Re: Bipedalism in different substrates

From: Bob Keeter (rkeeter_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 06/28/04 

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 23:52:19 GMT

"Pauline M Ross" <pmross@ross-software.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c420e0lhj7adppva1qmu97sb5sta1cohpm@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 10:57:26 GMT, "Bob Keeter" <rkeeter@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> >> [Pauline] Naturally they would have eaten whatever was around, and for
the early
> >> hominids that was lakes, rivers and forests rather than sea (so far as
> >> we know).
> >
> >Well, we can be pretty sure of the forests and terrestrial food sources
> >since
> >those are in fact the food sources all of our cousins exploit. Could I
ask
> >for one piece of evidence that hominids more than about 500kya or so
> >exploited any aquatic food source, plant or animal? Cant remember the
> >dates right now, but lets just say any time before the Terra Amata site.
>
> Can't think of a thing, although sedges keep popping into my mind, but
> I'm suppressing that thought - we don't want to go there, I think :-)

Im certain that we dont!

> It's just a general feeling that since the environment was pretty wet,
> that they would have exploited any water they were near (as gorillas
> do, for example). But no actual hard evidence, no.

Thank you.

> >My apologies. You have the numbers and I have no reason to disagree.
> >Now, "oily fish" if Im thinking right are things like mackeral,
anchovies,
> >and such, right? NOT catfish, or other fresh water fish. Oily fish also
> >IIRC usually tend to be pelagic fish, not coastal, and quite proficient
> >swimmers. If I was to toss in "available to early hominids" to that
earlier
> >statement about muscle meat being the better source, would you feel
> >better?
>
> Well, things like salmon are definitely found in rivers, but whether
> that was available to early hominids in Africa I have no idea. I
> actually think any serious fish/shellfish eating came a lot later,
> during our coastal trek to Australia and other distant parts. The
> evidence for early hominids is for fruit and other chimp-like dietary
> items, plus a fair bit of meat. I have no problem with that.

Good! That might have been a multi-round KDDO as well! 8-)

Snippage. . .

> >My own personal beliefs is that "hunting" probably started off with the
> >smaller, less challenging and more available prey (like the colubus
> >monkeys that are the prime targets of chimp predation, or for that matter
> >any small, slow moving ground mammal, bird or reptile). Likely, the
> >meat from larger prey animals that shows up in very early hominid sites
> >was scavanged.
>
> Actually, that's the interesting thing about the paper I sent you -
> the author finds firstly, that the typical carcass was quite large,
> and secondly that the hominids were generally getting to the carcasses
> first, so either there was some form of hunting or they were taking
> advantage of mass kills (from migratory river crossings, for example).
> Standard scavenging would not have yielded enough meat, apparently.

I would just about guarentee that the migratory river crossings would have
been a big seasonal windfall for any and all savanna and "open forest"
carnivores. Our little bright eyed ancestors would NOT have left that
resource untapped. On the other hand, even chimps (and perhaps even
orangs and bonobos) take meat. Not so much the mature gazelles and
antellope, but smaller prey. Once you have filled your belly with juvenile
antellope and colubus monkeys, the next step is just to apply some of
that B-12 enabled gray matter to find ways to take bigger morsels!

> >
> >Only after gaining the taste for the meat, the confidence and the
> >technology would those early hominids have stepped up to larger, more
> >dangerous, and more difficult ungulant prey, IMHO at least.
>
> Yes.

See, we dont even need to come to blows on some subjects. . . . . 8-))
You must be saving those haymakers for better subjects! ;-))

Regards
bk

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