Re: Absence of Canines in Apiths


"quercophile" <ed.byron.adams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote

> My only dispute with this scenario is the fossil record. If club
> weilding came first, the ability to fully pronate the wrist would have
> been an early selection instead of a late one.
>
> We will agree that it was early tool use that was the overall selective
> pressure that led to Homo. I tend to emphasize internecine, intergroup
> violence because it is novel.

Novel?

While it would have no credence at all if
> it had not been observed in chimpanzees,

It would be strange if it was not observed in chimps since its observed in
just about any mammal of similar size and lifestyle.

it is also fair to note that
> it is an infrequent behavior. If the LCA was chimpanzeelike, why would
> a novel and extreme adaptation like bipedality arisen? After all,
> chimps adaptations to predators is perfectly adequate.

There's nothing in this that indicates bipedality.

>
> Tool use is also a chimp adaptation and the attempt, albeit feeble, to
> throw things. I just think that an increase in the incidence of
> intergroup violence among a chimpanzeelike LCA, possibly under the
> pressure of environmental stress, and some mutation that would allow
> slightly more on-target throwing could have been the initiator
> adaptation for bipedality.

I agree. But the question is how did it become adaptive. Goodall's
observations refute internicene violence as the cause.

>
> Projectile use is rare in the animal world. It is an adaptation that is
> useful for hunting, predator defence and warfare. We may not be able to
> tease apart the most likely pressure that led to human evolution but it
> is clear that there has been a significant bias against the intergroup
> violence explanation in academia for a long time. I love the studies of
> the New Guinea highlanders. The Rousseauan notion of the peaceful,
> noble savage was so ingrained in higher education at the time that the
> cultural anthropologists claimed they did not practice "war", mainly
> because the large formal territorial disputes had so few casualties.
> They ignored the fact the smaller isolated raids and ambushes that were
> nearly constant aggreagately added up to one of the largest causes of
> death on the island.
>
> These ambushes are exactly the kind of "warfare" Goodall observed among
> chimps.

Okay, but it seems you are making the same mistake to consider any of this
evidence even remotely indicative of the selective realities of early
hominids.

>


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