Re: Causes of floresiensis' Dwarfism - Headland & Bailey Rise Again

From: richard01 (richardparker01_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/02/04 

Date: 2 Nov 2004 01:36:45 -0800

nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote in message news:<cm2fot$qdg$1@gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk>...
> In article <6e30eb22.0410300334.42ffccb5@posting.google.com>,
> richard01 <richardparker01@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >They referred to the Headland and Bailey theory that hunter-gatherers
> >couldn't live in a full rain forest because there were not enough
> >carbohydrates available. Thus, for instance, no hunter-gatherers could
> >have lived in any forests before local cultivators turned up and
> >helped them out with starchy vegetables. "No modern hunter-gatherers
> >have actually been observed living completely isolated'lives". (Not
> >many live without TV and cellphones nowadays).
> >
> >This is arrant nonsense , of course, because, as you say, forests are
> >remarkably productive of good food, and if people could never have
> >lived in them without help then it would imply that they couldn't have
> >lived anywhere very much - which, patently, they did.
> >
> >There have been many refutations of this theory since it was first
> >published about 1990, but it seems stuck as a paradigm in
> >palaeoanthropology. I have been told, quite authoritatively, by a
> >qualified PA that it would have been impossible for pygmies to have
> >lived in Central African rainforests before farmers arrived about 2000
> >years ago. Another has said that the Penan of Borneo actually went
> >into the forest to collect trade goods for Chinese merchants.
>
> And people say that the savanna theory is dead :-(
>
> Thanks for filling in the background on this pseudo-scientific myth.
> It is utterly horrifying that the savanna theory is generating new
> non-science even today - and 1990 is today, in this context. As far
> as I know, no scientific paleoanthropologist dissents from the theory
> that the common ancestor of the African great apes (including man)
> was a rain forest animal, and lived primarily by gathering.
>
> >Many forest peoples have 'pygmified', from PNG through Indonesia, the
> >Philippines, India, etc to Central Africa, but it would seem to have
> >more to do with the hot humid climate than with food resources - after
> >all, humans in deserts or tundra or empty grasslands don't seem to
> >have got smaller.
>
> Yes. An elementary analysis of the cooling problem indicates that
> this can be explained very simply - the explanation may not be correct,
> but there IS a trivial one that comes down to simply that.
>
> >And none of them has shrunk the brain in proportion to the body as the
> >'hobbits' seem to have done. This seems to be a classical 'island'
> >size reduction, which can happen remarkably quickly - deer on Jersey
> >and elephants on Malta have shrunk radically in periods of only 5-6000
> >years.
>
> Yes. And rabbits somewhere else - I now forget where. I think the
> woolly mammoths on some Siberian islands weren't isolated for much
> longer, either, and they dwarfed.
>

I posted a fairly full lsi of sites dealing with 'Island Dwarfism'
just recently - it may be worth your while looking at some of them.