Re: Final Solution of the Aquatic Question

On Sun, 07 Aug 2005 21:04:38 GMT, "Rick Wagler" <taxidea3@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Thanks for flagging this. It is an interesting read but
>Marc's preferred scenario is far from the only one
>indicated.

If by that you mean there is some aquatic take on this, I would say
that the only conclusion that can be drawn is that our ancestors were
not on mainland Africa at the time of the retrovirus. It might have
been an offshore island, it might have been mainland Asia, but it
doesn't suggest anything particularly aquatic (even though it fits
with a number of proposed aquatic scenarios).

>Firstly taking the data at face value means
>that primate phylogeny has to be reworked to produce
>a human-orang-gibbon clade versus a gorilla-chimp-
>Old World (Cercopithecid) monkey clade and this just
>conflicts with too much other data to be realistic.

I'm not sure why you think that. The existing arrangement is still
perfectly feasible, I would have thought.

>The
>argument for the line leading to Homo abandoning Africa
>3-4 million years ago and then re-entering while not impossible
>has absolutely no fossil evidence to back it up.

Well, there's no need to presume they abandoned Africa and re-entered
it. How about if there are populations of hominids all over the place
- including some outside Africa? When the retrovirus hits, the African
populations are decimated. Later, the African and non-African
populations are able to meet up again and the non-Africans
predominate, thus eliminating the signs of the retrovirus in human
ancestors. Is that feasible?

[Snip]
>In any event this is fascinationg stuff and we will have to
>see where it leads.

Indeed. I've been looking forward to some informed debate on this from
the professionals. It's been much discussed on the AAT group, but no
one there is an expert in these matters.

--
Pauline Ross

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Final Solution of the Aquatic Question
    ... resistance to infection and/or infections never completely hit all of ... >>argument for the line leading to Homo abandoning Africa ... How about if there are populations of hominids all over the place ... When the retrovirus hits, the African ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Final Solution of the Aquatic Question
    ... Pauline M Ross wrote: ... >>Marc's preferred scenario is far from the only one ... >>argument for the line leading to Homo abandoning Africa ... When the retrovirus hits, the African ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Mitochondrial Eve a fact?
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    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Mitochondrial Eve a fact?
    ... Africa and colonized the old world on the order of a million ... populations, but we don't see evidence of it in the maternal ... Doesn't the loss of mt lineages to drift when populations are ... science had implications that supported the social positions we already ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Question: Population Bottleneck and "out of Africa"
    ... Africa, but even that shows that there was a bottleneck where the ... Several sub populations ... and re-mixed with the Homo Erectus gene ...
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