Economic Competition Amongst A'pith
- From: claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 9 Dec 2006 13:16:31 -0800
"Peter F" <fell_spamtrap...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
intense intra-species competition
There certainly is intra-species competition in my
scenario. But this is true for all species at all
times. What is different about the intra-species
competition in my scenario is that the competition
is between different communities. These apith
communities (which are comprised of multiple bands
or families) are geographically separate from each
other. As such, they were largely unaware of each
others existence and they were completely unaware
that they were in competition with other communities.
This may seem counterintuitive because usually when
we think of competition we think of direct contact,
fighting, etc. How, then, could they have been in
competition with each other? The answer to this
question is that these apith communities were in
economic competition with each other.
In other words, in the same sense that extant human
communities are in ecomonic competition with each
other, town to town, city to city, state to state,
country to country, these first hominid communities
were in economic competition with each other. How
could communities comprised of multiple bands of
chimps be able to compete with other bands of chimps
if all of the members of these communities possessed
the limited mental capacity of chimps? In other
words, what type of behavior would cause the economic
success of one's own community and, at the same time,
cause the economic downfall of one's neighboring
community? The answer to this question is simple
once you understand the role the environment plays
with respect to being the main selective factor in
this environment.
More precisely, the main selective factor in this
environment was seasonal scarcity. What causes
seasonal scarcity? Two things, one of which, seasonal
dessication (dryness) was completely out of their
control. The other cause of seasonal scarcity was not
completely out of their control, it involved the fact
that with the onset of seasonal dessication in their
greater environment other species would come flooding
into their relatively well watered and well treed
community sites and begin to deplete the resources.
So now we can answer the question we asked above: what
type of behavior would cause the economic success of
one's own community and, at the same time, cause the
economic downfall of one's neighboring community? The
answer is that any behaviors that would prevent
inmmigration of other species to one's own community
site would preserve the resources in one's own
community site and, at one and the same time, increase
the migratory pressure on neighboring communities in
that the inmigrating species will follow the path of
least resistance to their foraging goals. As is more
explcitly explained in my hypothesis, these behaviors
would have involved territorialistic, mob oriented,
rock-throwing, stick wielding behaviors that would scare
off and prevent the inmigration of other species. So,
what it comes down to is that communities comprised of
individuals with collectively territorialistically
motivated behaviors would be better able to control their
borders and, as a result, more likely to survive periods
of seasonal scarcity than communities comprised of
individuals and bands that lacked these behaviors.
So, why bipedalism? Now the answer to this question is
obvious. Bipedalism enabled the mob-oriented
stick-wielding, rock-throwing behavior that, as explained
above, would have been so adaptive in this habitat.
of a kind where great numbers of bands of 'chimpy'
pre-humans battered and out-smarted each other into
many a mutually exclusive selective oblivion and
success.
Outsmarting each other is, really, not part of my
scenario.
Nothing wrong with that theoretical thinking, IMO.
On the other hand, many a dead-serious bombast coupled
with the fondness for vapid artificial argumentation,
have occasionally made me simultaneously
nauseous and fascinated.
Truth can be nauseating. (Case in point, if you've read
a biography on Darwin you'd know that nausea was a
constant in this life.)
Jim
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