Re: The Litmus Test

On Mar 10, 3:23 am, Gerrit Hanenburg <G.Hanenb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"Claudius Denk" <claudiusd...@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.

A rose by any other name . . .


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

That's different from McGinnian idiosyncrasy and eccentricity.

For you anything that isn't vague is idiosyncratic.

And for you the suggestion that hominids are communal and communally
territorialistic and always have been is idiosyncratic.


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?

See my hypothesis.


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.

Specifically?

Basically your hypothesis is one of resource defense.

In part, yes. And group selection.


But we now know
that chimpanzees live in communities

Ridiculous. Chimps are true hunter/gatherers. The reside in small,
ever-mobile bands.

and actively defend a community
territory without any of the characteristics of hominids.

Chimps don't experience the dry-season predatory massacres that
occurred on an annual basis starting in the late miocene and
continuing up to more recent times gradually tapering off as hominids
became ecologically dominant.

Sinking your
canines in an opponents neck is just as effective as hitting him with
a stick.

This is obviously false. Collective rock throwing, stick wielding is
obviously more effective when the goal is to protect or guard
territorialy situated resources from many different species.


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".

Ardey vague notions never added up to much.

Write a book, kid, and see if it sells.
.

Relevant Pages

  • The Litmus Test
    ... Humans and hominids worked under ... Claudius Denk wrote: ... standard PA and consistent with the communalism of my hypothesis. ... cooperative, communicative, and intellectual adaptations that are the ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: New Savanna Man from China 2 mya
    ... About the apith grade of hominids ... Homo too would have been largely defenseless against predators in open ... very real and very dramatic predatory implications. ... communalism and communal territorialism were first established. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: New Hominid Fossil Finds In Ethiopia, 3.5-3.8 mya
    ... On Jul 12, 3:27 am, "Paul Crowley" ... monkeys, antelopes and wild pigs, suggesting that the hominids lived ... emerged in the same geologic era that early hominid fossils are ... traits that other hypotheses pretend to ignore, like communalism, ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
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