Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
From: Marc Verhaegen (fa204466_at_skynet.be)
Date: 10/01/04
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Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 11:28:03 +0200
"Jason Eshleman" <jae@ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
news:b7af43cb.0409302328.4dac3a0f@posting.google.com...
> algis@RiverApes.com (Algis Kuliukas) wrote in message
news:<77a70442.0409301802.3a68d442@posting.google.com>...
>
> > I'm only a little surprised to see JE collaborating with him in that
> > endevour here. I thought professional scientists had higher standards.
> > And meanwhile, of course, nothing from either of them on MC's tactic
> > of lying to Tobias to extract the words he was looking for, just like
> > another sleazy journalist.
>
> You've got some peculiar definitions of words and phrases that don't
> mesh with how the rest of the world uses them. Your use of the phrase
> "double standard" (which appears to be Algisean for "I don't like it")
> is funny enough and recently, you've added "gossip" to this
> collection. You've now shown an even more peculiar usage of
> "collaborating."
Mister Big Bla-Bla, point is: this is what Tobias said on the savanna
nonsense:
Repudiation of the Savannah Hypothesis
My disavowal of SH was based in the first place on evidence which had been
coming forth from excavations in South and East Africa. From Sterkfontein,
suggestions of greater woodland cover at the time when Australopithecus was
deposited in Member 4, had emerged from studies on fossil pollen, but these
were not compelling. Then Wits team member Marian Bamford identified fossil
vines or lianas of Dichapetalum in the same Member 4: such vines hang from
forest trees and would not be expected in open savannah. The team at
Makapansgat found floral and faunal evidence that the layers containing
Australopithecus reflected forest or forest margin conditions. From Hadar,
in Ethiopia, where "Lucy" was found, and from Aramis in Ethiopia, where Tim
White's team found Ardipithecus ramidus, possibly the oldest hominid ever
discovered, well-wooded and even forested conditions were inferred from the
fauna accompanying the hominid fossils.
All the fossil evidence adds up to the small-brained, bipedal hominids of
four to 2.5 million years ago having lived in a woodland or forest niche,
not savannah. The evidence for the presence of big forest trees supports the
idea we had gleaned from the bones of "Little Foot" that tree-climbing had
been a part of the lifeways of these early African hominids. At least, one
could conclude, there had been trees big enough to bear the weight of the
Australopithecines (for which stunted acacias of the savannah would have
been unsuitable).
To a large London audience in 1995 I said: "All the former savannah
supporters (including myself) must now swallow our earlier words in the
light of the new results from the early hominid deposits... Of course, if
savannah is eliminated as a primary cause, or selective advantage of
bipedalism, then we are back to square one."
Humans are not savannah-adapted animals
In rejecting the SH, I was moved primarily by the evidence unearthed in
South Africa and East Africa. Meanwhile, Elaine Morgan had been piecing
together a number of other arguments against the SH, based on some
anatomical, biochemical and physiological data of modern humans, much of
which was collected by Belgium's Dr Marc Verhaegen, which contrast sharply
with the traits in present-day animals that are truly adapted to savannah
life.
As examples, modern humans lack sun-reflecting fur and are virtually
hairless. The cooling system in our skin is quite unfit for hot, dry,
exposed environments: we have numerous sweat glands and we waste water and
sodium - not very suitable for life on the savannah. Our ability to
concentrate our urine is poor and too low and if ever our earliest ancestors
were savannah dwellers, we must have been the worst, the most profligate
urinators there.
Adapted savannah-dwellers need to drink more water at a time, but most
humans are not able to drink much at a time. The quantity of our
subcutaneous fat, which would insulate us against heat loss, is never found
in truly savannah-adapted animals.
In our bodily functions, chemistry and microscopical anatomy, we should be
hopeless as savannah-dwellers. So Marc Verhaegen and Elaine Morgan, in her
remarkable book, The Scars of Evolution, came to the same conclusion that we
had reached from quite different lines of evidence: the old Savannah
Hypothesis was not tenable. All former savannah supporters must recant and
this I did in London. It was an exciting moment - living through a change of
paradigm.
Max Planck, the German physicist and Nobel laureate, once wrote these words
on the replacement of an outworn paradigm: "A new scientific truth does not
triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows that
is familiar with it."
That must be one of the masterpieces of cynicism on the scientific process.
Paradigm changes, I like to think, flow overwhelmingly from new evidence
and, where the evidence is sound and even irresistible, they should be
embraced just as lief by the old as by the young. It was three weeks after
my 71th birthday and I went on to declare, "A change of paradigm shakes us
up; it rejuvenates us; and, this above all, it prevents mental
fossilisation - and that is good for all of us."
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