Re: Elaine Morgan OBE

On Jul 7, 8:14 pm, rmacfarl <rmacf...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

He spent 700 hours watch chimps and found them to be bipedally very
rarely (around 2-3% of the time) but when they WERE bipedal, he found
that it was usually in the context of postural feeding - hence Hunt's
postural feeding hypothesis. It's about and as evidence-based a model
of bipedal origins as you can get. I have never heard anyone criticise
it on the grounds that there's "an inconsistency" in using postural
feeding as evidence for the evolution of obligate bipedalism.

Hmm [scratches chin...] Why would standing on 2 legs be inconsistent
with bipedalism?

So, it's fine and dandy to report very rare instances of bipedalism
and infer that they might have been a factor in human evolution, but
not me. Why's that then? The 'a' factor, right?

The trouble with Hunt's study is his definition of "bipedalism".
Acording to his study a chimp wobbling in a tree at 45 degrees using
three limbs to cling on whilst using the fourth to reach for a banana
is being bipedal. It gets a tick on Hunt's notebook even though it's
clearly got little to do with obligate human walking. He had a broad
definition for good reason, I suppose, because if bipedalism was
strictly defined as "unsupported locomotion on two legs" he would have
got a big fat ZERO against it. 700 hours and NO bipedalism at all.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bipedalism
bi⋅ped⋅al⋅ism
  /baɪˈpɛdlˌɪzəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [bahy-ped-l-iz-uhm] Show
IPA
Use bipedalism in a Sentence
–noun
the condition of being two-footed or of using two feet for standing
and walking.

Hmm... On that definition, Hunt's definition, errh, stands.

Very clever but the question we are all trying to resolve (at least
some of us are anyway) is why did humans start walking? not why do
some primates wobble in three branches, hand-assisisted somerimes
whilst gathering food. To some of us, that's kind of bleeding obvious.
Iknow that for others they'd rather keep everyone in the dark, scratch
their chins and say "we don't know... it's a big mystery" than even
consider the heretical proposition that human ancestors moved through
the water sometimes... incredible.

Yes, it's frustrating that the researcher looking at bipedal origins
chose to study chimps at Gombe (where there was no water to wade
through) whilst the researcher studying general behaviour of bonobos
saw all the bipedalism. Murphy's law strikes again.

I think you (again) miss my point, which was that "bipedal wading in
24.14% of encounters" is not the same as wading bipedally 24.14% of
the time. As I read the Myers Thompson quote you posted, it may have
been that in a quarter of the encounters where bonobos were wading,
some bipedalism was observed, but not necessarily for the whole of
those encounters. They might have only been bipedal for (say) 10% of
the time during those 24.14% of encounters.

I know you read it in the worst possible way... but even in that way,
it's still a world record for bipedal observations in the wild... and
water is the key additional factor ... again, obviously.

You're also forgetting Hohmann & Frith, for what it's worth.

I'm not forgetting that if I was scrambling around in the mud looking
for food I'd get down on all fours' too.... but we're really talking
about locomotion here. why switch from walking on four legs to walking
on two..? Duh...


Sure. They COULD move to higher ground and cuddle up to the big cats
up there. Gorillas do not live in gallery forests like I'm postuting
early human ancestors did.

[Sound of reversing beacon as truck moves goalposts...]

Higher ground. Big cats. Trees that you can climb.
Flooded forest. Crocodiles ~and~ big cats. Waist-deep water that you
can't run away in.
You decide...

Flooded forest... ancestral home.
Open plains... scary
No contest.

It's time to move on and realise that the wading idea is EASILY the
strongest, most evidence-based model for hominin bipedal origins.

In the words of our much-missed firstjois,

"La la la..."

That was me who said that to describe what you guys do when presented
with the most simple explaantion for human evolution... close your
eyes, hands over ears aand sing la la la at the top of your voice.

"You may be in water up to your waist. You'll be attacked by bees.
There'll be leopards around the camp at night. You'll get ulcers on
your legs. You'll develop body fungus. You must take care with vipers
and cobras. And along the waterways - the tsetse flies are truly
terrible."
- Marcellin Agnagna, a distinguished Congolese naturalist. Reported in
Redmond O'Hanlon, "Congo Journey" (1996), Penguin Books edition,
p43-4.

Yes, and savannahs are lovely places for plump curvacious women to
raise k-selected fat infants, aaren't they?

Algis Kuliukas
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: DHA ... savannah and bipedalism.
    ... KWing. ... > Dropping fat babies. ... force in plantigrade walking. ... intermediate bipedalism (bipeds with abducted big toes. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: DHA ... savannah and bipedalism.
    ... > force in plantigrade walking. ... > necessarily need broad heels, ... > Miocene hominids had no sign of KWing. ... Bipedalism & valgus knees need to be explained ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: DHA ... savannah and bipedalism.
    ... I'd think that leg length is determined by wading (cf. ... >> We took to plantigrade bipedalism because it is advantageous for getting ... as plantigrade walking uses less energy than ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: News: On Nova, Theories of How the Apes Became Us.
    ... But the program turns out not to be as interested in bones as it is in ... the preference for walking ... and chimps and gorillas both developed knuckle ... But that energy-efficient bipedalism, it turns out, did not ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Early apes were parttime bipeds
    ... stages of upright walking evolved in apes ... "Origin of human bipedalism as an adaptation for locomotion on flexible ... Orangutans react to branch flexibility ... appears, so perhaps the early apes already did this, but all this does not ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)