Re: What is the Aquatic theory?

From: Algis Kuliukas (algis_at_RiverApes.com)
Date: 09/11/04 

Date: 11 Sep 2004 03:33:54 -0700

"J Moore" <anthrosciguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<I4s0d.366581$M95.320708@pd7tw1no>...
> Algis Kuliukas <algis@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.0409092243.508b2408@posting.google.com...
> > "J Moore" <anthrosciguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<iJ10d.352933$M95.21443@pd7tw1no>...
[..]
> > Tell you what, Jim. I'll admit that I just made up the bit about the
> > 'top ten AAH distortions list' if you admit I never said that Hardy
> > and Morgan's work was absolute trash.
>
> No, you didn't use those words -- you just said that after some 40-50 years
> of thinking for Hardy, and 35 or more years for Morgan, they hadn't managed
> to get to the point where they defined their idea, which I'd have to say
> sounds like absolute failure, since that's one of the first things you need
> to do.

So when you claimed that I'd said their work was 'absolute trash'
what, exactly, was that? Was it a lie or just sloppyness? As this is
limit of the big, terrible claims you make against Elaine Morgan
doesn't this put you firmly and squarely in the same boat as her?

> Of course, I disagree with you in that you can definitely see what
> they were talking about if you look at what features they said we share with
> other mammals and just which mammals those are, not to mention other things
> like Morgan's aldosterone evidence and such.

In five books and several articles it is posible to find a couple of
words and quote them out of context to prove that the authors meant
anything you fancy, Jim. But if you were to change the habit of a
lifetime and be fair and reasonable for half an hour or so and read a
whole chapter of any of Morgan's books or Hardy's whole article and
get a feel for the broad context that they are referring to, you'd
have to agree that they're not postulating anything more than humans
merely being more aquatic than our ape cousins. All you have done is
to hunting for slight errors and misrepresnted them as fraudulent.
You've filtered out the more ambiguous phrases and exaggerated them
into 'humans were like whales' claims. It's just sleazy crap, Jim. You
ought to try to get a job as science correspondant for the UK rag, The
Sunday Sport.

[..]
> > You've missed the plot. Morgan's 'list of aquatic traits' were
> > speculations. Some of them are more speculative than others. The
> > hymen, the ventro-ventral copulation and the salt tears arguments are
> > cases in point. It is easy to focus in on those and claim that you've
> > exposed a great fallacy. Langdon did the same thing. He listed out the
> > dreaded 23 traits with equal weighting and equal ridicule. This is
> > just not fair. Morgan (1997) didn't do that. She had four chapters
> > just on bipedalism for instance. Anyone that critiques this hypothesis
> > fairly has to give appropriate weightings to the traits which are
> > claimed may have a more aquatic explanation. Why we walk, why we're
> > naked and why we're fat are the three biggest ones. Your critique, and
> > Langdon's, simply don't do that. They clearly have an agenda to focus
> > in on the more minor, weaker, points.
>
> The "naked" (we aren't, you know)

What amount of body hair (that is number of hairs x average length)
does an adult male human have compared to an average male chimpanzee?
Make the same comparison for females and then for all people at
different ages. Repeat for different ethnic groups. Add the data all
up and work out an average. If it failed to reach even 0.5% (which I
doubt) then, to the nearest integer, we're naked compared to chimps.

> and fat (not all humans are, you know) --

Not all but even the least fattest humans are typically fatter than
primates. Your own Caroline Pond says so.
"More than half the 31 captive monkeys that we examined were less than
5% fat, thinner than most laborotory rodents, although all of them had
continuous access to food and little opportunity to exercise. ... The
minimum fatness recorded for teenage girl athletes is 7%, and for men
5%. Thus most human beings are not only much fatter than most wild and
captive mammals, but women and girls are consistently fatter than men
and boys." Pond (1987:63)

Pond, Caroline M (1987). Fat and Figures. New Scientist Vol:
Pages:62-66

So, again, you're just wrong. Compared to apes we ARE naked and
compared to all primates we're fat. How could that be, Jim? What's
your ecological scenario for explaining that? Is it the
slightly-less-wooded-than-chimp-habitats-but-slightly-more-wooded-than-might-be-labelled-savannahs-because-that-was-a-straw-man-invented-by-Elaine-Morgan
habitat? And if it is why did it have such a drammatic effect?

> well, maybe you don't, but there you go -- are traits "shared" with seals,
> whales, and sirenia. And of course those traits aren't really the same in
> humans as in those other mammals, so that's another problem for the AAT/H
> (and esp. it's claim of parsimony). And of course when we look at
> bipedalism, aquatic anything isn't where it's at, but other primates are.

Blaa blaa - still banging on about seals and whales. Jim, we've moved
on.
 
> > If hominids waded through water more than ape ancestors they would be
> > more likely to move bipedally. That's not vague.
> >
> > If hominids swam through water more than ape ancestors they would be
> > more likely to gain buoyancy through increased adipocity. That's not
> > vague.
> >
> > If hominids lived in hot tropical water-side habitats they would be
> > more likely to go for dips to keep cool than ape ancestors and evolve
> > sweat cooling mechanisms to supplement it. That's not vague.
>
> It's vague when it doesn't give any sort of time needed to affect these
> changes -- of course, since the features in question are those of virtually
> or completely aquatic mammals which have been aquatic for between 25-50
> million years, there's a really good reason to be vague on your part.

Yes it does - time since the LCA of course. We don't actually know how
long that was but if it was 5.5 Ma or 13Ma, increased selection from
moving through water is going to have some effect isn't it?

I mean your position is either saying:

a) Our ancestors did not move through water more than the ancestors of
chimps since the LCA. (Not backed up by the fossil record and not by
comparative anatomy either)

b) If they did move through water more, then no significant selection
took place. (Illogical since an increased terrestriality has certainly
had traits selected for.)

[..]
> > I want you to do that, Jim. I want you to cite references to the
> > claims you make. That's what you criticse Elaine Morgan for not doing
> > but you rarely do it yourself..
>
> You read that page and you still can't tell where Hardy said what I
> reported? Wow.

You still don't get it, Jim. I can read your page and I have. But I
want you to get into the habit of writing a claim and putting a
reference next to it. The technique goes something like this...

Hardy claimed that the aquatic phase occurred in the fossil gap that
was apparent in 1960. He wrote "It is interesting to note that the
Miocene fossil Proconsul, which may perhaps reprsent approximately the
kind of ape giving rise to the human stock, has an arm and a hand of
very unspecialised form: much more human than that of the modern ape.
It is in the gap of some ten million years or more, between Proconsul
and Australopithecus that I suppose Man to have been cradled by the
sea." Hardy (1960:645)

Hardy, Alister (1960). Was Man More Aquatic in the Past?. New
Scientist Vol:7 Pages:642-645

See? It's easy. Now you try...
 
[..]
> > I know that New Scientist is not peer reviewed but it's a more serious
> > and important journal than Zenith.
>
> How non-serious need one get before they're allowed to spout nonsense and
> have it accepted as acurate science? I say that any science writing,
> especially that which purports to be trying to get a new idea accepted,
> should be accurate, no matter where it's published -- you obviously
> disagree, so again, just how non-serious does one have to get in choice of
> publishing venue before one's work gets accepted uncritically in science?

Ideally every single statement one reads should be absolutely truthful
and fully referenced but, unlike you apparently, I'm not living in
fantasy land.

When you claimed that I'd said that Hardy and Morgan's work was
'absolute trash' I was appauled but, hey, it's only a newsgroup and I
expect you'd had a few - so no probs. If you'd have written the same
thing in the local edition of the Cleveland Telegraph, I'd have been a
little more pissed off - but journalism doesn't have such high
standards either. If it had been in New Scientist I'd have written a
letter of complaint. Of course such a silly statement would never have
got past the editor of such a journal and if it had arrived at a
scholarly journal like AJPA they wouldn't have even opened the
envelope.
 
Elaine Morgan made errors but so does everyone, even you.

[..]
> > "It may be objected that children have to be taught to swim; but the
> > same is true of young otters, and I should regard them as more aquatic
> > than Man has been. " Hardy (1960:643)
> >
> > "Nobody has suggested that they turned into mermen and mermaids. They
> > would have been water-adapted apes in the same sense that an otter is
> > a water-adapted mustelid. If we knew nothing of the otter except what
> > we can deduce from its bare bones, it would take a clever scientist to
> > detect that it was any more aquatic than its cousins the stoats and
> > the polecats." Morgan (1997:31)
> >
> > "In an environment which combined trees and water ( a flooded forest
> > or an offshore island dwindling as the sea level rose) the more
> > dominant males would have had first call on the diminished reserves of
> > the traditional food source and would have continued to confine
> > themselves to it. In any society, long-established dominance tends to
> > lead to conservatism. The hungrier females could have been driven to
> > seek for less familiar things to eat and would have found them in
> > water." Morgan (1997:100)
>
> Yes, they can say that, but look at the features they say we got as a
> result, and what other creatures have them, and you see that these
> statements you've quoted are disingenuous.

Well yes, let's look at those features and those creatures...

Apes wade bipedally ... and we walk bipedally on land.
Apes don't swim as well as we do ... and they're less buoyant.
Shaving body hair reduces drag in water and helps sweat cooling... we
are more naked than apes.
 
[..]
> > In the New Scientist paper he cites 10 My. In the Zenith paper he
> > cites twenty. This tells us something about a) the relative quality of
> > the editors, b) how much Hardy had declined in another 17 years after
> > his retirement and c) the determination of Jim Moore to give the worst
> > possible slant on anything to do with this idea.
>
> Ah yes, it's the editors' fault, not Hardy's -- poor fellow. Just as you
> suggested that Morgan's problems with leaving words out of quotes without
> any indication of their absence is her editors' fault... which would mean,
> of course, that her editors also crept into her home or office and altered
> newsgroup posts before she sent them along. Wow -- these editors have a lot
> of power, and the poor author. Well, Algis, let me respectfully submit that
> that theory is bull***.

You missed out points b and c. Editors are supposed to check the copy
before putting it in to print. I'd have thought that any decent
scientist reading Hardy's 'twenty million year' reference in Zenith
would have known better, wouldn't you? Hardy was 81 at the time, I
think your miserliness of spirit is appauling.
 
> > [..]
> > > > But is it uninformed and inaccurate? When he wrote that in 1960 10Ma
> > > > could have seemed reasonable. Heck, it even seems reasonable today if
> > > > you take the scepticism about the molecular clock calibration and
> > > > assume Pan-Homo split 10-13Ma.
> > > >
> > > > As usual, you're just scraping the barrel for any bit of dirt you can
> > > > gather against this AAH but, as usual, when you examine it closely the
> > > > only dirt is on Jim Moore himself.
> > >
> > > Again you substitute your "10 my" -- you are not being accurate about
> what
> > > Hardy said -- you should have read more than the title.
> >
> > Look, I'll make it easy for you...
> >
> > Click this link http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Hardy/HardyPage4.htm
> >
> > Scroll down the third column, last but one para, last sentence.
> >
> > Now if I'd made an error like that, or Elaine or any AAH proponent, it
> > would find it's way on Jim Moore's 'Can AATer Research be Trusted?'
> > page.
> >
> > See http://www.aquaticape.org/quotes.html for the original twists
> >
> > and http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/Quotes.htm for the
> > expose.

Nothing to say there, Jim?

See that? He's very quick to pounce on the slightest error any AAH
proponent makes but when you show that he's just as prone to making
errors (or are they deceptions?) - oops, he just tries to slip away
into the mist.

[..]
> > > Now you're saying it isn't "boringly obvious"? -- that was a quote from
> you,
> > > you know.
> >
> > Yes, Jim. When you quote someone you really should quote more than two
> > words. What was the context of it, do you remember?
>
> It was one of the many times you insisted that all should read only Hardy's
> 1960 title and ignore all the words that followed, a technique I do not
> endorse. ("the question Hardy posed was merely 'was man more aquatic in the
> past?' It is people like you who refuse to consider it in the modest,
> boringly obvious, sense - because then you'd have to concede that there can
> be no serious objection to it at all.")

So are you conceding that I didn't actually claim that Hardy's paper
per se was 'mild and borringly obvious' as you tried to twist?

But see, here's another Moore twist. You know I think I'm going to
start a page of 'Mooreish deceptions' myself.

1. "And what, I wonder, given the above, did Elaine say when you said
that her
work, and Hardy's, was all just incomptetent trash?" Moore
(2004-Aug-30 sap 'What is the Aquatic Ape Theory?')

2. "It was one of the many times you *insisted* [my emphasis] that all
should read only Hardy's title and ignore all the words that
followed..." Moore (2004-sep-10 sap 'What is the Aquatic Ape Theory?')

3. "I disagree with your idea that one should stop reading after the
title." Moore (2004-sep-03 sap 'What is the Aquatic Ape Theory?')

Keep 'em coming, Jim.

[..]
> > I'm saying that when you consider the AAH merely as meaning that 'Man
> > was more aquatic in the past' and by definition therefore more aquatic
> > than ape ancestors, it becomes boringly obvious. That's why you have
> > to take words out of context and twist them into a claim that wasn't
> > made. This is all you do.
>
> Asking us all to ignore everything written by AAT/H proponents except for
> the title of Hardy's 1960 article isn't really sensible, yet if you do read
> more than that it rapidly becomes way less than "obvious" -- not boring
> either, at first, but that feeling creeps up on us after a few exchanges
> from AAT/H proponents denying facts and blaming all the idea's problems on
> editors.

Moore twists. I've quoted many times from the Hardy text. Here's some
more...

"On March 5th [1960] I was asked to address a conference of the
British Sub-Aqua Club at Brighton and chose as my theme "Aquatic Man:
Past, Present and Future"... I ventured to suggest a new hypothesis of
Man's origins from more aquatic ape-like ancestors and then went on to
discuss possible developments of the future" (Hardy 1960:642)

"I have been toying with this concept of Man's evolution for many
years, but until this moment, which suddenly appeared an appropriate
one, I had hesitated because it had seemed perhaps too fantastic; yet
the more I reflected upon it, the more I came to believe it to be
possible, or even likely." (Hardy 1960:642)

"... This history of the emancipation of animal life from the sea is
very well known. I repeat it only because it forms the the background
to another story, one that is not quite so familiar to those who are
not trained as zoologists. .. We see . ... Again and again ...
Over-population resulting in some members being forced back into the
water to make a living because there was not enough food for them on
the land." Hardy (1960:642)

"The suggestion I am about to make may at first seem far-fetched, yet
I think it may best explain the striking physical differences that
separate Man's immediate ancestors (the Hominoidae) from the more
ape-like forms (Pongidae) which have each diverged from a common stock
of more primitive ape-like creatures which had clearly developed for a
time as tree-living forms.
My thesis is that a branch of this primitive ape-stock was forced by
competition from life in the trees to feed on the sea-shores and to
hunt for food, shell fish, sea-urchins etc., in the shallow waters off
the coast.
I suppose that they were forced into the water just as we have seen
happen in so many other groups of terrestrial animals. I am imagining
this happenning in the warmer parts of the world, in the tropical seas
where Man could stand being in the water for relatively long periods,
that is, several hours at a stretch. I imagine him wading, at first
perhaps still crouching almost on all fours groping about in the
water, digging for shell fish, but becoming gradually more adept at
swimming. Then, in time, I see him becoming more and more of an
aquatic animal going farther out from the shore: I see him diving for
shell fish, prising out worms, burrowing crabs and bivalves from the
sands at the bottom of shallow seas, and breaking open sea-urchins,
and then, with increasing skill, capturing fish with his hands." Hardy
(1960:642)

"Let us now consider a number of points which such a conception might
explain. First and foremost, perhaps, is the exceptional ability of
Man to swim, to swim like a frog, and his great endurance at it. The
fact that some men can swim the English Channel (albeit with
training), indeed that they race across it, indicates to my mind that
there must have been a long period of natural selection improving
man's qualities for such feats. Many animals can swim at the surface
but few terrestrial mammals can rival Man in swimming below the
surface and gracefully turning this way and that in search of what he
may be looking for." Hardy 1960:643)

"It may be objected that children have to be taught to swim; but the
same is true of young otters, and I should regard them as more aquatic
than Man has been." Hardy (1960:642)

"Whilst not invariably so, the loss of hair is a characteristic of a
number of aquatic mamals; for example, the whales, the sirenia and the
hippoptamus. Aquatic mammals which come out of water in cold and
temperate climates have retained their fur for warmth on land, as have
the seals, otters, beavers etc. Man has lost his hair all except on
the head, that part of him sticking out of the water as he swims: such
hair is possibly retained as a guard against the rays of the tropical
sun. Hair, under water, naturally loses its original function...
[keeping body warm by trapping air close to skin] ... The unborn
chimpanzee has hair on its head like man, but little on its body.@
Hardy (1960:643)

"The idea of an aquatic past might also help to solve another puzzle
which Professor Wood Jones stressed so forcibly, that of understanding
how Man obtained his erect posture, and also kept his hands in the
primitive, unspecialised, vertebrate condition. . . . Wading about, at
first paddling... He would naturally have to return to the beach to
sleep and to get water to drink; actually I imagine him to have spent
at least half of his time on the land." Hardy (1960:644)

"Man's hand has all the characteristics of a sensitive, exploring
device, continually feeling with its tentacle-like fingers over the
sea bed; using them to clutch hold of crabs and other crustaceans, to
prize out bivalves from the sand and to break them open, to turn over
stones to find the worms and other creatures sheltering underneath."
Hardy (1960:645)

"Man, no doubt first saw the possibilities of using stones, lying
readiy at hand on the beach, to crack open the enshelled "packages" of
food which were otherwise tantalizingly out of reach; so in far off
days he smashed the shells of the sea urchins and crushed lobsters'
claws to get out the delicacies that we so enjoy today. From the use
of such natural stones it was but a step to split flints to make
fires, perhaps with dried seaweed, on the sea-shore." Hardy (1960:645)

"Man, now erect and a fast runner, was equipped for the conquest of
the continents, the vast open spaces with the herds of grazing game.
Whilst he became a great hunter, we know from the shell middens of
mesolithic Man that shell fish for long remained a favourite food."
Hardy (1960:645)

"In such a brief treatment I cannot deal wit all the aspects of the
subject: I shall do so at greater length and in more detail in a
full-scale study of the problem. I will just here mention one more
point. The students of the fossil record have for so long been
perturbed by the apparent sudden appearance of Man. Where are the
fossils that linked the Hominoidae with their more ape-like ancestors?
... The gap... Is it possible that the gap is due to the period when
Man struggled and died in the sea?" Hardy (1960:645)

"It is interesting to note that the Miocene fossil Proconsul, which
may perhaps reprsent approximately the kind of ape giving rise to the
human stock, has an arm and a hand of very unspecialised form: much
more human than that of the modern ape. It is in the gap of some ten
million years or more, between Proconsul and Australopithecus that I
suppose Man to have been cradled by the sea." Hardy (1960:645) - note,
Jim, TEN million years.

"My thesis is, of course, only a speculation - an hypothesis to be
discussed and tested against further lines of evidence. Such ideas are
useful only if they stimulate fresh inquiries which may bring us
nearer the truth." Hardy (1960:645) - note the modesty of the man.
He's requesting that scientists take an interest in the idea, that's
all. That nobody did is a shocking indictment on the intellectual
independence of a whole generation of paleoanthropologists. It was
left to Elaine Morgan to try expose the stupidity of such ignorance
but even today Jim Moore still can't see it.
 
[..]
> > Yes, poor souls indeed. Jim expects you to read his whole gigantic,
> > one-sided, masquerading web site to find these extra (extra to the ONE
> > he reports on his 'Can AATer research be trusted' page) errors because
> > he's just not tellin'.
>
> I had to create a web site to list them all, I can't see cutting and pasting
> the whole thing in a newsgroup -- it's far better to offer the link. I know
> it's not the way you're used to seeing things done by, say, Marc, but then
> that's how he got the nickname "macroman". I think that sort of thing is
> bad newsgroup manners.

But you don't give references to the 'errors' except on four ocassions
and even those are just pathetic. If you say there are more... let's
have them - WITH FULL CITATIONS! Can you do that?
 
[..]
> By all means. There have long been a great many uncritically pro-AAT web
> sites -- literally dozens by now, I think, and having one that takes a more
> critical view (required in science, after all) never seemed so bad to me.
> You disagree, of course, but hey, no one said you have to like science.

I thought two wrongs don't make a right, but then that was Jason's
argument, not yours. It's intersting how people like JE are so silent
about the qualities or otherwise of your web site. Can't quite bring
himself to comment on that, I note. It would put him in a very
difficult position.
 
[..]
> > While you're there, check how many of his claims have references so
> > you can check them out.
>
> I forgot to mention the business about Algis claiming Morgan deserves praise
> because she tried so hard for so long, even though her tries were blunders
> filled with falsehoods and distortions. In the States we'd call that grade
> an "E for effort", and it isn't a compliment.

Morgan's works were "blunders filled with falsehoods and distortions"
- Jim Moore (2004-sep-10 sap 'What is the Aquatic Ape Theory')

... that's one opinion.

"I see Elaine Morgan, through her series of superbly written books,
presenting a challenge to the scientists to take an interest in this
thing, to look at the evidence dispassionately. Not to avert your gaze
as though it were something you that you hadn't ought to hear about or
hadn't ought to see. And those that are honest with themselves are
going to dispassionately examine the evidence. We've got to if we are
going to be true to our calling as scientists. Phillip Tobias 1998
("BBC Documentary 'The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis'").

... there's another. Take your pick.

Algis Kuliukas

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