Re: Elaine Morgan: 88 Years old and still head and shoulders above your typical anthropologist

On Dec 18, 2:26 pm, Algis Kuliukas <al...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 19, 12:02 am, Paulc <crowl...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Algis wrote

That you think you can make a useful analogy
between the evolution of the hominid taxon (over
a couple of million years) and those of land
animals out of water, and of birds (each over many
tens of millions of years) confirms that you are
an evolutionary ignoramus.

How do you know it took "many tens of millions of years"? I
suspect it was much quicker and punctuated in steps.

A whole range of changes are necessary for
the transitions of that size -- air-breathing
lungs, impermeable skins, muscles and bones
that can carry weight out of the water, and so
on.  They cannot evolve quickly.  In any case,
the stages are known, as is (roughly) the time
involved.  The evolution involved series of
hugely different genera. It is not as if
evolution knew where it was trying to get, and
could plan the steps in the minimum number.

I think this thread is going off at a tangent. I am not implying human
ancestors ever became aquatic in the sense that a whale or seal is
aquatic. I am suggesting that moving through water (wading, swimming
and diving) acted as an agency of selection in the human lineage more
than it did in the leaneage leading to the other great apes. Positing
this kind of selection explains, far better, the phenotypic
differences between humans and chimpanzees than do orthodox ideas
which have traditionally placed our ancestors on the savannah, or some
savannah mosaic.

Scientists have long ago come to the conclusion that early hominids
were arboreal. So you're beating a dead horse there pal. Oh, and,
emplacing these ape-like animals in habitat that contains wasted deep
water is cartoonish nonsense.




The differences we are talking about clearly evolved at different
stages. We know that bipedalism evolved early - possible as early as
4Ma - and we know that encephalisation happenned much later with
modern H. sapiens in the last 400Ka or so. We do not know, but is
likely, that other human characteristics such as loss of body hair and
the evolution of language, also evolved late.

As pre-Homo australopithecine-like bipedalism was stable for at least
2My it is therefore clear that our evolution underwent at least two
seperate stages or "phases." I do not think this is in any way
controversial. "Claudius" objected to the idea and I responded by
suggesting that evolution was full of examples of such shifts in
habitat and "phases". He replied that this sort of thing took tens of
millions of years and I suggested that it might not always have taken
so long.

Perhaps I was over-extending this argument a little but I think recent
research from the world of EVO-dEVO shows that mutations in
developmental genes can have saltatory effects that can shorten some
of the timescales that have traditionally been assumed to have been
required in the past.

In any case, I do not want to stretch that argument any further. The
sort of changes we are considering here are ones that certainly could
have happenned in the timescales everyone is postulating in human
evolution and the sort of shifts in habitat I am postulatiing for my
own waterside hypothesis of human evolution.

What's your problem with 'phases' anyway?

No one speaks about 'phases' in the evolution
of other taxa over remotely similar timescales.

Who cares what term "they" use. By 'similar' do you mean in human
evolution here, or are you thinking of whales?

It is a notion that is strictly reserved for
the evolutionary illiterate, but only when they
pretend to talk about human evolution.

I hate this kind of arrogant condescending talk. It's not helpful to
anyone.

Taxa do NOT switch habitats as they evolve --
or not easily.  Evolution is extraordinarily
conservative.  Nor do they change their form
of life. Herbivores do not give rise to
carnivores, and back again.  THAT is what is
so wrong about the Savanna Theory.  No species
would ever come out of the trees and go on to
the savanna -- let alone then leave it, and go
elsewhere.

Well I agree with that, at least.

To suggest such a thing is evolutionary
illiteracy.  But AAH types are even worse.
They have hominids moving between elements.
From trees into water, and then back again
onto land. That is beyond idiocy. It is
unknown in nature -- except over tens or
hundreds of millions of years, and involving
catastrophic world-wide extinctions.

Some waterside models do that but not all.
My view is much more conservative: that humans have always lived at
the water's edge. First it was some kind of swampy forest, then it was
gallery forest and finally it was coasts. Switching from fresh water
rivers and lakes to coastal habitats is the only big shift to be
postulated but it is very plausible, has a lot of explanatory power
and it fits the fossil record.

Algis Kuliukas- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Bipedalism in different substrates
    ... needed water to drink and to keep cool. ... from Africa to Europe and mainland Asia. ... human cultural and behavioural evolution. ... show signs that they belonged to erect bipedal hominids. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • prof.Tobias (Re: What is the Aquatic theory?
    ... needed water to drink and to keep cool. ... from Africa to Europe and mainland Asia. ... human cultural and behavioural evolution. ... show signs that they belonged to erect bipedal hominids. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Bipedalism in different substrates
    ... evolution, no possible evolution of the diet or the locomotion, they can't ... just-so stories on bee honey-eating hominids, on head-banging hominids, on ... deeper water. ... cannot be counted as an argument in favour of the wading model! ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: savanna theory
    ... Try reading a book about the Pleistocene. ... You asked for evidence of the spread of savannah 2 million years ago. ... Water 5-6. ... Yes, of course, you're perfectly right on this point - "ALL evolution ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: savanna theory
    ... Why do you exclude open woodlands from the definition of a savannah? ... You asked for evidence of the spread of savannah 2 million years ago. ... Water 5-6. ... Yes, of course, you're perfectly right on this point - "ALL evolution ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)