Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: rmacfarl <rmacfarl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:50:12 -0800 (PST)
On Feb 27, 12:25 pm, "caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx"
<caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...
(c) why our infants are altricial?
(d) why we have so much fat?
(e) why so much of it is subcutaneous?
Jois and I had a long, long discussion about this many years ago, and
concluded very little, but did eventually "agree to disagree" about
some of the details. IMHO, fat in babies can NOT be just for
emergency backup for the brain in a starvation scenario because the
body begins to dissolve muscle tissue before all the fat is burned
up.
When is an emergency an emergency? If a baby has a fat supply
available to it it might not get to the muscle-burning stage as
quickly. And do we know if the physiology for infants is the same as
for adults? It isn't for many if not most normal physiological
functions. It's more than possible that they react by burning their
fat first based on natural selection.
(f) when and why we stopped sleeping
in trees?
Probably, again IMHO, when we stopped grasping our mom's fur as
infants in order to cling to her body. RE: recent research about
strenght of hair and the bipedal stance.
Have you read Steven Stanley, "Children of the Ice Age"?
(Recommended...)
...
I agree that all features should have, no, NEED, a explanation for why
they evolved. (but would also add that I "believe" in sexual
selection, which can have a rather random outcome.)
Not all features "NEED" an explanation. Are you familiar with Stephen
Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb?
Have we any comprehension of the
nature of the hominid niche -- at any
stage in our evolution?
Concerning niche, I would add ocean and space exploration to our niche
now, and this, a repost of mine from Jan. 2003:
"Today on NPR a guy was talking about the "stupid" war at the
Pakistan/India border... it is being fought in very high mountains.
In
this connection, he said that most soldiers died from what mountain
climbers would call "objective dangers." He also said that the human
body fails to acclimate above 18,000 feet... Oxygen problems....
Most people who die in war are not directly involved in conflict.
Historically far more died from disease - e.g. the Spanish flu post
WWI. Paradoxical as it may sound, this doesn't mean that war is not a
selective behaviour for humans in a Darwinian sense...
...
Regards,
Charles "
Ah, Charles! - Welcome back - I was wondering who you were when you
said you discussed stuff with Jois before...
Concerning our "ancient niche", if that is what we can call that whole
period from the LCA some 6 mya up until 200kya. I beleive that we
must have evolved in relatively ideal conditions. That is, not
extremely hot or cold. Probably not above 105 degrees Farenheit, or
below freezing. The reason I "believe" this is that our currently-
evolved naked bodies are pathetic in dealing with extremes in
temperature. I have no problem imagining that early hominids dunked
under water in order to supplement the evolving sweat-cooling system.
And now that chimps have been observed wading up to their chins for
fun, it is well within the possibilities. My point is that with or
without fur, we did not survive through an extremely hot climate.
Fur doesn't fossilise. We don't know when nakedness evolved. If as
some hypotheses would have it, it evolved to increase heat loss while
endurance running, or because of brain expansion, it would probably
post-date Australopithecines and only evolve in Homo - so less than 2
MYA. I think that if we ever saw an austropith it would have as much
hair as a great ape.
And I still reckon hairy Neanderthals is a live option, Lee... :-)
Cheers,
Ross Macfarlane
.
- References:
- The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: Claudius Denk
- Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: Gerrit Hanenburg
- Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: Paul Crowley
- Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: Gerrit Hanenburg
- Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: claudiusdenk
- Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: caldervangogh@xxxxxxxxx
- Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: Paul Crowley
- Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- From: caldervangogh@xxxxxxxxx
- The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- Prev by Date: Re: The Knight of Common Sense Vs. the Pope of Vagueness
- Next by Date: Re: The Knight of Common Sense Vs. the Pope of Vagueness
- Previous by thread: Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- Next by thread: Re: The Question Gerrit Won't Answer
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
