These Legs Were Made For Fighting: Human Ancestors Had Short Legs For Combat

Science Daily ^ | 3-12-2007 | University Of Utah

[Hoplite]

Yo! Dobie!
Yeah you - you're lucky I'm on this leash!!!

[fish hawk]

The very first line is a lie. It should read: Ape like monkey ancestors .... Not ape like "human" ancestors. There is absolutely no proof that this animal was a direct ancestor of humans. My tag line says it all.

[Stultis]

I opt for Intelligent Design - we never had short legs!

I think you must mean creationism, not ID. (See, even you guys have trouble maintaining the distinction, unless you're admitting there is none.)

None of the differences separating man and apes have been cited by IDers as indicative of "intelligent design". All the things that have been -- the blood clotting cascade, various other molecular machines or processes, the genetic code in general, etc -- are common to and substantially (or absolutely) identical in humans and anthropoid apes.

Many IDers admit the possibility if not probability of substantial common ancestry, often up to or beyond the range of diversity separating man and apes. A few even have no objection to universal common descent.

[Xenalyte]

So THAT's why Wild Bill is built like that!

Those of you who don't know my stepdad, I gotta tell you . . . he's taller than me (so over 5'10"), and his legs are noticeably shorter than mine. I mean, WAY shorter, like you wonder what happened to his legs, and then you realize he had to have been born that way since he's almost six feet.`

[Stultis]

Wow look at those very tiny feet. I wonder how many of these finds are actually built up composites of many creatures.

Sorry to deflate your bubble of incisive analysis, but that drawing is the skeleton of a modern gorilla. The feet just look small because you're looking at them head on.

[citizencon]

Howard Dean...
Short legs and nasty...

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Nice of you to hijack this thread. How attractive were YOUR remote ancestors, hmmm?

[RunningWolf]

So then they are digging up old skeletons of gorillas, chimps, baboons, orangutans, put it all together, fit in a few parts of Man Skull and viola! the next 'hominid ancestor' to further cement Darwin's legacy.

[Stultis]

The very first line is a lie. It should read: Ape like monkey ancestors .... Not ape like "human" ancestors.

Wow. That's an impressive concentration of ignorance packed into a couple short sentences: Effectively an announcement, that; "Now I'm going to debunk an entire subject I thoroughly misunderstand and know virtually nothing about"!

Where to start? First apes evolved from monkeys (or monkey-like ancestors) not monkeys from apes, so you have that completely backwards.

Second monkeys and apes are vastly more distinct from each other by nearly every objective measure -- gross anatomy, genetic distance, geologic time separating first appearances in the fossil record; excepting, of course, only the uniquely extreme development of the neocortex in humans -- than humans are from apes. Therefore if you object to the notion that humans and apes are related by evolution, you logically ought also to object to the notion that monkeys and apes are so related. In fact the fossil evidence of early apes is actually worse, relatively speaking, than that of early humans.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Wow look at those very tiny feet

"How did he do such increcible fighting...with such tiny feet?" (with apologies to Blazing Saddles)

[WestVirginiaRebel]

No, they're taking skeletons of early humans, comparing them to apes and proving that we're related.

[Stultis]

So then they are digging up old skeletons of gorillas, chimps, baboons, orangutans, put it all together, fit in a few parts of Man Skull and viola!

Um, no "they" aren't doing that. Was there a point to this contrived, bald and gratuitous assertion; or did you just suddenly feel the need to go public with this bit of delusional paranoia?

[uglybiker]

So, how does it relate to the trousers worn with the belt just above the knees?

Or how that belt slowly creeps up to the chest area as one grows older?

[fish hawk]

I put it that way because Monkeys, Apes, Chimps etc. etc. are all the same to me and Humans are a whole different subject. Nit picking will get you nowhere. You are welcome to your "philosophy" (Darwinism: and that is all that it is) and I have mine. Putting me down for my opinion does not make you a brilliant person. But then you are probably somehow in time, related to monkeys, apes, and chimps, I am not.

[RichInOC]

I thought we had short legs for loving. Well, half of us, at least.

[RunningWolf]

I did not say they are led astray intentionally (although that has happened too) This area of science history is replete with both occurrences. Enough that any reasonable person can have legitimate doubts as to what scientists are asserting in this field.

[metmom]

*research suggests*, *aggression hypothesis*,*may result in*, *it might be*,*Carrier says the correlation between short legs and aggression may be imperfect...*, *made a case*, *Now he argues that*,*If they were*,*lines of evidence suggesting*,*Humans "are a special case" and are not less aggressive because they have longer legs*,*Utah study suggests *,

*Yet, "we don't really know*,

Exactly, they really don't know. This is a lot of conjecture.

[Stultis]

I put it that way because Monkeys, Apes, Chimps etc. etc. are all the same to me

Well then, if that's the way you want to look at it -- lumping monkeys and apes into one category, even though to biologists (including pre-Darwinian ones) they are entirely separate orders, as distinct if not more so than cats and dogs -- then that's fine.

The problem is that doing so, and then preceding to airily dismiss the entire field of evolutionary biology, is exactly like saying; "Electrons and protons and photons are all the same to me, but now I'm going to tell you why modern particle physics is all a load of crap."

[RunningWolf]

*research suggests*, *aggression hypothesis*,*may result in*, *it might be*,*Carrier says the correlation between short legs and aggression may be imperfect...*, *made a case*, *Now he argues that*,*If they were*,*lines of evidence suggesting*,*Humans "are a special case" and are not less aggressive because they have longer legs*,*Utah study suggests *,

*Yet, "we don't really know*,

Careful now, we shan't put a little bit of light on what the 'mountain of evidence' starts to look like the closer you get to it.

[Stultis]

Enough that any reasonable person can have legitimate doubts

But can we trust a person who can't recognize a gorilla, and can't be troubled to read a caption, to have legitimately formed and reasonable doubts?