Origin Of Bipedalism Closely Tied To Environmental Changes

Space Daily ^ | 05-01-2002 | staff writer at Space Daily

[null and void]

Also we sweat. We can persue other animals until they drop from heat exhaustion.

BTW An upright posture also reduces solar overheating by a large fraction.

[gcruse]

The original point bears repeating.

BTW, did you know your dog makes his own Vitamin C, and yet you cannot?
Why would God create humans to be inferior to dogs?
The answer has to do with "use it or lose it" and
is a powerful indicator that early hominids ate fruit so
exclusively that the need to make C was selected out and didn't come back.
Else, God is a lousy craftsman.

[Old Professer]

Pretty informative, except for that part about the blood going to the oranges.

[Old Professer]

Only city folk can't swim.

[Old Professer]

Did you ever try to drag a Wildebeast back to camp with a Lion hanging on to the other end? :>)

[RightWhale]

We learned nothing from rabbits. We learned how to throw rocks at rabbits and how to cook rabbits. Technique.

[Old Professer]

Long distance travel as a goal implies higher-order reasoning; the greater the distance the more imaginary the goal. To this day, people will tend to walk in a great circle when lost absent a path or clear marker; I wonder where ancient Man thought he was going?

[U S Army EOD]

Well for real, I am fixing to go into the commercial rabbit business. Will this possibly have any frenge benefits for me?

[U S Army EOD]

Where would we be now, in your opinon, if PETA had evolved before the hunters?

[VadeRetro]

Man, is this an old thread come back to life.

I've never seen a wildebeast I wanted enough to argue up close with a lion. But you gnu that!

[RightWhale]

In those days people also hunted people.

[RightWhale]

Still do, but don't eat them so often. Probably worried about disease.

[U S Army EOD]

I think we still do that, but we just don't eat our kill as often.

[U S Army EOD]

You beat me to it.

[U S Army EOD]

Usually where he was headed unless he knew he was lost, if he didn't know he was lost he usually thought he knew where he was going if he thought that was where he was headed. When he got there it might not be the there he thought it was. Which would explain early maps. Which would also have to be carried upright because they would get dirty so they couldn't be read if you were kind of dragging them on the ground. These people would have become extinc.

[Vinnie]

As a result of that movie, I at times wonder what certain young ladies would look like bent over at the waterhole.

With that thought is mind, I'll turn up my pacemaker to high. (G)

The 'natives' called our method the 'missionary position', obviously they preferred another.

[Virginia-American]

But we also don't have a single fossil of an aquatic ape.

How would you recognize it? Aren't a lot of infra-human fossils found near ancient lakeshores?

The tow theories I find most intriguing are aquatic ape and William Calvin's
throwing theory of language and intellignece.

Granted, both of these are speculative, but I think they're basically good science, in that they tie together a lot of observations with one plausible theory.

The aquatic ape ties together physiology (body hair, fat) and behavior (swimming, anti-drowning reflex), and to some extent bipedalism (part of the weight being supported by bouyancy).

The throwing theory starts from the fact that people are the only anlimal that can throw accurately and the fact that this reqires timing more accurate than a neuron can provide, but which can be provided by many ganged-together neurons, and the hypothesis that throwing sticks and stones was an early method of hunting. He reasons that the large number of neurons needed for throwing was co-opted into providing the accurate timing needed for speech, and the sequencing needed for many other tasks that only people can do.

[SunkenCiv]

A Blast from the Past -- 2002.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[StructuredChaos]

What an interesting article and theory.

Thanks for the post.

And the theory fits our physiology like a glove.

[StructuredChaos]

You write, "What aquatic mammals have hair primarily on their heads, armpits, and pubic regions?"

I respond:

What aquatic mammals stand on two and reside both on land and water? The uniqueness of this animal perhaps provides answers to your questions involving placement of hair.

For instance:

Ever go skinny dipping in the ocean? Ever get out of the water standing face forward to a cool breeze? I'd say my children owe much to the hair on my hrmpph. When you get into cold water at what point to you hesitate the most :)?

You write, "Are their non-aquatic non-primates with salty tears?"

I respond: Good question. The question invites the following inquiry: What evolutionary benefits flow from non salty and salty tears?

You write, "But we also don't have a single fossil of an aquatic ape."

I speculate: Perhaps our time adapting as an aquatic ape was limited geographically and temporally. And perhaps while adapted to water we were not adapted such that we could cross oceans or great distances by water. Accordingly, the adaptations could only be transmitted to other populations by land. Once fairly adapted to the aquatic condition the benefits associated with that adaptation were not just marginally advantageous to survival in aquatic environments but also greatly advantageous to populations living primarily on land. At some point the adaptations made us champions of the land - upright tool users ........ The old primates, indeed all land-dwelling animals, were no match for aquatic man. In point of fact, we are the aquatic ape. Our remains as fossilized are the remains of the aquatic ape. End of speculation.

You write, "There are a lot of things different about humans. Our hairlessness, our pronounced sexual dimorphism (pendulous breasts on non-nursing females), our brains, our posture, the lack of a penile bone in males (other primates have them), the helplessness of our babies, our relative physical weakness, etc... and we don't have a lot of the answers as to why these things are the way they are."

I respond that the aquatic theory explins many of these "things different about humans".

It's a fun theory. Your questions are fair tests of its viability.