Re: The Litmus Test

"Claudius Denk" <claudiusdenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Claudius Denk wrote:
I don't know why you are mad at me. I'm not the one that spilled the
beans. You need to control your boy Mikey. He's the one that made
the claim that standard PA does have a specific hypothesis and then
was unable to specify it. I even gave him multiple opportunities to
make a retraction. Gerrit tried to reestabish the vagueness but he
only made it worse when he admitted that the distribution of early
hominids stone tools was inconsistent with hunter-gather notions of
standard PA and consistent with the communalism of my hypothesis.

Gerrit Hanenburg wrote:
Really?
Exactly when and where did I admit such a thing?
I did provide references to a few landscape archeological studies that
indicate that early hominids such Homo erectus ventured into more open
and arid environments, call it savanna if you want. Have you read
them?

Claudius Denk wrote:
Now you are trying to backpedal. Why don't you reread the relevant thread
and see if there is anything there you'd like to retract.

Nope.

Something that you seem to be incapable of grasping is that sometimes
science suffers from group think.

I tend to think of it in terms of intersubjectivity, consensus,
convergence.

Sometimes in order to overcome this you need consider notions that are counterintuitive.

That's different from McGinnian idiosyncrasy and eccentricity.

The fact is all of the evidence is consistent with all hominids, even as far
back as 6 to 8 mya, being communal and communally territorialistic. You can
pretend to dispute this if you want. It won't make any difference. Facts
are facts. Despite your efforts to keep your hunter-gatherer notions vague
you've been unable to conceal the fact is that they completely fail to
explain the selective origins of the adaptations that are so plainly
apparent in our species.

So what then constitutes the community in early hominids? Who are
members and who is excluded? What is its size? And how does it show in
the archeological record?

I think an excellent litmus test for any hypothesis is whether or not they
can explain the early emergence of bipedalism in our earliest,
chimpanzee-like hominid ancestors. Obviously your thinking is to vague to
even begin to approach such a test.

The stick wielding, rock throwing communal territorialism (guarding the
garden) behavior of my hypothesis explains the early emergence of this
adaptation with ease and elegance.

Like Kortlandt did almost 30 years ago.
Basically your hypothesis is one of resource defense. But we now know
that chimpanzees live in communities and actively defend a community
territory without any of the characteristics of hominids. Sinking your
canines in an opponents neck is just as effective as hitting him with
a stick.

Undeniably my scenario may seem
counterintuitive at first, but it begins to make more and more sense when
one considers the hyper-aggressive and hyper-competitive biota of late
miocene east africa and, most importantly, how this competitiveness and
aggressiveness would have been exaggerated by the effects of the dry season
of the monsoon climate. Most importantly, the ensuing predatory massacres
and resulting communal selection explains the selective origins of the
cooperative, communicative, and intellectual adaptations that are the
hallmark of humanity.

Your scenario is just a variation on dramatist Robert Ardey's 1961
"African Genesis". Write a book, kid, and see if it sells.

Gerrit
.

Relevant Pages

  • The evidence indicates hominids have always been communal
    ... The legs and hip bones of Homo erectus were buttressed by tremendous ... niche, they stopped occupying it? ... Hominids experienced group vs. group competition (Actually it's ... community vs. community competition) that accelerated hominid ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Absence of Canines in Apiths
    ... >> My model for communal territorialism involves constant intracooperative ... >> the same kind of periodic malthusian scarcity that all species ... >> literally a matter of survival for the community as a whole. ... I don't see hominids being ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Apith Predatory Realities: not like those of extant chimps (Repost from 08/2003)
    ... the confines of these treed community sites. ... invasion by both predators, such as lions, hyenas ... and there is nothing the hominids could ... essential aspect without which my scenario would not work. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
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