What We Know

From: Jim McGinn (jimmcginn_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/20/05 

Date: 19 Jan 2005 18:05:52 -0800

Philip Deitiker wrote:

<snip>

> > I'm noting that the plains/whatever theory
> > is /not/ faced with the same scrutiny. Of
> > all the proposals, not one has even as many
> > pieces of circumstantial evidence in their
> > favor as AAH, in fact there's little evidence
> > at all, and what there is tends to be inductive,
> > a sort of reverse-engineering of explanations,

I agree. Well stated. We don't see conventional
theorists making even the slightest effort to
approach the questions about early hominid lifestyle
in a manner that a naturalists would approach it.
All we get are vague notions about the emergence
of tool using culture and the like.

> > whereas the aquatic trait parallels tend to
> > stand out to begin with.

To me the only thing that stands out about
aquatic-trait-parallel arguments is how
quickly they reveal their author's to be idiots.

> Scrutiny or not it is not a defense. People who favor more or less
> savanah are constantly scanning for evidence in support of their
> theory or against it.

What theory?

> If africanus is truely an intermediate to
> humans and the C-13 studies are correct it could be said that Savanah

> is clearly in the range of early homo. This does not mean it was the
> range, or even the subset that leads to us. What it does say however,

> is so far there is substantively more in-situ evidence for expanding
> into savanah than into aquatic. It does not mean that humans were
> strictly savannah dwellers.

We know the habitat/environment/climate. It is
obviated in the paleoecological evidence. It
involves the more well-watered localities of a
monsoon forest habitat.

We know a lot of other things also.

We know about the existence of a significant dry
season.

We know they resided in treed habitat.

We know that the greater ecology was dominated by
very large browsing and grazing species and the
relatively large social predators that preyed on
them.

We know that bipedalism was achieve in the
earliest years of hominid evolution.

We know that the earliest hominids were apes,
most likely indistinguishable from chimps
(and/or bonopo).

> How can I make the ape theorist of this world
> understand. Science is not about knowing, its
> about asking and waiting for answers.

You keep waiting for answers to drop out of the
sky, Phil. I'll keep considering the evidence.

Jim

Relevant Pages

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