Re: Homo Erectus was *not* a hunter/runner.



Claudius Denk wrote:

"Lee Olsen" <paleocity@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

Couch potatoes may disagree, but people are fairly well built to run
in the heat.

In comparison to what, hedgehogs? Sure. And in comparison to turtles we
are fairly well built to swim. The comparisons that matter are comparisons
to predators that were contemporaneous to them when they actually lived.
Using this comparison hominids are hopelessly slow and always have been
throughout the better part of our evolution. One need not be a couch potato
to disagree. In fact, one need be an intellectual couch potato to agree.
It's an absurd supposition. Hominids are not built for travelling long
distance or fast.


Long distance yes. Fast (relatively) No. And we are lousy swimmers compared to
just about anything else than floats
with effort - turtles float without any effort. Hmmmm. Thimk agin.





We sweat more per unit of body surface area than any
other animal, and our upright posture exposes less body surface to the
sun than would walking on all fours, and more surface to the cooling
wind. On the hunt, those traits give people a distinct advantage over
most quarry.

More absurdity. HE would have been an extremely ineffective hunter. (You
should try going deer hunting yourself sometime. It would be obvious to you
that hunting deer or animals of a similar size and ability, with a spear is
about impossible.) The stone tools (spear points) that are associated with
HE did not serve much if any of a hunting function. Their main purpose was
pest control. (More specifically, they were part of a communties collective
armed force that they employed to protect the fruit bearing trees from
inmigrating food competitor species that would, if left unchecked, deplete
these resources. And it was especially important to protect these resources
because if they were an important part of the communities strategy to
survive the predatory implications of the dry season.)

You've misinterpreted this data. HE may have often eaten meat. Especially
during the dry season when desperate, inmigrating species were vulnerable to
their collective ambush hunting techniques. But there wasn't much of any
chasing them down over long distances, especially not in or across or even
near treeless habitat where they were completely defenseless against
predators.

<snip>

"In fact, Australian Aborigines and various Native American and
African groups have traditionally practiced "persistence hunting,"
chasing antelopes or other game in the midday heat, often for hours,
until the animals overheat and collapse."

Irrelevant. Australian Aborigines live at a time and place long after
hominids have become ecologically dominant. HE did not. HE was only
beginning to become ecologically dominant and only at the treed localities
that comprised their communal site. Using modern day hunter gatheres as
examples of HE lifestyle is to make an apples to oranges comparison.



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