Re: A critique of the BBC aquatic ape programme and the transcript.

On 10 Sep 2005 14:49:41 -0700, "Lee Olsen" <paleocity@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>> I'm not sure what Lee's evidence says about where early Homo was
>> actually living.
>
>Well, "Early Homo living sites" certainly wasn't a very good choice of
>words on my part, I must have been thinking about their day job as
>opposed to where they were actually camping or sleeping at night.
>*Activity sites* would have been better. Where they were actually
>sleeping at night is the puzzle, except it would not be very near a
>water source or even near site with a lot of fresh bone lying around,
>that would just be an advertisement for trouble. I really don't have
>a clue other than that. [...]
>Not much evidence for formal "home bases" that I know of. [...]
>I don't know where they were living, they
>may not have been living anywhere in particular.

OK, thanks, that's very clear. But I have a couple more questions
arising from that.

Firstly, these activity sites are mostly located by small streams,
drying river beds and so forth, and you use this as evidence that the
associated hominids preferred these sites to locations by large bodies
of water (and statistically this is true). But if the sites without
hominid fossils are butchery sites, it is quite likely that they slept
elsewhere (for the reasons you give: not clever to sleep alongside
fresh bone). And if they are caches of stone tools, these may have
been positioned conveniently for butchery operations. So would you
agree that there *may* have been other sites, less visible in the
archaeologocal record, where hominids slept, met, rested and ate
non-meat food, some of which may have been beside lakes and large
rivers?

Secondly, whatever the function of any of these sites, would you agree
that they would have been part of a substantial territory, within
which the hominids roamed, and that this *could* have included the
margins of nearby lakes and large rivers?

Not that I think that this is necessarily more plausible than your own
analysis; I just wanted to put an alternative interpretation of the
evidence to you, to see what you think.

On this point...

>Where they were actually
>sleeping at night is the puzzle, except it would not be very near a
>water source or even near site with a lot of fresh bone lying around,
>that would just be an advertisement for trouble.

.... I agree with you about not sleeping near a freshly butchered
carcase, but there are possible sleeping sites near water. For
instance, some rivers gouge out steep cliffs which would make a safe
perch at night (eg some baboons). Also, islands in a river or lake
might be safe (crocs permitting).

Where do you think they would have found safe sleeping sites
elsewhere? Up trees? In caves? Surrounded by thorn bushes? I find it
difficult to visualise groups of hominids sleeping on the ground in
open country.

--
Pauline Ross

.

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  • Re: A critique of the BBC aquatic ape programme and the transcript.
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