Re: Jane Goodall notes

On Mar 13, 7:54 pm, "caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx"
<caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 13, 10:38 am, claudiusd...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Mar 11, 7:31 pm, "caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx"

<caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Saw Jane Goodall speak last Saturday night in Washington DC to a group
of educators, mostly about her program called Roots and Shoots.

I find her to be sweet, humble, smart.  A great lady & all women
scientists owe her some gratitude.

Her speech was grand.  Impassioned.  Entertaining.  Touching.
Factual.  It is probably somewhat of a "canned" speech, but so what?
I had not heard it yet....

I took notes.  I only have one line that is a direct quote, but here
goes:

Her mother was with her in the first 4 months of her work in Gombi, in
1960.  Louis Leakey helped get her started, and the both of them were
considered "crazy" at the time to send a woman off into the forest on
her own.

she saw chimps buiding nests in groups and on their own.

Dinosaurs and birds build nests.  So this is no great revelation.

I agree.  However, compare and contrast that with gorilla nest
building....

And what . . . ?

She (of
course... all of us in sap know this) saw chimps using tools....

Lots of animals use tools in one respect or another.  It's silly to
suggest that chimpanzee tool usage tells us anything about how chimps
evolved in to humans.

I don't quite follow your reasoning here.  

But you do concede that you have no dispute with the veracity of my
assertion. Right?

Meanwhile, humans did not
evolve from chimps.  We evolved from a common ancestor.  Small words;
big difference.

Irrelevant semantics.

Goodall gets credit for "shaking up" what you and Paul would call
"standard PA."  This was no small feat, and she did it quite
scientifically.  Clear and thorough field notes.  Astute
observation.

I suppose.

even
stripping the leaves off twigs & to use that twig to fish out
termites.  This observation revolutionized our place in nature.... we
were at that time defined as humans at least in part by our ability to
use tools.

chimps have a whole series of gestures, and use them in the same
way(s) that humans do.

Chimps have their first child at about 13 years old, and then another
one every 5 or 6 years.  The bond between the mother and child gets
even stronger after the younger sibling is born.  A long childhood is
important to social learning -- like us -- and a young chimpanzee will
pay careful attention to to the behaviour of an adult IF he is
interested in the behaviour.

"our brain has had an explosion."  .... what caused our explosion?
She thinks it is
"this sophisticated language."

She's largely correct about this.  It's our ability to conceptualize
and understand the long-term value of resources so that we can work in
concert to maintain these resources and survive the dry season and its
very dramatic predatory/competitive factors.

Isn't there a long period, from 6 mya to 3 mya, when our presumptive
ancestors did not have a large brain?

Yes. And it might have even been longer. (However cranio endo-casts
suggest an expanded neocortex for A'pith which is consistent with the
existence of social behaviors.)

(although it could be argued
that we were smart without the added grey matter from 3 mya to the
present, but then what purpose does the added grey matter have?).

Yes. You are absolutely right. This is the right question.

I guess what i don't understand, have never understood about, your
scenario, is the interaction between climate change, brain growth and
the known fossil record.  Do all these factors actually add up?

I concur that my scenario does not explain the emergence of the
hominid cultural behaviors and their associated grey matter. It does,
however, set the stage for such an explanation.

Although I've discussed it before in this forum, this part of my
theoretical thinking is so complicated and so potentially
controversial that I am avoiding it now.


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