Re: Terra Amata poo poo
- From: charles <charles.uzzell@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:53:08 -0000
On Jul 31, 10:47 am, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 30, 9:19 pm, charles <charles.uzz...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 27, 9:02 am, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 26, 7:18 pm, charles <charles.uzz...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 19, 9:40 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 16, 5:27 pm, charles <charles.uzz...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 16, 5:24 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 16, 1:44 pm, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
More lip sevice.
Comparative-imagination evidence is nice. One can imagine Homo
ancestors living almost anywhere, bottom of the Indian Ocean,
Atlantis, seaside, who can prove you wrong? Absence of evidence then
becomes proof. One can imagine early Homo eating mountain beaver food,
swishing for algae like flamingos, noodling for catfish. Sir Hardy
knew what he was doing when he gave up AAT for spiritual phenomenon,
because isotopic sigatures refute algae, sedges etc. Smart guy that
Hardy.
Not that I am going to jump on either bandwagon, but there is some
evidence that the bonobo eats some sort of teeny, tiny food out of
streams. Cf. Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, By FRANS DE WAAL,
Photography by FRANS LANTING,
University of California Press. He did not know what the bonobos were
eating but they spent some time at the activity.
But I know what the bonobos were eating even if Frans does not.
The teeth of the bonobos reflect C3 fruit and veggies, isotopic-forest
food, just exactly as expected for the habitat in which they are
living. We know common chimps eat a small amount of monkey meat and
termites, but not enough to dominate the major portion of their diet
or the isotopic signature of their teeth. If early Homo ate tons of
algae and other riverside food, the signature of their teeth would be
the same as chimps/G, C3. This is not the case, early Homo is C4, just
exactly as one would expect from the cut-marks on antelope bones, thus
it is also the same as the signature as the habitat in which they were
living ie savanna. Early Homo is always found with ostriches, big
cats etc, which of course are savanna or open woodland type
creatures.
Lee.. thank you for your thoughtful and detailed response, and I
apologize that it has been so long in my reply... I just didn't see it
until tonight... have been busy being Judge Judson in a theatre
production of Amistad.
Don't forget that the C3C4 research did not include fish, and the
author of the study considered that a weakness in the work.
Maybe for her purposes, but as far as changing early Homo from C4 back
to C3 (savanna back to "riverside" as Marc likes to dream about) fish
would not enter into the equation. I would have to look it up, but I
think only a lot of salt water fish in the diet (Marine reservoir
effect) could change the numbers substantially and I don't think there
were any salt water fish at Swartkrans. Freshwater fish are in savanna
streams also, even if there were evidence for their consumption.
Just getting home from a long, wonderful weekend... so no time to
reply in full tonight. I am not really interested in whether the fish
confirms the diet that Marc touts; rather, I am concerned that the
fish component of the c3/c4 studies was absent entirely.
But I still don't see why.
Fish or the things that fish ate would skew the results. I also think
that the researchers could have included more insects. I don't know
if either of them are essentially C3 anyway, or afterall.
Fish
probably were a part of our diet very early on... we are a generalist
species, adn it is a food that we hss folks continue to consume
today... well.... most of us.
I hate fish and only eat it when
nothing else is available. Once caught some awesome tasting little
smelts, though, in the lake country of Finland.. we roasted them on
the fire and ate the whole thing. Gads. Not an activity I would
think of enjoying, but they were good.
Too many other predators are in competition for fish. Trying to get a
fish away frrom a croc would consume
more energy than it would be worth. If the people at Terra Amada did
eat marine food, their descendents did not, at least to any major
degree.
hmmmm... am still thinking about this one. I do recall that prey
tends to outnumber predators by ten to one. So, one possible way to
figure this part out would be the number of any predator animal to the
predicted homo population. We would also have to know at which point
"we" became the top of the food chain and not like rabbits to the
coyote. It is in the news just this week, in my area, that humans are
not the normal or prefered prey for sharks. Most shark attacks here
are accidental on the part of the shark. True, also, of lions and
many of the cats and crocs and etc. That is, while we are definitely
attacked by many of these predator animals, we are not the preferred
snack. I know that we have the one fossil with the holes in the skull
that match the ancient jaguar. and tigers eat people.
my understanding of crocs is that they will eat anything they can
catch, human or otherwise, but then they don't eat for some ten days
or so.
I don't know if I agree that there are too many predators in
competition for fish. Is that the same as saying that a huge whale
eats huge amounts of plankton, so there is none left for others? Or
are you saying that the little fish is eaten by the bigger one and
then a bigger one and etc.? I guess the question is answered
differently if one speaks of a watering hole, a river, the sea, etc.
Otherwise, I agree about what the chimps were eating. And they hunt
down those monkeys and chomp them up, which is a bit of a surprise.
This does indicate that hunting precedes the LCA with Pan.
Probably, baboons hunt also, so this could be a trend that goes way
back. Still, it is not something very common in those creatures, the
difference is in us.
Also, please note
The depth of the stream you cite is ankle deep, nothing that would
invoke swimming or diving (else the common and bonobos wouldn't be
trapped on opposite sides of the Congo). If they did swim and dive on
a semi-aquatic basis, why are they not AAT also? Surely there is more
water running through the Congo Basin than the savanna at Gona.
No, it doesn't. I agree. But it does prompt bipedal locomotion. Now
how that would somehow lead to obligate bipedalism is another problem
altogether.
Since oranges and sugar cane (Kano 1992) also prompts bipedal
locomotion on dry ground, an extra step requiring water is not needed.
Occam's Razor.
Algis claimed he was going to check this out and he never came back
with a reply. What could he say?
My recollection is that Algis did respond to this, in terms of
"carrying" as a general reason to have gone obligate bipedal. Would
be safer to check the archives on that, in that I don't remember what
he said.
I do because I was one of those debating him. It is exactly as I
said.
okay
that De Waal devotes an entire page to poo-pooing the AAT. Point is,
that if our LCA also ate some sort of teeny, tiny food out of streams
then the evidence would be De Waal's observation... the bonobo
swishing for algae... or some such stuff.
I have no doubt that they do swish for something algae-like (same with
gorillas who also wade in streams and eat swamp food), since their
teeth isotopes reflect this. The teeth of early Homo does not (Julia
Lee-Thorp 2001).
This C4 signature is for early homo at about 3.2 mya. We still have
to figure out what was going on between approx. 6 mya and 3.2 mya.
Regardless of the names given to the species at that time, no matter
what the size of the brains were at that time, only Homo has been
*proven* (all else is circumstantial evidence) to understand the
principles of conchoidal fracture. CF was in place at 2.6 mya.
I agree entirely and yippee too... for my favorite thing is to find NA
CF pieces... arrowheads. I found a 10,000 BC Hardaway DAlton, but it
was not insitu so was of no use to the wise guys downtown.. they are
only trying to keep ahead of the bulldozers here.
Here they are getting ready to flood another important valley full of
archaeological sites. It is illegal to hunt or dig artifacts. What the
bottomline message is: don't touch anything so we can destroy it
forever.
crazy, isn't it. Would love to know what is being flooded around the
world. By the way, slightly correcting my own previous paragraph....
in my area, the bow and arrow were not invented until approx. 2000 BC,
(4 kya) so most points are considered spearheads or some other tool.
In common vernacular, they are called arrowheads even if that is
inaccurate. Also, everything I have ever found has been a surface
find, which means that it could never be in situ. We have not yet,
AFAIK, found a Clovis point in North Carolina. The Hardaway series is
the closest we have. I had hopes that the archeologists would at
least look at the spot I found the thing... alas.. now it is a big ol'
shopping center.
What were "we"
doing in the prior 4 my? wooden tools?
I don't know, but by 2.6 mya "we" were 2.6 million years ahead of
chimps in tecnological brainpower, because they haven't/can't catch up
to CF. Most animals do a lot better trained in captivity, than they
demonstrate in the wild, yet even in the lab, Toth can't teach Kanzi
even the basics of CF. Kanzi understands sharp flakes cut, so his idea
is to throw a rock on the floor and pick up the sharp flakes that
randomly break off. Pretty amateurish compared to the 50 flakes Homo
could drive off a single amorphous core 2.6 mya. I've been
flintknapping for 15+ years and I'm impressed, so are Semaw and
Roche.... read their debates.
Congrats on your flintknapping. I admire that skill and admire the
skill of our forebearers... especially the Clovis culture. wow...
what beatiful points.
What
this means, is the same mental gap that chimps have now, they had
then.
I agree and well stated.
This mental gap could not have occured overnight because the
chimps and gorrilas have had millions of years since to catch up----
and they haven't. This implies our ancestors were not doing chimp-like
things,
I agree and well stated.
but savanna like things during that 6 to 2.6 era,
not sure I agree with this part. For me, it is not necessarily Bolean
logic to go from CF at 2.6 my to savanna CF at 6 mya.
True, I didn't state that so well:-)
The difference had to have happened sometime during that period
though.
But during this interm, "we" IMO, wouldn't have had the time to
separate from pan/G, evolve toward a semi-aquatic direction, and then
end up fully adjusted out on the savanna with the ostriches by 2.6
mya. If this gap happened fast as opposed to slow, why haven't savanna
chimps done the same, or at least headed in our direction?
It is possbile
that some sort of intervening lifestyle occured within that gap that
caused "us" to grow bigger brains and begin using more tools that then
lead to savanna CF. Of course, this requires the random mutation and
the selection force to keep it. The missing component is the
selection force, and seems to be what we argue about back and forth on
sap.
They think common and bonobos (time frame differs from worker to
worker somewhat) have been separated for roughly 1.5 My. Look how
little differences there are between those two species in that amount
of time. This is why I argue with Marc on this point, there just does
not seem to be enough time involved for all this back and forth to
have occured.
I wonder this same thing in terms of the LCA of HN and hss...
Neanderthals split only some 600 kya ago. If we share genes with HN,
then I will fall in with the camp that gives current human populations
red hair... <smile>
otherwise
there could be no CF tools at 2.6 mya. If the tools were being used on
the savanna to butcher antelope and tortoise, then that gap from AATs
perpective would have to be countered with the same type of hard
evidence, not imagination. All AAT can claim is excuses as to why the
data isn't in their camp.
I agree. The AAT camp has to work on producing some evidence.
Yes, and right now they are doing wonderful work finding artifacts in
the North Sea and getting the geology there worked out. No excuses for
not finding underwater sites any longer.
BTW, they have just found some Homo footprints a thousand miles inland
(foothills of the Himalayas) dated to over 1 mya. Kind of off the
littoral Indian Ocean path I would think.
There is evidence that h.e. coprolytes from Terra Amata contained
shell fragments. This kiddie book here in my hand, "Jurassic Poop" by
Jacob Berkowitz, 2006, on page 28 says that "The oldest human
coprolites found so far are 300,000-year-old coprolites discovered
along the southern coast of France, at Terra Amata."
Sorry charles, but if you crap on a beach full of shell fragments, a
small amount
of shell will certainly get into some of the corprolites.
Terra Amada is not that old compared to Gona, either most or all of
human evolution had taken place by then, so even *if* shells were
involved, who cares?
While I am not willing to fight for the value of the Terra Amata data,
I would put a lot more reliablitity on a corprolite than I would on
cut marks.
I do not agree, because corprolites are rare and they only measure the
last meal or so, similar to tooth-wear data which only measures a
brief time. Isotope measures like tree rings, over
a large period of time during the tooth's formation.
I suspect that more of our ancestor's corprolites will be found as
time goes by, and that will give us a complete picture of our ancient
diet, and that is strong evidence, IMHO. ...
My prediction is that an ostrich egg-shell will be found with a hole
bored in it @ 1.7 My. They were doing something with awls, that's as
good a use as any as I see it.
Hinds Cave in SW Texas was loaded with more than a thousand
corprolites. Most of them contain a huge amount of fiber... some 15
times the amount of fiber in the US diet of today. Most of the fiber
was from local desert plants such as the prickly pear cactus, agave
and yucca. and bones from sixteen different animals including
packrats, antelope, birds and fish. page 29 Jurassic Poop.
Google Hidden Cave, Nevada. When you are starving, you eat what you
gotta eat (I think they have some Corp. data from the Dirty Shame
Rockshelter, Or. But I don't remember the results). See Lewis and
Clark in the Bitterroots, not to mention their scavenged whale. The
issue is, what are you eating most of for the longest period of time?
<snip>
I DID google this, and read several papers related to it. INteresting
stuff. Enjoyed especially this one
http://web.pdx.edu/~virginia/pdf%20files/ButlerSchroeder1998DigestiveTraces.pdf
Also, I note that the eating of the already digested seeds was not a
hunger driven activity... dang.. they seemed to LIKE eating them.
eek. The Eskimos love a small rotten bird. who knows what else we
eat! but in terms of the poop eating seed seconds, it does make me
wonder at which point we humans stopped eating poop, like the gorilla
does. Certainly this must be related to our changing sense of smell
and changes in our sexual habits and our child rearing?
regards
charles
.
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