Re: Hunting in dangerous water

Op 22-04-2008 02:53, in artikel
b543e34d-ee37-463a-8875-8963f7420523@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Day Brown
<daybrown@xxxxxxxxxx> schreef:

"Here's a point to consider when evaluating AAT. I did not learn this
point from some academic overlord with an anti-AAT agenda; I learned
it while trying to avoid becoming crocodile food in Africa. When I
spent several months with a team at Lake Turkana, Kenya, investigating
some of the most important early hominid sites in the world, one of
our overriding concerns -- while swimming, bathing, or catching fish
with a net -- was to watch out for crocodiles in the shallows. A croc
can be on you, crush your legs in its jaws, and drag you under to
drown before you have time to screech for help.
The fact that crocodiles co-existed in time and space with early
hominids is a colossal blow to AAT, which does not explain what
advantages early humans would have gained by spending time in
crocodile-populated waters; an environment where they could not make
fires, throw stones or sticks, use other tools, or have any hope
whatever of escaping the most common predator. A troop of early
hominids wading in a lakeshore or swampy forest would best be
described as a crocodile banquet. The cute, feel-good images of babies
swimming freely in a pool, shown in the AAT video, have nothing to do
with the real situation of predator avoidance in Africa.

:-D
This "predator avoidance" blabla has nothing to do with AAT.
Why don't these fanatics inform a bit before talking?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT

Ask the
Dasenich or Turkana people who live around Lake Turkana: only visiting
maniacs swim in that lake." Cameron M. Smith

Mr.Smith apparently doesn't know what AAT means: his blabla is irrelevant.

AAT is about ancestral (Plio)Pleistocene Homo populations (after the H/P
split c.5 Ma) dispersing along the coasts (incl.Java & Flores) & from there
along the waterways inland.

As usual, this characterization ignores the widely varied adaptability
of hominids.
There is the point where the waterhole water is only inches deep, and
then its the turn of the hominids to stab the crocks with their
digging sticks for dinner. I never suggested that a mother would want
to throw a baby into the water, but if by doing so she feeds a crock
rather than a lion, she'd do better to deny the lion the reward for
hominid predation. the big cats have been much better at it than
crocks.
I fail to see why aquatic adaptations required hominids to *only* rely
on that ecosystem, It makes more sense that the hominids which could
exploit BOTH savannah and water courses would do better. And this is
egzactly what we find associated with the oldest hominid skull yet
found, at Chad, which at the time was a varied seasonal riverine
floodplain like the Okavango.

Waterside (both land & water) ok, but not savanna: in that case we had had a
keen olfaction, a bigger mouth (à la Olson) with sharper teeth, higher
running speed, higher body temperature, higher daily temp.fluctuations, less
sweating, less dependence on sodium, water, iodine, a short sun-reflecting
fur, no SC fat, no plantigrady, etc., but we see the opposite in humans.

There's not the slightest indication for any savanna adaptation in human
ancestors. Of course, some Homo populations could have lived next to rivers
in savannas or elsewhere, but that doesn't mean they were savanna dwellers:
they were waterside omnivores.

R.Wrangham 2005
"The delta hypothesis: hominoid ecology and hominin origins"
in D.Lieberman, R.Smith & J.Kelley eds
"Interpreting the Past:
Essays on Human, Primate and Mammal Evolution in Honor of David Pilbeam"
Brill Ac.Publ.Inc, Boston MA, pp.231-242
= example of people who want to keep the old savanna nonsense in combination
with waterside ideas (BTW, it's about apiths, not about Homo, IOW,
irrelevant to AAT).

--Marc Verhaegen
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm
http://users.ugent.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT


Depending on what time of year, it was either dry grassland with
stagnant bayous, or wet season lushness with raging torrents dividing
up the resource bases. The hominids that could swim got to eat the
fruit on the other side, while those that couldnt are no longer in the
gene pool.
Crocks in the channel would be a concern, but herd animals are locked
into habit, and will try to cross the water at the same point every
year. That's where the crocks will be. The hominids are smart enuf to
figure this out, and dont go there.

.

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