So it's Superbowl Sunday, here is God's Country,
and I absolutely HATE football.
If you're not an American then let me explain:
Football is a game divided into four equal parts,
each consisting of 15 precisely timed minutes,
and games routinely take 3 hours or longer...
Now some armchair athlete may see this and
object: "No," they will proclaim. "Many games
only take two and a half hours, sometimes even
less."
(Kind of proving my point there)
So let me talk about my path to Aquatic Ape...
Like a lot of people advocating for Aquatic Ape
(Waterside/etc) I'm an outsider to the paleo
anthropology crowd. More of a hobbyist. I've
always been interested in human origins and
was intrigued early on(?) by Multi Regionalism
and the views of Wolpoff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_H._Wolpoff
It's not like I was exposed to Wolpoff and was
instantly convinced. But he would say things that,
is they /Were/ true, really kind of meant that he
had to be onto something. Problem was, as a
hobbyist I really couldn't bring myself to take that
next step, see if the things he was saying /Were/
true after all.
Example? Want an example?
There was one documentary, and I don't think it
was that old, or they reused the footage (or he
repeated the argument) but, there was one
documentary, featuring Wolpoff, where he lines up
some skulls and shows a progression from more
archaic to more modern. And it's very clear. And if
you see something like that you know they have to
be on to something, IF the information is correct.
What do you need to know? Why can't someone like
me simply believe my eyes? Well, hold old were each
of the skulls? Where were they found?
I mean, did finds such as this show a linear progression
both geographically and temporally? Did other finds of
the same age & location(s) differ in any way?
Yeah, imagine a hobbyist trying to compile a near
exhaustive data base of finds; their ages, locations and
comparative morphology...
Luckily, I didn't have to. Someone by the name of Eric
Trinkaus did all the work, conclusively demonstrated
that Neanderthals and so called "Moderns" had to
interbreed... just in time for him to be upstaged by the
DNA evidence.
Two things about this:
I had actually been long convinced of interbreeding and
hence "Regional Continuity" for quite some time. And,
secondly, men like Eric Trinkaus spent their entire
careers compiling evidence and writing about it, only to
be ignored, AND THEN everyone who ignored him
caved instantly when someone told them the DNA showed
the same thing.
They couldn't see the DNA. The could see the fossils, they
could read the data but that was irrelevant. But what they
could never see, what they couldn't understand, on the other
hand, was auto agreed to...
Fact is that the evidence against Out of Africa purity was
already generations old. It's been proven. It had long since
been proven even before I ever heard of Wolpoff.
https://crosscut.com/2014/03/science-and-meaning-our-neanderthal-heritage
So not only was Out of Africa nonsense, not only had it been
debunked decades ago -- generations ago -- but you couldn't
talk about it. No, questioning OoA was taboo.
...the first time I raised Multi Regionalism in these groups I
was met with cries of "Racism."
And, when was it? 2007? I got into an argument with talk.origins
over Neanderthals interbreeding with so called "Moderns." I got
into an argument with the group. There was me saying "Of
course interbreeding was going on" and everyone else saying
"No."
Oh, of course, any number of people had to agree with me. But,
not a single one rang in. Nope. It was pig-pile on JTEM. And
nobody ever forgave me for being right.
But there I was, not just aware of the status quo but practiced
in the open conflict. And that's when I started to move on from
all these "Different" populations to where they came from, how
they got there in the first place...
Aquatic Ape.
-- --
https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/676115701353889792
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