Redirection
From: Jim McGinn (jimmcginn_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/06/04
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Date: 5 Nov 2004 21:13:52 -0800
algis@RiverApes.com (Algis Kuliukas)
> 'Some' hominids did swim and
> 'some' hominids did drown. Are you finally accepting
> that, because it's pretty much all the AAH is arguing for?
Amazing.
> Now come on, Su, put all those years of scientific
> experience behind you and think a little. If 'some'
> hominids swam more than others what effect do you
> think it might have had on their evolution?
Sometimes the inanity overwhelms.
<big snip>
> If the ST is a myth,
> what *is* the ecological niche in E Africa you
> envisage made us so very different from chimps
> and gorillas?
I can't tell if you're talking about a habitat
or niche here. Nor do I get the sense that you
know the difference.
> - 'slightly more open
> habitats than chimps but not quite sufficiently open
> as to be labelled savannah', I suppose. How did such
> a miniscule (if not non-existant)shift in habitat
> make us so very different?
The shift in habitat that first created the hominid
niche happened about 8.1 mya, at the boundary between
the middle Miocene and the late Miocene. The
evidence indicates a shift to monsoon
climate/environment at certain regions of the planet,
including east Africa. The fossil evidence indicates
the extinction of forest-adapted species and the
emergence of large, migratory grazing-browsing species
and social predators. And this is just to scratch the
surface of the differences that appeared in the late
Miocene monsoon forest habitat in which hominids first
emerged. What brought you to the sweeping conclusion
that these differences are miniscule?
> b) That humans really *did* evolve in more open
> patches of African woodland. In which case why are
> you so weary of the use of the word 'savannah'?
> It's a pretty vague term, why avoid it's use?
Like conmen trading cons.
Algis, you would have us assume vagueness as a
scientific virtue?
> If so, how
> come the great tenet of EM's work is so misguided?
Morgan used it as a strawman. This is so obvious I
doubt that Elaine would even bother to deny it.
You AAT geniuses really don't have a hypothesis for
why hominids emerged from apes in ‘aquatic' habitat.
What you have is an argument (not a hypothesis) for
why hominids did not emerge from apes in treeless
savanna habitat. IOW, your argument for the aquatic
hypothesis has little if anything to do with arguing
your own hypothesis. Instead your argument, word
for word, has to do with telling us what "the"
savanna hypothesis is so that you can then tell us
why it is wrong and thereby, by some leap of logic
known only to yourselves, arrive at the conclusion
that, therefore, AAT is right. All the while, it
seems, you high priests of the AAT faithful (a
congregation of nitwits if there ever was one) would
have us not notice that you never quite got around
to telling us why your aquatic "hypothesis" is right,
or even what it, supposedly, is.
Unfortunately the best argument for AAT is the best
argument for conventional theory. For both the
strongest parts of the arguments have to do with
redirecting the audiences attention to the
comparative weakness of their opponents argument.
Jim McGinn
jimmcginn@yahoo.com
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