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:1125289380.258720.49740@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Marc Verhaegen wrote:
> "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.



No nonsense please. You just changed the wording from ALWAYS NEAR LAKES
OR SEAS (R.Dennell 2003 JHE 45:421);... to "hominids lived near
permanent & open waters" which is what *I* cited, not you. Try to be
consistent [I'll skip your lecture 2B about honesty here :-)] in your
arguments please. Every one on this planet is *near* a sea if you make
the scale generalized enough. Science is not about generalizations, its
about specifics arrived at by data, and lots of it, not to mention
repeatability and independent verification; none of which are contained
in your arguments.

OK, rephrase: Dennell's paper shows that there's not 1 instance of early
Homo that is clearly away from lakes or seas. This can be expected (though
not necessary) on comparative grounds. If somebody doubts it, he has to
give good reasons. The more we know, the more likely it becomes that all
early Homo sites were near large bodies of water, that the lakes in the Rift
were larger when Homo was around etc. If you believe AAT is wrong, you have
to show that our ancestors wer not "shoreline" (as Cunnane calls it).




BTW, have you read RW Dennell
> cs.1988 "Early tool-making in Asia: 2-Ma artefacts in Pakistan" Antiquity
> 62: 98-106? eg,


Nice bluff Marc, but the Pakistani sites he is referring to are ca.500
km from the Indian Ocean.

1) today yes, but 2 Ma?? evidence?
2) no large bodies of water there IYO?
3) no bluff, just read it - with *open* mind

As long as you deny the biological evidence, you'll never understand much
about human evolution, Lee.
________



> - "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"

Thank you Marc, you make my case again. Nothing there to imply a large
body of water or a sea.
Of course they are difficult to interpret, that is just what Binford
said:
"...insists that "claims for the use of tools should be supported by
the citation of marks produced by tools." Although there are some
notable exceptions.....
it is not unreasonable for Binford to take this stance." F. Clark
Howell in Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths.


Dennell is not making a leap of faith here and suggesting because the
bones and stones are difficult to interpret, and that water lilies
were around that the tools were being used to process those instead.







> - "the association of artifacts & carnivore-collected materials resulted
> from the slope wash of artifacts into natural traps"

Yeah, that's why I would like to see the site report on that whale
before making any conclusions.



> - "that early hominids regularly hunted giant mammals is not well
supported
> by the available evidence"
> - etc.


Dennell is of course talking about the debate over scavenging vs
hunting large animals, not about defending littoral lifestyles.



> 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,


Nope, evidence of the imagination is not allowed in science.



tortoises, legless lizards and ostrich eggs".


None of which would need to be obtained with a specialized littoral
lifestyle then (no diving required), any more than catching them today
would. Littoral lifestyle not demonstrated again, savanna lifestyle
supported.



> Already found out why they needed so badly those PUFAs, Lee? Of course,
you
> haven't.

Why am I not dead yet? I do not lead a specialized-littoral-lifestyle,
never have, never will.



Then please read a recent book on this subject
> S.Cunnane 2005
> "The survival of the fattest"
> World Scientific.


http://tinyurl.com/b9t27

Nothing here would even remotely require a specialized littoral diet to
obtain a "MODEST" intake of your precious PUFAs. No diving or swimming
needed. Specialized-littoral-diet falsified again.

You really need to review Langdon's new book.



>
>
>
> .....
>
>
> >>>>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),

Cunnane? Let me guess, another person who has not contributed in anyway
to the large body of original African archaeological research? Do you
think Cunnane can even find the rift valley on a map????? :-)




and nothing in the fossil or
> archeol.record contradicts this.


And nothing in the fossil or archeol record contradicts the savanna
scenario (I'm starting to like this negative argument idea).



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). :-)

Nothing here would even remotely require a specialized littoral diet to
obtain a "MODEST" intake of your precious PUFAs. No seaside living , no
lakeside living , no diving, no swimming needed period.
Specialized-littoral-diet falsified again.

And please cite where Trauth claims to have falsified M. Leakey 1971,
Isaac 1977, Feibel (in Walker and Leakey) 1993, Schick 1986, Jones
1988, Clark 1992, Semaw 2000, Blumenschine et al. 2003. And let's not
leave out Su, who demonstrated the dangers to those who approach too
close to the lake edge and end up a meal for the crocodiles, rather
than getting a modest intake of PUFAs for themselves.




>
>
>
> >>>>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.


If it's minor, then why do you keep bringing it up?
And I already said it wouldn't surprise me very much if it were the
case. That still would not make an association with the Indian Ocean.



>
> ......
>
>
>
> >>> > >>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?


I do, but you just proved you didn't read Dennell. Do you actually read
any of your citations or do you just cite from abstracts?

Dennell 2003:428, "When occupied, it was probably only 60 km from the
Caspian, which may have then joined the Black Sea."

Key words: "probably" and "may have"

Unless early Homo was a really fast runner, 60 km away would have been
out of easy reach, so could not have contributed in any way to seaside
living. Unless you want to concede that early Homo was really fast, do
you?




>
>
> >>>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,

And you are speaking as a archaeologist and a geologist with experience
in Africa as these people are? Or maybe you are citing from secondary
worker's abstracts who have never been to Africa and are simply making
vague generalizations.



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

No Marc, they did stress the importance of large lakes nearby (what is
nearby in terms of km?), you need to read all my posts. What they, and
Feibel are saying is that they cannot prove a lake was nearby when the
sites were occupied or even if a lake was in the basin at all during
the time of occupation of most of the sites. At some times, yes, the
lakes covered the entire basins. In geology, a small streambeds are
very easy to identify. This is where the majority of the sites are
found. If there is a streambed identified, then a large lake could not
possibly be there at the same time by definition. The question is how
far and at what time? Could Hay, Isaac, Leaky, Potts be off in the
exact km estimates from the large lakes, yes, but since most of the
sites have been found in stream beds, marshes, ponds, springs, then
they will always be nearer to themselves than to the large lakes. Do
you think streams can run under a lake and form a channel?


>
>
>
> ......
>
> http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/whale.html
> "Fossilized Whale Discovered"


"The almost complete skeleton of a large whale Balaenoptera sp was
found
closely associated with 57 Lower Palaeolithic artefacts near Baia
Farta,.."

(Binford) "...insists that "claims for the use of tools should be
supported by the citation of marks produced by tools." Although there
are some notable exceptions.....
it is not unreasonable for Binford to take this stance." F. Clark
Howell

http://tinyurl.com/76a2y

"Excavations are ongoing at the site" I assume means the site report
has not been written, nor has Marc posted anything that would indicate
if the association between the tools and the whale has been
demonstrated or is simply the opinion of the excavators.

Assume for the time being (until a site report is available) that the
association with the whale is legitimate. Would this be any indication
for support of the AAT and possibly a littoral lifestyle? No.
1) It only confirms what is already known, early Homo had a penchant
for large mammals, elephants, hippos, giant baboons etc. and virtually
nothing that would imply a separate lifestyle unique to littoral.

2) The fact that shark teeth are also present at the site then means
Homo was catching and eating sharks?

3) Lewis and Clark scavenged a whale while at Astoria in 1805. Does
this mean Lewis and Clark were living a littoral lifestyle? Of course
not. Did they live near the beach? No, actually they lived 3000 miles
away.

4) The human species on occasion has been known to drink urine, eat
feces, and each other. Do we then catagorize our species as s**t eaters
and cannibals? No, it just means that if a person is hungry enough they
will eat almost anything. The whale is evidence of just another large
animal on an already large list of possible meals.




> 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?


I have no clue as to what you mean by this.


>
>
>
> >>>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.


No Marc, we are talking about science-----independent verification. The
Hippo Banda site at Olorgesailie and the HTS and KBS sites at Koobie
Fora are not in the same place, but they provide independent
verification that the first one wasn't an anomaly.


>
> >> 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?


You said it, why did you bring it up in the first place?


No, no, try to follow. Again: our
> anatomy & physiology say our ancestors were shore-based.


I follow perfectly. Langdon (2005) follows perfectly also: "However,
there is simply no evidence that early hominins were dependent on
aquatic habits or foods and the model is unparsimonious."



So far, you
> haven't given 1 argument against this.


So far you haven't given one argument against the savanna scenario.


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?


Yes we can, if you had actually read Dennell instead of skipping
through it, that is exactly what fig 3 says. How many times do you want
me to repeat this?



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.

Not whales in the plural. So, shark teeth are also mixed in the
beaches, I suppose early Homo was eating sharks if we follow your
flawed logic?



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

Please read Langdon for better scenarios.



>
> IOW, more seriously, I don't say these whale-butchers were our ancestors,
> they're only an example.


Yes, of hungry savanna eaters that finally found the coast.


AAT says that at one time our ancestors were
> littoral,


Saying something doesn't make it so.



collected shoreline foods,


No evidence for this and even if there was a "MODEST" input it still
would not require a littoral specialization.



parttime dived for sessile seafoods.


No evidence for this and even if there was a "MODEST" input it still
would not require a littoral specialization.



> When our shore-phase happened (Plio- or Pleistocene) I don't know.


I'll say it again, you need to be back before 2.6 Mya. There is just
too much counter evidence in the later record to allow for a littoral
specialization, even if a "MODEST" amount could be found.



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.


Nope, the evidence is from inland out. You have gaps were there should
be none if your scenario was correct. Ain Hanech to 'Ubeidiya is a 2000
+ km gap. From 'Ubeidiya to Modjokerto is a gap of 4000+ km. All other
early sites outside Africa aren't anywhere near the Indian Ocean. Why
was India skipped (one inland exception: Jalapur) if they were on the
sea and migrated inland? You don't have a underwater-rising seas excuse
for this giant problem.



>
> >> 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?

Cite your source from something besides an abstract by someone who has
never been to Africa.



>
> I'm losing my time, Lee.


Yes, you need to be reading Dennell, Isaac, Hay, Leakey, Clark, Walker
and Leakey, Potts,
Blumenschine, and Langdon. Rather than reading sap.



> I leave you to Richard...
> Perhaps he can make you a bit more open-minded?


Richard who? Oh, richard the Troll----
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/31126



>
> Marc Verhaegen
>
> http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT



.

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