Re: Vegan A'piths?
From: N A Sides (nas_at_sonic.net)
Date: 09/13/04
- Next message: Yuri Kuchinsky: "Re: Aboriginals 'got to America first'"
- Previous message: Algis Kuliukas: "Re: What is the Aquatic theory?"
- In reply to: Rich Travsky: "Re: Vegan A'piths?"
- Next in thread: Rich Travsky: "Re: Vegan A'piths?"
- Reply: Rich Travsky: "Re: Vegan A'piths?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:17:51 GMT
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 21:18:47 -0600, Rich Travsky
<traRvEsky@hotMOVEmail.com> wrote:
>NA Sides wrote:
>>
>> <http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=17605>
>>
>> This paper reminded me of facts that are difficult to reconcile with
>> my recent s.a.p speculations that australopithecines and
>> paranthropines probably ate more meat than do chimpanzees, and perhaps
>> even used clubs to down relatively large prey. So now I'm having
>> second thoughts. When considering A'piths later than afarensis, it
>> seems clear their teeth weren't up to the task of tearing and slicing
>> meat. The canines of africanus and Paranthropines were even more
>> reduced than our own. All species had large flat cheek teeth without
>> shearing surfaces: good for crushing and grinding hard foods like
>> grains, but not good for processing tough foods like meat. And it
>> seems unlikely they could have used there small incisors much to snip
>> off chunks of flesh.
>>
>> And then there is early Homo whose use of stone tools eliminated the
>> need for fangs to tear meat and who *do* seem to have practiced
>> significant carnivory, a habit that is reflected in their cheek teeth:
>>
>> <http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994122>
>>
>> And to muddle things up even more, a paper that uses isotopic data to
>> infer that africanus possibly *did* eat significant amounts of meat:
>>
>> <http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/isotopic_evidence_for_the_diet_o.htm>
>> or http://tinyurl.com/3m3v9
>
>We know from the Gona site that stone tools were being used to work
>bones at 2.5 mya.
It appears that no hominins have yet been found at The Gona site, so
it's still a matter of some doubt as to what species made them.
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n5_v18/ai_19332980>
"But as to who those hominids were, Gona has yet to offer any clues.
Semaw hasn't found any hominid remains at the site. Lucy and other
members of her species, Australopithecus afarensis, roamed around
nearby Hadar 3 million years ago. Researchers have recently discovered
a 2.3-million-year-old jawbone at Hadar, which they attribute to an as
yet unspecified species of our genus, Homo. But not much is known
about what came after afarensis and before the sketchy early Homo. The
Gona tools lie smack in the middle of a 700,000-year stretch in the
Ethiopian fossil record marked by a paucity of evidence."
So I don't think you can say for certain that they were created by
australopithecines or paranthropines. They're earlier than any known
specimen of Homo, but that jawbone (assuming it is early human) isn't
all that much more recent.
<http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/africanus/africanus-b.html>
This site claims stone tools at 3.1 mya, but also notes that africanus
has never been found directly associated with such tools. I know that
Louis Leakey at one time claimed robustus created the Oldowan tools
found at Olduvai, but that was before the discovery of habilis. So, as
far as I know, there still remains a gap between afarensis, who may
have had canines adequate to open carcasses of small antelope or suids
and early Homo who could have used tools to do the same job.
>Also of interest
>
>
> http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1156792.htm
> Monday, 19 July 2004
>
> Two million-year-old blood and fat on stone tools found in South Africa are
> giving clues about what hominids ate and how they lived, says an Australian
> researcher.
>
> Molecular archaeologist, Dr Tom Loy of the University of Queensland, reported his
> analysis of biological residues found on quartz stone tools at a recent ancient
> biomolecules conference in Brisbane.
>
> "I looked at them and there was blood everywhere," Loy said of the tools, which
> are among the oldest of their kind, and came from the Sterkfontein caves 60
> kilometres northwest of Johannesburg.
>
> Loy found intact and fragmented red and white blood cells; fat cells from bone
> marrow; collagen from ligaments and tendons; muscle tissue and even degraded hair
> on the tools.
>
> He also found residues of wood, keratin from the scraping of horns and starch
> grains, which he said was from a plant that still grows in the area.
>
> "They were eating meat and tubers," Loy told ABC Science Online. "The residues on
> the stone tools tell us what hominids ate, what kind of tools they made: those
> from horn, wood and bone," he said. "We didn't know any of this stuff before."
>
>
>Anything by Sponheimer/Lee-Thorp will be of use.
>
>It's evident from the tool evidence that some effort was made by hominids (and
>given the dates, these hominids would appear to be australopiths) to obtain and
>process meat.
Well, this was 2mya, and habilis was definitely around by that time.
Yes, if this holds up, it pretty definitely shows early Homo was using
stone tools to process carcasses and to work wood, but this doesn't
necessarily mean that known australopithecines used stone tools.
There's no way of telling at this point exactly what was going on
during that 700,000 year period before the appearance of early Homo.
NAS
- Next message: Yuri Kuchinsky: "Re: Aboriginals 'got to America first'"
- Previous message: Algis Kuliukas: "Re: What is the Aquatic theory?"
- In reply to: Rich Travsky: "Re: Vegan A'piths?"
- Next in thread: Rich Travsky: "Re: Vegan A'piths?"
- Reply: Rich Travsky: "Re: Vegan A'piths?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
