Re: What is the Aquatic theory?

From: Algis Kuliukas (algis_at_RiverApes.com)
Date: 09/12/04 

Date: 12 Sep 2004 05:31:26 -0700

"J Moore" <anthrosciguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<4cO0d.396323$gE.286961@pd7tw3no>...
> Algis Kuliukas <algis@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.0409110233.576d4dea@posting.google.com...
[..]
> > 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?

Nothing to say there, Jim? If I'd have done that you'd have leapt on
me from high above and maybe it would have ended up on your 'Can AATer
research be trusted?' page. It's just one rule for you and one rule
for us, isn't it?

[..]
> > 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.
>
> Again, you look at the features they say we share with these "more aquatic
> than apes" mammals and you have seals, whales, and sirenia. That tells you
> they're not actually talking about wading about or a little "less than an
> otter" swimming, unless you're suggesting some sort of "homeopathy theory of
> human evolution" where the magic power of water creates changes in inverse
> proportion to contact with it.

Amazing. The author of aquaticape.org just never got the whole point
all along.
 
[..]
> > > 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.
>
> You at least have to look at the fact that we aren't naked, that we have
> lots of head hair (and far longer than apes) and that the way it varies
> between the sexes and during the lifespan shows clearly that it's a sexually
> selected trait rather than due to convergence. This same is true of fat,
> btw.

The head hair happens to be largely out of water whilst swimming the
breast stroke. If it was purely sexual selection how come both men and
women have lost their body hair? If sc fat was sexual selected how
come even the leanest males are generally still fatter than the
fattest primates? There may be an element of sexual selection going on
but it can hardly explain male hairlessness or male sc fat.
 
[..]
> > 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-Morga
> n
> > habitat? And if it is why did it have such a drammatic effect?
>
> Both features are quite obviously sexually selected, and in amount of fat I
> agree with Pond that this is something one expects to see in an animal which
> hasn't had to deal with much predation (for quite some time now) just as you
> see with other animals. Again, if it were an aquatic trait, then you are
> comparing us to seals, whales, and sirenia, plus you would see an incredibly
> different pattern of differences between the sexes and during the lifespan.

You completely avoided my question. What ecological scenario would
have allowed this sexual selection positive feedback loop to cause
such a marked difference between humans and chimps?

No I'm not comparing to seals and whales. People that are fatter are
less likely to drown than people who are thinner. It's called
buoyancy.

The lifespan differences are not so hard to explain. Infants are most
vulnerable to drowning hence it makes sense for them to establish a
thick layer of sc fat at birth and in the early months. Later in life,
the argument that they are to show sexual maturity is not incompatible
with a more aquatic lifestyle. The function of advertising to the
opposite sex that you are mature need not have involved nakedness
and/or fat (it didn't in any other primate, did it?) and it is
certainly an odd and very expensive method to use for a hominid that
is supposed to have been moving into more open and arid habitats. It
makes perfect sense, however if these hominids were spending a
significant part of their lives in water. Seen in this light extra
female sc fat might be seen as advertising to males that they are
relatively fit in water (more buoyuant and hence less likely to drown)
and therefore a better bet for a male to invest in, and vice versa
with females too.
 
[..]
> > Blaa blaa - still banging on about seals and whales. Jim, we've moved
> > on.
>
> If you've moved on, why are you still using as evidence features found only
> in seals, whales, and sirenia and claiming theose features are similar to
> humans?

I don't need fully aquatic animals to show that more fat in humans
makes you more bouyant and less likely to drown.

I don't need them to show that shaving body hair off a human reduces
drag significantly in water and that hair reduction aids dip/sweat
cooling.
 
[..]
> > 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.)
>
> Since you are using as evidence features found only in seals, whales, and
> sirenia I don't think the idea seems very sensible, especially since the
> featrues in humans are dramatically different in differences between the
> sexes and during the lifespan, indicating that they are sexually selected
> rather than due to convergence.

You can keep repeating that all you like, Jim, but as I said, we've
moved on. The aquatic mammals were only an analogy, a wake-up call for
Hardy to realise what might be going on. It seems, Jim, that you've
just never understood that. What a waste of time, then, your attempted
character assination of Elaine Morgan has been. Any increased
aquaticism in humans as compared to chimps would predict increased
adipocity and reduced body hair irrespective of what's going on in
aquatic animals. They're almost irrelevant. They only act to show that
in mammalia, as an order, nakedness and fat are most likely associated
with aquatic factors.
 
[..]
> Check out his later statement then -- what did he say then? Did he mean
> what he said then, or not? If so, you have a statement that it was 20 plus
> million years, far longer than hominids have existed; if not, you're stuck
> now saying that he was so incompetent that he couldn't even remember or read
> what he'd said previously. Either one is damning, yet on the basis of that
> you think he should have been taken seriously.

The later reference was clearly an error. An error made by an 81 year
old that had retired 17 years earlier. An error he and the editor of
the student magazine it was published in should have picked up on. As
usual Jim Moore tries to twist simple errors into something much
worse. It's all he has done. It's sleazy and dishonest just like his
URL, www.aquaticape.org.

Anyone reading this will see that you have a clear agenda to use the
worst possible AAH material every time to twist and distort into the
worst possible light.
 
[..]
> > Ideally every single statement one reads should be absolutely truthful
> > and fully referenced but, unlike you apparently, I'm not living in
> > fantasy land.
>
> How many untruthful things are you allowed to have uncritically accepted in
> science? Does it vary by venue, or age, or whether one has grandchildren,
> as many AAT/H proponents over the years have insisted in newsgroups? I'm
> getting on now, I have a grandchild -- can I now write up something in an
> appropriately unserious venue and have it uncritically accepted as
> scientific fact, as you suggest?

Well that's what you *have* done, Jim. It's called www.aquaticape.org.
It's ok, now, suddenly, I'm beginning to understand.
 
> > 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.
>
> I'm not insisting that scientists accept my radical new theory -- and I've
> got a grandkid! Where do I apply for "my I'm an old grandpa get into
> science free" card?

Try www.aquaticape.org. I think that qualifies you.

[..]
> > 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.
>
> If you wish to have the AAT/H simply be one of many entries in a long list
> of things that hominids did when bipedal, you would have no argument and,
> incidentally, no hypothesis -- just one item in a long list. But that's not
> really the AAT/H, is it?

It's more than that, Jim, and you know it. The wading hypothesis is
the strongest on that list. The one that is most causative, the one
with the most evidence in extant apes and in the fossil record.

> And look at the hair reduction business -- a) from
> the presumed ancestral condition, it seems from the evidence that we could
> have done well to either become more hairy or completely non-hairy -- we did
> neither.

How do you know that? Perhaps Homo erectus or early Homo sapiens was
completely without body hair. How would we know?

> Swimmers use two methods when it comes to hair -- they remove it,
> which shows that the condition we find ourselves in is not good for swimming
> fast, and nowadays they often use bodysuits which mimic the boundary layer
> effects seen in dolphin's dermal riges or seals' hairy skin. The one thing
> they don't do is to leave us as we are -- and don't even look at head hair
> and swimming speed. (But then AAT/H proponents don't, do they?)

But how do you know that more body hair wouldn't make us worse in
water? It seems a logical enough interpretation and until that study
has been done, it must remain a plausible hypothesis. The body suit
evidence isn't that great actually. From my discussions with experts
in swimming exercise physiologists in WA (they know their swimming
here in Australia) they apparently reduce drag only to about the same
level that shaving would.

It's just not been looked at properly yet. There's been, what? three
studies done. None of them quantified the hair removed and so
attempted to see if there was a correlation between hair removed and
reduced drag, none of them continued the study as the hair re-grew.

What you are basically arguing is that to get any drag reduction in
water you need *absolute* hair reduction. Going by that, if a single
hair was left unshaven anywhere on the body, or if some hair was left
only half shaven, then the *entire* benefit would be lost. That is
clearly a ludicrous position. There are likely to be some body
surfaces where having hairs present, orientated in a certain way,
would actually benefit the swimming stroke. The hairs on the back of
one's arm are a good case in point. Whilst swimming the breast stroke
the orientation of the hair (laterally towards the midline when arms
are held down at the sides in a supine position) would cause greater
friction in the water during the power stroke but not in the recovery
stroke. No-one has studied this effect, or any other specific region
of body hair for that matter.

It is fair enough to be sceptical about this but that's not what
you're doing - you're just trying desperately to rubbish the whole
thing, using whatever snippets you think you can find to do so. In
doing this, you're actually doing exactly what you claim Morgan did.
 
[..]
> > > > 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.
>
> Again, where do I apply for my "my I'm an old grandpa get into science free"
> card? I am not an ageist as you are, Algis, when you attempt to excuse
> errors by Hardy and/or Morgan by referring to their age.

You still missed my point c. (Gosh, it's hard getting you to see any
fault in your own reasoning) Hardy was an FRS and his 1960 paper was
written when he was at the peak of his career. It was written just
after his Brighton speech and published in a reasonably reputable
magazine. The Zenith paper was written 17 years later when he was long
into retirement and, at 81, not of certain good health. It's not being
ageist to suggest that the earlier paper is the more significant, just
fair minded. It's instructive that you *refuse* to use the ten million
year quote from the earlier paper, but insist on using the twenty
million year one from the second - just to make his argument look that
much weaker. I still haven't even got an admission from you that the
1960 paper was saying ten million years, you even tried to deny that!

Can you admit that you were wrong, Jim? Ever?

[..]
> > > > 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.
>
> I haven't looked at your site's critiques yet, Algis, and as I've said
> before, I don't want to assume they are all so facile and ridiculous as your
> complaints about my URL. On the contrary, I hope that some might be the
> sort of valid criticsm that does me a favor, as the Carl Sagan quote on my
> opening page puts it. Of course, having seen you claim that I found only "4
> tiny errors" makes me wonder if I will be disappointed in your efforts --
> but I'll keep my hopes up; I'm an optimist by nature.

Sorry, but you missed my point. My earlier link was to a scanned image
of Hardy's whole paper which I put on my web site so that people could
access the whole original article very easily rather than just take
the headline (another Moore twist was that I "insisted" people only
read the title.) I was kind of hoping that you'd concede that in the
1960 paper Hardy actually cited a figure of 10 My, not 20 My. I was
kind of hoping that the great Jim Moore might admit that even he makes
mistakes. I know this is difficult for you, Jim, and that it kind of
destroys your whole argument. After all, if you make as many mistakes
as Elaine Morgan does, it makes all that self-righteousness (what was
it? 'you won't find those here'?) all seem a bit silly.

I want to see if you can admit that you were wrong. The Hardy (1960)
quote clearly refers to ten million years.

As to the critiques of your web site. Blimey, still haven't read them
five months on. Seems to me that you're not really very interested in
getting any feedback positive or otherwise. Not much of scientific
critique that.

A link to my critique would be enough to regain some credibility. Can
you do that?
 
[..]
> > 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?

Jim's not saying.

> > 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.

No comment there, either.

[..snipped a tonne of Hardy quotes in response to Moore's amazing
claim that I insisted that people only read his title - something of
course I've never done, I've even put a scanned copy of Hardy's
original paper on my web site in full so people can read it all for
themselves.]

http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Hardy/HardyPage1.htm

> Here the assumption is that scientists didn't take a look at it; the ones I
> knew in the field did, and they didn't find it to be sensible -- you can
> take a look at all sorts of claims and not feel they're worth the time to
> painstakingly dissect them in print -- it's far easier to spout speculations
> backed up by "false facts" than it is to take them apart.

Rubbish. When you say they 'took a look at it' - what? you mean over a
coffee, or whilst they were sat on the toilet? I meant, of course, a
proper scientific investigation of the kind I'm doing now, 44 years
later.

I thought in science we publish thoughts on hypotheses in peer
reviewed journals not bitch about them in corridors or write one-sided
web sites. Save Langdon 1997 and those aquasceptic chapters in Roede
et al (1991) - exactly where is this great AAH refutation? It
certainly is not your one-sided whitewash of a masquerading web site.
When it comes to the AAH it has been dismissed on the grounds of
misunderstandings, gossip, rumor, sleaze and no science.
 
You are as guilty (if not more) of spouting false facts as Elaine ever
was.

[..]
> > 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?

Apparently not.

[..]
> > 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.
>
> Then why do you and Marc and Elaine complain so when someone does take a
> look at the evidence?

You're quoting selectively again, Jim. Did you notice? He said 'look
at the evidence *DISPASSIONATELY*.' (you snipped that word out,
conveniently.) You have made it abundantly clear that this is not what
you have done. Hardy (1960) "ten million years", Hardy (1977) "twenty
million years" - which one do you take?, the later - simply because it
makes Hardy look like a fool. Anyone looking at his claims
*dispassionately* would have given him the benefit of the doubt.
Another example: Morgan's (1997) book has four chapters on bipedal
origins. Wading is the biggest claim in the AAH and yet you only
stress the miniscule, teeny-weeny-itsie-bitsie change in emphasis over
Morgan's reporting of the Aldosterone evidence out of Ganong and twist
it into another shock-horror deception rather than discuss the bulk of
Morgan's treatment or the block of evidence that is growing all the
time for it. Langdon's treatment was almost as bad. If you were
looking at the evidence dispassionately you'd have considered the
wading hypothesis full on, and not tried to twist it like you have
into another straw man.

Algis Kuliukas

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