Re: Wetloon Fantasists

On Apr 26, 9:23 am, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


  Tobias 1995    ³We were all profoundly and unutterably wrong! Š All the
former savannah supporters (including myself) must now swallow our earlier
words Š²  
  Wood 1996   ³the Œsavannah¹ hypothesis of human origins, in which the
cooling begat the savannah and the savannah begat humanity, is now
discredited²  
  Stringer 1997   ³One of the strong points about the aquatic theory is in
explaining the origin of bipedality. If our ancestors did go into the water,
that would forced them to walk upright Š²
  Tobias 1998 ......

Thank you for your review of ancient history.
The Savanna Hypothesis is no longer about the 1926 version, but today
it is about how Homo got to be such efficient runners, unlike the
A'piths involved the out-of-date Raymond Dart era.

See:

"The Turkana boy tells us that early H. erectus, besides being a
tall biped,
had arms and legs proportioned like a modern human's. For his height,
his
arms were not as long as those of Lucy, Lucy's Child or so far as we
know,
any other prior hominid. He lacked the apish details that, in earlier
bipeds,
suggest occasional tree climbing. The legs and hip bones of Homo
erectus
were buttressed by tremendous thickness and bulges, which denotes a
body geared toward endurance walking and running. An exclusive pact
had
been made with the terrestrial realm, and the boy's legs were
equipped to
cover ground in strides protracted in both length and hours."
Richard Potts from Humanity's Descent

W.-J. Wang and R. H. Crompton 2004
The role of load-carrying in the evolution of modern body
proportions
J. Anat. 204 pp417–430

"Our hypothesis
that there is a direct relationship between the acquisition
of modern postcranial proportions and increased
ranging/transport distances at around 1.8–1.5 Ma appears
to be borne out, although other selective factors, such
as thermoregulatory influences (see Ruff, 1991; Wheeler,
1992) and adaptations for throwing (see Dunsworth
et al. 2003), are likely to have played an important
(although probably interdependent) role."

Holger Preuschoft

Mechanisms for the acquisition of habitual bipedality:
are there biomechanical reasons for the acquisition of
upright bipedal posture?
J. Anat. 204 pp363–384

"Once bipedality has been acquired, development of typical human
morphology can readily be explained as adaptations for energy saving
over long distances. A paper in this volume
shows that load-carrying ability was enhanced from australopithecines
to Homo ergaster
(early African H. erectus),supporting an earlier proposition that load-
carrying was an essential factor in human evolution."

http://tinyurl.com/2n8y2n
Carl Zimmer, Science Novemer 19, 2004
"It may come as a surprise to hear that humans excel in running.
Obviously, a leopard can leave us in the dust in a short sprint. But
over longer distances leopards and most other mammals flag. "Most
mammals can't sustain a gallop over 10 to 15 minutes," says Lieberman.
Humans, on the other hand, can continue running for hours while using
relatively little energy. "Humans are phenomenal endurance runners,
in terms of speed, cost, and distance," says Lieberman. You can
actually outrun a pony easily." And yet, he points out, "no other
primates out there endurance run."



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