Re: What was the habitat of early hominid evolution?
- From: <claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 11:08:14 -0700
"Marc Verhaegen" <m_verhaegen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C2C8CC68.4E10%m_verhaegen@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Op 22-07-2007 02:35, in artikel
1185064529.734588.43700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> schreef:
On Jul 21, 3:06 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 21, 2:18 pm, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This stuff is so old and out-of-date it must have come from a museum.
Dates are irrelevant.
Tobias 1995 We were all profoundly and unutterably wrong! All the
former savannah supporters (including myself) must now swallow our
earlier
words
1995, sadly out-of-date.
Out of date? Dates are irrelevant.
There really never was a savanna theory. It was little more than a
few vague assumptions that never did add up to anything viable.
Early hominid evolution did not take place in a rainforest habitat.
It it had then they would not have evolved away from the chimpanzee/
ape niche.
Early hominid evolution did not take place in grasslands
Early hominid evolution took place at localities that are treed within
a greater habitat characterized by treelessness, a severe dry season,
migrational herbivores, and larger predators.
Ridiculous:
Uh, . . . er. What? Be specific.
Nature 325:305-306, 1987
Origin of hominid bipedalism
Sinclair et al. (1) believe that human bipedalism arose in scavenging
hominid ancestors that had to carry their children while following
migrating
savanna ungulates but this seems highly improbable.
There was no empty niche of migrating scavengers to be occupied by hominid
ancestors.
Yes. I'm the one that informed you of this.
Not only vultures, but aso canid, felid and hyaenid carnivores
were much better preadapted for such a niche. They possessed sharp beaks
or
long canine teeth and did not need to carry stones for cutting carcasses.
Agreed. There is nothing about hominids that can be explained by
scavenging. It's an inane notion.
Moreover, the bipedal way of locomotion - whether fast of slow - is
inefficient and costly (2,3).
Uh . . . no. It is efficient in comparison to the ape quadrupedalism. And
I agree that it is relatively inefficient in comparison to other quadrupedal
species. So only an idiot (Lee Olson and Jason Eshleman) would argue that
this was a migrational adaptation. The resulting diminutive and
slight-shouldered apiths would have been completely vulnerable to the large
predators in treeless habitat. (They, undoubtedly, used [needed] trees to
escape the frequent visits from these predators.)
Another argument against the migrating hypothesis in particular and the
savannah theory of human evolution in general is that it is highly
unlikely
that hominid ancestors ever lived in the savannas. Man is the opposite of
a
savanna inhabitant. Humans lack sun-reflecting fur (4) but have
thermo-insulative subcutaneous fat layers, which are never seen in savanna
mammals. We have a water- and sodium-wasting cooling system of abundant
sweat glands, totally unfit for a dry environment (5).
No duh. This is so obvious it isn't even worth discussing.
Our maximal urine
concentration is much too low for a savanna-dwelling mammal (6). We need
much more water than other primates, and have to drink more often than
savanna inhabitants, yet we cannot drink large quantities at a time (7-8).
The fossils of our hominid ancestors or relatives are always found in
water-rich environments.
Again, all of this is so obvious it's hardly worth mentioning. Obviously
hominids resided at locations at which they had proximity to fresh water
year round--most notably during the dry season.
It is difficult to understand why most anthropologists keep believing in
the
savanna theory (possibly because it goes back to Darwin), or why so many
anthropologists keep trying to seek the most improbable reasons for
bipedalism, while they should know there are much better explanations
(9-11).
Well, they say they don't believe in the savanna theory any more. Beyond
that they seem to have no theory at all. Just like yourself.
Marc, eventually you will have to come to grips with the fact that you don't
have a hypothesis. You seem to have gotten the habitat kind of right. But
you don't have any selective factors in your hypothesis that explains any of
the adaptations that are so plainly apparent in our species.
.
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