Re: Is the AAH a legitimate hypothesis? Of course it is.

From: Algis Kuliukas (algis_at_RiverApes.com)
Date: 01/15/05 

Date: 15 Jan 2005 00:10:52 -0800

jae@ucdavis.edu wrote:
> Algis Kuliukas wrote:
> > Bob Keeter wrote:

> > > Is that perhaps one of those "tiny little troubling issues " in
the
> > theory?
> > >
> > > 8-) But those kinds of holes close with time and forgetfulness I
> > guess. ;-)
> > > Or perhaps just ingenuous self-serving memory and a dearth of
> > > intellectual honesty.
> >
> > I've been arguing (with Jason as I was with you, Bob) that humans
are
> > largely terrestrial animals that happen to swim better than chimps.
> > Water has acted as an agency of selection is our evolution more
than
> > their's. Did you miss something? I've been arguing for that for
> years.
> >
> > Yes, sweat cooling makes sense in an arid habitat where there is
> access
> > to drinking water. But an even better way of cooling is to go for a
> > dip, right? And if there's no drinking water, sweat cooling is a
very
> > bad idea. So, the best place for such a hominin to have evolved is
in
> a
> > water-side habitat where it can go for a dip, ideally, but sweat to
> > keep cool for a limit amount of time if it has to.
> > There's no contradiction.
>
> There's no explanation either.
>
> The ready availability of a watersource is quite a different thing
> altogether from "explaining the major differences between humans and
> apes" as a result of getting in the water. What is absent from your
> explanation is why there is this pressure to stay cool in a creature
> who is around water often enough to "take a dip" that isn't seen in
> other lineages.
> The pressure to stay cool is greatly minimized if
> water is around, but somehow you're arguing that a rather pronounced
> mechanism that manages to give us an ability to operate at higher
> temperatures than a whole host of creatures somehow evolved in this
> environment where the presences of water minimized the stress that
gave
> us this adaptation. It's a peculiarity at least if not an actual
> contradition. Why is it that other "waterside" creatures don't seem
to
> employ this strategy? Being waterside doesn't explain the sweating
at
> all and, if the patas monkey is to be believed, it's not by any means
> prerequisite to the adaptation. You should also consider that
> drinking water doesn't have to be in the form of something that a
> hominid can "go for a dip" in. "Drinking water" is not a synonym for
> "swimmin' hole."

I've answered this at least three times in the last few postings: Other
'waterside' creatures tend not wander away from the water. We do. Get
it? I'm *agreeing* with the orthodox paradigm that human sweat cooling
evolved in arid places. See? I'd be a savanna theorist, except that I
realise that this reliance on sweat cooling wouldn't make sense on the
savannah on it's own. It needs to have a very reliable source of water
close by. I'd be a savanna theorist, except I realise that as humans
swim better than chimps, moving through water must have been a big part
of our evolution too. *More* aquatic than chimps does not mean we were
aquatic.

Algis Kuliukas

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