[email protected] wrote:
Dear One and All
Late (in WA, and even later in Tokyo!) last night we had the slightly confronting experience of hearing someone argue against​ our pet theories.
Emeritus professor John Langdon wrote the first and, for 54 years, the only attempted critique of the so-called "aquatic ape" hypothesis in a specialist journal. I don't mind hearing arguments against the wading hypothesis. In fact, I think the
academic response to these ideas is almost as interesting as the ideas themselves.
Similarly here, although John's talk was interesting, I think the discussion afterwards was even more illuminating.
Here are the links...
I had numerous problems with it.
Overall, I'd say he's stuck, frozen sometime about 50 years ago. Or at least I hope so,
because he doesn't seem to be aware of anything spoken or written since then!
Let me paint you a picture of Aquatic Ape that the detractors will never see:
We have Hominins EVERYWHERE, spread from the southern reaches of Africa to
deep into China and beyond. And we have this going back MILLIONS of years!
I've twice already cited a Chinese site dated to maybe 2 million years or more and
even THAT site was deceptive. See, it weren't using base tools. These weren't the lowest level of the technology. Whatever made them, whatever used them
had existed long enough to produce tools and then refine their invention, move on to Tool Set 2.0 or later by that point... more than 2 million years ago... in
China.
So what explains these far flung groups? What model allows groups to spread across the continents, some periodically splitting off, moving inland, adapting to their new found environments... evolving...
Does savanna nonsense allow this? Does it make any room for this? Are there
any provisions within the savanna idiocy which could and would result in this?
No.
We have two concepts here:
#1. Coastal Dispersal
This is someone everyone agrees with, only all the savanna apes immediately deny it... after agreeing... they both agree and deny.
See, Coastal Dispersal REQUIRES Aquatic Ape.
If they were on the coast they weren't there for a rock concert and they weren't searching for an all night Burger King. No. They lived there. They
ate there. They were exploiting marine resources.
Put short: They were eating and then just as soon as the pickings grew
slim they moved on. That's it. That's all they were doing.
AND groups periodically moved inland, following rivers, escaping conflicts, running from disease, chased off by natural disasters... periodically groups pushed inland and adapted. Made new lives for themselves.
This HAD TO HAPPEN. No question. Coastal Dispersal means THIS HAD
TO HAPPEN and we all agree that it did. Even the Out of Africa purists.
EVERYONE AGREES: Coastal Dispersal and Coastal Dispersal means
Aquatic Ape. It means a waterside population exploiting marine
resources.
Wait. How is it that setting one toe on a savanna completely transforms
the human body & mind, but MILLIONS of years of exploiting the sea
did nothing?
So that's it. Aquatic Ape tells us WHY there were Denisovans and WHY
there were "Hobbits" and WHY there were Neanderthals, Red Deer
People and all the rest. Savanna idiocy doesn't even try to explain this.
BUT AT THE SAME TIME it's not an overly simplistic linear model. They
didn't live waterside, move away and then move back. Some moved
inland, became isolated and then later came back into contact with the waterside group, exchanging genes.
Virtually the entire history of the genus Homo has existed in this present
Ice Age, the Quaternary Period. "Climate Change." Sea levels have been
AND WILL CONTINUE to rise & fall, connecting and isolating lands. Places
that were warm got cold and then got warm again, only to get cold...
forests spread and retreated... species thrived and then died off...
I image that at some point, once the Glacial/Interglacial cycle emerged,
human evolution grew machine like: As clock work. Glaciers grow, vast
treks of land emerge, connected far flung places, the waterside group
could walk from Oceania to deepest Africa, meeting and breeding with
anyone they met. Then the Interglacial period would start, the waters
would rise and everyone was cut off from each other, evolving on their
own. It would be at this point when diving would have been most
beneficial. Without endless stretches of beaches to exploit, diving would
allow them to increase their range locally by simply going into deeper
waters. They could produce far more resources from a smaller stretch
of beach by extending their reach beneath the waves.
This is probably where erectus comes from. But he was tropical, no
colder than sub tropical, and to really seize the world he had to start adapting to new (colder) environments....
Yeah, aquatic ape gives us all this. And it gives as bigger brains. We
were getting all the Omega-3s we needed to grow our brains just as
large as our genetics would allow. Add the occasional lucky mutation
and they grow even more...
Aquatic Ape does this. It fits. It works. It explains everything. No
competing savanna nonsense explains ANYTHING at all, not even
why they would be on the savanna in the first place!
"Well I don't have a large brain yet, I'm much slower and weaker than
all the predators so, why not? What can go wrong?"
-- --
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