesting...
> I'm gonna start snipping your bullshit if you don't cut it out yourself.
> This is really tiresome. You are wasting tons of bandwidth with
> your silly little games.
Ok - usual MC insults. Nothing to worry about there. But this bit...
> A dichotomy is a two-part argument. You make it so when you compare us and > our ape cousins and suggest that water meant less or more to one or the
> other.
But hold on, isn't that what the study of human evolution is *all*
about? Comapring us with our ape cousins and trying to find out which
factors led to our evolution which were different from the factors
that led to theirs?
Hasn't exposure to greater terrestriality and less arboreality been
pretty much the assumption for all the differences since Darwin?
Doesn't the fact that we swim but chimps don't kind of encourage the
question - perhaps greater exposure to water was another factor to be
considered?
> It's a stupid argument, an unsupported argument, and just more of the same
> dodge and feint I have come to expect from you.
Hold on. It's a "stupid" argument? Stupid? Why stupid? Is it also
stupid to question if human ancestors moved in trees less than chimp
ancestors? That we moved on land more than they did? Why is it any
more stupid to question movement through water? Why? Because you just
know the AAH is wrong. How do you know that?
Unsupported? It's a bloody hypothesis. It needs testing but it appears
to fit the facts beautifully.
> Talk about intellectual cowardice --you have yet to respond to the objections
> of your critics.
Rubbish.
[..]
> > > Is this some kind of crack I see in your stony exterior?
> > > Are you now qualifying your 7-year pontification in this
> > > NG as "mere speculations"?
> >
> > See? You've completely misunderstood everything. Doesn't that make you
> > feel a bit stupid? Of course they're speculations. Speculations that
> > need testing. What did you think they were?
>
> I thought they were wanton, bald-faced, navel-gazing hallucinations.
> And the only time I feel stupid is shortly after having replied to
> your posts in this NG --although not for the reasons that you infer
> above.
Well, Michael, let me tell you they were speculations. You know,
that's all Hardy's ideas were and that's all Elaine Morgan's books
were too. So why all the angst?
> > > > By isolating them from the other arguments - like stressing croc
> > > > predation rather than flash floods, like ignoring the fact that I
> > > > accept sweat cooling was part of it - you make them look more
> > > > ridiculous than they would be.
> > >
> > > No, and again, it is YOU who vociferously defends your
> > > swimming speed advantage as a selective factor in the
> > > reduction of hair in our ancestors. You do so by trotting
> > > out the swimming speed reference --as you did just a few
> > > days ago. Yea, "..make them look more ridiculous than they
> > > would be.", as if that were possible.
> >
> > Yes, swimming speed *and efficiency* as selective factors. You keep
> > letting the 'efficiency' bit slip out don't you - another Moorism. I
> > wonder why that would be - presumably because you'd have to concede
> > that it makes some sense.
>
> I asked about the efficiency thing above. I predict that you didn't
> answer it to anyone's satisfaction up there and that you will miss
> this opportunity as well.
Ok, *this* time you did. But in almost all your other postings you let
it slip, keeping it to speed because you think that's your strongest
case.
Increased swimming speed, efficiency and durability are likely to be
selected for in hominids that swim regularly, right? Is this such a
difficult concept for you? Why's it so difficult?
> > Yeah, sure, it's not possible to make it look more ridiculous is it,
> > Michael? After all, no human ancestor *ever* went in the water, did
> > they? The idea that water might have acted as an agency of selection
> > in our evolution more than in apes is ludicrous, right? Because,
> > presumably, we never spent a second in the water longer than their
> > ancestors did. But then how do you explain this: humans can swim but
> > chimpanzees, bonobos, and orang-utans cannot? Funny that.
>
> Yes, funny that, allright. I guess it's settled then: we're bipedal
> because chimps can't swim. I asked you once before if you
> realized how patently ridiculous that was and you didn't answer.
> Can you ditch the whining long enough to answer it today?
Well when you dissect out one part of one argument (the earliest
bipeds spent a significant part of their time wading because, hey,
apes in shallow water have pretty much no choice) and stitch it to
part of another (humans can swim and chimps can't - doesn't that kind
of imply our ancestors were exposed to the danger of drowning more
than theirs?) it is possible to make them look ridiculous. But I've
answered these over and over again, as well you know. I'm bored with
this now.
[..]
> > > > I am testing the hypothesis that water acted as an agency of selection
> > > > in the evolution of bipedalism. I'm taking the hypothesis and I make
> > > > some predictions about it. Then, I test them. It's called the
> > > > hypothetico-deductive method. Can you tell me any other model of human
> > > > bipedalism that has been tested in this way?
> > >
> > > You are doing no such thing.
> >
> > Oh, but I am....
> >
> > > You have a "hypothesis" (which is about as meaningless as a belch)
> >
> > It's quite simple... "Water acted as an agency of selection in the
> > evolution of hominid bipedalism." Which bit of the meaning are you
> > having trouble understanding, Michael? Just tell me and I'll spell it
> > out for you in ever simpler terms if you like.
>
> You could just as well say "air" instead of water and it will
> make as much sense. Or try "soil" --maybe that will work.
> How does this "selection" work? ~I'm~ all ears and eagerly
> await your "simpler terms".
Ok, let's try "Moving through water acted as an agency for selection
in the evolution of hominid bipedalism." So, some apes moved through
water more than other apes. The ones that moved through water most,
moved bipedally more than the apes that moved through water less. Any
better?
> > > from which you derive the most ludicrous series of corollaries
> >
> > Ok, if you don't like my predictions, why don't you make some that I
> > can test. I'm all ears. Can you do that? You know, it's called
> > science. I've outlined my hypothesis, now all you have to do is come
> > up with something that might test it. I've three or four already but
> > I'm open to more.
>
> You've outlined your hypothesis, alright. It's silly --to be polite.
Silly? But it's the only place extant apes are more-or-less
guarranteed to move bipedally.
> Now you're asking me to test it. Isn't that your job? Why don't
> you list those "three or four already".
Ah, so you say my predictions are ludicrous but have nothing to add to
them. Mmm. I listed them below... ... but you snipped them out!
> > > that you then defend by
> > > lambasting anyone who offers the slightest criticism.
> >
> > Lambasting? It's you guys, and you in particular, who hurl the
> > childish abuse at every opportunity. Just look at the Langdon critique
> > thread I started. It was a serious attempt to write a critique of the
> > only paper published in a top anthropology journal to rebut the AAH
> > and all I get is 'ner, ner n-ner ner... you are a troll and so is Ni -
> > ick, ner, ni-ner-ne-ner-ner'. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so
> > pathetic.
>
> It certainly is pathetic. You want a pat on the head, you'll have to go
> whining to the Macro Man.
I notice you have nothing to say on the substance of that point.
Ok, 'nuff said to MC for now. Let's see if Jim Moore's tried to
wriggle out of my accusations of smearing Morgan...
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> Algis Kuliukas wrote:
> >> jimm...@yahoo.com (Jim McGinn) wrote in message
> >> news:<ac6a5059.04041...@posting.google.com>...
> >>> "J Moore" <anthro...@yahoo.com> wrote
> >>
> If you don't like the response here, why post here?
>
> Jois
Because it's the no 1 public forum for matters on human evolution, of
course. I am astonished that the mild idea that human evolution was
influenced by moving through water more than apes due to our ancestors
living in predominently water-side habitats still meets with such
incredible hostility. I want to expose the weaknesses of the arguments
used against the idea and the stupidity of the people that do so.
I think I'm succeeding in that quite nicely, thank you.
Algis Kuliukas
J Moore
> > > Try telling all the competitive swimmers that shave their body hair
> > > before a big meet that it's nonsense. The Sharp & Costil paper's very
> > > clear that it isn't nonsense. But, of course, you just ignore that
> > > data or cite another paper (Kruger et al 2000) that shows the same
> > > thing but, because JE used it to claim that it wasn't the *amount* of
> > > body hair that was removed, to twist the argument around.
> >
> > Here you are with your Sharp & Costil paper. Right on time.
> > What does it mean, Algis? Does it mean that our ancestors were
> > competitive swimmers? Does it mean that the winner got the girl
> > or stiffed the croc? Does it mean that the winner had more offspring?
> > Come on, say something.
>
> It means, obviously, that body hair reduction (hair loss even)
> significantly reduces drag in water. This makes it easier to swim
> further, for longer and faster. There are all sorts of scenarios of
> hominids living in water-side niches where that would give an
> obvious-to-an-eight-year-old-but-not-to-blinkered-aquasceptics
> advantage.
Interesting thing about this -- Algis got the Sharp and Costill reference
from my site, where I presented it because
a) I'd heard these arguments from AAT proponents for years and none of them
had ever done anything to try to find support for it, so I looked.
b) I found there was conflicting evidence -- both for and against the idea
that hair reduction is a benefit in swimming speed.
c) I presented both sides, since that's the only honest thing to do with
evidence.
d) Algis found the page with both sides presented, and has been presenting
one and only one side of it ever since.
You may judge the honesty of his presentations from that.
The direct link, if you want to check it out, is
http://www.aquaticape.org/hair.html. The summary is that Sharp and Costill
found a slight increase in speed with hair shaved from the body (an amount
would would be perhaps as much as 1/4 of a mile per hour in Olympic swimmers
in the fastest event, and their swimming speed there is very slightly over 5
mph). But experiments with seal forms both bare and covered with hair
showed a reduction in drag with the haired forms. Plus there's the swimming
body suit used by swimmers in recent Olympics, which the coaches credited
with the record breaking speeds reached at the Sydney Olympics -- these have
tiny ridges whichg mimic the effect of hair or the dermal ridges found on
dolphin skin. Bottom line, whatever the speed increase, it's incredibly
tiny, and there is evidence both for and against hair loss as an aid in
increasing swimming speed. Algis has read this on my site (it's all on the
same page, in the same section) but has presented only one side, which is
unfortunately typical of pro-AAT research.
Ross Macfarlane
...
>
> > As I mentioned before, the actual "acid test" of whether I will be, in
> > Algis' words, "as open to at least some of the criticisms as Elaine has been
> > to yours" is whether I refrain from using some of Elaine's "openness"
> > responses to my critiques when I speak of Algis.
> > For the record, I have no
> > intention of ever saying any of those things about Algis that Elaine said
> > about me in her responses to my critiques (ie. "just smearing like the worst
> > kinds of politicians"; calling me a "Joe McCarthy"; or saying the critiques
> > are "all trumped-up imaginary statements made up out of your head. You
> > really are a shocker."). That's Elaine's techniques, not mine. And, also
> > unlike Elaine, if Algis does change my mind about something, I will mention
> > him as I do so, again unlike Elaine's methods (especially regarding those --
> > sadly few -- critiques that Phil Nicholls and I made which she responded
> > more appropriately to).
>
> I can understand Elaine's reaction to your web site. It is pretty much
> an unabashed attempt at a character assasination. From the first page
> you imply that her research is not trustworthy and yet if you go to
> the trouble to examine the actual substance of your allegations, as I
> did, they amount to, at worst, tiny errors. However, you exaggerate
> them in a shock-horror way to insinuate that they were meant as some
> kind of deliberate deception.
Tiny errors? In her 1997 book written in large part to address the
critiques she received on-line, she supports nakedness as having an
aquatic origin by lumping all naked mammals into 3 groups: Humans,
mole rats & "Pachyderms". What's a pachyderm? A false grouping of
mammals developed by Georges Cukier in the earliest years of the
science of taxonomy (early 19th Century), including:
- elephants
- rhinoceroses
- tapirs
- walruses
- sea cows
- pigs
- babirusa
- hippopotamuses
Honestly, Elaine Morgan is by her own admission not a scientist. She
puts up ideas for discussion. Trouble is, her ideas are bad, don't
stand up to scrutiny & she clings to them like grim death.
(Although in fairness, the book does explicitly repudiate her belief
in the idea that sweating is evidence of an aquatic past, based on the
evidence that vervet monkeys use the same type of sweat glands as
humans for keeping cool in their savannah habitat.)
Sadly, the only difference between Elaine & Algis is that he claims
that he is a scientist...
Ross Macfarlane
N.B. I read Elaine's book, "The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis: The Most
Credible Hypothesis Of Human Evolution", carefully, & made a heap of
notes, but to be honest, despite some good points, it was overall more
of the same nonsense & I couldn't be bothered stoking another flame
war by posting on it. If any non-AAH contributors want me to post a
more detailed critique, I will reconsider; otherwise I consider it
basically pointless.
firstjois
firstjois
Proselytizing? And you measure your success by the number of converts?
Jois
Nick Maclaren
In article <18fa6145.04041...@posting.google.com>,
rmac...@alphalink.com.au (Ross Macfarlane) writes:
|>
|> Tiny errors? In her 1997 book written in large part to address the
|> critiques she received on-line, she supports nakedness as having an
|> aquatic origin by lumping all naked mammals into 3 groups: Humans,
|> mole rats & "Pachyderms". What's a pachyderm? A false grouping of
|> mammals developed by Georges Cukier in the earliest years of the
Not quite. Think "convergent evolution". Similar phenomena often
have similar causes (e.g. the tooth growth of lagomorphs and rodents).
I agree that this classification and the whole nakedness argument is
dubious, at best, so I am merely supporting the PRINCIPLE of using a
common characteristic to look for a common cause. But I agree that
it doesn't hold up to inspection in THIS case.
For example, hairlessness has developed independently in at least
three groups of mammals:
Large, purely aquatic ones
VERY large tropical ones
Tropical subterranean ones
We fall into none of those categories, and pretty well the only
other naked mammal that I know of that doesn't is the babirusa.
In the absence of any evidence that human hairlessness predates
clothing, I don't think that anything much should be read into it.
|> Honestly, Elaine Morgan is by her own admission not a scientist. She
|> puts up ideas for discussion. Trouble is, her ideas are bad, don't
|> stand up to scrutiny & she clings to them like grim death.
That is NOT true. MANY of her ideas are like that, but a few are
very plausible. See below.
|> N.B. I read Elaine's book, "The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis: The Most
|> Credible Hypothesis Of Human Evolution", carefully, & made a heap of
|> notes, but to be honest, despite some good points, it was overall more
|> of the same nonsense & I couldn't be bothered stoking another flame
|> war by posting on it. If any non-AAH contributors want me to post a
|> more detailed critique, I will reconsider; otherwise I consider it
|> basically pointless.
Did you also note the ideas that seemed good enough to at least put
on a list of plausible things to check out when and if it became
possible to do so? If so, you are the only anti-AAT person that did.
Yes, I take the point that the theories that she was opposing were
(even then) no longer officially current, but evidence is that far
too many professionals have even now not abandoned them emotionally.
I have said before that I didn't find it particularly convincing,
but I found it no worse in its misuse of facts and logic than
Langdon's critique, and THAT was pretending to be a dispassionate
assessment. Are you prepared to say that it is worse, and why,
with explicit statements of its misuse of facts and logic?
Please Email if you do, as I am getting sick (again) of the abuse
by the unscientific bigots on this group.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.
Algis Kuliukas
> al...@RiverApes.com (Algis Kuliukas) wrote in message news:<77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com>...
> > I can understand Elaine's reaction to your web site. It is pretty much
> > an unabashed attempt at a character assasination. From the first page
> > you imply that her research is not trustworthy and yet if you go to
> > the trouble to examine the actual substance of your allegations, as I
> > did, they amount to, at worst, tiny errors. However, you exaggerate
> > them in a shock-horror way to insinuate that they were meant as some
> > kind of deliberate deception.
>
> Tiny errors? In her 1997 book written in large part to address the
> critiques she received on-line, she supports nakedness as having an
> aquatic origin by lumping all naked mammals into 3 groups: Humans,
> mole rats & "Pachyderms". What's a pachyderm? A false grouping of
> mammals developed by Georges Cukier in the earliest years of the
> science of taxonomy (early 19th Century), including:
>
> - elephants
> - rhinoceroses
> - tapirs
> - walruses
> - sea cows
> - pigs
> - babirusa
> - hippopotamuses
Yes and you got that 'false grouping' idea from where, exactly? Oh,
Morgan herself, right. That was really clever of you then, wasn't it?
You wouldn't be trying to do another smear would you? Like trying to
imply that silly old Morgan didn't even know about that?
"The term [pachyderm] is still used by laymen as a facetious word for
elephant, but scientists nowadays rarely use it. There is no taxonomic
relationship connecting these animals to one another." Morgan
(1997:82)
Moore does this quite a bit too. Find a piece in Morgan's book where
she uses a point she concedes is partly wrong or out of date and then
report it, without the correction, to make it look like she made the
error. It's sleazy and it's very lazy too.
> Honestly, Elaine Morgan is by her own admission not a scientist.
That's true but I think she has a better grip of the generalities
surrounding human evolution than practically any of them.
> She puts up ideas for discussion. Trouble is, her ideas are bad, don't
> stand up to scrutiny & she clings to them like grim death.
Some of her ideas are better than others, true. She doesn't cling to
ideas she's been proved wrong about - as you admit yourself in your
very next point...
> (Although in fairness, the book does explicitly repudiate her belief
> in the idea that sweating is evidence of an aquatic past, based on the
> evidence that vervet monkeys use the same type of sweat glands as
> humans for keeping cool in their savannah habitat.)
>
> Sadly, the only difference between Elaine & Algis is that he claims
> that he is a scientist...
I'm sorry you find that sad. I would have thought as that's one of the
main criticisms you guys have about Elaine you'd welcome anyone who
was at least trying to test these ideas scientifically. Perhaps you
find the thought too uncomfortable that I might actually produce some
solid evidence in favour of the AAH.
> Ross Macfarlane
>
> N.B. I read Elaine's book, "The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis: The Most
> Credible Hypothesis Of Human Evolution", carefully, & made a heap of
> notes, but to be honest, despite some good points, it was overall more
> of the same nonsense & I couldn't be bothered stoking another flame
> war by posting on it. If any non-AAH contributors want me to post a
> more detailed critique, I will reconsider; otherwise I consider it
> basically pointless.
Well at least you had the honesty to admit there were some good
points. Moore and Langdon would choke on the words if they tried to
say them.
Go on, Ross. Give us your top 5 Morgan clangers - so we can see that
you're not just doing another Moorish smear.
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
> Algis Kuliukas <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
> > > > Try telling all the competitive swimmers that shave their body hair
> > > > before a big meet that it's nonsense. The Sharp & Costil paper's very
> > > > clear that it isn't nonsense. But, of course, you just ignore that
> > > > data or cite another paper (Kruger et al 2000) that shows the same
> > > > thing but, because JE used it to claim that it wasn't the *amount* of
> > > > body hair that was removed, to twist the argument around.
> > >
> > > Here you are with your Sharp & Costil paper. Right on time.
> > > What does it mean, Algis? Does it mean that our ancestors were
> > > competitive swimmers? Does it mean that the winner got the girl
> > > or stiffed the croc? Does it mean that the winner had more offspring?
> > > Come on, say something.
> >
> > It means, obviously, that body hair reduction (hair loss even)
> > significantly reduces drag in water. This makes it easier to swim
> > further, for longer and faster. There are all sorts of scenarios of
> > hominids living in water-side niches where that would give an
> > obvious-to-an-eight-year-old-but-not-to-blinkered-aquasceptics
> > advantage.
>
> Interesting thing about this -- Algis got the Sharp and Costill reference
> from my site, where I presented it because
> a) I'd heard these arguments from AAT proponents for years and none of them
> had ever done anything to try to find support for it, so I looked.
Yes, and thank you. It's a pity that you didn't realise that you were
scoring an own goal. I'm sure you wouldn't have posted it up there if
you thought for a second that you'd damaged your own shaky cause.
> b) I found there was conflicting evidence -- both for and against the idea
> that hair reduction is a benefit in swimming speed.
Yes, but interesting that you fail to point out here that the evidence
in favour was in humans but the evidence against was in seals. I
looked at the two pieces of evidence, thought for a second, and
concluded that the human evidence was kind of a little bit more
relevant to the subject of human evolution. Since then, I've found
that there is another paper by Sharp & Costil and a more recent paper
by Kruger et al confirming the same finding that shaving body hair of
human competitive swimmers reduces drag in water. So, no contest. No
need to worry about the conflicting data.
The human swimming experiments were 'same speed' so this evidence
isn't really in favour of greater swimming speed, but for better
efficiency through reduced drag although, you're right, it is likely
to produce greater speed as a consequence of reduced drag.
> c) I presented both sides, since that's the only honest thing to do with
> evidence.
Yes, congratulations. How honest of you. It's a pity you didn't do
that everywhere in your web site. In fact where else on your web site
do you give 'both sides' to any argument? Where, in fact, do you
concede even a tiny scrap in favour of the AAH or Elaine Morgan? You
just don't. It's the most blatantly one-sided web site I've ever seen.
It makes Marc Verhaegen's postings look like they come from someone
who can't make his mind up. You can't even give Morgan the tiniest bit
of credit for promoting the cause of women and children in human
evolution and she's the person to have written two books called 'The
Descent of Woman' and 'The Descent of the Child'! You can smell your
bias from the other side of the world, Jim.
> d) Algis found the page with both sides presented, and has been presenting
> one and only one side of it ever since.
As I said, I present the human evidence and not the seal evidence
because I have a hunch it might be more relevant to the subject of
human evolution.
> You may judge the honesty of his presentations from that.
The author of www.aquaticape.org accusing me of dishonesty - that's a
classic!
> The direct link, if you want to check it out, is
> http://www.aquaticape.org/hair.html. The summary is that Sharp and Costill
> found a slight increase in speed with hair shaved from the body (an amount
> would would be perhaps as much as 1/4 of a mile per hour in Olympic swimmers
> in the fastest event, and their swimming speed there is very slightly over 5
> mph).
You obviously didn't read the paper very thoroughly, Jim. It was a
'same speed' experiment. The shaved and unshaved swimmers were asked
to swim at the same speed, so, surprise surprise, there was hardly any
difference in their speeds. I must admit I misunderstood the paper too
for a while, because of your introduction to it, but when I read it
for the second time I realised that the important data they present is
in the push-off drag reduction. In other words when the swimmers are
not even swimming.
Another own goal, Jim! 2-0, 2-0, 2-0!
Tell you what, why don't you just stick up the link on your web site
to my critique of it and retire on this long holiday you've been
promising. I estimate you must have spent at least two hours reading
and replying to these postings. You could have put the link up there
in thirty seconds. Perhaps you're just not interested in giving the
other side's point of view.
> But experiments with seal forms both bare and covered with hair
> showed a reduction in drag with the haired forms.
Yep. In seals hair reduction seems to slow them down. Odd that, seals
have fur humans don't.
> Plus there's the swimming
> body suit used by swimmers in recent Olympics, which the coaches credited
> with the record breaking speeds reached at the Sydney Olympics -- these have
> tiny ridges whichg mimic the effect of hair or the dermal ridges found on
> dolphin skin.
Tiny ridges does not equal body hair, Jim.
> Bottom line, whatever the speed increase, it's incredibly
> tiny, and there is evidence both for and against hair loss as an aid in
> increasing swimming speed.
Bottom line, Sharp & Costil showed that deceleration after push off
and glide was almost 12% less in swimmers that had shaved body hair at
2.0m/s. 12% less is *massive.* And this is in humans who shave body
hair, imagine what it might be for a gorilla! The swimming experiments
were 'same speed' - so any differences in speed are irrelevant.
> Algis has read this on my site (it's all on the
> same page, in the same section) but has presented only one side, which is
> unfortunately typical of pro-AAT research.
I read it on your site, yes, and I'm very grateful for such a lovely
piece of pro-AAH evidence. I detected it as an own goal and here
you've conceded another one. (2-0) I didn't cite the Sokolov evidence
because, forgive me, it was with seals whereas the Sharp & Costil data
was with humans. I bet if you'd could do the site again you wouldn't
mention the Sharp & Costil data at all - it's about the only piece of
pro-AAH data you let slip on your web site and, clearly, it was not
your intention to do so.
How about that other piece of pro-AAH data - you know, that humans can
swim but (gasp) chimpanzees can't? Nothing about that on
www.aquaticape.org either, a bit of an ommission that, eh, Jim? After
all the web site is about the aquatic ape, right?
Algis Kuliukas
Michael Clark
[Let's clean this up]]
> In waist deep water an ape has no choice but to move
> bipedally, therefore the more an ape moves through waist deep water
> the more it would have moved bipedally. Get it?
No, I don't "get it". I reject it. I reject it because your
~no choice~ assumption is false. You've been shown
why your assumption is false *m a n y t i m e s*. Yet,
with your fingers in your ears, you persist. Hmmm.
[..]
> > That would include me --remember out little
> > tete-a-tete regarding the hylobates?
>
> Why do you have a problem with it? Do you accept that in shallow
> water apes move bipedally?
Yes, I do.
> That our hominoid ancestors lived in woodland?
Yes, I do.
> That E Africa underwent significant aridification?
Yes, I do.
> That this would cause the distribution of forests ever
> closer to rivers and lakes?
Yes, I do.
> That, as a consequence, E African hominids would be exposed to
> signficantly more water-side niches than their cousins?
Probably. I think it's called the "east side story" or some such.
[..]
> The point is they don't move bipedally *much* there, right?
They move bipedally much more on the ground than in the
water. Your own data is pretty conclusive on that point, right?
Tell me again the length of your observations, and the total
percentage of time spent in the water. I need a good laugh.
> If all the
> arboreal/terrestrial contexts alone provided enough 'pressure' for
> bipedalism how do you explain why only humans and not chimps etc
> became bipedal? There's something missing from such models, something
> that very strongly encourages bipedalism in one line but not in
> others. I suspect that 'something' was simply water. What's 'forcing'
> them is, I suspect, the aridification of E Africa.
Yea, I'd say aridification had alot to do with it. As a critter
with the standard large-bodied primate behavioral package
is faced with a territory in which the trees are spaced farther
and farther apart, bipedalism would tend to come in handy.
[...]
> >Why would I leave more descendants than the
> > person who is slightly hairier than I am? Why, Algis? Stop
> > calling me names and questioning my motives long enough to
> > supply an answer free from "speculation" and dodging qualifiers.
>
> People drown of lots of things. Getting eaten by a croc is not, I
> suspect, a big factor in the death toll of humans who die in water,
> even in Africa and, I propose, it never was, even if humans went
> through a significant 'more aquatic' phase. Is that clear? Avoiding
> predators is not a big factor. Staying alive in water is.
So now preation is not a big factor. "Staying alive is". I wonder
what that means?
> However, if even 0.00004% advantage can be gained by some traits or
> other in such situations then its effect is likely to be amplified by
> the predation. Therefore predation is likely to have had an effect
> that is greater than zero.
But you just said that "predation is not a big factor" and now
it "amplifies" ~other things~? What other things? If it's greater
than zero, could it be .00000000001? That's greater than zero.
> If our ancestors swam more than our ape cousins then it is entirely
> predictable that we would have evolved *better* (but not perfect)
> swimming abilities and, guess what, so we have.
We are swimmers because we are bipeds. We are not bipeds
because we are swimmers. Roll that one around in your head
for awhile. Try to figure out what it might mean.
> You'd expect to find
> them manifest is certain physical traits and, guess what, that's what
> seems to be the case. We're more buoyant, we can cup our hands, we
> have big paddle-like feet, we have lost our body hair, we have facial
> structures (like noses) which appear to be better streamlined than
> theirs.
Oh wow. There it is folks. The AAT list. Impressive, aint it?
[...]
> It wasn't speed at all, actually. Please, let's drop 'speed' from
> this. Can you do that Michael? The Costil & Sharp paper was actually
> testing 'same speed' conditions for shaved and unshaved swimmers. The
> differnces were in their efficiency and in drag reduction.
Which produces what? Speed? What is it that competitive
swimmers do other than try to swim faster? Where is the selective
advantage in being .0000004% faster than your hairy cousin?
Why does your hairy cousin manage to place fewer offspring
in the succeeding generation? Why, Algis?
[...]
> What? So two folks swimming out at sea... one's an olympic swimmer,
> the other's never been in the water... they're equally likely to
> drown? See? This is the crazy position you end up having to defend
> rather than just accept that some mild pressure for better swimming
> has been part of our evolution. It's a religion, Michael, I think you
> should renounce it before more people notice.
No religion here, thank you. That's fine. If it were a competition
between two individuals --one a good swimmer, and the other
.0000004% not as good, then you might have a point. But my point
was that it never is such a contest. A man drowns because he
gets cramps far from shore, or he boinks his head while diving
off some rocky coast ala Mario, or he's swamped in some flash
flood. Try to be alittle realistic. Being a better swimmer than your
hairier cousin won't help you there.
[...]
>
> Not grudging at all. I claim the sweat cooling argument squarely in
> the AAH camp, thank you. Splashing about in water, you might have
> noticed, is the best possible way for a human to cool down. Sweat
> cooling acts as a perfect adjunct to that.
You would. But you'd have to avoid thinking about it
to be successful. Here's a clue: sweat is water. I only
need sweat if I don't have water. No water, no AAT.
[...]
> > Do you think that maybe there are other available sources
> > in that 2000 square miles?
> Yes, maybe. But it's not a good strategy to rely on, is it? Over 7my
> of evolution one would expect that if we'd spent so much time
> wandering around in the tropical heat we'd have been a little more
> economical with it, like almost all the other E African fauna are.
Someone might suspect that, but only for a moment. That
someone might do a little investigating and discover that our
ancestors were never very far from water and that sweat cooling
is actually a pretty efficient means to combat heat stress. That
same heat stress our ancestors encountered while wandering around
in the savanna --away from the kiddy pool.
> Our hominids ancestors probably evolved in E Africa. If you look at
> the fauna of E Africa today they are, generally, very conservative
> with their water sources. They don't sweat to keep cool, pass water
> with dilute urine or defecate moist stools. We do all of those things.
Yep, Marco's famous list that you parrot with such panache. Tell
me, Algis, how is a hominid like a gnu? This comparison is stupid
(more stupidity from the wet apes -imagine that) and has been
dissected and layed out before your eyes on countless occasions.
Yet here you are, in typical AAT fashion, repeating it.
> Doesn't it strike you as odd that of all the E African fauna we alone
> appear to have stuck the finger up to nature and decided to waste the
> precious stuff?
Oh yes! I'm amazed and my personal incredulity has
squashed any hope I have of critically thinking about the
issue.
[...]
> Ok, let's hear an argument against the efficiency evidence. Sharp &
> Costil showed that shaving hair increases energetic efficiecny of
> swimming. Why, then, is it so absurd that hominids might (gasp) have
> swam and that body hair reduction might have been an adaptive trait
> which evolved to help in that process?
You haven't linked the result "increases energetic efficiecny [sic]"
with any ~selective advantage~. How is it that a swimmer who
is .000004% more "efficient" leave more descendants? And how do
you know the individual was a swimmer in the first place?
> > Why does a wading ape need to develop
> > sweat cooling? Isn't he/she/it always close to the water?
>
> Close to the water, yes, but Michael I'm arguing that hominids lived
> by the water *side* not *in* the water, right?
Sell it to someone who's buying. You're arguing that our
ancestors spent enough time in the water to drive the evolution
of bipedalism. Hedging?
[fluff]
> AAH: The hypothesis that water has acted as an agency of
> selection in human evolution more than it did in the evolution of our
> great ape cousins.
So you've said. What you haven't done is provide any testable
evidence. All we get is, "I think", "don't you see", "is it so hard"
etc etc.
[fluff]
> What's a breadbox got to do with it?
In charades (which is what we seem to be playing), "Is it
bigger than a bread box?" is the first question a player will
ask when trying to identify the object. In this case, the
object is your hypothesis. Try to keep up.
[...]
> Perhaps I've been too gung ho in this area. If I have it's only in
> response to the apparent confidence some workers seems to have that
> Lucy walked like a man even when their pelvic morphology is so
> radically different from our own. Let me try to spell it out here: I
> don't know the specific nature of Lucy's bipedalism but I'm trying to
> test the hypothesis that she waded regularly.
And how in god's name would you do that?
[...]
> > Then why do people wade forward if it's so darned difficult?
>
> Good question. Clearly humans are terrestrial bipeds today. Our
> gluteal musculature is 'designed' almost totally for forward
> propulsion. Therefore we have the power to propel ourselves forward
> even in quite deep water. The strength of the muscles to propel us
> laterally (adduction/abduction) are comparatively weak. Ok? But this
> does not mean that the situation was the same in the earliest bipeds,
> right? If you look at the a'pith pelvis they seem to be geared more
> towards ad/ab and the pelvis is more platypelloid increasing the
> benefit for such movement. The hypothesis is, remember, that wading
> was a significant factor in the early adoption of bipedalism, not that
> Homo sapiens regularly waded.
So ab/aduction is usefull only in wading? Isn't regular old bipedalism
a dynamic process that involves a variety of muscle groups? Didn't
apiths ~climb~ more than we do? What muscle groups are useful
in ~climbing~? Any waist deep water up in the trees?
[more fluff]
> Which part to I find least repugnant? I find none of it repugnant. The
> part I find strongest is that, obviously, moving in shallow water is
> the only naturally occuring situation on the planet where extant apes
> are pretty much guarranteed to move bipedally.
That's a lie.
> It's so clear and
> simple you have to be mad not to see it, and yet it is the one factor
> which, bizarrely, has not even been considered as a driver for hominid
> bipedality.
You have to be mad to be so fixated on wading that you exclude
every other explanation. Explanations that have been laid out
here so many times that the sentences are burned into my monitor.
[..]
> > A dichotomy is a two-part argument. You make it so when
> > you compare us and our ape cousins and suggest that water
> > meant less or more to one or the other.
>
> But hold on, isn't that what the study of human evolution is *all*
> about? Comapring us with our ape cousins and trying to find out which
> factors led to our evolution which were different from the factors
> that led to theirs?
The study of human evolution is not *all* about comparisons
with our ape cousins. You need to take an anthro class --or two.
> Hasn't exposure to greater terrestriality and less arboreality been
> pretty much the assumption for all the differences since Darwin?
> Doesn't the fact that we swim but chimps don't kind of encourage the
> question - perhaps greater exposure to water was another factor to be
> considered?
No, that doesn't do it for me. Anybody else?
> > It's a stupid argument, an unsupported argument, and just more of the
same
> > dodge and feint I have come to expect from you.
>
> Hold on. It's a "stupid" argument? Stupid? Why stupid? Is it also
> stupid to question if human ancestors moved in trees less than chimp
> ancestors? That we moved on land more than they did? Why is it any
> more stupid to question movement through water? Why? Because you just
> know the AAH is wrong. How do you know that?
Unlike you, I don't know that water did or did not shape our evolution.
I just don't see any evidence for it and until I do, I won't be trumpeting
its emerging dominance --like certain wackoes in this NG. And in
the mean time, I get to knock hell out of all that AAT apologetics
that keeps coming from your quarter.
> Increased swimming speed, efficiency and durability are likely to be
> selected for in hominids that swim regularly, right?
If it were a swimmer. Got any evidence to suggest it was?
[slop]
> Ok, let's try "Moving through water acted as an agency for selection
> in the evolution of hominid bipedalism." So, some apes moved through
> water more than other apes. The ones that moved through water most,
> moved bipedally more than the apes that moved through water less. Any
> better?
No.
[more slop]
> Ok, 'nuff said to MC for now. Let's see if Jim Moore's tried to
> wriggle out of my accusations of smearing Morgan...
I see Moore handed your ass to ya, again. Keep it up,
Algis. A few more years of this and you won't have any
ass left.
firstjois
>> "Algis Kuliukas" <al...@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
>> news:77a70442.0404...@posting.google.com...
>>> "Michael Clark" <bit...@spammer.com> wrote in message
>> news:<1085emq...@corp.supernews.com>...
>>
>> [Let's clean this up]]
>>
Impossible!
Jois
--
Close your eyes, hands over ears
and sing, very loudly... "la, la la... sorry, need evidence before I'm
opening my eyes ... la, la la!"
Algis Finally understands Science
SAP 030804