Re: Bipedalism in different substrates

From: Paul Crowley (slkwuoiutiuytciuyik_at_slkjlskjoioue.com)
Date: 06/04/04 

Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 14:59:30 +0100

"Nick Maclaren" <nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message news:c9p9i5$c8e$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...

> >Wielding weapons is not really possible
> >-- in practice -- as a short-term action.
> >Either you have them in your possession
> >when danger threatens, or you don't.
>
> That is true.
>
> >> Where does bipedalism save my life?
> >
> >If you are not carrying a weapon (such
> >as a heavy club) then you are very likely
> >dead. If you are seen to be unarmed,
> >then you'll most likely be attacked, not
> >just by predators, or competitive
> >species, but much more likely by hostile
> >hominids.
>
> Grrk. The implication that the converse holds is NOT true. Despite
> the claims of the USA's gun lobby, even extremely powerful weapons
> are VERY poor tools for individual self-defence. Attackers out to
> kill do so from behind, with no warning - and it doesn't matter WHAT
> you are carrying.

I'm not talking of individual defence.
I see groups encountering one another,
where the calculation is always: 'How
many armed adult males have they
got, as against our numbers?"

> The same applies to predators. Except for cheetahs, all hunt by
> twilight or night - and all the great apes have very poor night
> vision, hearing and smell compared with the predators.

I should not have mentioned predators
at all. Our near-chimp ancestors would
not have descended from the trees
without the absence of all large ones.
When they had to cope with them later,
they could IMHO only have done so
by means of high density, good natural
barriers, and a policy of rigorous diurnal
aggression.

> So the key is organisation. Weapons in the hands of an organised
> group multiply its defensive capability no end, but weapons without
> organisation are purely offensive.

Agreed, but I see no real problem about
that evolving. Chimps already have
plenty of it.

> >It was the requirement to CARRY
> >weapons -- probably fairly heavy ones
> >-- that imposed bipedalism. And it did
> >it fast.
>
> Perhaps. Your certainty goes beyond the evidence.
>
> >Even if your wading scenario had
> >anything going for it (which it doesn't)
> >it would still be hopelessly slow.
>
> Not really. There is no reason to believe that it would be any
> slower than weapon carrying - food gathering is as important a
> selective property as defence.

Simply not true. Without weapons you
are dead; that's a highly effective system
for selection. But where does the need to
gather food come from? Why not eat it on
the spot? That's what nearly all animals
do. Some species have developed cheek
pouches, but only because they have to
grab what they can, and then retreat to
safety where they can tackle the food
items (typically nuts) one at a time.
Chimps didn't evolve them, since they
are rarely in much danger while foraging;
groups of hominids were even less likely
to have such a need. Chimps don't, in
reality, gather food. There is no reason to
believe that a population of near-chimps
would (a) evolve such a need; nor
(b) that, if they did, it would be significant
enough to bring about bipedalism.

Even Algis does not claim that wading
made more than a very marginal
difference in the capacity to find food
in each generation.

Paul.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: War Celebrations
    ... And why draw a line at weapons? ... reservoirs and food factories as it is to bomb weapons factories. ... must be legitimate to cut off that supply as well, by targetting ... supplies them by killing doctors and nurses in the city hospitals as ...
    (uk.legal)
  • Re: Shopkeeper ran out of money?
    ... Earlier he paid me for dwarf cloaks, weapons, etc. ... -- now if I drop something in the store, ... -- killed by a poisonous corpse, because although I had a unihorn with ... I saw my pet's corpse on there and thought it was a food item to pick ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
  • Re: Common Painkillers Can Raise Blood Pressure: Study
    ... without American food, jeeps, clothes and other items sent to Russia, ... without training (and sometimes without weapons) or to clear mine fields ... Yeah, docs aren't real big on barbiturates anymore, me thinks. ... Leader buying aluminum tubes to build cascades for iridium enrichment. ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)
  • Re: Are the "mosaic theories" completely vaccuous?
    ... is a possibility as is the gathering of food. ... >encounters (presumably with predators, ... Also remember that a lot of the animals gathering food will be young, ... and pretty ineffective with weapons. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Bonobos join forces to outdo chimps
    ... Bonobos join forces to outdo chimps ... one individual was more likely to take all the food. ... The researchers gave pairs of each species a task that required them ...
    (soc.culture.romanian)