Tobias & AAT (Re: Bipedal Orrorin?

From: Marc Verhaegen (fa204466_at_skynet.be)
Date: 10/01/04 

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 01:51:10 +0200

"richard01" <richardparker01@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6e30eb22.0410010611.7cdd79f@posting.google.com...
> algis@RiverApes.com (Algis Kuliukas) wrote in message
news:<77a70442.0409301802.3a68d442@posting.google.com>...

> See my post on "Gona: First Kitchen" to see how an archaeological >
specimen can become tripodal. It's about time the trend on this subject
was changed back to the real world. I have a great deal of regard for
Phillip Tobias, and I really don't believe he ever said what either of you
have been claiming.

Prof.Tobias never said he thought "AAT" (in whatever meaning) was correct.
He only said, eg, this:

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."

PV Tobias 1998 "Water and human evolution" Out There 3:38-44
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm

See also PV Tobias 2002 "Some aspects of the multifaceted dependence of
early humanity on water" Nutrition & Health 16:13-17, eg, "The AAH
highlights a ral process that needs to be addressed... for at least some of
the enumerated characters it may well provide the most reasonable, or
perhaps the only, explanation which has yet been proposed."

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Marc was right
    ... phenomenon---no evidence, how sad. ... The Savannah Hypothesis - From 1925 to 1995 almost everyone grew up on the ... forest and taken to living on the plains and among the rocks; ... hominid populations, but also the progressive expansion of grasslands from ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Recent declines in AAT
    ... former savannah supporters must now swallow our earlier ... such vines hang from forest trees and would not be ... fauna accompanying the hominid fossils. ... islands could favor the evolution of bipedalism. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Communal Ape
    ... > of grassland, woodland, and forest that the hominid line ... finds its origins in east Africa at 8.1 mya. ... > of the savannah and the attaining of erect bipedalism" ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
    ... Repudiation of the Savannah Hypothesis ... My disavowal of SH was based in the first place on evidence which had been ... Australopithecus reflected forest or forest margin conditions. ... possibly the oldest hominid ever ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Tobias (Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
    ... have proposed as "acquatic traits" of the hominids". ... Hominidae was born on the savannah, ... would be found in an anthropoid ape which had left the forest and taken to ... My disavowal of SH was based in the first place on evidence which had been ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)