Re: A'pith Predatory Realities: not like those of extant chimps (Repost from 08/2003)


Paul Crowley wrote:
<claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Well, Homo lived in communities, city-sized, town-sized, treed
localities with multiple families/subgroups. They maintained a
relatively permanent settlement and were ecologically dominant within
the confines of these treed community sites. They did not reside in
small bands. They did not travel much.

There are too many problems with all this (under
your scenario). Such sites are wide open to
invasion by both predators, such as lions, hyenas
and leopards, and by large prey animals, such as
elephants and buffalo.

Yes, I know. In fact this is an essential aspect of my
scenario/hypothesis.

Those animals are active
by night, and there is nothing the hominids could
do to stop them.

Nothing? I disagree. In the least they can be a nuisance, throwing
rocks, waving sticks, and just making a collective ruckus.

You are ignorant of basic facts. Primates
(such as hominids) have colour vision, so
they cannot see well at night. The
animals would just walk around them.

Its common knowledge that hujmans see just fine at night,


Nevertheless I agree this would not be perfect. But, again, not only
would this lack of proficiency in their communal territorialism not be
a problem for the validity of my scenario/hypothesis but it is an
essential aspect without which my scenario would not work. Any
particular A'pith community did not have to be perfect to survive the
dry season. They just had to be a little bit better than the other
communities in their vicinity.

Wrong. They had to be 'better than'
(or at least 'equivalent to') the predators.
You have not begun to set out a scenario
where they could cope.

Idiotic. Why you say these things we will never know because you willl
never say.


The assumption is that the predators
would tend to collectively seek out the A'pith community site that is
most impoverished--it's members hungry, weak, fighting with each other,
starving, coming out of the trees often to get food--and ignore the
A'pith communities that still have enough resources to put up a good
fight against the opportunity seeking predators.

The predators would consume any animal
significantly weaker than themselves.
They'd eat every Apith they could find.
And, under your scenario, they'd find the lot.

Nonsense. You have no dispute with anything I'm saying so you come
back with these absolutistic notions that have nothing to do with
reality as we know it.


Those are reasons why I see a continuing reliance
on off-shore sites (not unlike modern Zanzibar)
up to fairly recent times.

If you were to explicate the details of your scenario it would become
obvious that it completely lacks a communal (group) selective aspect.

That is not a problem at all. Whenever
they were not under pressure from predators,

In your scenario there is no pressure from predators.

etc., they would have fought in much the same
way as their descendants do today (see Somalia,
Iraq, Congo, etc.) and as chimps do all the time.

Thus it has no group selelctive aspect. And you are just assuming
human behavior, you are not describing its selective origin.


So it fails to predict the aspect that is most prominent in our
species, our communalism and all of the adaptations that coincide with
human communalism. (More specifically, there is no reason for them to
maintain group structure in your model.)

Inter-group rivalry (the norm in all human
societies and organisations) will ensure that
those groups with the best structure will
prosper.

Like I said above, you are just assuming human behavior, you are not
describing its selective origin.



Mainland sites would
have been exploited, but always with some
difficulty.

Boats?

Eh? They could swim; they could observe
tides, and currents; they would have used
flotation aids, such as logs. Often the water
would be shallow enough for wading.

Predators couldn't swim also?


They rarely if ever left their treed community site.

There is only one way to deter invasions by
predators -- the males would have to constantly
patrol the hinterland (say within about 10-15 miles
of the hominid home camp), tracking and finding
any predators, killing their cubs and preventing
breeding. Elephants and buffalo would have
been harder to deter. Later, physical barriers
would have been constructed -- walls and
ditches, but they would have been practicable
in only a few places.

Contrived, unnecessary.

The only alternative would often be to let
the elephants roam and destroy everything.

The "only alternative." Give us a break.


But this would not be perfect,
especially against leopards and other singular predators. Also they
did have stone tipped weapons, and they had the behavior of cooperative
engagement. Also they had the ability to get up in trees and or take
cover of some kind or another--caves etc.

This is more silliness. Hominids with stone-
tipped spears can to nothing against predators
in the dark.

Remember. It's dark for the predators also.

You seem to be totally ignorant about
all nature. In addition to their nocturnal
black/white visions, cats have special
adaptations to see better at night.

Yeah, so?


There is no short answer to this question. You are, essentially,
asking why did apes evolve into hominids.

NO, I am not. I am trying to ask a sensible
question about your nonsensical scenario
-- which, I admit, is not easy. You say that
Apiths slept in trees. But tree-sleeping
primates select their sleeping-trees with
care. Most are quite unsuitable. None will
sleep in thorny acacias, for example. So
what kind of trees did Apiths sleep in?

We'll probably never know for sure. Just look at the fossil evidence.
Spores, etc.

You should be capable of discussing POSSIBLE
types of trees. Of course, since there aren't any,
you have a problem.

Do you have any evidence that trees didn't exist back then?


When hominids began to sleep on the ground,
their habitat was no longer determined by the
presence of the right sort of sleeping trees.
Even under your scenario (insofar as it makes
any sense) the habitat of Apiths would be
different from that of Homo. So Apiths would
continue to exist, in their own patch of their
kind of woodland.

I wouldn't assume this and I don't know why you are.

As is very obvious, you are incapable of
thinking about the problem.

My whole hypothesis (which
remains completely undisputed) is the answer to this question.

Even Lee Olsen wrecked your 'hypothesis'
the other day by pointing out that buffalo
would destroy any gardens.

I can't imagine anybody taking that seriously. A herd of buffalo is
not going to walk into treed habitat--especially not at night--where it
will be defenseless against ambush predators.

Buffalo won't go into dense jungle -- but you're
not claiming that as the hominid habitat. Also
they know when there are predators around:
they can smell them -- or they might have seen
the local lions gorging themselves on a kill.

speculative


More importantly, the
supposition that buffalo and other food competitors might sometimes do
this is not only not a problem for my scenario but it is an essential
part without which my scenario would not, and could not, work.

It's not a working hypothesis when the
hominids have NO defence.

You say that, not me


Also, a
community of rock-throwing, stick-wielding A'pith would be a pretty
good deterent.

Useless at night. You seem incapable
of getting this point.

It's a stupid point.

.

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