Re: butchering sites at the intersection of river channels (Re: AAT is based on comparative data (Re: Algis ranting about AAH


"Lee Olsen" <paleocity@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1125164764.129473.214120@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Robin Dennell 2003
"Dispersal & colonisation, long & short chronologies: how continuous is the
Early Pleist.record for hominids outside E.Africa?"
JHE 45:421-440

>>> > >>>>>>Do you really believe that Homo got to Java over your savanna??
:-D

>>> > >>>>> That's what Dennell said.

>>> > >>>> Yes, those biases... They can people make tell everything...

>>> > >>> Biases like: "1.8-Ma Homo remains come from Algeria, Iran, Kenya,
Georgia, Java... always near lakes or seas (R.Dennell 2003 JHE 45:421);..."

>>> The reason there are no quotation marks (from Dennell) in Marc's
statement is because nowhere in that paper did Dennell make such a claim.
Dennell, instead, does use the terms "permanent water" and "open water"
throughout the paper (pp. 423, 426, 428 etc.). This is quite different than
saying near lakes and seas.

>> So, Lee, what is the exact difference between 'lakes and seas' and
permanent and open water"?

> So, Rich, just what exactly does your question have to do with the fact
that Marc got caught misrepresenting what Dennell actually said? A little
smoke screen perhaps?

"got caught"?? No nonsense please: it's clear from Dennell that early
hominids lived near permanent & open waters. BTW, have you read RW Dennell
cs.1988 "Early tool-making in Asia: 2-Ma artefacts in Pakistan" Antiquity
62: 98-106? eg,
- "The spatial associations betw.artifacts & animal bones in the earliest
sites, most of which occur in open fluvial, lacustrine or marsh deposits,
are difficult to interpret"
- "the association of artifacts & carnivore-collected materials resulted
from the slope wash of artifacts into natural traps"
- "that early hominids regularly hunted giant mammals is not well supported
by the available evidence"
- etc.
Although they might have "completed" their diet with the necessary
poly-unsat.fatty acids from bone marrow, it's obvious IMO that the basic
food were "marine mollusks, tortoises, legless lizards and ostrich eggs".
Already found out why they needed so badly those PUFAs, Lee? Of course, you
haven't. Then please read a recent book on this subject
S.Cunnane 2005
"The survival of the fattest"
World Scientific.



......


>>>>MV: Why on earth confine to Africa?? Do you believe our ancestors had
to be in Africa then?? Any evidence?

>>> Because Africa is where the first evidence for Homo is, and the
corroborating is there also. The burden is on those who do think otherwise
to demonstrate otherwise.

>> But Lee, that's only in the last half-century - in the half-century
before that all early humans (Pithecanthropus and Java Dawn Man) came from
Asia - who has any authority to tell us it's not going to change again in
the next half-century?

> Probably because the errors of the first-half century have been corrected
(that's how science works you know, um no, you probably didn't know that),
and the speculations about the future (negative arguments of the
imagination) can't be refuted by science. I think the most important thing
to figure out here is why so many of the proponents, like yourself, of AAH
seem to rely so heavily on negative arguments to make their case.

You still don't grasp it, Lee. Where-ever our ancestors might have lived
(Afr.coasts, Red Sea, Rift, SE.Asia), the comparative data suggest they were
shoreline-based (in the words of Cunnane), and nothing in the fossil or
archeol.record contradicts this. To the contrary, the more we know about it,
the more these data confirm our view, eg, the presence of Homo in E.Africa
remarkably coincides with the presence of large lakes in the Rift (Trauth
cs.2005 Science). :-)



>>>>MV: To the contrary perhaps: see the Retrovirus data on our ancestors:
possibly absent from Africa 4-3 Ma.

>>> "Perhaps" is not evidence.

*I* said "possibly" (it's a minor argument pro AAT) but the authors are more
confident: CT Yohn cs.2005 "Lineage-Spec.Expansions of Retroviral Insertions
within the Genomes of African Gr.Apes but Not Humans & Orangutans" PLoS
Biol.3:1-11: no evidence for a RV.infection that bombarded the genomes of P
& G 3-4 Ma.

.......



>>> > >>MV: Further on he [Dennell] mentions "perennial open water ...
palaeo-shore deposits of a vast shallow Late Plio/Early Pleist.lake ...
Caspian, which may then have joined the Black Sea... " etc.

>>> Dennell actually said ca. 60 km from the Caspian.

You know the difference between now & 2 Ma, do you, Lee?


>>>Lee: You ( speaking as a non-geologist & non-archaeologist) do not get
to define what NEAR is. This evidence, however, does: "At Olduvai the
Acheulean sites tend to lie along the former stream channels away from the
playa lakes." Hay 1967a, 1976. At Olorgesailie: "The study suggests hominid
preferences for certain kinds of topographic settings as locals for camps,
notably the sandy channels of ephemeral water courses." Isaac 1977. Potts,
Schick, Jones, Dennell, and Isaac again at Koobi Fora confirm this
observation.

AFAICS, Hay & Isaac have nothing to prove their savanna-biased
interpretation: "tend to", "suggest"... I guess that if they were writing
their paper today, they would have stressed the presence of large bodies of
water nearby... :-D



.......

http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/whale.html
"Fossilized Whale Discovered"
Bernadette Arnaud 13.4.00
Fossils of a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million
years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered
near the town of Benguela, 250 miles south of Luanda, Angola. This is the
first time a dismembered whale has turned up at a Palaeolithic site,
elephants and hippopotamuses being far more typical hominid prey. Manuel
Guttierez of the Université de Paris-10 and Angolan researchers from the
Archaeological Museum of Benguela found the whale's skull, the front half of
its veterbral column, some ribs and isolated vertebrae together with some 60
Olduvaian choppers and flakes. The whale measured 18 feet long and was
probably a baleen, according to Claude Guérin of Lyon's Université Claude
Bernard. The site is still littered with the shells, sharks' teeth, and sea
urchins of the ancient shore, now two miles distant and 300 feet above the
sea. Excavations are ongoing at the site.
http://www.elsevier.fr/html/index.cfm?act=abstract&cle=22979
Manuel Gutierrez, Claude Guerin, Maria Lena & Maria Piedade da Jesus 2001
"Exploitation d'un grand cétacé au Paléolithique ancien: le site de Dungo V
à Baia Farta (Benguela, Angola)"
CRAS 332:357-362
The almost complete skeleton of a large whale Balaenoptera sp was found
closely associated with 57 Lower Palaeolithic artefacts near Baia Farta, at
an altitude of 65 m, 3 km from the present shoreline. It constitutes the
oldest evidence of the exploitation of a stranded whale by Palaeolithic
people.

>>Richard: The whale was in Angola - some way from Morocco. And if H
erectus was in Morocco (which he has been shown to have been) just how did
he get there? - walk across the Sahara ?

>Lee: If they could walk on beaches, why not? But why not just save the walk
and butcher a whale on the beach in Morocco also? This would independently
verify the original observations in Angola (geez, I hate to keep shoving
good science in the face of imagination, I know how that must hurt the
pseudo-science people).

Ah, only "scientists" claim that early hominids could have walked across the
Sahara?



>>>MV: Morocco??

>>Lee: 1) Yes, that's is one of the places where tools mixed in with the
seashells did not originate from the beach. Where is your evidence that
those tools, found with the whale, are not secondary?

I don't know anything about whales in Morocco. We're talking about Angola.
Yes, Angola. W.Africa. Big whale. Beach. Stone tools. >1 Ma.

>> 2) Even if one late-dated whale were butchered on the beach (correct me
if I'm wrong, but didn't you just recently make a point about the
possibility that the Turkana Boy may not have been an ancestor, or
something to that effect?), what makes you think those people were our
ancestors (to use your analogy)?

Why do you think I think that, Lee? No, no, try to follow. Again: our
anatomy & physiology say our ancestors were shore-based. So far, you
haven't given 1 argument against this. I don't exclude possible shores in
savannas, of course, but we can't call eveything between Mojokerto & Ain
Hanech 1.8 or 1.7 Ma "savanna", can we? Now, in spite of sea levels changes
throughout the Pleistocene, at some places, ancient seashore or lagoon sites
can be found. Remarkably, on all those places (rarely preserved) we find
tools next to shellfish, stranded whales etc. Very remarkable for an
animal that is claimed to have evolved bipedality to run over the plains,
sweat glands to cool during the heat of the day when they endurance-ran
after antelopes, fur loss to sweat better, a thick SC fat layer to keep warm
at the cool savanna nights, & not to forget: got thick bones becasue they
ate too much antelope liver... :-D

IOW, more seriously, I don't say these whale-butchers were our ancestors,
they're only an example. AAT says that at one time our ancestors were
littoral, collected shoreline foods, parttime dived for sessile seafoods.
When our shore-phase happened (Plio- or Pleistocene) I don't know. I don't
exclude that some Homo populations could have lived in drier regions during
part of the year (& left there your famous "cutmarks" on antelope bones),
but I'm saying that all inland Homo populations, according their close
relatedness to us, must have had waterside ancestors & had followed the
waters (rivers/swamps/lakes) inland.

So far, nothing in the fossil record has contradicted that view, and the
more there's found, the more our view becomes confirmed.

>> 3) One whale doesn't an industry make. Freak occurrences do not trump the
hundreds of inlands sites that showed up in the record long before this
anomaly.

The hundred of inland sites along lakes etc., you mean?

I'm losing my time, Lee.
I leave you to Richard...
Perhaps he can make you a bit more open-minded?

Marc Verhaegen

http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT





.

Relevant Pages
Loading