Mockery is good. Behold the #spaceape hypothesis: humans clearly evolved in outer space!
#SPACEAPE
Basic Arguments of the Space Ape Theory:
1. we have evolved big brains relative to our bodies because we don’t need our bodies to move around in space.
2. we don’t have much body hair because what would be the point of a few more follicles worth in 2.73 Kelvin (-270 Celsius)?
3. sinuses, far from being evolutionary spandrels, are little miniature internal space helmets.
4. our outsize eyes clearly show our relation to other species in space.
It’s taking off on Twitter, too. Next time someone brings up the soggy monkey story, I’m just going to reply with “Space Ape!”
You are a crank/loon if……
You know you are the brightest one out there, but nobody appreciates your genius
If the idea you promote doesn’t have any real third party evidence
If you take criticism as personal insults instead of criticism of the idea
If asked what it would take to show your idea is wrong, you can’t/won’t supply an answer
You promote your idea by infesting and threadjacking other peoples blogs, and not by the normal scientific methods of publishing in scientific journals and talking about your ideas at professional meetings
I didn’t; I don;t even know what you mean anymore by “gossip”. I took issue with one specific assertion about animal physiology. With Williams I took issue with a number of such assertions. If you’d care to make a specific assertion about animal physiology, I’ll evaluate that for you, if you want.
But you won’t. You’ll just keep saying the same general shit over and over and over.
Re 500… only because this blog format is so primitive I have to read 488 (mostly inane) posts to get to my own.
My papers were both published in peer-reviewed journals actually, you slur merchant. It’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? I know that writing a shitty masquerading, gossip-filled, attempted character assassination web site counts more to some people (isn’t that right, PZ?) but what the heck. I tried.
Even if the LCA was already somehwhat bipedal, wading (in addition to vertical climbing, obviously) helps explain it’s origins in the ape lineage and lack of wading helps explain it’s demise in non-hominin lineages.
Thanks for posting my critique of the vile tactics of you and your gang. Very honest of you. Maybe PZ will even read it and realise his support of Jim’s gang was not so wise.
Algis Kuliukas
Well, excuse me, Chas, if I misinterpreted your post (443)…
<blockquote.yeah, I’m done with this guy.
… which followed another of my criticisms of anthro-slur-guy.
So, I was wrong, was I? You back him to, do you?
Have you read his web site, or is this just a touchy-feely thing? PZ likes him, so you feel you should too?
One day, someone with a microgram of intellectual courage is going to answer my critique of the travesty which is “aquaticape.org” and explain how his crap has anything to do with science and rational thought.
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm
Algis Kuliukas
You are a crank/loon if……
You fail to consult with experts in the field, as they may refute your idea
You think your opinion of the evidence means anything to those you are selling your idea to
You think you must get the last word in for victory
You don’t address solid evidence against your idea with third party scientific evidence, just your opinion of the evidence
You avoid making any statements that you know can be refuted/falsified easily by people in the field
You are a crank if you must sign your post even if your name is on the header. What an ego. We know who the fuck you are. Evidently you don’t.
You have to read them all once, because otherwise you can’t know if you’d just repeat what 15 other people have already said.
When you mouse over a comment, a permalink appears. You could bookmark it. Or you could remember the number of your latest comment…
Like orang-utans and especially gibbons.
Now I’ll catch up with the thread, and then I’ll read your critique. I’m not encouraged by the fact that there’s an ad-hominem argument (paraphrasing: he’s an amateur without credentials, so he must be wrong) in its second paragraph.
what
Our ancestors haven’t “always” been bipedal, only since brachiation became their main mode of locomotion. No drift involved there.
It is obviously a bad idea because the FOSSIL RECORD shows that 1) there is no such thing as a “hominin bipedal origin” because bipedality originated BEFORE hominins, 2) the FOSSIL RECORD already shows that bipedality originated in the trees, where ancestral primates have always been, making the postulation of an aquatic phase wholly unparsimonious and completely unnecessary.
When the ALREADY EXISTING FOSSIL EVIDENCE, which you can lay out on a table in front of you to look at, to hold, and touch, ALREADY SHOWS that your particular idea is WRONG, your idea is, by definition, an OBVIOUSLY bad idea.
Hell, it may be possible that semi-aquatic wading could provide selection pressures that promote the evolution of bipedality. Maybe on some other planet in this universe there is in fact an intelligent tool using social creature that is bipedal and evolved bipedality because its ancestors had a semi-aquatic phase.
Maybe, 300 million years hence, when humans have offed themselves by some combination of environmental degradation, nuclear war, the machine apocalypse, or the rapture, a second intelligent species will evolve on this planet, and they will be bipedal because their ancestry included a semi-aquatic phase the selected for bipedality. Maybe the squibbons will be bipedal, with 6 non-locomotive appendages for tool manipulation (and 2 for sex, of course).
But not this planet, not this species, and not this time.
Because the ALREADY EXISTING FOSSIL EVIDENCE found ON THIS PLANET, AT THIS TIME already shows that, ON THIS PLANET, AT THIS TIME, it is not so.
Most of the rest of the other AAH crowd like Marcel Williams have all but abandoned the bipedality angle. You seem not to have gotten the memo, Algis. Your idea is ALREADY FALSIFIED. It is dead, finished, gone. Murdered by the ugly facts.
Live with it.
So, from the critique:
(Bold and italics in the original. Yes, a large part of the first page is entirely in bold italics.)
I’m surprised it isn’t obvious: the site isn’t a personal letter to Morgan. It’s presented to, among lots of other people, those who picked up the salt tears argument from her writings and may not even know she has abandoned it.
That’s exactly what it is. You sound like a Republican complaining that reality has a well-known liberal bias.
The idea behind the URL is obvious to me: search engine optimization. That you see it as a personal insult looks to me like a symptom of narcissism: you believe everything is about persons in general and you in particular.
What I don’t understand is the .org part: how is this an organization?
(Hey, if you can use italics on your own website, what stops you from using them here???)
See, Hardy and you aren’t the only AAH proponents. There are some who have proposed that our recent ancestors were literally aquatic. In the next paragraph you act as if you didn’t even know that, talking about “what the AAH is proposing” but meaning just your version of it.
You envisage a hardly semiaquatic ancestor. You should say so instead of continuing to misuse the term “aquatic”.
Are you just angry that your particular hypothesis isn’t mentioned enough?
And no, “humans” doesn’t necessarily suggest Homo (what in the fuck do you mean by “post”?). Lots of people consider Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Kenyanthropus etc. etc. “humans”. Vernacular terms aren’t strictly defined; that’s exactly why biological nomenclature exists.
That sounds like you’re just angry at the conclusion. How dare a treatment of the AAH as a serious scientific hypothesis conclude it’s wrong!
What the fuck. If she doesn’t know the literature about a subject, how is she competent to write books about that very subject?
If I write a book that claims the moon consists of green cheese, will you defend me by saying I must not have had access to literature on moon rocks and general physics and cheese?!?
But of course she could have had access. On the one side, there are libraries. Where I come from, the university libraries are public; for those where it’s allowed to borrow books, anybody can get a library card (I got one when I was 15), for those (this concerns journals in particular) where it’s not generally allowed to borrow anything, anyone can just walk in and make photocopies.
On the other side, she could have written to authors and asked for reprints. Back in the day, authors got lots of free reprints (and sometimes even bought extra ones), so I don’t think they’d have refused out of scarcity.
That’s a fair point. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say anything about the accuracy of the statements for which the unnamed AAH proponents didn’t cite sources.
This just doesn’t make any sense.
What Morgan has made is a scientific hypothesis on human evolution. It is scientific, because it is testable. This hypothesis is what aquaticape.org is about, not Morgan herself!
Science is simply not about persons. Who came up with a hypothesis is simply not relevant.
Second page:
The gap… what gap? There was one in 1960. There isn’t now. There is no “sudden appearance of Man” anymore.
And note that Hardy refers to a period “when Man”, not “Man’s ancestors” or something, “struggled and died in the sea”.
Incidentally, “Hominoidae” must be someone’s mistake for Hominidae or Hominoidea. Please check which one Hardy used.
“The ape line”? There are four distinct ape lines, some closer to us than to other ape lines, and you know that full well.
What you don’t seem to know is that, unfortunately, different scientists have used the term Hominidae in very different meanings. It’s only defined as “the family that contains Homo“, and “family” is not defined. You should clarify what you mean here.
Freshwater is “an aquatic environment”, too.
I’m baffled. Please take it from a native speaker of German: “Der Eigenweg des Menschen” means… well, a really painfully literal translation would be “the own-path the’s human’s”; it means “Man’s own path”, “Man’s particular/special/unique path”. There is no “to” in it, and “Eigenweg” isn’t simply a synonym of “Weg”; “the path to Man” would be “der Weg zum Menschen”.
Too bad about the blockquote fail.
Because one hectocotylus (and that on just the males) isn’t enough anymore? :-)
Hey, if you’re going to be forced to evolve through 300 million years of a post-anthropocene apocalyptic wasteland, I think you’re entitled to getting a second sex appendage!
You were wrong, yes. When I said “I’m done with this guy” I was refering to you.
Do I “back” Moore?
It’s not a football match.
Some of it; not all.
lol.
“touchy-feely”? no.
(not that there’s anything wrong with that)
Re 531
So you’ve read some of it? A convenient dodge. Have you ever considered that someone might have written a counter critique? Did you read ANY of it with a critical eye or were you just looking for dirt and gossip to confirm your biases?
Where is the open minded intellectual courage in this debate? Non existent. Appalling.
Algis Kuliukas
dude, you have zero perspective left on this.
A “convenient dodge”?
Fuck you.
Why aren’t you open minded and have the intellectual courage to admit you are wrong? That is what crank/loons do. They question other people, but not themselves. They are wrong, and can’t/won’t admit it.
You are a crank/loon if……
You think everybody must agree with you before you move on
You think a large volume of your opinion is better than one solid piece of evidence
You think you are right until refuted, and will never allow yourself to be refuted
You forget you must sell your idea through evidence, not through attitude and handwaving
You forget the burden of evidence is upon you, and you must provide the evidence that convinces those you are trying convince
15/15 for being a crank/loon. Perfect score AK. And you wonder why nobody believes a word you say?
algiskuliukas:
Since that post hasn’t even been written yet it just shows your lack of scientific rigour.
Re 515
Look chas, I understand that you REALLY don’t like this idea, but please stop the nasty, childish hostility for a minute and try to engage, instead, on an intellectual level.
I am trying to get someone here to justify their support of the travesty which is Jim Moore’s web site. I can think of no other area of science where students might be referred to an ex-car mechanic’s web site, where he gets to write whatever he likes with impunity, as the “definitive web resource” rather than, say, the peer reviewed literature to see why some idea was wrong.
I’d like PZ Myers to do so, ideally, since his name is at the top of the blog, but as he keeps evading me (or calling me childish names) and as you’re supposed to be able to “whip his ass” in terms of physiology, it looks like you’ll have to do. After all, you did correct me when I thought you’d distanced yourself from him, and you did said you’d actually read some of it (you didn’t say which bits) and you clearly still did not react with the sort of critical disdain any academic would have for a 1st year essay written in that way, so excuse me for being curious.
His web site is one HUGE misrepresentation of facts, arguments, ideas and people’s work. It is little more than a sleazy attempted character assassination of Elaine Morgan and anyone who values her contribution.
My critique catalogues scores of examples of this. I don’t suppose you have even considered wondering if such a critique exists, let alone read any of it.
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm
Can’t you see, your pretence of academic rigor starts to look very shabby in this light.
What are you afraid of? If this idea is so bad, why do authorities have to hide behind the biased gossip of a layman with a chip on his shoulders who distorts everything about it? Why not take it on directly on its own merits.
This must represent the most monumental example of intellectual cowardice in recent scientific history. A scandal of Piltdown proportions.
Algis Kuliukas
I’m not pretending anything. This is a (stupid) discussion in the comment section of a blog. That’s not about academic rigor. This is not a place where science is done. You keep pointing to your website that critiques Moore’s website that critiques Morgan’s popular books as well as more contemporary proponents (inc. you). That’s not how science is done either.
Yeah, I’ve read parts of Moore’s website (simple truth, no dodge), the parts that interest me most, i.e. the physioogy stuff. I’ve also read the corresponding parts of your website.
If either one was sent to me for pre-publication academic peer review I’d have plenty of comments and criticisms, both major and minor. But I’ll tell you: to a more-or-less disinterested observer, his site, though far from perfect, looks much more scientific than yours. It looks better researched, better argued, better referenced, and much less cranky and hobbyhorsey than yours. Yours basically amounts to a giant helping of special pleading for your beloved hypothesis.
And That. Ain’t. Science.
Sorry, man. Just calling it like I see it.
Algis should spend less time “critiquing” websites and more time looking for new fossils.
The existing fossil evidence suggests a time frame that makes his whole contention impossible. Without NEW fossil evidence to show that the time frame inferred from the existing fossils is incorrect or incomplete, his idea is dead in the water.
Without NEW fossil evidence, everything he has done or said is a waste of time and space.
Re 519
I’m calling your bluff on that. I simply do not believe you have read enough of both with a critical eye. More likely, you had formed the usual ignorant (and biased – hence “special pleading for your beloved hypothesis”) opinion on your first (ill-informed) impression of the idea and then sought to confirm your biases with something. As there is precious little in the literature, what else other than Jim Moore’s famous web site to get to the bottom of it all, right?
It’s just rubbish.
Take, for example, his “Can AAT/Her Research Be Trusted Page?”
http://www.aquaticape.org/quotes.html
It is an appalling example of deleberately cherry picking tiny micro-quotes out of context to peddle lie slurs.
LESS cranky and hobehorsey!? You clearly haven’t read either!
His No 1 is a missing ellipsis for heaven’s sake – one that might have been made in error by her typesetter. It didn’t change the context one bit anyway. The other 3 barrel scrapings (from over 40 years of Elaine’s work) are no worse. One of them is from a newsgroup posting for Christ sake.
This, you say, is just “far from perfect” – WHAT? It’s a sleazy lie fest. On one of his “big four” shock-horror revelations (the Denton one) it’s Moore whose twisting words, not Elaine. The other two are relatively minor single word errrors that do not change much.
My corresponding page is, in complete contrast, balanced and fair. Like every page in my critique, it encourages the reader to go to the corresponding page on his site and read it for themselves, whereas Jim has just one, tiny, reference to the fact that I have a critique on his.
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/Quotes.htm
Ditto all the other pages.
I challenge any objective academic person to read any page on Jim’s web site and compare it with my corresponding one and they’ll come to the same conclusion – every time.
Shame on you for adding further to anthro-lie-guy’s already unbounded confidence with this uncritical acclaim.
Algis Kuliukas
Hold on…
… you’re having a laugh, aren’t you?
He criticises Elaine for not citing her refs with page nos and then does worse himself.
Almost all of his slurs are in the form “aquatic ape proponents usually say x about y” but rarely does he give specific examples. The reason he doesn’t, I suspect, is because whenever you find such an example, you can see (unless you are so biased you do not want to) that he is cherry picking a few words out of context and placing them in another context, deliberately to distort what was being said.
The whole thing is an exercise in distortion.
How much of his web site did you read, Chas? How much of my critique?
Demonstrate that you have read even one of his web pages and my critique of it, and have compared them critically.
I simply can’t believe someone in academia could come to the conclusions you have without either being extremely biased or simply by only giving them very perfunctory glance.
Algis Kuliukas
You are a crank/loon if……
You forget your opinion of your evidence will not be the opinion of those you are trying to convince
You forget they must make up their minds for themselves, you can’t do that for them
You forget citations to the scientific literature are evidence and are only refuted by more scientific evidence.
You forget your opinion is negated by their opinion
You haven’t sold your idea is three days, it means you need to go for the hard sell
Now 20/20 on the crank/loon scale.
Ooh.
Somebody appears not to have read comment 512!
I explained several times on the previous page why it’s hard to get a manuscript on that topic into the peer-reviewed literature. You are too what to have read that? Scared?
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
But reality isn’t.
The truth does not lie in the middle.
So far, I’m coming to Chas’s conclusion.
Moore: doesn’t cite enough.
Kuliukas: doesn’t cite enough; doesn’t understand what science is, thinking it’s a popularity contest of people; doesn’t understand evolution to the point that he can’t tell the difference between mother and sister; doesn’t know that gibbons are bipedal and has, because he doesn’t understand evolution, no clue why it matters; doesn’t keep up with relevant new discoveries and doesn’t even know why he needs to; ad nauseam.
That’s because it’s common knowledge, at least on Usenet.
Yes, he should provide specific examples with citations anyway. But for you to make a gigantic tu quoque argument about it is just hilarious!
That’s because you’re a narcissist and have no clue.
…as has been demonstrated over half a page of comments in this thread.
Re 524
Ok, David, I’ll bite.
Lets get back to basics here. Seriously, man, what’s your problem? Why all the hostility?
Try to be honest and open minded for a moment and tell me why tthe idea that there could have been a differential between the degree of selection from wading, swimming and diving in the lineage leading to humans as compared to that leading to chimps is so crazy and problematic to you.
Algis Kuliukas
Tears of a clown.
A passive aggressive clown.
BECAUSE THE EXISTING FOSSIL RECORD ALREADY SHOWS THAT THIS IS NOT SO.
Now, AK has been shown to be a crank/loon by scoring 20/20 on a series of defining statements.
No, what if he was a scientist:
You are a scientist if….
You publish in the peer reviewed literature first, and often
You only try for the public after you begin to achieve a consensus you are right
You avoid blogs and forums unless specifically asked to post or only pass through with ten or less posts to clarify a discussion
You respond to scientific refutation by either citing the literature, or by doing and publishing original research to solve the question
You always acknowledge you could be wrong, and are upfront about what would refute your ideas
Gee, here he runs 0/5. Not a scientist at all. Nothing but a crank/loon.
Re 527 – No it doesn’t. Almost every fossil hominin ever found is from a depositional substrate near permanent water courses. Thousands of hominins have been found in such places but only 1(?) chimp.
That the fossil evidence is AGAINST waterside hypotheses is one of the biggest myths in science. Quite the contrary.
Anyone who peddles it is simply ignorant.
Algis Kuliukas
M o r o t o p i t h e c u s…
There, say it slowly now. OK, now wipe your chin.
Now say ~ A a r o n F i l l e r… Good boy!
Don’t overestimate Morotopithecus. Look it up in Wikipedia, keeping in mind that they misuse “more derived” for “closer to us” (I’ll fix that later).
Easy: 1) you plainy refuse to read at least half of what I write, and continue writing as if my comments didn’t exist; that looks intellectually dishonest. Are you, like, afraid of reading them? 2) So many times we’ve explained the same things to you, and you just don’t listen. You ignore all the evidence we present. That’s just exasperating.
Of course there could have been. But there clearly wasn’t. The fossil record doesn’t fit it at all (see below), and there’s a much more parsimonious explanation for why we’re bipedal, for the umpteenth time.
What? No. Absolutely not. As soon as you think you have something publishable, in the sense of being new and sound, you submit it. If the reviewers agree it’s new and sound and the editor doesn’t reject it for not being groundbreaking enough, it gets published, and then a controversy can happen in the peer-reviewed literature. I’m currently participating in one that has been going on since long before peer review was invented.
Seriously, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
How many more times do we need to explain utterly basic taphonomy to you? This is first-year stuff at universities.
First, permanent water courses are almost the only places where sediments are deposited on land. Almost all the rest is where erosion happens instead. Almost all fossils of terrestrial organisms come from sediments laid down by rivers or lakes.
Second, the reason why humans are so much more common in the fossil record than chimps is that rainforests are very bad places for preservation. Their soil is acidic enough to dissolve bone. I’m really surprised that you don’t know this utterly basic fact. Not just chimpanzees, but all rainforest animals are very rare in the fossil record.
Re 531 I’m sorry, David, but whenever I enter a discussion like this I get rounded upon by a dozen or so anonymous know-it-alls who all seem to be full of the same ignorant prejudices against the dreaded ‘a’ factor but devoid of any alternative.
I tend to look for the most articulate and least rude and discuss exclusively with them.
I apologies if you have been trying to engage in a serious discussion and not just name call but I seem to have started associating your posts with the later approach, not the former.
Ok. So you have my attention.
I know about Morotopithecus. I read Fillers book within months of it coming out. So what if bipedalism evolved earlier than we thought (something Marc Verhaegen was arguing for long before it suddenly became fashionable recently). All it does is push the question “how did bipedality begin in the first place?” Back a little further and replace the question “why did only one great ape become bipedal?” With “why did only one stay bipedal and become obligate terrestrial bipeds?” Wading, or the lack of wading, still helps explain these problems.
Clearly, vertical climbing was also a major factor, but how on earth do you describe as “parsimonious” the fact that those great apes that stopped being vertical climbers were the ones that became obligate bipeds, whereas the ones that continued doing so, became quadrupeds? It makes no sense at all. Wading helps.
I am not ignoring any evidence, unlike aquaskeptics who I’ve been arguing with for years.
My word. There’s confidence for you! How do you come to that conclusion? Where’s the science that even considered the idea, let alone rejected it?
Really? Odd how such parsimony has never been noted in 150 years. Where’s the paper in the literature that discarded this one idea and rejected tHe other 30+? I must have missed it?
The next two points were not mine. You seem to have mangled them up somehow.
Yes, yes… The taphonomy argument this time. Next time it’ll be the “we haven’t been looking for chimp fossils” argument. I’ve heard them both a hundred times. You are clutching at straws. Much more parsimonious is simply that our ancestors lived by the waters edge more than chimp ancestors.
At the very least, to argue that the fossil evidence is AGAINST waterside ideas is a travesty.
Algis Kuliukas
No, it it the truth. YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE FOR YOUR CLAIMS. ERGO, YOUR IDEA IS DEAD.
Re 532. Should have written “promoted” that idea, not “discarded”.
Still nothing of evidence. And AK’s opinions aren’t evidence. They are egotistical blather.
Well, I’m not anonymous. Go ahead, find my peer-reviewed publications in Google Scholar if you don’t believe me.
Unscientific. :-|
That somebody is rude or inarticulate doesn’t mean they’re wrong; that would be yet another argumentum ad hominem.
The gibbons did that much earlier. Morotopithecus is at least as close to us as the gibbons are.
It’s completely unnecessary, though. Gorillas and chimps don’t walk long distances in open terrain. We do.
Because chimps and especially gorillas don’t brachiate much anymore. They actually spend a lot of time sitting around on the ground, and while they do climb and sleep in nests, they don’t brachiate anywhere near as much as gibbons. That must be part of the reason why their arms aren’t that long. A gibbon has no trouble touching the ground with its hands while standing upright; they actually hold their arms above the head when walking.
A paper doesn’t need to mention an idea in order to be able to present facts that contradict it!
Why is this not obvious to you? :-D
What?
Oh, did you believe I came up with the hypothesis that our bipedality is homologous to that of the gibbons? I didn’t. I got it from some semi-popular work or other maybe 10 to 15 years ago, so I don’t remember which one, but there must be primary literature about it…
…and finding it is your job. Before publishing a hypothesis, you must try to disprove it.
:-D
See, this shows your mindset really well.
I wasn’t replying to you, I was replying to the points that had been made since my last comment. All of them, in chronological order (except the first).
For the umpteenth time: science is not about persons.
What? “We haven’t been looking” is silly. Looking for one, you couldn’t help find the other, too. They’re almost the same sizes and shapes, FFS.
From what kinds of people? Those that knew any taphonomy?
LOL! Projection.
Show me. Count the steps.
Nope, not even that. The fossil record shows increasing adaptations to long-distance walking and decreasing adaptations to climbing as you get closer to us; nowhere are there adaptations to wading*, swimming, or a diet of aquatic organisms.
* Long toes (as found in wading birds) are good for wading, as well as for climbing. Ours are short, which is good for plantigrade walking but not much else.
Now you’re giving me orders?
Turnabout is fair play, so here’s one for you in return: Bite me.
[ooh, why the hostility? You’ve earned it, having called me childish and ignorant several times now. You’re not interested in discussing biology or ideas, just in flogging grudges and complaining about unfair treatment on the internet. Waaaaah!]
Thin skin, fat ego. Algis to a T.
I suppose the second could be constistent with an AAH. Flotation aid and all that.
Still peddling this pathetic and intellectually dishonest argument, even after it has already been refuted multiple times here by experts in taphonomy? The more you dismiss the taphonomy argument the more of an ignorant idiot you prove yourself to be. No LEGITIMATE evolutionary hypothesis ignores taphonomy. NONE.
No one. NO ONE, makes the claim that any vertebrate lived in water solely because the fossils are found in “depositional substrate near permanent water courses” to an audience of trained paleontologists without expecting to be laughed out of the room.
It is the ANATOMICAL FEATURES of those fossils, and the AGE of those fossils are found that provide the evidence that already falsifies your version of the AAH.
The ANATOMICAL FEATURES show adaptions of climbing and terrestrial locomotion, but no adaptions for aquatic living. All you’re left with are features that could be from wading but could equally be from walking on tree limbs or the ground. Arguing that those features arose from wading, rather than walking on tree limbs or the ground is the very DEFINITION of unparsimonious (not to mention unfalsifiable), making the whole conjecture utterly unscientific.
The AGE of the fossils show that all the adaptions purported to be the result of semi-aquatic habitat all arose at VASTLY DIFFERENT TIMES, making it IMPOSSIBLE for them all to be the result of a single period of selection pressure, no matter what you speculate that selection pressure to be.
The version of the AAH which you have been arguing for on this page is completely falsified by the existing fossil record.
Live with that reality and change your hypothesis, or live in delusion and waste everyone’s time. The choice is yours.
This dismissal of taphonomy strikes me as being perversely and grossly unprofessional. Someone making a palaeontological argument should show more of an understanding of taphonomy and a willingness to engage with a taphnomical argument, instead of this vague contempt.
It’s pretty easy to be dismissive: Oh, the wading argument again. And I suppose next you’ll be bringing up communities of modern humans living near the water, as if that had anything to do with aquatic adaptions.
====
That reminds me: Shouldn’t we expect a putative aquatic adaption to be a much higher incidence of webbed digits than we see as mutations and variations in modern humans?
It pushes it back to a date that is completely inconsistent with your version of the AAH, as you have argued it here on this blog.
It pushes it back to a time when the in question primates were exclusively arboreal, making a wading conjecture even more unparsimonious.
It pushes it back to a time when the discrepancy between it and the times which all the other adaptions the AAH tries to argue for arose is even more stark.
A basalt bed overlying Morotopithecus has been dated to 20.6 Ma ago. Not 10 or so like Oreopithecus – 20.
Webbing would be an adaptation to swimming. I’m not sure about wading. I guess wading would help distribute the weight on muddy ground, but might be too easily injured depending what else is lying around there.
I’m not even a scientist and I know that fossils are almost always found in places where they can be preserved…
Just you wait David. The next walkback by the AAH crowd will be not that semi-aquatic living was the cause of bipedality anymore, but that bipedality in the ancestral clade preadapted them for semi-aquatic living…..
I just came up with a new hypothesis for the origin of bipedality, and am prepared to defend it against imaginary oppressors and to roam the internet ranting psychotically.
I call it the Sideways Slow Sidle Sneak Hypothesis.
See, long ago proto-humans out on the savanna sometimes stood upright to spot danger. The other animals who saw them do that always looked toward where the danger was, or assumed they were standing guard, or just didn’t know what the hell proto-humans were. The protos started stepping sideways toward the other animals, slowly and sneakily, and then jumping on them, and later, with tools, clonking them on the head.
The more upright they stood the better it worked, so an upright posture became standard. It worked better in midday, so head hair grew as a sunshade, body hair thinned out for coolness and to look less predatory. The last few feet were accomplished as a bipedal run, so as to not lose the advantage of being above the prey, and led to bipedality.
If you don’t believe me, notice that humans walk sideways better than any other mammal. Plus we have hand preferences, which came from hiding the clubs. See? Proof!
All you haters can beg my forgiveness when you bring me my Nobel Prize.
Until then, SSSSH!
@Menyambal:
Ah, but do humans walk sideways better than Dr. Zoidberg?!
I think not!
*giggle*
.com was taken and has been parked for some years. There are a number of non-AAT types using the term “aquatic ape” as a catchy phrase, and apparently someone thought it might have value sometime. .org is for me the most apropos domain (at that time anyway) as it’s not just for organizations, as it was originally envisioned, but was used as a catch all for things that didn’t fit in commercial, military, and educational institutions.
Why not .net, then?
(Of course .info would have been best, but it didn’t exist yet.)
Re 540 I think some might call this a “PR” version.
The reality is Anthro-lie-guy couldn’t believe his luck that he could buy the domain that gave him most credibility to peddle his lies and slurs and gossip.
The incredible thing is PZ Myers, and a few others, swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.
Algis Kuliukas
Oh, look at that. algiskuliukas ignoring every point everyone makes, and instead talking about the URL again.
Re 536
On what basis do you say that? Even if it is true, so what? The great apes are even closer and out of that clade we are the only one that is bipedal. You are clutching at straws.
In any case, this is no answer to my point… “All it does is push the question ‘how did bipedality begin in the first place?’” back a little further.
What are you on about?
An anthropocentric argument if ever there was one. So what evidence is there that hominins, post the split between Hylobates and Pongo, walked “long distances”?
Why did they do that long distance walking thing ANYWAY? Bipedalism evolved long before forests opened up. It’s just another just-so story.
But neither do we, and yet we became ologate bipeds, whereas the species that continue the vertical climbing didn’t. And you call this “parsimonious”?
Bull Shit.
Ok, so name one tiny bit of evidence, in any paper published in the lietraure, that contradicts the wading hypothesis.
Do you even know what the wading hypothesis is?
Gasp!!
In other words you are not even sure of the scientific literature on which you amazingly confident opinions are based. Typical.
Aquaskeptics are usually clueless about how or why humans are so different from chimps but they are always mysteriously damned certain that whatever it was, it could not have had anything to do with moving through water.
David, I’m calling your bluff: You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you? You pretend to be some kind of expert, but really, it;s just the usual ignorant sneer-pressure based tribalism.
So because I took your post to be directed at me, it’s my fault that, embedded in that post – without any clue that you were doing so – you decided to also have a go at someone else too?
Bull shit.
I agree but it is an argument some aquaskeptics like you have used in that same slot. At the end of the day the argument doesn’t matter, does it. You know Hardy was wrong. All else follows. No need for science when you have a gang of people all sneering to the same song sheet.
Ok.
Taphonomy argument for why thousands of hominin ancestors found in depostional substrates but only one chimp.
1. Waterside habitats are best for fossilisation
2. Tropical Forests (and let’s pretend that chimps and their ancestors have always lived there) habitats are bad for fossiliation
Two steps needed.
Waterside life argument for why thousands of hominin ancestors found in depostional substrates but only one chimp.
1. Waterside habitats are best for fossilisation
One step needed.
One step is less than two steps, hence MORE PARSIMONIOUS.
Easy.
I predict, like all pseudoskeptics, you’ll change the rules now, rather than concede you were wrong. Or, like John Langdon, you’ll attempt to redefine the term “parsimony” to fit your biased conviction.
Long distance walking, where? The best place for efficient long distance walking to evolve is on the very substrates where it actually is efficient to do so. Flat, firm, vegetation-free substrates are found in the natural world (before pavements, carpets and lawns) on the very edge of the water on dried out river beds and the shore line.
Wading came early. Please try to understand the argument.
Swimming and diving will not have left much in the skeletal remains of hominin fossils but we clearly see a huge difference, consistent with that, in extant forms of Homo and Pan/Gorilla.
Your long toes point is facile. The idea is that bipedalism came early as an adaptation to wading-climbing not wading exclusivelty.
David, I’m just not very impressed.
Algis Kuliukas
537: Not very impressed Chas.
You SAY you’ve read both anthro”sci”guy’s web site (well, some of it – and you’re not saying which bits) and you SAY you’ve read some of my critique (but are not saying anything more about that) and on that basis you make some pretty damning slurs against my work – as you say Jim’s shite is better – but refuse to elaborate.
I am calling your bluff. I bet you haven’t read ANY of it.
Maybe you’ll read some NOW and post something quickly to try to prove you haven’t been telling fibs but I am just bored. I’ve seen this so many times before: Arrogant, self-righteous know-it-all, having heard coffee room gossip and sneering about the aquatic ape, gets all angry and self-righteous about it. Critical thinking is switched off – so no need to find out what is really being argued – and he/she goes looking for stuff to confirm their bias.
When faced with inquisitive students whose only fault it to wonder why humans are so different from chimps and realise that there’s fuck all in the mainstream view that really answers that, instead of pointing to John Langdon’s unscholarly straw man paper, they point them to (wait for it…) Jim Moore’s (the unqualified ex car mechanic) shitty web site.
Brilliant science, this!
Chas, you’re not being as rigorous on this as you pretend to be.
Algis Kuliukas
Not at all impressed by such a dismissive response AK. Still haven’t presented the conclusive, much less anything other than barely suggestive, evidence ofr you idea. Much less, evidence to refute real experts. Very unscientific of you. Typical though, of cranks/loons. Long on attitude, short on links to true evidence.
Score: Crank/loon, 20/20, scientific, 0/5. Nothing has changed nor will change until you fade into the bandwidth, and quit trying to bully us. Very unprofessional behavior on your part.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/05/13/aquatic-apes-and-puddin-elephants/comment-page-1/#comment-629775
Re 540
The taphonomy argument is not being dismissed per se. It’s just the selective use of it to perversely argue that it is AGAINST waterside hypotheses.
Thousands of fossils attributed to Homo ancestors found in depositional substrates – 1 (?) chimp. And THIS is somehow supposed to be evidence AGAINST the idea humans lived in waterside habitats?
How does that work?
It’s rubbish, it really is. Some anthropologists, at least (e.g. Nina Jablonski) seem to have got this but many still peddle the old myth from the days when people sneered at Hardy’s ideas.
The response really is lacking in any intellectual courage.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 543 Yes, so why have thousands of fossils of human ancestors been found in such places, but only 1 chimp?
Let me offer a guess: Hey, I know it’s as crazy as space apes and the entrire universe being created in six days just for us, but here’s a thought – maybe, just maybe, our ancestors lived closer to the water’s edge than chimps.
Sorry.
I know. I’ve stepped over the line there. The yellow van will be coming round soon.
Von Daniken, Big Foot, ID, homeopathy proponents all look like good guys compared to this, right?
What’s WRONG with you people?
PZ, no doubt, will start typing…
“SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE!”
Mockery is Good, right, PZ?
Algis Kuliukas
Yawn, still no evidence, as mocking and attitude by AK is nothing but crankdom/loonydom, and isn’t scientific. Until real and conclusive scientific evidence is presented that meets OUR STANDARDS, no minds will be changed. AK can rant and rave all he wants, it won’t change a thing.
I apologize: you only picked on the URL before trying to address my points.
Anyway: four new papers on what our ancestors ate 4.1 to 1 Ma ago. No room for seafood.
559 No probs.
Reference 4 of the Wikipedia article on Morotopithecus. Though, actually, this paper, which is 2 years younger, must be taken as superseding it; it finds the gibbons to be closer to us than to Morotopithecus. The second paper is cited by reference 5 of the Wikipedia article, which shows that Morotopithecus cannot be distinguished (based on the material known to date) from Afropithecus and should therefore be considered a junior synonym of Afropithecus.
Out of that clade, we are the only one that walks bipedally at all times. Chimps (bonobos more so than regular ones) and gorillas sometimes walk bipedally, too, orang-utans walk bipedally at many of the few times they walk at all, and gibbons walk bipedally at all times when they walk at all. Cercopithecoids and New World monkeys, in contrast, never walk bipedally. It follows, parsimoniously, that 1) the ability to walk bipedally is homologous among all apes, having a single origin, and 2) this origin must have happened somewhere in the origin of apes, not the origin of great apes or later.
What’s so hard to understand about this?
You have failed to read comments 541 and 542.
Bipedality did; it did during the origin of apes, see below. Our ancestors continued to climb a lot till the forests opened up; then the long-distance walking started.
What?
Ancestral state for apes, retained by gibbons: brachiation and bipedality.
Orang-utans derived from the ancestral state: less brachiation, shorter arms, rare fist-walking combined with rare bipedality.
Gorillas and chimps independently derived from the ancestral state: even less brachiation, less climbing overall, even shorter arms, frequent knuckle-walking (and some fist-walking in gorillas) combined with rare bipedality.
Humans derived from the ancestral state: no climbing anymore, even shorter arms, long-distance walking which is easy bipedally, so no selection pressure to evolve knuckle- or fist-walking – bipedality is retained, and additional adaptations to it happen.
The lack of adaptations to wading in us and our ancestors: limb proportions very different from wading birds that fit walking better, large muscle attachment sites that fit walking better, evidence that we ate stuff quite different from either seafood or waterside vegetation (I should have made that explicit in my previous comment; sorry for confusing you with Marcel Williams)…
Do I seriously need to go on?
Find it.
Or don’t find it, and evaluate what I’ve written above in this comment on its own merits. That works, too…
I’ve never claimed to be a paleoanthropologist; I am, however, a vertebrate paleontologist. As I said, find my papers in Google Scholar.
What? Why on the planet would I begin a separate comment just because two different people happen to have said the stuff I respond to? What for?
Again: I do not respond to people. I respond to claims.
My comment was not directed at you. It was directed at what had been said since my previous comment. Most of that had been said by you – but that’s not relevant for how I respond to it. Why would it be?
Seriously, if you can’t separate what is said from who said it, how can you ever do science? You’ll be distracted by arguments from authority or ad hominem all the fucking time!
That’s not a response.
Sorry, I have to break off and run, it’s stupidly late over here. See you in about an hour.
Don’t remember the details on that. My choice seemed reasonable at the time.
Oh yes, after reading the Wikipedia article on it, it said that “its originally intended purpose was for organizations involved in networking technologies, such as Internet service providers and other infrastructure companies.”
Still perseverating over this piece of idiocy?
It is an invalid argument. Period. End of story. You waste your breath. Drop it and find something more fruitful to spend your time on, like, say, looking for fossils of your own.
The fat ego gets even fatter.
Four more pieces of FOSSIL evidence that essentially falsifies Algis’ version of the AAH.
Speaking of chimp fossils, IIRC, there was some debate a while back as to whether or not Ororrin was actually on the chimp side of the divide. And there was also some debate, from other quarters that Sahelanthropus was on the chimp side. (It seemed like the supporters of Ororrin were the ones suggesting Sahelanthropus was not on “our” side of the family tree, and vice versa).
Wasn’t there even a fringish group arguing that Australopithecus was actually on the chimp side (with Paranthropus being ancestral to gorillas)?
Plus there was the DNA evidence that suggested a several million year period of regular interbreeding between the human side and the chimp side of the divide right around the split circa 5-7 million years ago, which would put both Ororrin and Sahelanthropus right in the middle of that interbreeding cauldron.
It seems to be an undeniable fact that the majority of human anthropologists, on finding a fragment of a fossil ape from somewhere in the 4-8 million year window, will be much more likely to end up putting their fossil on the human side of the divide.
Perhaps Cornelius and Zira would have done things differently….
Two hours, not one, sorry.
The other way around: we conclude Hardy was wrong because what he proposed doesn’t fit the evidence.
1. That doesn’t even count. It’s not something new that this hypothesis requires; it’s utterly basic taphonomy. It’s not only true of humans and chimps.
2. That, too, doesn’t even count. It, too, is not something new that this hypothesis requires; it’s utterly basic taphonomy. For instance, poison-dart frogs (Dendrobatidae) and true toads (Bufonidae) are sister-groups. Today, all poison-dart frogs and most true toads live in the South American rainforests. How many poison-dart frogs are there in the fossil record? A grand total of zero. How many true toads are there in the fossil record? Plenty, but almost all come from toads that left the rainforest and spread to North America and Eurasia from the Oligocene onwards. Only one fragment, from the late Paleocene of Brazil, comes from South America. (And then there’s the surprising fragment from the late Paleocene of France; I expect it’ll turn out to belong elsewhere one day.) Keep in mind that the existence of late Paleocene true toads, older than 55 Ma, necessarily implies the existence of late Paleocene poison-dart frogs; yet, from those more than 55 Ma, not a single fossil has been found.
So you haven’t identified any steps for either hypothesis yet. Try again.
And who is John Langdon?
Among other places!
And if you live at the waterside, why would you need to walk long distances?
Do explain.
And you’re back to making ad-hominem arguments!
Have you no shame at all!!!
Because, as everybody except you knows, rainforests are a really shitty place for preservation!
How dare we know any taphonomy?
Very good points. Most paleoanthropologists are ancestor-worshippers who haven’t noticed that phylogenetics is a science now and still do it as an art. As a result, they can’t agree on anything. There are even still such silly things as rivalries – the closer you get to humans, the worse the science gets – between the team that discovered Sahelanthropus tchadensis and the team that discovered Orrorin tugenensis: as soon as the former had published their fossil, the latter published a short reply claiming it was a female gorilla instead, and Nature published an article titled “The Battle of Tugen Hills”.
It’s probably not a gorilla. But without a phylogenetic analysis, we’ll never know.
These sorts of weaknesses in the existing fossil record opens a giant gaping zone of opportunity where someone could walk in, find some fossils, analyze them properly, maybe even present an idiosyncratic hypothesis or two, and win wide acclaim.
But no, that’s too much hard work for Algis, apparently. He’d rather spend his time attacking a car mechanic’s website.
Doing real science, which is hard work, and he
mightwill be wrong, versus making inane noises about something he should ignore? Let the loon/crank ego games continue…Re 561
I couldn’t get the 2nd link. Please post the ref like this…
Andrews, P., Martin, L., 1987. Cladistic relationships of extant and fossil hominoids. J. Hum. Evol 16, 101–118.
But look, I don’t see where this is going. So what if Morotopithecus is closer to us than Hylobates. Even if the ancestor of all great apes was already somewhat specialised for brachiation – enough so that they were bipedal on those rare occasions they moved on dry ground as extant gibbons are today – how does this help explain why, out of the great ape clade, only one became an obligate biped and the other three became quadrupedal?
Nothing. I’m not disputing an early evolution of some kind of bipedalism.
I’m disputing that the LCA of all apes was already a specialised brachiator like extant gibbons are and I’m asking the question – from this starting point, how then does this help explain great ape locomotion (3 quadrupeds, 1 obligate biped)?
Re “pushing back” point. You say this is explained by 541 & 541. It isn’t at all.
There is no inconsistency with my model and a very early evolution of some kind of bipedalism. I concurr with Marc Verhaegen on this – a climbing-wading LCA. I keep pointing out, and aquaskeptics keep ignoring it, that Marc was arguing for a bipedal LCA long before Filler and recent papers have suddenly made it re rigeur.
“Amphiox” says
Clutching at straws. How does anyone know that? A wading-climbing LCA makes perfect sense and is consistent with the fossil record. It acts as a better precursor to all four forms of extant behaviour – brachiation, knuckle-walking, quadramanous locomotion and obligate bipedalism.
My model makes a clear distinction between the evolution of bipedalism and other traits. All mainstream models do too, so that final point of his/hers is, again, not right.
Re 542 – that’s just a facile point. The idea is the LCA was a wading-climbing ape, not exclusively wading. How many times I’ve repeated this kind of thing is anyone’s guess. There seems to be no effort being made on the side of aquaskeptics to understand what is being argued, only to misrepresent it so it can be better sneered at.
I asked “WHY the long-distance walking?”… the response ” then the long-distance walking started” doesn’t answer it. It’s more of a just-so story than the wading idea which at least has better evidence in extant apes.
Another question that always seems to be dodged is this – if the LCA of all apes was already bipedal in the same kind of way gibbons are today (i.e. due to their arboreality) how come those great apes that lost their arboreality are the only ones that became obligate bipeds and the three that retained their arboreality lost their bipedality and became quadrupeds. It’s the opposiye of parsimony. Wading (or the lack of wading) helps.
Well yes. Frankly, as wading has never even been considered as an option in the debate (unless you can cite the paper that does, I did a massive lit. review for my PhD and couldn’t find one), I am surprised at your confidence at reporting these as show stoppers.
The wading birds point is facile. The proposal is that the LCA was a wading-climbing ape, not an exclusive wader. I wonder how many times I’ll have to repeat this.
The muscle attachment point implies that you know of some study has been done on this. Fascinating. Please could you cite it as I’ll need it in my PhD because this is an area I am studying. What early hominid pelvic sample are you thinking of? Or, are you just talking off the top of your head?
The food argument, again, does not contradict a wading-climbing model.
Can I use that technique too, or is it reserved for people who espouse mainstream views?
“I think I read something in the literature that supported my view but I can’t remember. Now you have to go and find it.”
If I used that method, a gang of anonymous nobodies would round on me and call me a pseudoscientist. When you do it, it’s fine and dandy. I see.
My point is simply that there are many ideas about bipedal origins. Where, in the literature, is that paper that asserts the confidence you show that the Hylobation model of Sir Arthur Keith has suddenly been resurected to “mainstream” status?
As Dennett wrote, the arguments are always thin and ad hoc. If the spectre of the dreaded ‘a’ factor is on the horizon, suddenly everyone pretends to “know” what caused our bipedality. But they forget where in the literature that knowledge came from.
David, I did a Google Scholar search and I’m impressed. I am also impressed that you do not hide behind a silly pseudonym. I am also impressed that you take time to come to places like this and debate these idea. I am also sure you know more about paleontology than I do but, sorry, you’re arguments against the wading hypothesis are typically weak and not backed up by anything but what appears to be the usual prejudice.
To make the argument clear, obviously. You, yourself expressed confusion when replying to someone elses’s points in that post so I would argue that you answered your own question there.
David, what this feels like is some pissing contest where, because you think I’m some “aquatic ape nut”, you presume to be superior in argumentation, scholarliness and pretty much everything else. It’s a mistake I’ve come across for years and it’s very irritating. Please don’tfollow Jim Moore’s delusion in dividing the whole world into two – those that think Hardy might be right (idiots at best who are also largely dishonest) and those that don’t (clever, nice, honest people, one and all.)
Hardy’s original proposal seems to have been wrong in that it adopted a wrong timescale. But that was forgivable from the fossil evidence known at the time.
Where’s the science to dismiss any waterside hypothesis? Where has it even been considered? There just isn’t any. You are pretending there has been rigour when there simply hasn’t been.
“That doesn’t even count” – good answer. Look, I get it. You’re the paleontologist so what you says is right.
The only guy to have published a paper in a specialist “anthro” journal on the so-called “aquatic ape” theory and attempted some kind of rejection. That’s all.
Langdon, J. Umbrella hypotheses and parsimony in human evolution: a critique of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. Journal of Human Evolution 33:479-494, (1997).
That you haven’t even read John Langdon’s paper on this subject does not inspire me with much confidence, David.
For the striding, extended limb gait – on which our bipedal effficiency is based – the substrate needs to be flat, firm and vegetation free.
Apart from waterside habitats (and, ok, trailing behind a massive herd of savannah bovids) where do you find such places?
Coastal foraging, picking up catfish from dessicated river banks etc provide plausible motives for walking on the water’s edge. The topology of coastal zones are, by definition, irregular and require much longer distances to traverse than open plains in land.
It’s ok for the people here to insult me, I notice (PZ called me an “idiot”,”loon”,”kook”) and you are happy with that. I criticise Jim Moore’s “work” and you accuse me of making ad hominem attacks. I see. Not biased much, are you?
Please explain how a thousands-1 disparity in the fossil record between those attributed to human ancestors near to permanent water courses (where, of course we know, fossils are more likely to be formed) compared to those attributed to chimp ancestors can be construed as evidence AGAINST the idea that humans lived in waterside habitats more than chimps?
Algis Kuliukas
Re 566
All good points, which I agree with.
But, just taking fossils that are unequivocally on the Homo side (say < 2Ma) there are still thousands of those that have been attributed and 1(?) chimp.
Can someone please explain how this can be construed as evidence AGAINST the idea that human ancestors lived waterside more than chimps'?
Algis Kuliukas
Algis, your soggy ape would have to compete with other animals in these idyllic fresh water habitats you propose, e.g crocodiles. Your soggy ape would benefit, in a very seasonal way, in the ability to walk from one drying water hole to another. This would be easiest using the trackways and cropped grasslands left by giant herds of migrating herbivores. Why would a former tree dweller try to outcompete previous water dwellers when the cry of the wide open veldt beckoned? Fresh water habitats are often very seasonal and provide an abundance of fruit, seeds, roots, small and large animals at different times during the year. Long term immersion would not only increase risk from large animals but risk from parasites which coinhabit these waters. Being able to walk bipedally across large stretches of savannah while holding your lunch would be a powerful advantage. Wading, not so much.
Protohumans probably lived next to the water, not in it. Seasonality means camps are sometimes inundated, sometimes dry. Trees that provide seasonal fruits on a flood plain would attract these creatures but they would benefit by not being permanently tied there. Chimps I believe are more likely to be found in year round rainforests where fossilisation is rare, as others before me have pointed out.
.
In summary, bipedal walkers thrive better in seasonal (not pemanently wet) environments than tree climbers or fresh water waders because of their ability to walk on dry land.
Re 573
I don’t think you’ve quite understood what I’ve been arguing.
See, there are two extremes here. On the one side, you have the idea that humans never ever stepped in the water. No-one would subscribe to that, right? On the other, is the idea that humans lived in the water. Well, it might surprise you, but no-one subscribes to that either.
There is this wierd, strange thing, called THE MIDDLE GROUND. It exists somewhere between the two extremes. I do not know where, exactly, that point is, but if one accepts that it is there somewhere and one further adds the assumption that wherever this point was, our human ancestors were further along it (towards the ‘aquatic’ end) than chimp ancestors were, then you have already conceded the whole thing.
This is because if there was a differential in terms of moving through water, there would be a differential in selection and population genetics 101 teaches us that even very slight selection is sufficient to overcome drift, even in relatively small populations sizes in relatively short evolutionary periods.
s > 1 / (2Ne) – or for selection to overcome drift it need only be greater than the reciprocal of twice the effective population size.
And odd concept where you decry the (albeit shrinking) habitat that they have become adapted to for tens of millions of years – seasonally flooded gallery forest refugia – for a completely new envirnment where already a whole host of fiercely competitive species were already well established.
Waist/chest deep water is the one place where being bipedal is a simple life saver because if you were foolish enough to try to move quadrupedally you’d drown. Of all the Mammalian species, only our great ape cousins switch from quaddrupedalism on dry land to bipedalism in water. It’s so obvious an eight year old could spot it, but it’s eluded palaeoanthropology for 150 years!
Mockery is good, right!?
No dispute theere. No-one is saying they LIVED in water.
Let me repeat that: No-one is saying they LIVED in water. Just that they sometimes moved through water and they did this more than chimp ancestors.
It’s scary, I know. Space apes seem relatively benign compared to the idea that our ancestors might have got their feet wet, I know. But come on… TRY!
Seasonally flooded riparian habitats are EXACTLY the places I have been arguing for years that terrestrial bipedalism is most likely to have evolved. So you are preaching to the converted there. They provide a habitat that simultaneously (in evolutionary terms) COMPELS bipedalism like no other substrate (wading), induces upright weight bearing posture through vertical climbing (where, incidentally escaping crocs and hippos would be quite easy) and provides regular opportunities for the optimisation of efficient longer distance TERRESTRIAL walking, foraging catfish and sedges from dried out (and therefore flat, firm and vegetation-free) river banks.
I’ve been saying this for only about 13 years. Considering Hardy’s ideas are still being distorted even now, 53 years later, I don’t expect any of the pseudoskeptics who viscerally hate the “AAT” so much will ever actually get that simple point, but I live in hope.
Rationality will previal one day, surely.
Algis Kuliukas
568 – I agree completely.
Algis Kuliukas
Considering your lack of evidence, and utter and sheer loon quality of your inane idea and egotistical posts. the only rationality that is appropriate is for you to shut the fuck up and leave trolling this blog. I’m not holding my breath for you to finally behave with honor and integrity.
Re 569, 570.
I have done what you’re supposed to do. I returned to university (UCL), did a masters degree in Human Evolution. (Passed with Distinction.) I took my family to Australia so I could start a PhD at UWA. In this time I have done research yielding new emprical data pertaining to the wading hypothesis – an idea the field of anthropology has all but ignored for over 50 years. I’ve presented the findings at scientific conferences (including AAPA 2009) and published them in two peer review journals and three chapters in a recent eBook. During this time (because I have not received any significant research grant) I’ve had to continue to work as a database consultant. But on top of all that, I’ve still made time to act as a critical voice to the gossip guy. I consider that my duty.
All he did was help proof read a book once and write a misrepresenting, masquerading web site, where he gets to write whatever gossip he likes with impunity.
It’s very irritating (but absolutely typical) how I always get criticised by pseudoskeptics for doing no science, when I’ve done quite a bit actually, whilst anthro-slur-guy gets praised (PZ Myers says it’s the “defintive web resource” on this idea) for doing no science, and no academic work at all.
As always, the aquaskeptic “response” is full of hypocrisy.
Algis Kuliukas
Very good points.
Bizarrely, it gives me an “access denied” error, too. Maybe this link works instead? It does for me.
But if it still doesn’t, drop me an e-mail (Google Scholar knows the address), and I’ll send you the pdf. It is:
James B. Rossie & Laura MacLatchy (2006): A new pliopithecoid genus from the early Miocene of Uganda. Journal of Human Evolution 50: 568–586.
It probably wasn’t quite that specialized: gibbons do have at least one adaptation to brachiation that we lack, extra mobility in the wrist. However, even we retain a lot of other adaptations to brachiation, like insanely mobile shoulders above and beyond what you can find in any monkey.
Brachiation works best at gibbon sizes. Gorillas and chimps live mostly on the ground; they sleep in trees, but don’t spend that much of their waking time there. For living on the ground, a larger size is advantageous – no idea which is the cause and which the effect, though. Orang-utans mostly stay in the trees; but when they come down, they walk bipedally quite often, more often than chimps.
Uh – if bipedality was already there, you don’t need a wading phase more than 15 million years later to explain its origin.
~:-|
I really can’t follow you here.
Oh. So you’re proposing that the wading phase lasted more than 15 million years, and that gibbons, orang-utans, gorillas, chimps, and humans independently stopped wading (or reduced it to insignificance) five times.
But where’s the problem with a brachiating LCA for all apes?
Four independent reductions/losses of brachiation are one step fewer than five independent losses of wading.
Why? Because it was possible, because the opening of the forest made it advantageous, because it allowed to stay out of competition with chimps. Easy enough, as I already explained just a few comments ago.
Doesn’t this predict that our ancestors should have become quadrupedal as soon as they stopped wading? Why did having a wading ancestor have an effect on us, but not on the chimps or the gorillas?
Oh no. It only implies I can look at a skeleton. Try it sometime.
Of course it does. It says our ancestors lived off the savanna in that timeframe, eating lots of stuff that simply doesn’t grow at the waterside or on trees.
You know…
Why don’t you just pretend I came up with the entire hypothesis on my own?
I didn’t*, but that’s irrelevant as long as nobody writes a paper about it; then we’d need to know the actual source so we can credit it.
The quality of the hypothesis does not depend on its source.
* Maybe I did come up with some details. I don’t even remember. My knowledge of orang-utan bipedality comes from Tetrapod Zoology in any case.
Never heard of it.
I’m simply not creative enough to come up with a good one. This has advantages as well as disadvantages: sometimes a bit of privacy would be a good thing.
I’m already here. :-) And time isn’t something I have, it’s something I steal. You’ll find that this explains a lot (mouse over the picture for extra text).
…I’ve expressed confusion over what something means, not who said it. Who said it isn’t interesting or relevant.
And here you’re back to believing this is about people.
No!
I don’t care what your or my qualifications are or what else you or I think. If nothing else, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I care about evidence, not about people. I evaluate evidence and logic, not people. I’m not trying to judge your character or mine, or our bladder capacities; I’m trying to judge the hypothesis that there was a wading-climbing phase in our Miocene and Pliocene ancestry, on its own merits, regardless of who came up with it or who agrees with it now!
If you really can’t imagine a human holding this mindset, maybe it helps if you pretend I’m some kind of Vulcan?
Unlike a Vulcan, I don’t try to suppress my emotions; but evidently I don’t get them over the same things as you. See, I’m not trying to engage in social interaction by having this discussion; I’m trying to have this discussion.
Here in this very thread and here in this very thread, respectively.
Translation: you don’t understand what I mean, but instead of asking, you decide to sneer instead.
As a phylogeneticist, I do indeed deal with parsimony on a daily basis – but if you don’t understand, why don’t you ask?
It has the opposite effect on me: the flaws in the aquarboreal hypothesis are so easy to spot that I don’t even need to have read Langdon’s paper – I can find them on my own!
Say, have you written a critique of Langdon’s paper? On this page you say you have; but the HTML version of the promised critique is a blank page, the PDF version doesn’t exist (“not found on this server”)… and you cut the quoted abstract off in the middle of a word.
If you have written it, we could discuss it…
That’s exaggerated. Any tree savanna will do.
…Interesting idea; why wouldn’t our ancestors have followed the herds as opportunistic scavengers? After all, if you need to find a carcass before the hyenas get there, you have to reach it really quick.
Uh, why? Are food and potable water even more sparsely distributed along coasts than on open plains?
It’s really not encouraging that you haven’t noticed the fundamental difference between insults and argumenta ad hominem: insults aren’t logical fallacies.
“You belong to group X, therefore whatever you say is wrong” is an ad-hominem argument.
“Your argumentation contains a lot of stupid mistakes, therefore you are an idiot” is an insult; it’s not an ad-hominem argument.
PZ doesn’t say “you’re an idiot, therefore you’re wrong”. He concludes that you’re an idiot because of the arguments you make.
That’s not nice of him, sure; but I can’t see how that’s relevant to science. PZ has not committed a logical fallacy.
Speaking of Vulcans, we scientists are Borg. Insults are irrelevant. Logical fallacies we hate.
I don’t think anybody has claimed that’s what it is. The idea is that it’s not evidence for any waterside hypothesis. You have claimed many, many times that it is – and that’s just wrong.
I’ve already linked to the description of Crocodylus anthropophagus. :-)
Bingo.
You need to quantify that. Even in the absence of trees, chimps defend themselves quite well against leopards; are leopards and hyenas and lions a greater danger than crocodiles and hippos?
I’m also not that sure about “established”. Before some 3 to 4 million years ago, there wasn’t much open habitat in Africa; it was pretty much rainforest from sea to shining sea.
Finally, as mentioned above, adapting to a new environment means you’re no longer competing with your closest relatives.
o_O
It’s really not common that trees grow in the water or have thick branches hanging into the water or within reach. If you wade for a living, trees will hardly ever help you when you’re attacked. If you don’t wade for a living, where’s the selection pressure?
That’s because they’ve inherited the ability to walk bipedally in the first place. Obligately quadrupedal species can’t deal with a bipedal posture for long, so they can’t reap the advantages of a bipedal posture in water.
Then perhaps it’s wrong.
See, it’s obvious that relativity and quantum physics are all wrong. And yet, they’re right; their deeply bizarre predictions are correct to at least 18 significant digits.
The argument from personal incredulity is a logical fallacy.
…But if you do, you can’t say with such strong confidence that only one chimp fossil has been found – in the continued absence of a phylogenetic analysis, we don’t really know.
References, please.
And do keep in mind that your use of “peer review journals” makes it looks like you have no idea of peer review: you mean peer-reviewed journals – they’re not journals of or about peer review, but the manuscripts in them are reviewed before publication.
…which you yourself edited, and which wasn’t peer-reviewed at all.
Baboons wading through water – Planet Earth – BBC animals & wildlife http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAiZFhhHEXU
David Marjanović, it is always a pleasure and an education to read what you write. Thank you.
Algis, the vid above shows baboons wading, some of them going bipedal. I think you said only us great apes do that. It is the vid I referred to when I said it looked like they hated water, and I now see it looks like only the young ones went bipedal—I can’t say if that is a matter of depth, or age-related ability.
As far as chimps and gorillas go, I look at them and think they used to be more bipedal. Their back legs look too long, and are bowed out, as if their ancestors used to walk more upright. They haven’t the functional back legs of baboons. Which is to say I agree that our LCA was mostly bipedal.
Algis, you keep babbling about some “aquaskeptic”‘s web site, as if it is poisoning the brains of us impressionable people. (Another way you are horribly insulting without calling names.) I’ve never seen it, and don’t care to. I form my own opinions, thanks.
I read the Aquatic Ape material back in the ’60s or ’70s, and was interested. I recall that it was strongly aquatic, to the point that women’s breasts and hair were shaped for floating babies. It was like we went all dolphin, then for some dumb-ass reason staggered back to land. But you’ve waded all the way back to occasional sloshing about in the shallows. How is that still Aquatic?
Algis, In another thread I asked how good humans can swim without lessons, and how well chimps could swim with training. I was pointing out that we really can’t compare abilities, and thinking of how you keep basing your case on the “fact” that we humans are much better swimmers. You, of course, misunderstood the implications for your argument.
You now want to see a fair comparison of chimp/human swimming abilities, and you seem angry that no-one will do that science. You fail to see that there is no reason to—the case for Aquaticism isn’t strong enough to risk even a grad student in a pool with a pissed-off chimp.
By the way, in all your science, there’s something you’ve missed about human anatomy that would help your case. I’ve based my “theory” on it, and it even started with a waterside ape—it didn’t end there, though. I will say that the nice flat land that you say doesn’t exist is found on game trails in almost all terrains.
You are really, really coming across as a nutcase. You show every sign of being a pseudoscience crank, and you haven’t shown any good science. If there were anything to Aquaticism, you’ve damaged its reputation seriously.
Skin gets ever thinner. Ego gets ever fatter.
Bored now.
Oh. So NOW you’re talking about a bipedal LCA that lived 20 plus million years ago? Are you admitting now that everything you’ve fapped about the “big” differences between humans and chimps, and all that humans x and chimps y reasoning was all just a useless waste of time?
Because if we’re now talking about a wading LCA that lived 20 million years ago (a time when the fossil record indicates that every known primate in the world was arboreal) none of any of the stuff you’ve babbled concerning humans and chimps and their differences has any relevance whatsoever.
An Algis STILL doesn’t understand ad hominem. After all the time spent trying to explain it to him, one has to start questioning his intellectual integrity on that point.
Ad hominem has NOTHING to do with insults. If it exists along with insults, it is purely coincidental.
One could praise someone to high heaven and still be committing ad hominem.
Sherlock Holmes could be saying “My dear Dr. Watson, you are such an honest and noble spirit that you simply cannot comprehend the depths of depravity to which some men might sink, and thus your conjecture concerning the motivations of our culprit are surely wrong.”
THAT is an ad hominem.
“You are a boring, insipid, dishonest idiot” is not an ad hominem.
This speaks to an important point. There are COSTS associated with doing scientific research. Costs in time, effort, money, risk.
If we were all immortal, invulnerable, infinitely wealthy, and our mental resources infinite in extent, it might not be so, but the real world isn’t like that.
If you can’t make a compelling enough argument to someone to convince to spend his or her LIMITED resources of time, effort, mentation, and risk of danger investigating your idea, then your idea won’t get investigated. Period.
You either come up with a more compelling argument, or YOU invest the time, effort, mentation and exposure to risk to DO THE INVESTIGATIONS YOURSELF.
And I blithely believed it. That’ll teach me.
Exactly!
http://www.uprightape.net/
The reason I mentioned Morotopithecus was to establish bipedalism at 20 -21 million BP. That together with Oreopithecus at 7-9 million BP pretty much establishes the fact that bipedalism has an ~ancient~ origin and history. So what does this mean for those who are poking around at the homo/pan split in search of the origin of bipeds? It means they’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. Well, OK, that’s all very well and good but then Algis’ question still applies –“What about the ~origin~ of bipedalism?” Algis claims to have read all about Filler’s homeotic transformation yet reveals himself to be lying once again when he asks questions which are easily answered by any brief perusal of the last couple chapters of The Upright Ape.
I’ve read enough AK to realize that he couldn’t find his way out of a phone booth but I haven’t heard from anyone on this side of the fence regarding the plausibility of Fillers’ thesis: namely, that we and our ape cousins owe our shared bipdedalism to a homeotic transformation of the lumbar spine –which, in one fell swoop, ~forced~ the original unfortunate primate to stand erect. All subsequent descendants then inherited this genetic defect and went on to found their respective groups ~hylobates, pongo, pan, gorilla and homo. Homo then retains the basal configuration while our cousins work with what is derived from that condition. Filler has a nice little discussion of the restrictions placed on ape locomotion by the configuration of the transverse processes of the lumbar verts –and the subsequent rigidity of the lower thoracic region.
I would also like to take issue with the use of the term “brachiation”. While it is true that brachiation requires a superiorly oriented glenoid fossa, such a feature would also be useful for what Lovejoy calls “careful climbing” –one of the Ardi papers. True brachiators have a stiff lumbar spine –again, a derived feature.
The Ardipithecus papers:
http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/misc/webfeat/ardipithecus/
There is something else that should be noted with respect to the genetic evidence of significant degrees of interbreeding between the human and chimpanzee lines around the time of the split. Said evidence suggests and extended period of regular interbreeding, a period lasting over a million years.
This means that the proto-humans and the proto-chimps were sharing the same habitat. There were no mail-order sperm banks 5-7 million years ago. To interbreed you had to share overlapping habitat and regularly venture into each other’s territory.
And again, we’re talking about a period of at least a million years, if not more, of such regular interbreeding.
If proto-humans were really hiving themselves off in some riverside habitat and doing lots of wading, then the proto-chimpanzees must have been there too for all the various hanky-panky. The genes tell us so. This means that IF the prevalence of human ancestor fossils in waterside-type environments really was an indication of living frequently in water-side habitats, then chimpanzee fossils SHOULD be also frequently found in that environment, because we KNOW from the genetic evidence that the chimpanzees were there.
Since we DON’T see these chimpanzee fossils, even though the genetic evidence of interbreeding tells us the chimpanzees must have been there, that tells us that the prevalence of the human fossils in the riverine environments must be artifactual, and not indicative of something special in terms of human habitation of those environments.
Wherever the humans were, the chimpanzees were too, for at least a million years. That means that if you want to argue about differential environmental selection for the different adaptations between humans and chimpanzees, said selective forces must be concentration after the final divergence, for dates younger than 5 million years. And we already know from fossil evidence that bipedalism in hominins was established long before that.
So once more, the time frames do not match for Algis’ version of the AAH.
Re 578 “Very good points”? I answered those “very good points” easily. They were not very good at all.
Thanks for the ref to the paper. I’ll be able to get that myself.
And of course, the possibility that this might be a swimming adaptation is discounted without so much as a passsing thought.
See? You assume “bipedality” means terrestrial bipedality. What if that early bipedalism was wading-climbing bipedalism?
Wading-climbing bipedalism acts a perfect precursor to quadrupedal knuckle-walking and obligate terrestrial bipedalism.
Wading-Climbing. Please try not to distort the argument. Straw men is the usual thing aquaskeptics use – and then they accuse “us” of doing that.
Well the de rigeur argument used to be that the LCA of Pan/Gorilla/Homo was likely to be a quadruped based on parsimony. Now it seems that the LCA of Pan/Pongo/Gorilla/Homo was already some kind of biped – that argument from parsimony has already been superceded.
Some kind of biped (a wading-climbing) biped acts a more parsimonious precursor to knuckle-walking and terrestrial bipedalism than what you seem to assume is already terrestial bipedalism.
Brachiation is a specialisation, just like knuckle-walking is. It’s as unparsimonious to assume the LCA of all of them had one extant specialisation as any other. Better to assume that it was something intermediate. Wading-climbing fits that role better.
Why would it be advantageous to go walking on the open savannah for a short, little hominin that had few of the other human attributes yet, like large brain, language etc?
It’s a just-so story. What about the competition with baboons that had already adapted to life there? What about the increased risk of predation? All flicked away as if nothing.
The idea is that the LCA of all three was a wading-climbing hominid.
If a chimp climbs down from a tree onto land, it switches to quadrupedalism.
If a chimp climbs down from a tree into waist deep water, it switches to bipedalism.
The idea is that Chimps and gorillas lost the regular wading so they have no need for bipedalism. Our ancestors lost the regular climbing so they moved along waterside habitats doing coastal foraging. Wading sometimes and walking on the perfect substrates for efficient bipedalism the rest of the time.
No need to be so patronising. So, you were just talking off the top of your head, then.
The articulation of the femur in the acetabulum, and the asssociated muscles involved with locomotion ther, are highly complex and require serious analysis to determine what was likely to have been going on in early bipeds.
I have looked at many skeletal samples of Primates, thank you. I have digitised hundreds of them to gather data on the load arms of the muscles involved in locomotion of the hip and I can tell you that there is no such study that looks a wading as a putative mode of locomotion in early bipeds, let alone dismisses it.
That’s funny. John Langdon (you know, the author of the one paper that attempts a “rejection” of the “AAH”, the one you haven’t read) argues that the savannah idea is a straw man invented by Elaine Morgan!
Now, notice how the rules will change again and some other thin and ad hoc argument will be conjured up out of thin air.
It’s interesting how “aquatic ape loons” are always derided for not knowing anything about palaeoanthropology but when the “big gun -experts” are wheeled out and they know even less, it’s fine and dandy – it’m me who’s the “idiot”/”loon”/”kook”.
Funny. I thought science was supposed to be conducted through the literature. Only when it doesn’t involve the dreaded ‘a’ factor, I suppose. When it does, it can be dismissed with a simple roll of the eyes and a “SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! ” tirade.
And it’s really not encouraging that you excuse ignorant, childish name calling from the “expert” whose name is at the top of this blog and try to pretend my criticism of Jim Moore’s crappy, web site is somehow worse.
I have to go now. More later.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 585
I thought you said you’d read Filler. Admit it –somebody came along and opened the door for ya, didn’t they.
Yawn, AK still thinking his OPINION is evidence? Never was, and never will be. He is no authority on anything. If he had something, all he would need to do is link and shut up.
But then, what would an evidenceless crank/loon do with his time, if he can’t make a scientific fool of himself on somebody else’s blog on the internet. Not showing himself to be somebody to be listened to, just mocked and laughed at.
Algis, have you ever managed to convince anybody with your “simple, plausible, Darwinian” hypothesis? I’m genuinely curious.
Uh, what are you talking about? What keeps me from walking on all fours more often is the fact that my legs are too long (not my arms too short, BTW; if anything, they’re too long, too); what keeps me from galloping more than a few meters is the fact that my wrists are too unstable (they tend to bend any which way, painfully). That’s right, I can gallop, just not for more than ridiculous distances.
A colleague (I’ll ask him for a source) told me about an experiment with some macaques or other. They were kept from an early age in such restrictive conditions that they had to stand upright all the time. Their spine assumed the famous human double-S shape. What happened when the restrictions were taken away? Nothing. The double-S shape remained, it did not revert to the usual ( shape.
Not a bad point. Any climber much larger than a gibbon has to climb rather slowly and carefully (even though some smaller animals, like chamaeleons and various lorises, also do it).
Well, adjacent habitats should be enough, especially when there’s no sharp boundary between them, as indeed there isn’t.
So, the last common ancestor of all apes swam for a living (in addition to wading for a living), had a few novel adaptations to that, and then the gibbons used these adaptations to brachiate?
What an unnecessarily complicated scenario. What an unparsimonious scenario.
What do you need that hypothesis for?
The same is true when you drop the “wading” part.
I’m sorry that I’m too lazy to spell it out every single time, after I’ve already spelled it out earlier in the same comment. I shall call it the WC phase, then.
It’s not intermediate at all. Wading is yet another specialization.
How about the advantages I already mentioned, like lack of competition from increasingly crowded close relatives?
Competition for what exactly?
Show me there’s an increased risk of predation. It’s harder for an ambush predator to hide in a savanna than in a forest.
Besides… don’t you think that going from the rainforest to the waterside instead of to the savanna would increase the risk of predation by crocodiles and rage-killing from territorial hippos???
But now you say gibbons and orang-utans lost the regular wading, too!!!
If a gibbon climbs down from a tree onto land, it switches to bipedalism.
If an orang-utan climbs down from a tree onto land, it doesn’t quite seem to know what to do, but switches to bipedalism pretty often.
If the WC hypothesis can’t explain these, I must consider it disproved!
And? Have you done that, or do you have a reference for that, or are you talking off the top of your head…? And why do you talk just about the femur and the pelvis?
Again: it doesn’t need to. It only needs to present evidence, knowingly or not, that conflicts with the WC hypothesis.
Godfrey (1989) illustrated the beautifully preserved cleithrum of Greererpeton from all sides. The illustrations show a big, well-developed postbranchial lamina; Godfrey didn’t recognize it, didn’t label it in the figures and didn’t mention it in the text. Nobody recognized it till Coates (1996) did and mentioned it, citing Godfrey’s figures, in his paper on evidence for gills in early tetrapods. Godfrey had unknowingly presented strong evidence that Greererpeton had open gill slits and a functional gill lid.
Do you know what calling isotope ratios “some […] thin and ad hoc argument” makes you?
An idiot and a loon, that’s what. :-| You didn’t even follow the four links I posted, did you?
What do I care what Langdon wrote so long ago? Did I ever say he’s infallible? And what exactly did Morgan or he mean by “the savannah idea”?
(I almost certainly won’t have time to read the paper today.)
Then why are you here?
If you’re going to ignore everything that’s posted in response to your comments, why are you here? And why do you post, when by your own silly rules we’re supposed to ignore it because it’s not in the literature?
You really haven’t thought this through, have you.
Have I ever made such a thing?
I don’t excuse it. I simply don’t care because it’s irrelevant.
How hard can that be to grasp?
As I wrote: I am not trying to engage in social interaction by having this discussion. Jim Moore isn’t my friend or foe, and I’m not trying to do anything about that. I’m trying to discuss hypotheses and evidence – not people.
No – and that’s exactly why he believes we’re all ganging up on him, him personally, and everyone else who proposes any waterside hypothesis. It simply doesn’t occur to him that there are more parsimonious interpretations for the evidence.
Look how it completely threw him that I’m not covering Langdon in slobbery kisses!
I read Elaine Morgan’s books cover to cover, and at the time I believed and accepted every word in it without question. (In fact that book was my first introduction to the concept of unrecognized male privilege – it wasn’t mentioned by name, but when I did encounter it years later it was immediately familiar and understandable because I remembered what I read in Morgan’s books.)
The savannah hypothesis she described therein is indeed a shallow strawman. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a real, far more nuanced, set of hypotheses that other people also refer to as “savannah” hypotheses.
I find Algis’ way of deliberately trying to shoehorn terminology into his preferred brackets, which he has done for quite a number of other terms as well, exceedingly intellectually dishonest.
There is no way in hell’s notated circles that the idea that a climbing primate venturing into water, evolving a shoulder joint for improved swimming and then returning to the trees to coapt that shoulder anatomy for climbing again is more parsimonious than a primate climbing in the trees stayed in the trees and evolved a different shoulder anatomy to climb in a slightly different manner in response to other changes such as body size or alteration of the types of trees it found itself climbing in.
Poor Mr. Kuliukis has been looking at the world through the same pair of narrow goggles for so long that he can no longer remove them. Nor can he acknowledge that there is a big wide world out there that his goggles do not reveal. He is stuck screaming to anyone who will listen that the world consists only of what can be viewed through two small circular tinted portholes; the rest of us look around and can only wonder what the fuck he’s still yelling about.
Wading!
[what about climbing?]
No, no, Wading!
[dude. Climbing.]
oh, ok, Wading&climbing.
[uh…how ’bout just climbing?]
NO MUST HAVE WADING
David: If you do nothing else this year, read Fillers’ “The Upright Ape”. I included a link above. that’s what I’m talking about. Vertebrate paleontologist, eh?
The savannah hypothesis she described therein is indeed a shallow strawman.
What is it like? Man-the-Hunter-type stuff? That wasn’t much of a strawman when she started writing.
I’m doing too much other stuff!
And on the homepage of that site, on the left, just under the photo of the upright chimp, there’s a link to a PLoS paper – you know, published in a peer-reviewed journal. Why didn’t you simply link straight to that? :-) That would have spared me this sight:
“We now understand that vertebrates emerged from invertebrates by a 180 degree flip of the body.”
Uh, no, that’s an old idea, but it simply fails when you look at more than a few model organisms. Yes, vertebrates and vinegar flies determine their dorsal and ventral sides in opposite ways – but octopuses don’t play along, molluscs in general have neither one dorsal (like chordates) nor two ventral (like arthropods and annelids) nor one dorsal and one ventral nerve cord (like enteropneusts), they have four (two ventral, two ventrolateral), and flatworms have been known for easily 100 years now to have eight regularly spaced nerve cords all around the body.
In short, Filler is trying to make a very general point about how evolution works – it’s in the subtitle of his book, too – and one of his centerpiece examples is wrong.
His paper is quite interesting and highlights several similarities between us and the gibbons that are not shared with the other apes. I don’t have time to read this long paper in detail now, though. Anyway, Pierolapithecus is interesting.
Yes, why? I’ve never worked on mammals, though. The closest I’ve come is this.
Oops. Italics instead of blockquote, because Scientific American blogs don’t allow the blockquote tag. :-]
But of course your idea doesn’t fit along any sort of middle ground, because as you carefully avoid saying here your idea is, and I quote you, “this explains all the major phenotypic differences between us and them” (us and them being “humans and chimps/gorillas”).
So you propose a “pretty much 100% terrestrial” hominid — which somehow has a tiny amount of contact with water, a fraction of one percent, causing them to evolve the features of whales, sirenia, and seals. Concerning this fraction of one percent you say “this explains all the major phenotypic differences between us and them” (us and them being “humans and chimps/gorillas”). How is that possible?
It isn’t. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense. The so-called “mild” version is the opposite of mild, it’s actually far more radical than Hardy’s, which didn’t mesh with the facts but at least had a time period that might account for those features.
As I explained to you when you claimed baboons were “up and running” within minutes after birth, there is no middle ground between that kind of dishonest and/or stupid claim/response, and reality.
Although history shows Algis won’t get this, here’s an example: someone says Mister X is a slob, a crook, smells terrible, and steals candy from babies, and that his ideas on this subject are wrong because they don’t fit the facts. Very insulting; not an ad hominem. Then someone says that Prof Y is super smart and has a sterling record in his field but can’t be right on this subject because it’s outside his field. Very compimentary, but it’s an ad hominem.
Science cares not a whit about middle grounds. Science seeks what is true and discards the rest. The truth is no more likely a priori to be in the middle ground than towards any particular extreme.
Now consider the following scenario:
Human ancestors descended from the trees and took up living in partially open ground with collections of trees scattered about, criss-crossed by waterways. They stood up and walked on two legs to get from tree stand to tree stand, climbed the trees, and, when needed, waded across the rivers. As the trees retreated ever further before the progressing savannah, humans became ever more ground dwelling, and started following the great herds of savannah herbivores for scavenging and so forth. One thing that enabled them to do this more readily then their chimpanzee-line cousins was they could walk better bipedally, which, as an ancillary benefit, enabled them to cross rivers, since the large herds frequently crossed rivers. This made it much easier for them to walk long distances and spread far and wide, while their chimp-line cousins remained among the trees, restricted in movements so much that a single river dividing their ancestral territory posed such a barrier to movement that it caused them to speciate into bonobos on one side of that river, and chimpanzees on the other.
Our ancestors’ bipedality, inherited from the distant past, pre-adapted them to walk further on open ground AND wade and cross water barriers, and became a key to their long-term success as a clade. The selection pressure of walking and jogging long distances on open ground sculpted our bodies into our modern human form. The benefits to wading were an ancillary bonus for a minor set of activities that nevertheless proved important and gave our lineage further adaptability in terms of habitat exploitation that further promoted their success.
Well there’s your “middle ground”. And guess what? This scenario is only TRIVIALLY different from the mainstream savannah-based scenarios. In fact it basically IS the mainstream savannah-based scenarios. In no way would it be honest to call such a scenario an “aquatic ape” hypothesis at all. And neither would it be honest to call such a scenario anything to do with “wading” apes either.
Yes. Lots of Man-the-Hunter stuff. But also lots of Man-the-Active-Player-in-Shaping-his-own-Selection-Pressures-while-Woman-Passively-Sat-Around-Evolving-Passively-In-Reaction-to-Man’s-Shenanigans.
And also lots of Man-the-Hunter-Oh-Wait-There’s-Such-A-Thing-As-Woman?-Oh-Yeah-She-Makes-The-Babies-But-There’s-Nothing-Interesting-There-To-Think-About-For-Evolutionary-Explanations-And-BACK-TO-THE-HUNT!
This is something that Algis, and Elaine before him, do not (or refuse to) get. Elaine’s use of savanna hypothesis has two major problems: one is that she consistently conjures up a “arid treeless plain” rather than the view of savanna as a variety of landscapes often with trees. This also works hand in hand with an attempt to claim that paleoanthropology uses the same environmental determinism that the AAT/H uses. This is a mainstay of the AAT/H.
Naturally paleoanthropologists do attempt to describe how hominins came to be able to live on savannas, because they did (and do) do so and so any hypothesis of human evolution has to do that. And how hominins came to be the supreme mammalian environmental generalist. But they are not environmentally deterministic like the AAT/H/WHHE; they are based mostly on food-getting and social interaction as drivers of change during human evolution.
You see, even the Man the Hunter (promoted by another pop dramatist, ironically) stuff wasn’t particularly environmentally deterministic. It dealt with food-getting and social life, and would’ve worked fine in open ground, mosaic savanna, or forest. It didn’t really fit the facts though, which is what sunk it.
I see we aren’t all tired of Elaine Morgan and her lackeys yet, or I’d suggest we could switch to beating up Robert Ardrey for a change of pace.
I was just reading up on swimming strokes, and it was quite clear that most strokes have to be learned—before 1850, it was different strokes for different continents. The strokes that really use the flexibility of the human shoulder were NOT universal (and were considered barbaric by the English when first seen).
Claiming that swimming caused the shoulder to change is silly. Brachiating is much more likely.
Who’s Robert Ardrey?
QFT!
IIRC, Robert Ardrey was one of the early proponents of the so-called “killer ape” theories.
(That would probably be seen by Algis and co. as yet another reason for the AAH. The killer apes had to go to the water’s edge to wash the blood off their hands.)
Re 592… A few, but this is not a popularity contest is it?
I couldn’t care less how many goons there are that think “mockery is good” is the best response to the misnamed, misrepresented so-called “aquatic ape hypothesis”. If I’m outnumbered 100:1 by people who do not show intellectual courage and argue the idea on its terms, rather than misrepresent it like anthro-slur-guy does, it only encourage so me. The fact so many hate the idea but still cannot scramble one, half decent intellectual, honest argument why, between them is very encouraging.
Most encouraging of all is to read PZ Myers and Henry Gee patting each other on their backs about their eight-year-old level sneers. With intellectual opponents like these… Who needs ignorant morons to poke fun at?
Algis Kuliukas
Re 601
Anthro-slur-guy again shows he doesn’t understand population genetics 101.
It is possible because if there was a differential in selection between human and chimp ancestors in, say, swimming (crazy, I know, space apes are more likely right, PZ?) then the basic principles of evolutionary theory will tell you to expect, even in relatively short evolutionary timescales (let alone 7 million years) that there would be a phenotypic difference too.
Jim doesn’t understand basic evolutionary theory. All he understands is how to cherry pick words to distort and discredit.
This is why he can write deliberate slurs like suggesting my ideas (arguing that some slight differential in wading, swimming and diving (at the most ‘aquatic’ at the time of early Homo sapiens) are more extreme than Hardy’s, which argued for swimming for several hours at a stretch for millions of years.
Algis kuliukas
Gee, still nothing but OPINION from AK. And his opinion isn’t worth its weight in water.
An interesting post on TRF at this link, wherein a PhD (screename sfs) whose speciality is precisely what Algis claims to understand (and who has a great many publications and cites to his credit) explains to Algis that his claims are not science.
http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=937737#post937737
This post of mine from there has several quotes from that poster, plus Larry Moran, which point out errors in Algis’ understanding of genetics.
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=1323181#post1323181
Another post from sfs from TRF: http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=912868#post912868
And of course always remember that Algis is the guy who thought that drift was another name for mutation and that tooth wear was an example of epigenetics. And this (bold added):
As I said then, if you assume magic all things are possible.
BTW, when Peez earlier brought up Algis’ equating tooth wear and epigenetics, I don’t think he mentioned Algis’ excuse for that error:
Nope, its a typical major fuckwittery from a loon/crank who is bullshitting about it being minor. Even I know better than AK on that issue.
This is rich coming from Algis, is has more than adequately demonstrated on this thread that he doesn’t even understand the population genetics chapter in Biology 10.
I watched the _Hominiform Progression_ vid at Filler’s website http://www.uprightape.net/Hominiform_Progression.html and enjoyed it. There’s some good video of siamangs and orang-orang utan, if nothing else, and some comparisons with people swinging on rings.
I didn’t read his paper, as it required paying, but I’m willing to consider that the brachiation/bipedalism logic is sound. The siamangs did walk around quite nicely, and I can see gorillas and chimps as descendants of something like a siamang, who lowered its long arms to the ground and lost the bipedal. Humans, when the chimps split off, were forced even more bipedal, and here we are.
Most folks sort of assume we evolved from something like a chimp, but we need to keep in mind that chimps have had as long to change as we have (and even more generations and perhaps more pressure) so the LCA might have been halfway between, at least. And, as far as I know, there’s nothing to keep a critter from losing bipedalism like an ostrich losing flight. Without going in the water like a penguin.
By the way, Wikipedia has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis which pretty much covers this entire discussion, and even has Algis’s name somewhere in the middle. I learn more here, of course.
There’s also a new page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archicebus about a fossil that isn’t relevant to this discussion, but may be of interest as it’s the oldest fossil primate skeleton discovered.
That I believe. I think he also had an article in Scientific American or American Scientist several years ago. Not impressed. Too much “just so”, too little hard evidence. Still the case today, and even worse with the progress of science. Easy to pretend when there is little evidence. Much harder today….
Algis’s purported ancestor. We seem to have lost the rubber skin though, had to buy a replacement..
anthrosciguy,
It is amusing.
Algis: tooth wear is not a phenotypic trait.
(Yours is a major blunder, not a minor technicality)
?
Sure it is.
Chas, well, if it is then I’ve made a major blunder! :)
Re 593…
David, please try not to fall into the common aquaskeptic trap of the binary straw man. All I was pointing out was that you assumed that the mobility of the human shoulder was an inherited trait from some brachiator ancestor and not a derived trait for swimming and diving. There is scope for many intermediates.
In between the “humans never swam” position and the “humans swam for a living” position there is a lot of middle ground.
Similarly, with the early bipeds – you assume that this was exclusively terrestrial (or arboreal) bipedalism, but the dreaded ‘a’ factor, again, is discounted a priori for no better reason that you don’t like it.
Wading-climbing is what all apes do.
Put a gibbon in waist deep water, it’ll move bipedally.
Put a orang utan in waist deep water, it’ll move bipedally.
Put a bonobo in waist deep water, it’ll move bipedally.
Put a chimp in waist deep water, it’ll move bipedally.
Put a gorilla in waist deep water, it’ll move bipedally.
Put a human in waist deep water, it’ll move bipedally.
Doesn’t sound very specialised to me.
Trading off less competition with chimps for more competition with baboons (for food)and savannah predators, doesn’t seem very likely.
It’s a fair point though because, later, coastal habitats would have provided a far better way of doing this of course though.
Convenient. You cherry pick the two ape clades (Hylobates and Pongo, not Pan or Gorilla) furthest away from us, and on that basis consider it “disproved”.
Yes. It’s a work in progress. No I’m not talking off the top of my head, that was you when you wrote “Oh no. It only implies I can look at a skeleton. Try it sometime.”
You seem to be suggesting that simply by looking at a skeleton you could tell if a hominin’s bipedalism had a wading component or not. I notice that you didn’t provide the link to the paper I asked for that showed how such inferences could be made.
Let’s face it, there are hardly any papers in the literature that even mention wading in the context of bipedal origins and the putative anatomy of early hominins.
What evidence, do you think, conflicts with the wading-climbing idea?
Which post did you put “the four links in”? Must have missed it.
Ignoring yet another “idiot and loon” slur, Please note that anthro-“sci”-guy (the guy PZ Myers thinks is wonderful) has a different argument. He argues that environmentalist arguments about human evolution are not correct.
I’d like to hear what you two have to say about that.
David, I am here because PZ Myers wrote another ridiculously ignorant, sneering post about the mislabelled “aquatic ape hypothesis” and I feel compelled to be a critical voice to that and also because I want him to justify his support for anthro-slur-guy’s shoddy web site. I’ve told you this before.
I want to discuss the hypothesis and evidence too, but you cannot pretetend that the opinions of people do not matter to evrybody. To some they are all important. Just a few posts ago someone asked me how many people I’d persuaded about the wading idea. I agree, that it does not matter how many agree/disagree with me. I think the evidence is good and the argument is sound but, clearly, a whole lot more science needs to be done.
That PZ Myers has backed Jim Moore’s (the ex car mechanic, not the real anthroplogist) gossip-fest web site and calls me an idiot/loon/kook is clearly of importance to some people. That you pay lip service to this ignorant tribalism is not encouraging.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 594
On the contrary, I have listened avidly to many of these alternative “explanations” for abour 15 years. I have not heard one that is any good yet, as long as one scales back the selection from mermaid-levels.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 595
Double speak. If Elaine Morgan writes about it, it’s a straw man. If anyone else does, it’s fine.
The material point is that for much of the last century, and earlier, the “open plains hypothesis” pretty much dominated all thinking on human evolution. It still largely does today, despite evidence (e.g. from Ardipithecus) that savannahs probably played little part in the evolution of early hominins.
If, as anthro-slur-guy would have it, some anthropologists never really thought in terms of stark environmental change, then it only begs the question – so why the stark phenotypic changes between humans and chimps?
Algis Kuliukas
Re 596
Note the only way these people can convince themselves is by distorting the arguments. You’d think if these ideas were so bad (as bad as, say, space apes) there’d be no need to twist and exaggerate them. I don’t need to distort creationism, or Von Daniken or Big Foot to argue it’s crap, so why do these people?
Where do you get the “returning to the trees” but from? You just made it up, right?
The idea is this…
Wading-Climbing LCA of all the great apes
Pongo loses the wading – so climbing and quadrupedalism.
Pan loses the wading – so climbing and k-w-ing quadrupedalism.
Gorilla loses the wading – so climbing and k-w-ing quadrupedalism.
Homo loses the climbing, gains some swimming/diving – obligate biped with some swimming/diving abilities.
What’s the mainstream model on this? Is there one?
De rigeur, now, it seems, maybe this….
The idea is this…
Gibbon-like brachiator LCA of all the great apes
Pongo loses the brachiation – so climbing and quadrupedalism.
Pan loses the brachiation – so climbing and k-w-ing quadrupedalism.
Gorilla loses the brachiation – so climbing and k-w-ing quadrupedalism.
Homo loses the brachiation and the climbing – obligate biped.
There’s no difference in parsimony there, as far as I can see.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 597 Nice, sneering post there, Chas, thanks. I love it when you guys revert to type and just act like twelve year olds. It makes me more confident about being right.
If, by this, you mean I keep coming back to the same astonishing, glaring fact that the one scenario in the natural world where any number of great apes will be compelled to move (not just pose momentarily) bipedally (instead of their usual quadrupedalism) for as long as the conditions would prevail, and would actually kill them if they were to try to move quadrupedally – is the one scenario that anthropologists seem to go out of their way to dismiss, then yes, you have a point.
Just when being in a minority starts to make me think I might be wrong about this, I return to the above point and think “nope”, they’re all just doing the “group think sneering” thing.
That you guys always have to misrepresent, exaggerate to breaking point and just generally polarise the argument, even when I have repeatedly stressed the slight selection argument indicates to me that your arguments are exceptionally weak.
The actual dialog I experience goes something like this…
Waterside selection. That’s a wading-climbing origin (river ape) followed by an almost fully terrestrial beach-combing hominin that swims and dives sometimes (coastal people.)
– Hahah! You mean the aquatic ape! Hahaha!
No, no, just a little more wading, swimming and diving than chimps.
– Hahah! That’s just your “PR” position. You mean the aquatic ape really, don’t you?
No, I don’t, I’m just suggesting that even slight selection from a little more wading, swimming and diving in humans than chimps could be responsible for all phenotypic differences we see.
– Hahah! Why must it be only wading! Hahaha!
I’m not saying that. I’m saying bipedalism started with wading-climbing and was later optimised on dry land – ideally flat, firm, vegetation-free land.
– Hahah! Space apes are more likely. It’s all creationism. Mockery is good.
And on and on it goes.
53 years on, PZ Myers & Henry Gee have elloquently demonstrated the intelelcctual response to these idea – it’s none existent.
Algis Kuliukas
Algis Kuliukas
To be clear, that precise scenario is exactly what I’m sneering at. OK? No straw man. Get used to it. It’s actually your ideas–not Morgan’s, not Hardy’s, yours–and your ignorant blinkered persistence in insisting they simply must be true that I find sneer-worthy. OK? Just so you know.
Re 603 You misunderstand my point. I’m not arguing that science should try to find the middle ground, I am suggesting that aquaskeptics, like the group of people that have already formed here, should see that middle ground does exist, instead of always polarising the argument to help dismiss it.
I have repeatedly argued for a wading-climbing LCA, and yet the “climbing” bit is often snipped away to make it look like I’m only arguing for wading. Chas did that very thing just now. I’ve repeatedly argued for a terrestrial Homo with some swimming and diving, but it’s always exaggerated into some “aquatic” ape.
Why do you do that? If the idea’s so bad, why not just point out where it’s wrong on its own terms.
I do agree with you about one thing…
I agree. That is why I think it’s a gross misnomer. They (plural) should be called waterside hypotheses of human evolution.
I have been arguing this for years too, but it’s easier to sneer at the “aquatic ape” so pseudoskeptics just ignore the point and keep sneering.
Algis Kuliukas
Yawn, still no new evidence from AK. And his opinion isn’t and never will be evidence. That comes from citing the peer-reviewed work of others. You know AK, real scientists, not cranks/loons like yourself.
Oh, and AK, your point is that you are a TRUE BELIEVER™ who can’t be wrong, no matter how little evidence your have for your idea. What a loon. Typical of crankism.
Algis, you really do read poorly and write poorly.
Wading
for a living is a specialization, even if all apes wade bipedally
when they have to. (Baboons wade bipedally, too.) You set up your
version of the AAH to claim enough wading to affect evolution, now
you say that proto-humans specializing for wading isn’t a specialization.
And what happens to swimming when you focus on wading? It pops in
and out of your mind like a frolicking dolphin.
Competing with baboons isn’t a deal-breaker. The early bipedals likely
have got their start in Asia, well away from baboons. Even if directly
competing with baboons, bipedalism may have helped them, and been
reinforced—I see a biped harvesting from isolated trees, or from grass
seed-heads, much better than a baboon.
Savannah predators were certainly a factor, but they liked to hunt around
water holes. And water has its own predators and parasites.
Coastal, marginal and littoral life has double the trouble. There are videos
of crocodiles and big cats fighting over the same prey animal, and there
are no videos of people living a wading lifestyle. There are videos of
probiscus monkeys living the life aquatic, and they look like
monkeys (and like Jimmy Durante).
There aren’t any papers mentioning spacships, either.
Wading just isn’t a factor. We’ve all heard of the AAH, but it doesn’t
explain anything. It’s just everything you accuse us of, coming from
you—closemindedness, arrogance, personalities, and cetera.
By the way, there’s a place where a river is a boundary for chimp range.
You might look there for an effect of lack of swimming ability. (You’ll
probaly find that humans walked upstream, or used boats, but it’ll make
your AAH happy.)
Clearly, a whole lot more science would have to be done, but there’s no
reason to do it. You’ve got nothing.
Not to me, it isn’t. I find you kooky on your own merits. You just can’t
imagine anybody reaching conclusions on their own, and you can’t
avoid personalities and name-calling, while snarling about imaginary
slights to you.
You and your own personal problems is all that is going on here. All of
your paranoid imaginings are simply not happening. Reasoning with you
isn’t possible, so PZ suggests mockery—nothing else is going to work.
But I don’t blindly follow PZ.
No, the way she wrote about the savannah hypothesis was a straw man. She set up an imposslble scenario, like saying the little bipeds were Chuck-Norrising jaguars, and she scoffed at that. The blockquote you used says that clearly enough, but you strawmanned it.
No, moving quadrapedally in water is safe in shallow water, is needed for scavenging food off the bottom, leads to swimming more easily than does bipedal wading, and isn’t going to be done if it isn’t safe.
Two paragraphs later, you complain that we “exaggerate to breaking point”.
I can’t keep up with you, and it isn’t because you are right.
We have living brachiators, and we see signs of former brachiation in the long arms of chimps. We have no living waders, and we see the most aquatic of monkeys looking just like monkeys.
Well, damn. I composed in a text window, and I thought I cleared out the double-spacing artifact. Sorry about that.
:-D
…It says Greg Laden is a paleontologist. o_O
“For a living” is shorthand for “often enough for natural selection to kick in”. That is what you propose, right?
By assuming that shoulder mobility increased as an adaptation to climbing, I’m not assuming any additional habitats. You are. All else being equal, parsimony sez your hypothesis loses.
Stop lying. I’ve explained often enough why I think it’s an unparsimonious hypothesis. How much I like it is completely besides the point.
*eyeroll* You say that our ancestors waded often enough for natural selection to kick in, resulting in adaptations that cause us to remain bipedal even outside the water. In other words, you’re saying our ancestors became specialized enough for wading that such adaptations conferred a fitness advantage.
Whether they additionally kept climbing doesn’t change any of that.
I asked what we’d compete with baboons for.
You haven’t answered.
I asked if predation pressure is really higher in the savanna than in the rainforest, let alone waterside environments (which have the added danger of territorial hippos).
You haven’t answered.
That’s because our bipedality is homologous to that of the gibbons.
Also, as I keep mentioning, orang-utans walk bipedally quite a lot (when they walk at all).
OK, I’m shutting up about this topic.
559. You didn’t miss it – you even responded to it. You just did so without following any of the links.
(I apologize again for mentioning “seafood”. I corrected that in 561, a comment you also replied to.)
You just can’t get over it, huh?
I think you are the tribalist here: you want to belong to the tribe of anthropologists, so you try to be xenophobic about the tribe of car mechanics. Hint: it’s not working.
…Many of those interpretations aren’t even 15 years old. Back then, most paleoanthropologists believed we’re descended from knuckle-walkers.
Read that quote again, this time for understanding, and read comments 559, 604 and 606.
Let’s count the steps:
4 is less than 5. Losing the climbing is a single step that logically entails losing the brachiation; it didn’t happen afterwards (or at least there’s no reason to think it did).
Oh, look, a logical fallacy.
Why in the fuck do you jump straight to assuming malicious intent? That’s quite unparsimonious.
It’s snipped away because – see higher up in this comment – it’s often not relevant to a particular argument.
…So why exactly did you think PZ had your hypothesis in mind when he mocked the AAH?
Uh… that would be the origin of apes. Our ancestors, already distinct from those of the chimps, had the savanna move in under them much later, just some 2 to 3 Ma ago, and that clearly happened in Africa.
A good point. See also Oreopithecus standing under trees and reaching up like a ground sloth or chalicothere or homalodothere.
And why be so whiny about ex-car-mechanic Jim Moore’s website URL if it’s a gross misnomer anyway?
We had a little go-round over this last year at TRF, where I tried to explain to Algis just why this didn’t work (he’d picked up on the phrase “non-polarising” and was trying to use it in nearly every post at that time). I gave the example of his “up and running” after birth claim and pointed out that there is no comfy non-polarizing middle ground between fantasies like the claims he made and the facts.
For anyone who wants the background on this particular episode, here’s a post which contains the previous posts and a link.
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=1952306#post1952306
Bottom line is that Algis claimed that if we had lived in savanna environments (he ignored that we know that many of us did) we should be expected to have evolved the same birth strategy as ungulates*. He then danced around this for many weeks claiming he meant something else “up and running” within minutes after birth, at one claiming he was referring to baboons.
The oh-so-comfy non-polarized middle ground does not exist in-between that kind of dishonest and/or stupid claim/response, and reality. Science must exist in reality, not Algis-style fantasies. If Algis really does want a non-polarized discussion he needs to leave the fantasy-world he’s built for himself and enter the world of reality in which science must operate.
* This is an old AAT/H type of claim: Morgan for decades has claimed that if we weren’t semiaquatic we should expect to have abandoned phylogeny and evolved the sweating system of “the wild ass and the camel”, along with other nonsense along those lines.
BTW, on Algis’ constant claim that others are twisting the claims about the AAT/H, let me point out what Hardy and Morgan claimed. (Algis’ claim is not twisted either; everyone is aware that he is talking about less than 1% water contact causing “all the major phenotypic differences between us and them” — them being African apes. This is not a milder view, as he seems to think, but far more radical since it removes selection pressure.)
Morgan claimed “I think that probably [aquatic apes] were about aquatic to the same degree as an otter. So, they would spend large amounts of time in the water but come ashore to sleep and to breed.” Algis has said of this statement: “Quote mining. Congratulations for finding the word combo that best distorts her thinking into what you want her to say.” But the statement was directly from her, while she was being filmed for a television documentary, and there is no way a longtime professional television scriptwriter did not have clearly planned what she wanted to say.
Hardy said we were similar to “Polar bears, otters, beavers, water voles, etc.” although he simultaneously said that he thought of otters “as more aquatic than Man has been”. He also envisioned our ancestors lived “in large colonies, like those of seals or penguins”.
In 1960 Hardy said we had a discreet semiaquatic phase during the then recognized “fossil gap” (“gap of some ten million years, or more”); in 1978, after even the last holdouts had accepted that we and chimps had diverged much later, Hardy doubled his timeframe to “twenty million years or more of living a semi-aquatic life”. He talked about “no more than half” his time in water, and that “I must make it clear that I do not suppose man spent more than perhaps five or six hours in the water at a time.”
The next comment is a cut and paste of a summary of claims by the major AAT/H proponents.
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=848639#post848639
(note: this is not an exhaustive list of the outrageous, contrary to fact claims of these proponents)
Hardy compares us to whales, sirenia, hippos seals, and penguins; with jaws like frogs; living in offshore colonies like seals or penguins for 20 million years or so; says we’re shaped like boats, learned to stand upright on the seabed; made stone tools like knives and spear heads; hunting porpoises; returned to land “after some twenty million years or more of living a semi-aquatic life” spending “perhaps five or six hours in the water at a time”; diving reflex found only in humans and diving animals. Don’t forget that his view of human evolution always included telepathy playing a part, with habits sometimes spread by “telepathic-like means” from a “psychic pool of existence”.
Then comes Morgan with her sweat glands and tears evolving as salt excretion mechanisms despite their inability to excrete hypertonically; hymens as aquatic adaptations; fur seals sweatcool via eccrine glands; humans don’t have salt hunger, humans don’t search for salt when deprived of it (and other false claims about salt); “hypothetical crocodiles”; standing up produces the same bodily “emergency” reaction as surgery, anxiety, a diet deficient in salt, and haemorrhage; our fat is like that of aquatic mammals 9ie. seals, whales, and sirenia… and this is false); rhinos are descended from an aquatic ancestor; all apes and monkeys always walk bipedally when in water; humans “are halfway to being shaped like a fish”; there is a mainstream theory called the savanna theory, there is no mainstream theory (she says both things even though they’re mutually exclusive); academic response to the AAT/H is handled by “diktat” (“Somebody up there is issuing the commandment”).
Then Verhaegen with his “predominantly aquatic” rhinos; “semi-aquatic” mountain beavers; Neanderthal snorkel noses with nostrils on the end (he started off saying the nostrils were on the top of the nose); ear exostoses “only found in populations that dive”; “hairless” male steller’s sea lions; “most-themoregulatorily-sweating mammals besides humans are sea-lions”; robust australopithecines ancestral to gorialls and gracile australopithecines ancestral to humans, chimps, and bonobos; “Thermoactive eccrine sweating is abundant in sealions & humans on land. I have no examples of this in other mammals.”; and most insanely: “When one gradually shifts to drinking small frequent bits of seawater + eating fish, it’s possible to survive for months”. Plus his made-up institutional affliliation.
Then Algis Kuliukas, with claims like these: “the one place apes are pretty much *always* bipedal is in water”, “Extant apes are pretty much 100% bipedal in water”; two-thirds of seals are hairless; genetic drift is another word for mutation; sideways “ice skating” wading in australopithecines (“you’ll agree that the evidence that Lucy might have moved in this way is quite staggering”); his claim that “it favours the AAH” that in “Jane Goodall’s landmark survey of chimp behaviour she ranked moving over wet ground (after or during rain) second in her big three factors to compell bipedalism”; “our lineage has been exposed to a greater degree of selection from wading, swimming and diving than the lineage leading to the African great apes and that this explains all the major phenotypic differences between us and them”.
And the various AAT/H/WHHE proponents comparing themselves to Darwin, Wegener, Copernicus, and Galileo.
Re 628 –
Oh dear, Chas. You got that wrong, big time.
Do you really think that I have been “insisting” that it “must be true”?
How ever did you get that idea? I’ve been arguing about this for about 17 or so years and have made thousands and thousands of posts and I have NEVER EVER written anything like that.
Why do you people have to keep twisting the words of people who argue things you don’t like? It does not show much intelectual courage.
And “ignorant”? From the guy who, when challenged to show how he can describe a single page on Jim’s web site as being “well researched” http://www.aquaticape.org/quotes.html and my critique of it http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/Quotes.htm – he runs away.
PZ? This, is the guy you think I was afarid of engaging in a debate with!?
Just to be clear: I do not “insist” that waterside hypotheses “must be true”. All I would like to see is that the field of science responsible for enlightening humanity about our evolution finally try to get over their ridiculous, ignorant, phobia about the damned “aquatic ape hypothesis” and show some open mindedness about the simple, plausible, evidence-basded and very Darwinian idea that some differential in selection from moving in water might help explain the remarkable phenotypic differences between humans and the other great apes.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 632
Good point.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 634
But, David, humans came down from the trees. We have been close to 100% terrestrial for the best part of 2.5 million years.
Humans do swim and dive better than chimps. I think a more parsimonious (and Darwinian) explanation for that is that is is the result of natural selection rather than a fortuitous exaptation from bipedalism, or encephalisation or some other just-so story.
No-one denies we have a more arboreal past but I put it to you that far more people regularly go swimming today than climb trees. But to even float the idea that this might mean we had a “more aquatic” past too (even one just slightly more, as I argue) then anthropologists get all in a panic and start lashing out irrationally. (“SPACE APE!! SPACE APE!! SPACE APE!! SPACE APE!!)
What’s your problem? Why are you guys all so hydrophobic?
Please let’s not escalate this into an insult-throwing battle. I’m calling your bluff on your pretence of rigour. Parsimony, my arse. I think you just don’t like the idea because none of your peers do.
We have seen the sort of treatment people like PZ, Gee and verbal bullies here dish out to people who are so much as open minded about this idea so it’s no surprise that people who are naturally insecure about their reputation would seek safety in numbers on such matters.
All members of the ape clade wade bipedally in waist-deep water. You can roll your eyes all you like but that is NOT then a specialised behaviour, is it?
Unlike brachiation, knuckle-walking and efficient striding bipedalism.
Arguing for a wading-climbing LCA is therefore more parsimonious than arguing for any one of the extant (specialised) modes of locomotion.
I did: “Food”. What else?
Sorry. Yes, really. There are these things called lions, leopards and hyenas.
Crocs and hippos can’t climb trees. Our ancestors could.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Gibbon bipedalism is very different from ours and seems to be more a result of their specialisation to brachiate. With arms as long as theirs it’s hard to see how they could be quadrupedal even if they tried.
Usually, in cladidistics, we look in the closest clades for homologies. Hylobates-Pongo etc split 18 Ma. Gorila-Pan-Homo ca 7Ma. It seems to be a bit of special pleading to argue that the LCA of all great apes was also a biped (like gibbons) for the time in between and then Pongo, Pan and Gorilla all became quadrupedal.
No, I can’t. I seriously pisses me off that some lay person with a massive chip on his shoulder gets endorsements from people like PZ Myers for misrepresenting people’s work and ideas, whereas people like me, who have tried to do the thing your supposed to do (it’s called science) get called “idiot” “loon” etc.
I’m just pointing out the double standards. Alister Hardy and Elaine Morgan were castigated for not being specialists. Even Sir Richard Attenborough and Dan Dennett’s considered opinions are dismissed because they are not of that unique, mysterious band of people who uniquely understand human evolution, but the nit picking gossip of the unqualified Jim Moore, simply by clinging to Nancy Tanner’s coat tails, is fine and dandy – the “ultimate web resource”.
Some did. Some didn’t. You said that it did not occur to me that there were “more parsimonious” explanations of our bipedality. This wasn’t true. I have avidly read all the latest ideas, as well as all the old ones.
The current de rigeur idea which you back is one of the oldest, actually. Sir Arthur Keith promoted a Hylobatian model early in the last century. That you were not even aware of this makes your lecturing of me on this matter look a little weak, don’t you think?
e.g., see…
Keith, A. Man’s posture: it’s evolution and disorders (1923)
Some “idiot”, eh, PZ?
Woopidoo. Clutching at straws, or what!?
2 is less than 1 too, hence the knuckle-walking LCA idea – which also proved wrong.
Parsimony is a good principle but it does not always prove to be true, as you should know.
All apes move bipedally in waist deep water. It is less specialised than brachiation or any of the other extant forms. Wading-climbing is therefore a more parsimonious starting point.
I didn’t. PZ Myer has never shown the slightest evidence of knowing (or even caring to know) what the latest thinking about waterside hypotheses are. His sneering indicates the kind of knee-jerk, ignorant reaction people have when they hear jokes about the idea in a crowded bar or staff coffee room.
Algis Kuliukas
Flashback to 01-31-2010, Talk Rational Forum:
RAFH: “Have you considered the possibility it’s a shite idea?”
Algis: “Yeah.. I considered it for about 30 seconds in 1995 when I first read one of Elaine Morgan’s book. Since then I’ve thought it’s a great idea.”
Bonus flashback from 2010:
Algis: “It’s all very well playing the “evidence” card. Anyone can do that.”
Those beliefs were and are not dismissed because of who the people were/are or what their training was, but because of what they claimed. What they claimed is not so, so it’s proper that it be not accepted.
What I’ve done on the AAT/H, begun some years after wife died, is obviously not clinging to her coattails (although my decade of researching with her was certainly very good training for my later AAT/H critiquing).
You really need to learn, and accept, the actual meaning of the term ad hominem.
Duh. That’s the point.
Anthro-slur-guy has, for 17 years, been misrepresnting these ideas.
I bet PZ Myers hasn’t even read it. Maybe tiny a fraction, enought to conclude “mockery is good”. Or, if he has, it doesn’t say much about his academic standards if he thinks it’s “the definitive web resource” on the idea.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 643
Note gossip guy’s technique is to regurgislur precious little snippets he’s collected over the years as “proof” of something.
It should only take a rational person, who understands what is being proposed, seconds to dismiss the notion that it is a “shite idea”. This, note, is not at all saying that “it must be true”.
But never mind small matters of logic like that, Jim has a slur to peddle so let’s all stand up and applaud.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 637
The usual gossip.
Jim’s life’s “work” on this idea has been to try to polarise the debate. He has misrepresented practically everyone who’s stated an opinion on it. Most notably, Daniel Dennett, author of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”. Search the web for “anthrosciguy Dennett” and you’ll found countless posts where Jim peddles the idea that Dennett brackets the idea along with creationism and denies his rather clear open minded support of Elaine Morgan’s work. I wrote to Dennett the other week to ask him about this and he told me, quite categorically, that Jim’s peddlings were simply not true.
From Hardy’s work, his web site only cherry picks the worst sounding bits (“penguin colonies” and “frog jaws” and the like) and not his “first and foremost” points – the fact humans swim and dive rather well, certainly as compared to chimps.
There is a lot of middle ground to be sought here, if only people would abandon their tribal hysterics for a minute.
Savannahs contain lots of micro habitats that are wet. Seasonally flooded gallery forests, for example. As conditions got drier, our ancestors would paradoxically have been more dependent on such refugia. Being 100% terrestrial (to the nearest integer) does not mean that we never swam and dived. Even swimming once a week poses a significant threat of drowning and if our ancestors did this more than chimps for a significant period of time we’d expect to see some phenotypic shift from selection.
Take two extremes here.
One is that human ancestors did not swim and dive significantly more than chimp ancestors. If so, one would predict no difference in swimming and diving abilities between the two species. A lot more research needs to be done but the anecdodatal evidence seems to contradict this.
The other is that humans ancestors became aquatic mammals in the past. If so, one would expect to see clear evidence of aquatic traits in the fossil record. We’d expect to see limb reduction, and a definite trend toward vestigiality of weight bearing traits. The evidence so far contradicts this too.
But there is a middle way too. Human ancestors were largely terrestrial like we are now, but swam and dived more than chimps. Here, we’d expect to see an odd collection of traits that are hard to explain otherwise and clear evidence that humans are significantly better at swimming and diving than chimps are. Again, a lot more science needs to be done but so far, this seems to be the closest to the truth.
I predict Jim Moore will ignore this line of argument – as he has for the past 17 years of so, and continue to peddle slurs that my ideas are even more extreme than Hardy’s.
Algis Kuliukas
Wow.
Thank you.
Algis, in your wading scenario, what is the primary purpose of the wading? I mean, out in the ocean, ships are either fishing or transporting—extracting something from the ocean, or just trying to get through it. (The tuna you had for lunch came from the ocean, the computer you are using came over the ocean.)
So are your waders just slogging through the water to get to a flooded tree to climb up, or are they scavenging for snails off the bottom, or harvesting water plants off the surface, or even from reeds overhead? What are they doing in the water, and how do you justify your scenario? Yes, a mix of all is possible, but I’d like something more than just “wading”.
My point here is that chimps are much better suited than we are for scavenging stuff off the bottom of shallow water.
The only wading that humans currently do for a living (to any appreciable extent), is rice cultivation. The transplanting of seedlings`—“rice planting”— is done in water a foot or so deep, and pretty much involves getting the hands down almost to the bottom. It’s done bent over, often with legs spread, and is back-aching work.
Fortunately the bottom is soft and the rice seedlings are stiff, so it doesn’t have to be done quite as far down as it could be, but it isn’t easy for people to do. Chimps, on the other hand, would find it a doddle.
Chimp hands are already on the ground. Hell, their knuckles are on the ground, they could extend a finger into the mud and nestle the seedling into the hole, without even blinking.
Chimp back feet would also have it a bit easier in the soft muck, with their spreadable toe/fingers and sensitivity.
Now, you could move the chimps over to snail-harvesting, or clambering around on a rock bottom, or grubbing for oysters, and they’d still be doing better than humans. Unless the water is deep, or fast, or the travel is fast, chimps are better suited to it than humans. (I’ve been in many a water/wading situation, and I’d go chimp in most of them.)
Algis, you need to specify what the water-work is, and then show evidence for it. Just saying that humans are better is not sufficient.
*checks evidence net for anything to back up AK’s idea. Sees nothing as opinion is nothing.*
This false dichotomy is part and parcel of the AAT/H, and Algis certainly continues the tradition. By doing so, the proponents suggest that any use of water is evidence for their overall idea. (For instance, I’ve mentioned above that Algis has said that Jane Goodall’s observation that chimps at Gombe often walked bipedally on wet ground after a rain is strong evidence for the AAT/H.) But the AAT/H isn’t just some water use; it’s that water use to some degree (often vague and shifting) spurred convergent evolution and left us with features seen only in cetaceans, pinnipeds, and sirenia (and hippos)… the features seen in humans (and often those other animals) are generally inaccurately described as well, making for a huge GIGO problem. In fact I’ve described the AAT/H as a GIGO machine, which I think is quite accurate if you’ve looked at the history of the proponents’ argumentation.
This middle ground is trivial, and already acknowledged and a part of existing savannah based theories. In fact it is a truism. A terrestrial mammal on the savannah that travels long distances over that savannah MUST swim and dive more often than a forest-bound mammal living in the trees. That small degree of water use however offers little in the way of pervasive selection pressure and fails to provide any form of parsimonious explanation for anything. If you walk back your assertions all the way here, Algis, then you have given up on the AAH, even if you refuse to accept that reality.
The fact that you think this is “cherry picking” is just another demonstration that you don’t comprehend the first thing about how evolutionary theory works on its most fundamental level.
Truly you are pathetic Algis. Now it appears we can add “straw man” to “ad hominem” and the rest of the basic evolutionary concepts you simply do not understand.
WHAT Morgan wrote was the straw man, you pitiful ignoramous (and truly, you are rankly pitiful right now). Other people have written DIFFERENT THINGS that are not straw men, but they just happen to have used the same words as a name for what they wrote.
Labels aren’t magic. And that applies to your juvenile perseveration over “waterside” vs “aquatic”.
It. don’t. matter. what. you. call. it. Algis.
Your. problem. is. that. your. idea. STINKS.
It is unparsimonious.
It is unnecessary.
It is based upon false assumptions.
It is inconsistent with established evidence that WE ALREADY HAVE.
Algis, I’d not call orangs quadrupedal. They mostly stay up in trees, and while in trees sometimes walk bipedally on branches, with hands for stabilization. They do seem to more quadrupedal than bipedal on the ground, but do go bipedal fairly often. I’d call them arboreal, rather than name them for a ground gait.They look to me like brachiators who got too heavy.
Chimps and gorillas I’d call quadrupeds, and say they live mostly on the ground. But even they look like brachiators gone bad.
So two out of four of the apes are quadrupeds. I have no trouble with that.
Algis, when you say “swimming and diving”, what do you mean? Some folks say they are swimming when they are sloshing about in a pool, and diving can mean leaping into water from a height, or just swimming down to the bottom.
Chimps are dense, strong little bastards, and really can’t float. We humans, as best I can tell, have slow and steady muscles (that came from the savannah life) and are less dense. We are also, most of us, packing some fat.
I argue that our swimming abilities came AFTER the savannah made us soft-muscled and well-fed.
Orangutans have been trained to swim a bit, and even observed to do so in the wild—really swimming across a river. I could argue that swimming is so un-natural for all us primates that only humans can learn how to do it well. Only we have the brains to do the moves and work the breath, and even we suck at it.
Yay, let’s play Mad-Libs!
Humans do _verb_ and _verb_ better than chimps.
We are Lipid.
Hear us roar.
Dude. You’re bluffing.
quoted for the record.
Begging The Question for $1000, Alex.
Re 644:
What Jim means here is that he has managed to find a couple of minor points that they made which, with the benefit of hindight, might have been false. Anyone (apart from Jim Moore, it seems) is capable of making mistakes.
The material point of what they claimed – that there are a set of remarkable phenotypic differences betwween humans and chimps that are consistent with a “more aquatic” past – is exactly so.
This is why Jim Moore’s web site fails to even mention the most significant fact of the whole debate. Yes, that’s right, PZ. Imagine that. The most pertinent fact in the whole issue of the “aquatic ape theory” and the “definitive web resource” on the subject doesn’t even mention it.
Humans swim and dive BETTER than chimps.
This is why Jim’s nit picking somehow manage to miss Hardy’s “first and foremost” point. Lot’s of stuff that, when taken out of context, and given the once over by Jim’s special presentation techniques, sound a bit crazy, but not the esssentials.
Some web resource this!
Algis Kuliukas
Re 644:
followed immediately by…
In other words: “I’d like people to think that I’m not clinging to her coattails, but I am really.”
Surprising, Jim. I don’t remember any cherry-picked, out-of-context gossip in Nancy’s work, whereas that’s pretty much all your “critiquing” has been for the last 17 years.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 655:
Chas, thanks for your encoragement. PZ had you lined up as some big intellectual foe I was supposed to get my arse kicked by.
The reality is you’re nothing of the sort. Easy-peasy. That’s really encouraging. The more I dig into this, the more I find that so-called experts have nothing significant to say on the matter.
Gosh. That’s a new one. Never heard that one before.
But please, before rattling off the usual “we can climb mountains better than chimps” “we can play the trombone better than chimps” etc let’s try to think about doing stuff without technology and from the earliest ages. Infants can learn to swim before they learn to walk.
We are not talking here about wierd things cultural modern humans can do, we’re talking about how well we move compared to chimps in one of only three substrates possible – the one you’re not supposed to consider, otherwise you get labelled an “idiot”.
The rest is not worth bothing about.
Come on, Chas. I’m sure you can do better than this.
How about reading Jim’s (shock horror) Can “AAT Research be Trusted?” page, and then reading my critique of it, and tell me – knowing that your scientific reputation might be at stake – why you think Jim Moore’s research is better than mine.
Or, you could just keep evading the point and hope nobody has noticed…
Algis Kuliukas
Algis does not like it that Jim Moore is better at science. It makes him very angry!
So angry that he will draw a thread out to a month long, because how dare the mechanic have a better understanding of the subject than Algis. It’s almost as if all those years of school were a compleat waste of time and money.
Re : 651
The “aquatic ape hypothesis” is a misnomer. It’s not suggesting our ancestors were “aquatic” in any real sense. My understanding was that the term Desmond Morris coined was somewhat ironic – of the apes (of which we know are most definitely not aquatic) we are the most aquatic.
It’s not exclusively pre-Homo, so “ape” is not appropriate.
And it’s not one idea, but several – hence “Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution” (plural) is better, in my view.
In that sense, I have given up on the “AAT”, yes.
But, there is a clear difference between what I’m suggesting and what you say is “trivial”.
“Waterside hypotheses of human evolution assert that selection from wading, swimming and diving and procurement of food from aquatic habitats have significantly affected the evolution of the lineage leading to Homo sapiens as distinct from that leading to Pan.” (Kuliukas & Morgan 2011:118)
Kuliukas, A., Morgan, E. (2011). Aquatic scenarios in the thinking on human evolution: What are they and how do they compare?. In: Vaneechoutte, M., Verhaegen, M., Kuliukas, A. (eds.), (2011). Was Man More Aquatic in the Past? (eBook). Blackwell Science (Basel)
You say …
… but I dispute it. Even slight levels of selection can, and do, cause significant phenotypic changes in short evolutionary timescales.
Some selection from wading, swimming and diving, potentially explains all the major phenotypic differences between humans and chimps/gorillas.
Algis Kuliukas
There are also differences that are consistent with a “running” past, a “space” past and a “gay San Francisco hairdresser” past.
Algis, you keep addressing snarkasms toward PZ. I’m pretty sure he isn’t reading this, and would not care what you said care if he did. You just sound egomaniacal and bitterly twisted.
And to other people …
And you have heard it so damn many times before because it is true, and you don’t listen.
They have to be taught, and they don’t swim well. Have you tried teaching baby chimps to swim? Can you really say we swim better? (By the way, I understand that baby seals or sea lions have to learn to swim, so there’s “instinctive” oot the windae.)
We run distances better than chimps. We walk distances better than chimps. We dance better than chimps. We do karate better than chimps. We suck at wrestling and biting, compared to chimps. And we really don’t know that we swim better than chimps—we float better because we are spongy and fat, and that’s all we can say. As for scoffing at “cultural”, you just can’t—we are cultural, and so are chimps—and swimming is cultural.
No, that’s not the reason for the label.
Re 653
Yes, adding the full stops there really makes the point. Thanks.
Trouble is, your “justification” for that opinion doesn’t add up.
Most waterside hypotheses are parsimonious. For example, what’s the most parsimonious explanation for why we swim better than chimps?
Is it a) because our ancestors were exposed to more selection from swimming than theirs or, b) because of an exaptation from something else, like bipedalism?
If it’s unnecessary, how do you explain the suit of traits that WHHE explain? You can’t. Saying it’s unnecessary is just saying “we don’t know is fine”. It might well be fine, but why reject a perfectly plausible potential model just because a whole field got the wrong end of the stick on the idea from day one?
What false assumptions?
How is it inconsistent with established evidence that we already have?
Algis Kuliukas
PS
Please, do you have to do the “you don’t understand x, y, z” slur? I have a masters degree in human evolution (passed with distinction) am doing a PhD and tute human biology to 1st year university. I make mistakes but, honestly, peddling slurs like this is truly pathetic. Who are you, and what are your qualifications to lecture me on all this anyway?
Re 654
Why are you so sure that our “slow and steady” muscles “came from the savannah” and that our fat is a recent phenemon of over-eating?
Isn’t it just as likely as the density difference between humans and chimps is due to some selection from swimming?
Algis Kuliukas
Re 661
Daft point. See, a “space past” and a “gay San Francisco hairdresser” past are silly, ridiculous, implausible examples. I personally have no problem with Lieberman’s ER hypothesis, so you cannot accuse me of being inconsistent about running, whereas I can accuse the mainstream of that.
Seriously, why do people sneer so much about the idea that humans might have waded, swam and dived more than chimps since the LCA? Do you? If not, what’s you’re problem with this idea?
Yes, because it’s his blog and he has made the most ridiculously ignorant sneering posts against a perfectly plausible idea. He also gave uncritical support of a shit web site that any academic should want to disown.
On the contrary, I do listen, very carefully. The first person to make this point against me was Mark Collard, my tutor at UCL. It was a silly point then and it’s a silly point now.
Infants can learn to swim before they learn to walk. This cannot be placed in the ssame bracket as playing the trombone etc.
Of all the billions of permutation comparing how well two species move in a given substrate, where there is a significant difference, the only one where natural selection would not be offered as the obvious explaination straight away is where humans and chimps are being compared in water.
Humans, chimps, trees – chimps are better due to n.s.
Humans, chimps, dry land – humans are better due to n.s.
Pick any other combo…
Pigs, monkeys, trees – monkeys are better due to n.s.
Whales, squirrels, water – whales are better due to n.s.
etc etc.
Try this…
Humans, chimps, water – and all of a sudden, the rules change. Anything can be considered here APART FROM NATURAL SELECTION.
It just can’t be, right? I mean, that’s CRAZY. SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!!
Good question, and thanks for admitting that even true aquatics have to learn. Clearly more (well some) proper research needs to be done, but I think the anecdotal evidence is pretty clear.
Observed incidents of swimming in humans – billions, chimps – a handful at most.
Observed incidents of infant swimming in humans – thousands, zero in chimps.
Swimming > 3km in humans – thousands, meanwhile the river Congo has been an
adequate geographical barrier to seperate the three great ape species for 3Ma.
Diving incidents > 5m depth in humans – thousands , chimps zero.
Who was scoffing? Not me. Even walking requires learning. I’m just making the point that the argument we can do x better than chimps, where x is yet another of the millions of things human culture and technology has enabled us to do completely misses the point.
There are three possible substrates our ancestors might have moved through.
JUST THREE. This is assuming we never flew and we never started burrowing underground.
Of the three why do you think it’s justifiable to completely reject one of them a priori, and concentrate on the other two?
Why ignore water when it is clear to everyone that the big ecological thing that happenned in Africa since the Miocene involves that very stuff? Seasonally flooded gallery forest habitats were clearly a key micro niche in human evolution.
Algis Kuliukas
Oh! Oh! Can I try? Let’s do this combination for size:
– Pigs, squirrels, water.
If pigs swim better than squirrels (or the opposite) it must be because one of them was specifically adapted to traverse water! It makes perfect sense!
Or maybe you didn’t think this through. Humans don’t necessarily swim better than chimps because we suffered selection pressure to swim. Maybe we just happen to float better and have more mobile shoulders for different reasons, which incidentally made us better suited to swimming than our closest cousins. Mind you, we might swim better than other primates, but we still suck compared to basically anything that actually lives in the water.
Re 665 – See that? “specifically adapted” is a misrepresentation of the argument, all I’m suggesting is just that some natural selection is usually used to explain the difference, if there is one.
Yes, maybe. Maybe we swim better because we’re bipedal. Maybe we swim better because we have more intelligence. Maybe we swim better because we’re fatter. Maybe we swim better because we have mobile shoulders from brachiation. Maybe we swim better because we fart so much.
Who knows why, or cares? The one key message is clear: It CAN’T be due to natural selection, coz that’s crazy! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!! SPACE APES!!
Of course we suck compared to anything that actually lives in the water – because we don’t live in the water and nobody ever suggested we ever did. The idea is we swim better than chimps so… (I know it’s so scary anthropologists will be twitching and starting to fit now) so… MAYBE our ancestors were exposed to selection from swimming and diving more than they were
As always, deny and distort to discredit, is the mantra of aquaskeptics.
Why do these people hate the idea so much? It’s truly bizare.
Algis Kuliukas
NS! NS! NS!
I wonder if I can prevail upon you to haul out your copy (you said you’d bought and read it, right?) of The Upright Ape? It isn’t necessary to read the whole thing (Jeez, think of the attention span you’d have to muster) –just the last chapter. That last chapter is called “The Four Great Hominiforms”. Can you guess what it covers? Oh, I know you’ve read it so you know what it covers, right?
Now go back and read your last post.
EVEN YOU should be able to see how stupid your argument has become. EVEN YOU, Algis.
Eversbanes’ AHA moment is coming for you. That very scientific moment when you look in the mirror and say “Gee, look how wrong I was!”
We’ll let DM stumble around for awhile yet. He saw the word “octopus” and ran away laughing. But you and me, Buddy, we’re ahead of the game ‘cuz we’ve read Filler, right? Right?
AK’s evidenceless arguments don’t hold water, never did. What a drip.
That’s not what happened.
Those goggles you’re wearing–they distort your perceptions.
In the first place, I had to actually LOL at the notion that my scientific reputation might hinge on a blog comment in which I express an opinion about two personal pages on the inernet, neither of which has jack shit to do with science. Scientific reputations don’t work that way, man, and the fact that you don’t realize that is one reason why you come off as a crackpot.
So but anyway I took your little challenge and frankly it was senseless; I can’t judge the quality of his research or yours from a webpage that discusses a webpage that discusses a pop-science book. If it helps, I agree with you that Moore’s page is highly selective and that some of the examples are trivial errors; because its purpose could be interpreted as well-poisoning it’s not something I would choose to include if it was my website. Your response, on the other hand, once again presents you as a crank. The tone is belligerent. It seems excessive and obsessive, with every detail made explicit and a wordcount that dwarfs the page to which you are responding. It’s laced with appeals to authority and special pleading.
OK? You asked.
And what exactly is it that you think is “the point”? (Please spell it out so that folks can decide whether I’ve been evading it or not.)
I’m not sneering at that idea.
My-are problem with your waterside-evolution scenario is with this part:
…and with this part:
…because although the ideas are sort of interesting, they are a) not supported by any of the available evidence and b) therefore unnecessary because all of the available evidence is better explained by competing hypotheses.
OK? *shrug*
Um.
Isn’t that exactly what the original aquatic ape hypothesis posited?
I think you need a new phrasing and acronym for your far more limited idea.
How about the Adaptive WAter-Side Hypothesis?
It’s not AAH; it’s AWASH.
Or maybe:
Ape Wading Verticality Adaption Synapomorphic Theory
AWVAST, landlubbers!
No, baby seals, sea lions, or otters (as Hardy claimed) don’t really have to taught to swim. The ” teaching” people sometimes talk about consists of being nudged into water and kept there. They, like virtually all mammals it seems, swim instinctively. Exceptions are humans, African apes, giraffes, and of course adult hippos are incapable ( but I would assume the infants do so instinctively) . Jan Wind looked at the reasons for this, why humans and African apes are out of this particular loop compared to other primates and other mammals, and determined that its a consequence of our respective primary modes of locomotion. The instinctive swimming moves all mammals use (even kangaroos use the dog paddle even though its quite different from the way they normally use their legs) don’t work we’ll for either our bottom heavy upright style or African apes top heavy quadrupedal bodies. The instinctive swimming stroke mammals use tends to drive us under water, unlike most mammals. Luckily for us this problem is easier to overcome than it is for African apes, since in our style our heads are at least closer to the surface. All of this, however, including the difference between us and African apes, is a side effect of our locomotion rather than an adaptation for swimming.
Chas, I appreciate your reply. Thanks.
Well I’m glad you’re so confident that whatever you write here publicly will not have any impact on your reputation.
Both Jim Moore’s web site – and my critique of it – should have “jack shit” to do with human evolution, I would agree, but unfortunately, so sparse is the peer-reviewed scientific literature on the subject, I fear many undergraduates are finding, or being directed to, his web site, reading endorsements like those from PZ Myers, and are trusting his word on that basis. I was, by Leslie Aiello, at UCL.
Fair enough, but you did say earlier that you thought his web site was better researched than mine. On what basis did you make that assessment? How much of his web site did you actually critically read, and how much of it did you then look at my critique for a comparison?
I’m frankly skeptical that you could have come up with the conclusion you did if you gave it much more than a perfunctory glance.
Thank you.
Is it more “cranky” to obsessively try to twist a missing ellipsis into a seedy slur of some kind of malpractice, or to carefully expose that gross misrepresentation? Ditto the other three on that page. Ditto the rest of the web site.
My tone is was not belligerent when I wrote my critique. I actually gave Moore some credit, whereas he has never given one hint of any to Elaine Morgan.
I admit I have become belligerent since. I despise the way this guy, simply by hanging on the coattails of a respected anthropologist, supplying dirt and gossip to scientists looking to have their biases confirmed – and doing no science or academic work of his own, has been given so much uncritical acclaim, whereas I, and people like me, have tried to do the right thing, returned to university with an open mind, got academic qualifications and done some proper science to look into these ideas for the first time, presented them at scientific conferences and had them published, get treated like pseudoscientific cranks.
Anyway, I understand your desire to appear balanced and fair here.
Well as you have just, finally, given some fair (and rare) criticism of one of Jim’s pages and my critique of it, I can no longer say that you have been evading it.
I really don’t know how you can say that.
* Humans do swim and dive better than chimps. You couldn’t wish for a better piece of pertinent evidence than that if it was a Hollywood script.
* Thousands of fossils, attributed to ancestors of Homo have been found near paleolakes and lacustrine dominated habitats, compared to a tiny few attributed chimps.
* We have a peculiar set of traits that are all consistent, and more importantly, none that are contradictory to, a more waterside life.
As a scientist, would you not, at least, agree that more science needs to be done here?
… or that.
I have carefullly evaluated all the 30+ models of hominin bipedal origins and the wading hypothesis, by any rational objective measure, is as good as any of them, and far better than most.
I suspect that if each and every human-chimp difference was looked at in this way and for each, the competeting mainstream explanation(s) were evaluated against waterside ones, you’d find a similar pattern.
Even John Langdon’s “AAH critique” found 6 out of 26 traits “consistent with AAT” and he was evaluating a rather exaggerated form of the idea.
If practically no science has been done to evaluate these ideas rationally (and it hasn’t, by the way) on what basis do you make such bold claims? Coffee room sneering, right?
Algis Kuliukas
Re 670
No. At least not in my, and some waterside proponents, opinions.
Morgan can be criticised, in my view, for not labelling the idea more accurately or for trying to define what it (they) actually are.
Unfortunately, we are left with a herd of cats all arguing about what it is, when it happenned, where and how much?
It drives me up the wall, but I guess that’s human nature for you.
What I think all of “us” agree with though is the form of words I’ve repeated here already a few times such as here.
That’s really not too bad!
Actually, the label I have suggested (without a great amount of success, I admit) is
Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution (WHHE)
Waterside, not ‘aquatic’ because the term is loaded. I think it was only meant as an ironic term but that irony clearly has gone over many people’s heads. I agree humans are 100% terrestrial (to the nearest integer) and probably always were. But even if we were only 0.49% aquatic at most, that still leaves plenty of scope for some swimming and diving – easily enought for some selection to shape the phenotype.
Human Evolution not “apes” because the idea is not exclusively pre Homo.
and
Plural Hypotheses because there are several, not one, related ideas.
I call my own, specific model “River Apes … Coastal People but there are severl others.
Algis Kuliukas
Crankdom like AK shows comes when one lets an idea and your ego get ahead of the evidence in science. There really isn’t any evidence for AK’s idea, so it doesn’t even reach hypothesis state.
The idea becomes a monomania, where the crank pester one and all about the idea, but not in the right way. His continued presence here is prima facie evidence that his efforts are misplace. The “NO SALE” signs have been up ever since he couldn’t show the proper evidence. Nobody will accept his word for anything other than bullshit at this point. His efforts here are wasted time he could use in the field to find the evidence to support his idea.
AK needs to convince scientists, which means he should stick to publishing in the peer reviewed literature, and he should be doing field work to support his idea. Otherwise, he isn’t doing science, he is being a crank.
AK also seriously needs to ask himself “why can’t I give up this idea?”. Science is evidence based, not idea based. His idea is worthless without anything to back it up. His continuous goalpost shifting is a sign he knows he has nothing, other than the honesty and integrity to admit the idea, while appealing to him, is probably wrong, and maybe he should let it go for a while and see what develops as far as the evidence is concerned.
But his ego is too big to acknowledge he could be wrong. He mouths the words, but doesn’t back up those words with actions, showing his lack of character. His continued temper tantrums about being refuted are another sign of crankdom and overly big ego. His crank score was 20/20. His scientist score was 0/5. He needs to reverse that, where the crank score is a low percentage, and he is 5/5 on being a scientist. I’m not holding my breathe. His idea doesn’t hold water, and his ego is inflated beyond all reason.
AK: “I call my own, specific model “River Apes … Coastal People but there are severl others.”
I always thought you should call it ~ Coastal-Riverside Aquatic People. ;)
This is a repeated claim from Algis, but it’s false. (He’s also varied on the numbers here, for whatever reason: sometimes he says 7, sometimes 6.) I’ve explained this in a post at TRF (link below), where I pointed out “Algis understands this as Langdon saying this is what Langdon believes to be so. But Langdon actually says in his intro to Table 1 that these are the arguments given for the AAH, not what he himself believes to be so, and elsewhere he has already outlined why these arguments fall down.”
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=1490396#post1490396
Remember earlier in the thread when I commented that a version of a wading hypothesis was not an AAH?
Remember how vociferously Algis complained about that?
Now listen to him babbling about how his ideas are a “waterside” hypothesis, and NOT an AAH?
What a pathetic hypocrite he is.
Here you are, lying again Algis. Putting false words into everyone else’s mouth.
Man, you are pathetic in your intellectual dishonesty.
No one is sneering at that idea. That “idea” is a trivial truism that is already de facto included in the mainstream savannah based hypotheses. ANY animal that lives on an open savannah and travels long distances over it HAS to wade, swim and dive more than an animal that lives in dense, wet forests, simply because the first lifestyle requires the usage of rivers and lakes as water sources and the crossing of those rivers in migrations, whereas an animal living in a dense, wet forested environment can get all its water needs satisfied within the trees.
What people dispute is that this trivial truism has selective significance to the SPECIFIC traits you are claiming it to have.
And the existing fossil record ALREADY clearly says no.
Your idea stinks, Algis.
Live with the reality.
WTF? How could it possibly be “ironic” in any sense of that word? If Morgan didn’t mean “aquatic”, it was just incompetent of her to use that term.
I wrote “original” specifically to distinguish from what you were writing.
I thought the whole point of talking up the infant diving reflex was to argue that human ancestors were not just part-time water-waders, but actually living in water for a long enough time that they were giving birth in water as well.
Another acronym from my personal generator:
Altered Lumbar Loading Wading Evolutionary Theory
Cut and pasted (in other words, Algis knows this but pretends not to, or rather, it’s blocked by his Morton’s Demon):
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=1148218#post1148218
Algis apparently has a huge animus toward whoever foisted the name “aquatic ape” on the world; a name he claims is “ironic”. He’s said “It was meant to be ironic – of the ape clade (which we know are very much not aquatic) we are the most aquatic.”
How that’s “ironic” rather than “descriptive” seems elusive. It seems to me that it was intended to be a descriptive but not perfectly literal name. BTW, this insistence on literalness is another of the ways in which Algis argues (and thinks?) like a creationist. Back in the early 1990s days, when my online discussions were partly internet and partly the various BBSes and nets around, I went into this with a creationist on FIDONET who was using the scientific name of Australopithecus africanus literally (“see, the name says it’s an ape!”) and my post described the practice of scientific names being non-literal descriptive names (cougar, Felis concolor; giraffe, Giraffa camelopardalis; etc.).
And where did this “aquatic ape” name come from?
Hardy certainly got the ball rolling. His 1960 article started with an explanation of his talk and its title which Hardy said he selected: “Aquatic Man: Past, Present and Future”. He continued with “I ventured to suggest a new hypothesis of Man’s origins from more aquatic apelike ancestors…” and “Then, in time, I see him becoming more and more of an aquatic animal going further out from the shore…”. He described his idea dawning on him as he was watching a seal being skinned this way: “at once I thought perhaps Man had been aquatic too.” He also used the phrase “aquatic past” several times when describing his idea, and talked about us being adapted “for aquatic life”. Clearly these pointed the way toward the use of this term, especially, I would say, when he wrote the phrase referring to our supposed “aquatic apelike ancestors”.
In his radio talk, the text of which was published that same year (1960, that is), he used the phrase “semi-aquatic” or “partly aquatic”.
(He also titled his 1977 Zenith article “Was there a Homo aquaticus?” and used the name Homo aquaticus four times and also the phrase “semi-aquatic” several times.)
Desmond Morris, who Algis inaccurately says originated the phrase “aquatic ape” (and apparently then forced it on everybody else, including Hardy retroactively), used that phrase once, in his book The Naked Ape.
Then came Elaine Morgan, who used the phrase repeatedly for decades, in six books (and as the title of two of those books) and numerous articles, talks, and interviews, right up to her TED Talk last year.
So if Algis wants to complain about the name, he should direct his sputtering rage toward the person who started the ball rolling that way — Alister Hardy — and especially the person most responsible: Elaine Morgan. Desmond Morris used the phrase once — as many times as Hardy did. Morgan used it over and over for decades, even as the titles of books and articles.
Certainly she didn’t need to; she wasn’t forced to, she did so willingly, so Algis has some wild and weird hate-on for her in this matter, or would if he honestly faced the implications of what he’s saying. Since he feels he can’t deal with that rage honestly, he directs it elsewhere.
I am not “so sure”. Why do you keep trying to make it sound like everybody but you has some sort of blind fixation?
Not equally likely, no. Just because there are two possible scenarios doesn’t mean they are both equally probable—a lot of people think that. If nothing else, the surface area of savannah is much greater than the surface area of wading-depth water—there’s more environment.
And, seriously, we have high-arched feet with heels, we don’t have swim fins, we have sweat glands that work best in dry climates, we can’t see through the water’s surface well, we hate water up our noses, we can go for years without bathing, we get all pruney in water ….
Now, as I have said earlier, chimpanzees have evolved as much as we have since the last common ancestor. I see them as having lapsed from a long-armed former-brachiator biped, and gone to scuttling through the undergrowth. You want to account for ALL the differences between us and them by OUR changing, and you want all those changes due to swimming. Or wading. Or whatever you think at the moment.
Frankly, most of my problem right now is with you. You’ve made this discussion into a mental circus.
And one of the things you’ve done is back off further and further from the original Aquatic Ape. Notice in the above quote that you say “… humans might have waded, swam and dived more than chimps since the LCA”. Hell, everybody knows that humans HAVE waded, swam and dived more than chimps, or at least that such is the case in the present day, and it is reasonable to assume that such a pattern, even if only valid for the past five thousand years, adds up to MORE than chimps did.
So yay, you finally touch reality. But you haven’t shown that it makes a difference, and you haven’t really defined your terms. You don’t have a case.
Look, I know that the Pacific Ocean islands were settled by boat people, and think that some of the first Native Americans arrived by boat, and that the first Australians arrived by water, and even that early people went East from Africa over water. I’ll say that most of those folks knew how to swim, even (though not necessarily the case). I’ll even show you oyster-shell middens all over the damn world.
Humans have done more in, on and with water than chimps have. But that doesn’t make them aquatic, or that aquatic life has re-shaped them.
There was a guy making the case that proto-humans developed by throwing rocks. People throw rocks more than chimps do. See, that’s as good a case as yours. (By the way, when I get near water, I throw rocks.)
This brings to mind the “historical Jesus” argument. Yes, there certainly was a Jew named Jesus, about then, but that doesn’t make him the son of God. Yes, we wade more than chimps, but that doesn’t make it a major factor in our evolution.
Yes, Algis, our relative-to-chimps affinity for water has surely affected us in some ways. It has, for instance, fed South Asians with rice and fish, making the world human population just a little bit more South-Asian than it would otherwise be.
If you want to make a more precise case, Algis, you need to make it, and to stop raving about.
I’m just going to let that one steam.
Algis Kuliukas, many times:
PZ, once:
Forget the space apes! This is how to make me laugh! :-D :-D :-D
Whoa. Mountain beavers (Aplodontia) are neither beavers nor remotely semiaquatic. Was he misled by the name?
…Wow. That’s outright kookery. Tell us more about that!
Perhaps from statements such as this in the same comment (640)?:
You know, this sounds like insisting your hypothesis is not just true, but obviously true, so much so that any opposition to it can’t possibly be scientific – oh no, the opponents have to be clinically insane, it must be a phobia. (Splash damage to people with actual phobias, whose conditions you use to score a cheap rhetorical point, be damned.)
Have you never noticed how this makes you sound!?!?!
…So? What are you trying to say? Should we have lost shoulder mobility?
Do we have any potential adaptations, any heritable phenotypic traits, that are good for swimming or diving and that chimps lack?
I can’t think of any. But my imagination is limited, so please tell me which traits you are thinking of.
That’s an incredible insult at least on par with me saying you’re lying. “Please let’s not escalate this into an insult-throwing battle”? Work on your sarcasm!
I counted the steps out for you! Why don’t you reply to that!
My peers? Fuck ’em! Have a short look at my papers, and you’ll find I agree with a phylogenetic hypothesis on the origin of the modern amphibians that only 2 or 3 other people in the world agree with, against at least a dozen who think one particular alternative fits the facts better – and those are the people who write the textbooks and the review papers except the one by me + coauthor.
Being a scientist, I don’t care what my peers conclude. I care what facts they find and how they arrive at conclusions.
Stop trying to make this about people. I’m not “people like” anybody else, and I don’t pretend that you are either.
Talk about evidence and parsimony, you know, like a scientist.
*blink*
Who would that be?
PZ, who has a job he likes and has an extremely popular blog?
Gee, who used to be the editor of fucking Nature?
Chas, who has published plenty of neat work?
Oh, me? My first paper alone has been cited over 100 times now, and when I applied for a Humboldt Foundation grant for the maximum duration, I got it. Do you really believe commenting on something outside my narrow field for weeks raises my reputation among colleagues or potential employers? If anything, I’m running the risk of being seen as a procrastinator.
(I don’t care, because you’re still wrong. :-) )
…No. That’s not how it works. It does not follow that the MRCA of humans and anything else waded for a living. I think we attach different connotations to the word “specialised”.
So? What do baboons eat, and how do they get it?
(Chimpanzees eat baboons on occasion, BTW.)
Leopards occur in rainforests just as well. And do remember that the Pliocene fauna was different from today’s. There were, apparently, pumas in Tanzania and South Africa (extant pumas occur in all terrestrial habitats that aren’t too cold); and the large, rather carnivorous bear Agriotherium occurred in South Africa and Ethiopia (the earlier layers at Middle Awash!) before the savanna got there.
Convenient trees are not usually located in the water. If you’re attacked by a croc or a hippo – and they don’t give you much advance warning – while wading, you usually have a problem.
Oh, now you tell me. Why didn’t you say so weeks ago? And why don’t you provide any details?
Exactly – the idea is that we have inherited this bipedality.
You know what? Tell me in your own words what “cladistics” means.
(There are two meanings; I’ll accept either one.)
Pongo, as mentioned several times by me and others now, not all that much.
Gibbons: bipedal. Oreopithecus: bipedal. Afropithecus (“Morotopithecus“), Pierolapithecus: apparently bipedal. Pongo: semibipedal. Gorilla, Pan: walk bipedally on rare occasions (P. paniscus not that rare).
You’re doing it again! The argumentum ad hominem, that is.
Could you show us your publication list again?
*sad headshake*
No. It works the other way around. The arguments by Hardy, Morgan, Attenborough and Dennett, considered though they were, were evaluated and found to be wrong – and then the people who found them to be wrong proposed a hypothesis for why they had come up with such wrong arguments: it must be because they’re not familiar with the field.
We can of course discuss if that really is the reason (except I’m not interested, I don’t care). But it’s counterfactual to claim the anthropologists had all engaged in ad hominem arguments (“they’re not qualified, so we don’t even need to read what they write, it must all be wrong anyway”).
Well, not in its current form, and it had completely fallen out of fashion for many decades in the meantime…
~:-|
I’m trying to do science here, not history of science. That’s a separate subject, interesting in its own right, but pretty much irrelevant to science itself – till it comes to citing sources and giving credit where credit is due (social acts more than scientific ones).
WTF? I guess science theory is another subject I should lecture you on!
Don’t write faster than you think. It makes it look like you read faster than you think, too – and anything read at that speed can’t be understood.
The hypothesis that the LCA of chimps and us knuckle-walks requires two steps: 1) origin of knuckle-walking in the ancestry of the LCA of gorillas, chimps and us; 2) loss in some ancestor of ours after our LCA with chimps.
The hypothesis that the LCA of chimps and us did not knuckle-walk also requires two steps: 1) origin of knuckle-walking in the gorilla branch; 2) origin of knuckle-walking in the chimp branch.
Without additional information, parsimony cannot discriminate between these two hypotheses.
It’s all we have to discriminate between hypotheses that explain all (!) of the data. If you think the most parsimonious hypothesis about anything is wrong, you must show that there are data it doesn’t explain.
…No. All we can say from this is that our LCA with chimps (and indeed the one with gorillas, and so on) waded bipedally when it had to enter water. It does not tell us if it entered water often enough for selection to kick in.
What do you mean by “latest”? You aren’t “later” than Marcel Williams or Marc Verhaegen!
Really? Reference, please!
I asked whether we pack more than the average male orang-utan. Nobody has replied yet. I’ve also pointed out that if I don’t inhale enough before diving, I don’t float – I sink, and have to jump off the bottom to resurface.
Once again: nobody except you cares who, which person, is “better”. We care about individual facts and individual hypotheses. Trying to evaluate everything that comes from the same person in bulk would be quite silly.
We’ve been through this (possibly on the other thread): somebody pointed out that moving generally forward in water is easier, in absolute terms, than upright bipedal walking – pretty much any movement will propel you in some direction, and such things as balance are taken care of. You never replied.
Incidentally, how wide is the Congo in that region? (It’s more than 220 m deep somewhere.) Or perhaps even that is irrelevant, and what actually matters are the crocs and hippos?
…what? I didn’t see that word, I brought it up. Read that comment again.
I’m reminded of several creationists who came here over the years and found that way too many people argued against them, so each one individually suggested that we name a champion to fight him like the Philistines named Goliath to fight David.
It never occurred to them that science isn’t a fight between people.
Oops! You did it again.
He hasn’t been given acclaim, uncritial or otherwise. His arguments against various AAH arguments have been.
Concerning coattails – I only learned from one of your comments in this thread that his wife was an anthropologist.
So, all of our discussions of basic facts of taphonomy never happened.
That looks like a typo to me. He writes fast, after all.
It’s been Puma concolor for quite some time now. The other species in Puma is the jaguarundí, P. yagouaroundi.
Yes, only about a year or so after the internet conversation I was talking about.
Apparently yes. This was an interesting mistake, not just because it shows just how little research these folks typically do regarding their claims (Verhaegen is arguably the biggest and best-known of the AAT/H proponents after Morgan) but because, well, here’s the deal:
Verhaegen and his co-author Puech claimed mountain beavers were semiaquatic and that their supposed similarity to australopithecines in toothwear was evidence for australopithecines being semiaquatic. They were apparently confused by the name of the animal (mountain beavers were named that because they look sort of like little beavers except for that tail business, and the not being semiaquatic business). Verhaegen has responded to people like me and others pointing out the facts about mountain beavers by doubling down and insisting that anyone who says they aren’t semiaquatic is an “anti-AAT fanatic”, which would include every wildlife biologist in the Pacific Northwest, among others.
Naturally, with huge glaring and basic errors like that, and the fact that they have repeated that error even after they’ve been corrected, doesn’t make me for one inclined to accept their analysis of australopithecine teeth.
Another aspect of this is that they’re in a bind here, because the above means there are two possibilities and either one destroys their argument:
either 1) Puech, who has done some tooth studies, did a rotten job of this and the tooth microwear of capybaras and mountain beavers is not like that of australopithecines.
Problem for them if the above is so: this would mean that their conclusion that australopithecines were eating foods indicating semiaquatic habits is not supported by the data.
or 2) Puech, who has done some tooth studies, did a good job of this and the tooth microwear of capybaras and mountain beavers is like that of australopithecines.
Problem for them if the above is so: this would mean that their conclusion that australopithecines were eating foods indicating semiaquatic habits is not supported by the data, since one of the “semiaquatic” mammals they say australopithecines’ tooth microwear resembles is not semiaquatic.
Cut and paste from the Verhaegen page on my website:
Here’s some of Algis’ own words, written after he got his masters and while he had been engaged for many years on a quest for a PhD connected with human evolution:
“I am no specialist, I agree. I accept that my knowledge of teeth is weaker than yours. I accept that my anatomy is very poor compared to my peers. I accept I know relatively little about paleoanthropology, primatology, genetics, ecology, neurology, embryology etc etc.”
“Nope. When I see the term “craniodental characters” it makes me think
“what’s the point?” As I said. I’ve done an analysis like that and I
learned that it was just dodgy. I freely admit that I cannot tell a
bit from a bobble on a bone and I know there are many very clever
sounding people who will tell you that they can and that I must be
very stupid for not being able to do so. But I’m still not impressed.”
“I’ve done cladistic analyses on skulls and pelves and other bones too
and I have never felt confident about them. At UCL we were encouraged
to give a binary 1 or 0 for the presence or absence of a particular
“bony bit” and it was almost impossible to do.”
…Wow.
A completely unfounded fear driving him to making shit up? That’s the regard for reality he has?
I’ve seen people publish peer-reviewed papers without an institution, just with a home address.
But those are old. Let’s see if he has learned since then.
You said “if he has learned” in connection with Algis… I just love crazy juxtapositions like that. :)
Why do you insist that we’re sneering at that? It’s a trivially true statement. That’s NOT what you’re trying to peddle, though. You conveniently omit the part where humans swimming and diving more than chimps has shaped all the major differences between us and them. That’s shifting the goalposts, and nobody’s going to buy it.
It does NOT follow from there that the differences between us and chimps are explained by us retaining adaptations for wading that they lack. Especially since chimps ALSO can wade bipedally in waist deep water. So, even if you’re right (which you have no evidence for), it’s irrelevant to your hypothesis.
This is what makes people compare you to creationists. Your assertions are challenged, and your reaction is to repeat them as if the rebuttal never happened.
We’ll let DM stumble around for awhile yet. He saw the word “octopus” and ran away laughing.
…what? I didn’t see that word, I brought it up. Read that comment again.
You’re absolutely right. You brought it up –to suggest that Filler didn’t know what he was talking about. It only stuck in my mind because Filler mentions them in his book. Look, it might strain credulity to think that you could get a vertebrate from any old invertebrate, but Filler isn’t making ~that~ argument. For the argument that he is making, he supplies plenty of referenced ammunition. He’s saying that at or around 21 million years ago, some primate underwent a homeotic transformation that changed the shape of its lumbar spine such that it was no longer comfortable unless standing erect. All else follows from this transformation. It’s a pity that you can’t find the time to read what he has to say but I can fully appreciate that you have plenty on your plate. He published this book in 2007, I only bought it last year and have just now finished reading it. I can tell you that I feel pretty dumb about this –Filler goes into excruciating and humiliating detail about Washburns’ setting the stage for all those wide-eyed anthro types to follow. Now, it seems, we’ve all been outed –barkin’ up the wrong tree. I don’t know, I found his argument quite persuasive. I think you would too, but it is hard to tell from where we’re standing.
Off the top of my head…
1) The discomfort I get from a quadrupedal posture isn’t in my lumbar region, it’s in the neck.
2) In anything other than a large climbing animal, such a mutation would simply have been selected against. Hanging around in trees (literally) allowed it to be retained in the population.
The discomfort you get *once you’d undergone the transformation* would be in the lumbar region. It might even make you prefer an orthograde posture.
David Marjanović, the stuff I said up there about chimps being too dense to swim was based on what I think is fact, that they have much stronger muscles than us. Which was explained as us having slower endurance muscles, related to running. I think that was a semi-scientific source, but I cannot cite.
A quick Google showed no swimming chimps, and found an explanation that they were too dense to swim. I added the lack of fat my own self. (I assume they could do a quick swim if they needed, and knew how.)
Orangs, on the other hand, are fat. I never said they weren’t, as I was addressing Algis on chimps. There is video of one orang at least, floating under water, said to be able to swim 20 feet on his own. There was also an article saying some orangs swim across a particular river, with a picture, but highlighting that it us unusual.
—
Algis, I have mentioned two things that humans do that involve wading for food purposes, planting rice and hunting oysters. I say that chimps could do them better, with the quadrupedal posture and all. Let’s change that to hunting for snails, say, and let’s have you tell me why bipeds would do that better.
We have very few claims of chimps swimming. It’s often said to be denseness, or lack of fat, but I don’t think that’s clear. Well, really lack of fat by itself clearly isn’t the reason, since we see humans with as little fat are able to swim. In fact, several Olympic champs, including Michael Phelps and Tom Dolan, are noted as being extremely low fat, certainly as low or lower than chimps. Simple denseness due to musculature could be it, but it isn’t something that’s proved; it’s a speculation. Jan Wind’s suggestions, which I mentioned before, seem to me to be far stronger supported. That’s that African apes have a top heavy structure and coupled with their necks not being either incredibly long or incredibly flexible, means they have a difficult time swimming in the manner we see other mammals doing. They’re simply not built to do a dog paddle without tipping down at the front and then, naturally, they’re apt to drown. We have a similar problem but biased toward the bottom, which at least leaves our heads tending to point up, so all we have to do is overcome our tendency to drive ourselves underwater with our instinctive attempts to swim. I say “all we have to do” but it obviously isn’t easy. Humans drown with remarkable regularity.
Other primates, such as macaques, swim (and dive) easily and instinctively even when they’ve had no chance to learn before adulthood.
anthrosciguy:
Some of my favorite footage in the Planet Earth series is the macaques swimming.
I guess I never thought about why other primates don’t swim a lot. The top-heavy, head-not-swiveling hypothesis seems legit.
I’d look into it, but damnit, Jim, I’m a programmer, not a primatologist.
Re 677
The usual anthro-lie-slur-guy twistings.
I made a simple typo (I wrote “6” instead of “7” – John Langdon listed 7, not 6, traits that were consistent with the AAH) and the tedious nit picking guy with a chip on his shoulder tries to twist into a sordid accusation of incompetence/malpractice against a damned “aquatic ape” proponent.
Seriously, this is ALL he has ever done.
It’s just rubbish. Thanks to people like PZ Myers giving him uncritical acclaim, Jim now seems to think he can write anything and it must be true. All the one-way praise has gone to his head.
Another technique he often does, like here, is paste in some link to a post he’s written, as if it proves him right. Of course he never links to any criticism of that post, which inevitably follows (usually by me, like here.)
In this case his post in question is splitting hairs on whether Langdon actually believes what he wrote in that table. As anyone with a critical mind who has been following the discussion at TalkRational will know, Jim Moore’s interpretation of what people mean is different from reality. He’s been peddling the idea, for years, that Dan Dennett’s clear support of Elaine Morgan’s work was somehow, really, a way of bracketting it with creationism.
See here for more about that.
The guy’s a nasty, twisting, piece of work. Anyone that believes a word he writes on this subject is either naive or just equally biased.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 682
Notice how Jim’s hubris is now apparently so great, he imagines that everyone should “know” all his postings and gossip on his web site in detail.
The material point in all that is that Desmond Morris was the first to use the term “aquatic ape” – not, as Jim is twisting, the word “aquatic” in any sense related to human evolution per se.
Whether Morris originally used this term in an ironic sense or not, it has always been my undertanding that Elaine used it in that sense. It was also, obviously, used for drammatic affect, to make a headline.
I think this paragraph, from her original (and most controversial) book, “Descent of Woman” says it all. You won’t find it on Jim Moore’s web site, of course, it gives a far too moderate impression for that.
Morgan, E. (1972). The Descent of Woman. Souvenir Press (London)
Hardly an argument for a mermaid, is it?
At the end of the day, both Hardy and Morgan can be criticised for not being as clear as they might have been about exactly how “aquatic” they were proposing human ancestors to have been. I guess they’d say “we just don’t know”. The title of Hardy’s original article was clear enough: “Was Man More Aquatic in the Past?”
But exactly how much more, no-one seems to have asked or even wondered.
Throughout the long running debate about this, people who seem to just viscerally hate the idea always to want to exaggerate the claims to dolphin levels, people who cannot understand what the fuss is all about, tend to go in the opposite direction.
I fall into the later category.
Even if human ancestors only swam for just half an hour a week, and chimp ancestors did none whatsoever, that still represents a significant extra drowning risk and a mechanism for natural selection to have worked on our phenotype.
It’s population genetics 101 but whenever I mention it, it seems to fly over everyone’s head (proponents and skeptics alike).
I continue to be puzzled by all the controversy surrounding this idea. It’s very simple and very plausible. It’s supported by a lot of evidence and contradicted by none. It potentially helps explain so much, with so little extra assumption, it hurts. And yet just look at the hysterical, sneering response it always generates.
SPACE APES!, indeed.
On TalkRational right now, there’s a new thread started on human bipedal origins but the moderators have BANNED any discussion of the wading idea and the discussion of waterside hypotheses have been relegated into a section on pseudoscience.
Truly bizarre.
Algis Kuliukas
algiskuliukas :
I dunno, I’m just spit-balling here, but: maybe because there’s never been a reason to wonder?
Re 688, 690 Anthro-slur-guy at “work”. Brilliant, isn’t he, PZ?
Algis Kuliukas
“hypothetical crocodiles” is the name of my Fountains of Wayne cover band.
In case anyone was interested.
I’m going to use the David Marjanovic technique here. (No clue as to who you are citing, arguing with, on about etc.) Just randomly, cherry picked snippets to rant against.
After all, it’s only about the arguments, not the people, right?
WHAT!?
IN the water? What kind of a moron wrote this!?
Seriously. I mean, do you REALLY STILL think anyone is arguing that our ancestors LIVED in the water?
Have you noticed how ignorant this makes you look!?
Ok. I’m bored now.
…
Oh dear, another gang of know-it-alls, led by the Chief of Misrepresentation himself, seems to have gathered with their usual self-righteous anger about a simple plausible idea they bizarrely just hate and a pretence of rigour about how science works which just masks a gross hypocrisy and closed mindedness.
What’s at the root of all this?
Remember?
The idea that the reason humans are so very different from chimps and gorillas (despite being genetically closer to chimps than they are to gorillas) might have had something to do with moving through water – that’s wading, swimming and diving.
Crazy, isn’t it? Space apes are just as likely.
The fact that the one place all apes will move (not just pose momentarily) bipedallly with 100% certainty, for as long as the conditions prevailed, and would KILL them if the moved quadrupedally, is simply ignored and the “new” (actually old, Keith 1912) Hylobation model is roled out as if no more discussion on bipedal origins need ever be done. We were always bipedal. It was a magical preadaptation.
The fact that humans actually do swim and dive better than chimps – the most blatant evidence imaginable – is brushed aside as nothing without a hint of embarassment at inventing all sorts of just-so stories to explain it. We swim better because we’re bipedal. We swim better because we’re fat. We swim better because we are clever. We swim better because we have a brachiating exaptation for mobile shoulders. Look, we don’t know why, but we’re DAMNED CERTAIN it couldn’t have been that usual thing we use to explain these things… natural selection. No, that’s the LAST thing to consider this time.
Mockery is good.
What is wrong with you people?
Algis Kuliukas
algiskuliukas:
You know what swims better than humans?
Deer.
Seriously. I’ve seen deer swim across channels most humans wouldn’t survive. I’ve been on a boat between two islands miles apart in Southeast Alaska, and BAM! there’s a deer, swimming a distance (and making it!) that would drown a human from sheer exhaustion.
Are you saying deer evolved aquatically?
(HINT: the ability of an organism to adapt to an environment doesn’t mean that organism evolved in that environment.)
I haven’t met or heard of any significant critic of the AAT/H who thought the argument was about mermaid levels of aquaticism. I have seen several AAT/H proponents who suggest that, including William “Mermaids are real” Bond, who posts regularly in Verhaegen’s Yahoo group where Algis also posts.
I’ve used what AAT/H proponents say and what animals they use as anologies for the characteristics they say we evolved due to water use. For the earlier versions of Hardy and Morgan this generally is some vaguely otter-like amount of water use, as Morgan said (and which Algis has denied Morgan said despite her saying it on camera for a TV documentary) and for the charcateristics (inaccurately described by the proponents, of course) these are cetaceans, pinnipeds, and sirenia (with occasional references to penguins, flamingos, frogs, and hippos). Because of this the less aquatic versions of the idea, such as Algis’, are actually more radical since they claim convergence without significant selection pressure. All the versions, due to inaccurately describing the characteristics in question, suffer heavily from GIGO.
I really have not even scratched the surface of this thread, but I have to chime in with amusement at the way Algis signs his name at the bottom of every comment, no matter how raving he is. And no matter that his name (nym) appears at the top of every comment automatically.
Re 704
This may come as a shock to you but the last common ancestor of humans and chimps was not in Artiodactyla.
It’s the comparison between humans and chimps that’s key to understanding human evolution.
Algis Kuliukas
@algiskuliukas
It’s not a shock to anyone that you missed the point by a mile.
Which you show you don’t understand you need to look at just more than chimps if you wish to talk about human evolution. A topic you provide prima facie evidence you know nothing about each and every time your post about your all wet idea. You don’t have a hypothesis. That requires some evidence. All you have is your imagufactured easily refuted bullshit. What an egotistical loser, proven by needing to sign every post. Only egotists do that, usually those whose ego outruns their intellect. Which is the case with you also.
That much seems clear. I used to teach swimming lessons professionally.
I doubt that a chimp who figured out how to swim would be able to teach another chimp, even if it wanted to. And learning by observation alone is far rarer and more difficult than one might think.
About the ability of chimps to swim at all, I think that all this talk about muscle density and top-heaviness on land is pointless.
In the first place, the only reason that any non-obese vertebrate floats is because of the buoyancy of lung air. Period. Therefore if a vertebrate is floating, it’s because its thoracic cavity is full of sufficient air to balance the ineluctable density of bone and protein. Even fat (in the living form of adipose tissue) is really not all that buoyant; it takes a lot just to cancel out the skeleton.
In the second place, there is no diference in density between more-powerful but quick-fatiguing fast-glycolytic muscle tissue and lower-power but fatigue-resistant slow-oxidative muscle tissue. If, in fact, humans have proportionally more of the latter this would have no correlative effect on buoyancy.
My guess is that chimps could be trained to float by breath-control and that a young enough chimp could be trained by a human teacher to swim just fine.
But that’s a guess.
Not in this case and not for this characteristic.
But this has already been explained to you, in depth, Algis.
And yet you continue to repeat this already debunked falsehood ad nauseum. Just as you continued to repeat your lies about taphonomy. Just as you repeat your demonstrably false accusations of ad hominem against anthrosciguy even has you shamelessly ad hominem him.
You have crossed the line, Algis.
Your demonstrated intellectual dishonesty is more than merely pathetic now. It is disgusting.
Disgusting.
Your behavior is no different from that of txpiper, joey, jimashby and the rest of the lying, hypocritical, unethical trolls of their ilk that have infested this blog from time to time.
You are disgusting.
Your only saving grace is that you lie and dissemble on an academic topic that does not directly imply or produce harm to real world people.
You are disgusting.
I am done with you. Your intellectually dishonest filth shall henceforth be ignored.
The only commentary from that I will henceforth notice will by that which is quoted by others like David M and Chas.
Re 711 – Blimey. I’ve seen some rabid hydrophobes in my time but this one takes the biscuit!
The idea, remember, is that humans might be so different from chimps because of some wading, swimming and diving!
Yes, “Amphiox”, please do not comment any more.
Algis Kuliukas
It’s funny.
Algis Kuliukas uses a comparison between whales and squirrels to illustrate how we can supposedly detect who’s adapted to water by comparing their swimming ability.
Then, when it gets turned back at him with two animals where the difference isn’t so clear (humans and deer, squirrels and pigs) he complains that we aren’t doing it right.
We’re just trying to follow your logic, throw us a bone here!
ChasCPeterson, thanks for the info on muscle density. What you say makes eminent sense. (Unlike the stuff that Algis babbles.)
Algis, you seem to have a magic power to know what everyone else means and thinks, even when they clearly write something else. You keep whipping out pop psych explanations for our motivations, yet everything you say would better apply to you.
Parsimony implies that if there is a cultic crazy cacophony of confusion going on in this thread, it’s in the side with the fewer people. And when it’s one guy, it’s probably that guy. And that guy is you, Algis.
Take whatever self-defense you just worked out in response to me, and turn it around. I bet you a cookie that it applies better to you.
This isn’t healthy for you, Algis. Go away and get over it.
That sort of internal inconsistency predates Algis’ appearance on the AAT/H scene. Here’s an example of a reply I made to one such in 1995:
One of the posters at TRF has used as a sig a line John Langdon said to Algis: “When I begin to think that all the world is wrong but me, I should question myself.”
Algis is a mass of projection, which seems to be a common theme in pseudoscience. He’s also had a long time habit of objecting to what people like Hardy or Morgan say or write being presented, as he claims to know what they meant to say or write. His attitude toward accepting what they’ve said is summed up in this tidbit: “A rational approach is not to take Hardy’s text too literally but to think critically about the idea being proposed.”
Algis Kulukis argues exactly like a creationist. I’ve only been basically reading this topic to get some information about stuff I didn’t know about, and it’s clear he understands exactly what’s being said – and just chooses to ignore stuff.
So much of his responses have been repeats of infomation already presented. He talks as if no one responded to his arguments. He’s like Ray Comfort – who I told no less than twenty times on his blog the exact scientific definition of evolution, and still refused to use that definition, instead arguing for some straw man definition we had already responded to and corrected.
I forgot to mention parsimony as yet another of the concepts Algis continues to shamelessly lie about.
I wonder if Algis will take issue with me commenting again? I specifically said that I would still be following this thread because I am interested in the posts of other people, but knowing Algis and his flabby, buoyant ego, he probably thinks that participation in this thread requires responding to him. Because it is all about him.
Disgusting.
Yawn, True Believer™ is still peddling his sunken and sodden idea of human evolution. No solid evidence for anything he says to be seen. He’s still trying to pretend his interpretation of everything is the only one.
Sorry AK, real scientists look at everything, and see what you post (self-serving and self-bragging bullshit), and just point and laugh. You are comic relief. There is no way for you now to get above being a joke around here until you show some intelligence and go away for a while. 20 years sounds good.
A lot of people have told Algis directly about this over the years, and it’s been a common theme hammered home many times by others criticizing the AAT/H in general. But John Langdon said it directly to and about Algis’ misunderstanding in a short pithy form: “Your concept of parsimony is a delusion.”
I’m going to walk back on something I said earlier (hey, if Algis can walk back, I can, too).
I conceded that humans spend more time wading and swimming than chimps do, and said that it was not really important. But now I’m going to say isn’t true, especially for pre-technology humans (pre-technology being something Algis brought in for one of his arguments).
I, myself, haven’t been swimming for about two years, and can’t recall wading for a few years. I cannot believe that a chimp living in a jungle hasn’t had to wade in all that time. My life is such that wading and swimming is a recreational choice (one of my recreations, poling my canoe, involves NOT wading if I can possibly get upstream any other way), but a chimp doesn’t have that kind of life. He has to wade sometimes, surely.
A chimp certainly gets caught out in the rain more than I do.
Humans, when you think about it, have developed all kinds of ways to avoid getting wet. Houses, umbrellas, weather forecasts, all in aid of staying dry. Hell, pre-technology humans lived in caves and tents and huts. Low-tech humans, even now, tend to live in the dry areas of the world. Keeping dry drives some of our earliest technology.
Yeah, the Romans built baths, but the Medieval Europeans didn’t use them. Mongols never bathed, the Bedu never swim, Persian though rivers were sacred ….
We may shower to get clean, and some may swim for fun, but I’ll bet a chimp gets wet from rain and wading far more than the average human does.
And, as was said above, chimps get up and walk bipedal just to avoid wet grass. I bet they fucking hate wading. I see no reason to think our ancestors were any different, and given the way most of us live, I’d say we still hate getting wet … when we don’t have a choice.
That we swim and bathe and plant rice is cultural, I say, and we do our best to make the water clean and warm and as little like jungle water as possible.
The chimps must hate us dry-shod bastards and our domesticated water.
Oh, and I’m agreeing and reinforcing what David Marjanović and others said above about babies not really being able to swim before they can walk. Algis just loves to say that babies can swim, and makes it sound like they blast through the water like Michael Phelps headed for a bong.
Babies float. Babies float because they are fat, and as ChasP points out, they have a lungful of air. As I recall it, the trainers start humming, which the babies imitate (see, cultural already). The humming effectively equals breath-holding, and when the kid has inhaled for another round, the trainers submerge him, gently. Some of the kids then “swim” by making a crawling movement just like they’d do on dry carpet. They do not go ripping around any better than they could crawl.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEDUrEh7hSU was the first video Google hit for “babies swimming”, and it features much talk about training, and nothing of a baby moving through the water. The little bugger just lies there and twitches. You might as well say that babies can lie on a waterbed before they can walk.
If a baby could manage any better in water than on dry ground, it would be due to the floating nature of water, not to instinct or evolutionary history, and certainly not to the babies “natural” swimming ability.
besides which, even IF babies could somehow “swim”, it actually can’t be considered evidence of much of anything, really. Could be any number of reasons for it. Rather, our illustrious nutter here simply biases the idea right into evidentiary support.
dude has … obvious issues. His lack of scientific understanding to be the very least of them.
Actually, what babies do best in water is drown. It’s the leading cause of accidental death for infants in the USA. Algis’ claim is based on the “swimming reflex” and the facts behind that have been pointed out to him and other AAT/Hers for years now. The infants can’t swim, they can’t breath on their own, and the people who run these baby “swimming” programs are careful to point out that not only does it not drownproof your kids, but that except for unusual kids you can’t count on an infant to be able to learn to swim until about the age of two. (Obviously, the vast majority of human children learn to walk well before that, and to crawl even earlier.)
Algis has regularly refused to accept the written statements of the people who run these programs worldwide. One such person I’ve mentioned to Algis is a Norwegian expert, Torril Hindmarch, who pointedly questions why there are so few swimming toddlers in Norway when there were so many “swimming” babies there. (Algis actually tried to explain this by saying “I guess the reason is because Norway has a relatively small population compared to the rest of the world.” Think about that one… cause he didn’t. :)).
Also, the swimming reflex, when you look at it, is virtually the same thing or actually the same thing in terms of movement as the crawling reflex, which is another reflex that infants have early on in life which is then lost.
anthrosciguy, you are right, of course. All the videos that I found about swimming babies were about drown-proofing the little varmints, or, actually, drown-resisting. The vids stand as evidence that babies cannot swim for poop, and need lots of training to not drown instanly.
The swimming baby thing seemed to be centered in California, where there are lots of swimming pools, lots of New-Age people, and lots of money to indulge such a thing. So yay for the Norwegians.
Algis really seems to have read about a few things, and is parroting them around without thinking about them. He is very much like the creationists, and all the other conspiracy cranks.
Yeah, I know he has some college degrees. It sounds like some of his profs didn’t want to give him one, though … but I’m sure he could put a lot of effort into churning back what he was taught or had read. Look at all the work he has done here.
I went through university in the Honors College, and noticed that about half of us excellent students were just really good at regurgitating formulas and composing impressive-sounding papers. Every one of those was a fundamentalist Christian of one sort or another. (I hung out with the atheists who really dug down for the concepts, and who were truly creative and self-teaching.) So, whoopee for Algis’s educational qualifications. He’s just as goofy as the “Doctors” at the Disco ‘Tute.
Or, as they say, ten percent of everything is shit.
One of our faves over at TRF was Algis saying “See, I have ‘o’ levels in science, ‘a’ levels in science, a first degree in science, a masters degree in science and 3/4 of a PhD in science.”
A few years ago I offered a test for Algis, based on his bragging about his masters, to list in order who was the best source of info on human evolution based on their degrees. A link to a post where I outlined it all is below, but the results were this:
He has shown absolutely no signs of having learned anything from that episode.
http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=786151#post786151
Of course Algis has always been fluid on whether or not degrees are of paramount importance or completely unimportant (ie., it’s whether or not someone accepts the AAT/H).
Algis’ degrees are a classic example of GIGO.
Gee, it appears AK thinks of himself as a rebel against traditional science based on the sources he likes. Explains his inability to understand how science is done, and what his inability to evidence his fuckwitted idea really means. Like the creobots, he knows he is right. He just needs to find arguments to persuade people. But scientists understand an idea without evidence is to be discarded in favor of one that has evidence. No wonder his idea is all wet.
My dad’s an inventor, or he was until the Alzheimer’s took over, and he got a lot of people wanting help with their inventions. He said once that most people are really proud of their idea, because it’s the only one they’ll ever have. (Isaac Asimov said something similar about ideas for stories.)
I’m now going to say the same thing about epiphanies. Wiki says epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, “manifestation, striking appearance”) is an experience of sudden and striking realization. (An idea for an invention could be a realization that something would work, so there’s the similarity.)
I’m referring here to epiphanies that come from reading something that explains everything (or seems to), and that make all kinds of sense (or seem to). As Thomas Henry Huxley said, “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.”
I add “or seems to” because I find that epiphanies aren’t going to happen about obvious things that everybody already knows, things that are true, but seeming epiphanies can happen about things that are not true. Con men can’t sell you real things for their actual value, but are selling false goods—the peddlers of seeming epiphanies are selling falsehoods.
So Algis, like many others, read a book (his was about aquatic apes) and felt that giddy rush of “facts” clicking into place, things making sense, patterns emerging, and the feeling that he knew something that few others knew, and that he was smart enough to understand it. He had an epiphany, and it felt good. It was his first, and it was his last.
He need the help of a book laying it out for him, and he hadn’t the sense to distinguish falsity, but he had an epiphany.
Now he, like many a crank, is going to hold on to that, religiously.
—–
Mark Twain:
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea–to discover a great thought–an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain–plow had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings carry your messages. To be the first–that is the idea. To do something, say something, see something, before any body else–these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his first message, brought by his servant, the lightning; Fulton, in that long-drawn century of suspense, when he placed his hand upon the throttle-valve and lo, the steamboat moved; Jenner, when his patient with the cow’s virus in his blood, walked through the smallpox hospitals unscathed; Howe, when the idea shot through his brain that for a hundred and twenty generations the eye had been bored through the wrong end of the needle; the nameless lord of art who laid down his chisel in some old age that is forgotten, now, and gloated upon the finished Laocoon; Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding in the zenith, to print the landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate, and he obeyed; Columbus, in the Pinta’s shrouds, when he swung his hat above a fabled sea and gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are the men who have really lived–who have actually comprehended what pleasure is–who have crowded long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment.
714>
“There’s more of us than you.”
Bullies’ charter.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 715
Jim, demonstrates that he hasn’t understood much about “their theory” in over 17 years.
It *depends* on comparisons between humans and chimps, not gibbons. It *uses* examples from other taxa as pointers to try to explain why the human-chimp differences have occurred.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 713
Why are humans more efficient terrestrial bipeds and better at ER than chimps? Does anyone doubt it was due to natural selection?
Why are chimps better at climbing than humans? Does anyone doubt it was due to natural selection?
Why are humans better at swimming and diving than chimps? Suddenly, the rules change, and the LAST thing to be considered is n.s. Why’s that?
Re 715-717, 721, 725, 727 – anthro-slur-guy at work. You can always rely on the spanner man to deliver a never ending series of cherry picked, out-of-context micro-quotes, on cue. Each of these has been answered elsewhere, but it never stops him regurgisluring them again and again. He is the peddler of zombie slurs that never die. Great “resource”, eh, PZ?
Re 718
What, exactly, do you think I have ignored? So that I can try to address it for you.
Honestly, you should try being in the minority in places like this where a kind of lynch mob mentality arises. I do not have infinite time to spend here answering each and every point of a dozen know-it-alls who couldn’t tell you why we are so different from chimps but are mysteriously certain that it has nothing to do with water.
Is it arguing like a creationist to specifically take on the people who, I was told by PZ himself, are most authoritative and ignore those that usually just sling nasty insults over and over again?
I notice you have not one word of censure for them. Your pretence to be some kind of objective thinker would have a bit more of a ring of truth about it, if you did.
Who did respond to my arguments without cherry picking and distorting them? Chas Peterson, did some, perhaps. But who else?
PZ didn’t and he’s the main reason I’m here. He wrote a shamelessly ignorant blog post sneering at a perfectly plausible idea and he has backed a shoddy, gossipy, masquerading web site that does the same, for years. I’ve asked him to defend those actions and all he’s replied is by calling me an “idiot”/”loon”/”kook”. Presumably, by this reckoning, you think PZ argues like a creationist too, then?
re 724 (& 725)
The key comparison that matters is (why do I have to keep repeating this? – oh yeah, misrepresentation is the name of the game here) with chimps.
If unequivocal evidence is shown that human infants are no more likely to survive near drowning incidents (assume their mother is close by to enact a rescue) than chimp infants, I, for one, promise to drop the idea like a stone in a pond, never to return.
(another creationist-like argument, I suppose.)
Re 730
A bit presumptious. If I write anything like this I get attacked for it (e.g. by the very guy who wrote this!) A bit hypocritical too, then.
Yes, I was inspired by Elaine Morgan’s book “The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis”, true (and “Scars of Evolution”). Brilliant books. Have you read them? I have been inspired by several such books, (like all of Richard Dawkin’s books, most notably “The Selfish Gene”, Sean Carrol’s “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”, Daniel Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, Sam Harris’ “End of Faith” and Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near.”)
So what?
The cheap slur you are trying to peddle is really a bit scummy.
Are you saying you have never read a book and been inspired by it? That would be sad admission indeed.
Now, about this bit…
Therein lies the problem.
Just run that past me again. What falsity, other than minor errors?
I’ve read the literature on this and I’ve asked all sorts of people who, I’m told, are authorities on the subject and, like Daniel Dennett, I’ve still not heard an answer worth tuppence.
Maybe you have.
Please point me to something in the scientific literature that even evaluates the so-called “aquatic ape theory” rationally and objectively, let alone rejects it.
John Langdon’s unscholarly straw man paper is very weak indeed, as I have described…
Kuliukas, A. (2011). Langdon’s Critique of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis: It’s Final Refutation, or Just Another Misunderstanding?. In: Vaneechoutte, M., Verhaegen, M., Kuliukas, A. (eds.), (2011). Was Man More Aquatic In The Past? Fifty Years After Alister Hardy: Waterside Hypothesis Of Human Evolution. Bentham (Basel)
What else? A load of childish sneering in places like this and twisting gossip by anthro-lie-slur-guy.
Seriously, so where does your incredible confidence come from that this must be pseudoscientific rubbish come from? Sneer pressure. What else? Precious little science has been done, so what else?
Talking about the supposed lack of ability to see fault, how come aquaskeptics never criticise each other in these places? Apart from Chas Peterson’s very refleshingly honest criticism of Jim Moore’s “Can AAH/Ter Research be Trusted?” page the other day, I have never read one word of criticism by anyone of his gossip.
One-way-only critical thinking is a hallmark of pseudoskepticism, You can’t accuse me of that. I have criticised Hardy. Morgan and had a public falling out with Verhaegen rcently.
Algis Kuliukas
Back again with more evidenceless OPINION. What a unscientific loser. Only one thing will work AK shutting the fuck up and pointing to the EVIDENCE. Since it doesn’t exist, his overly inflated ego delusional thinks his talking will convince folks of anything other than he is a bullshit artiste. Not working AK, Crank/loon and troll.
OMG, despite my long experience with Algis, I didn’t know until now that he’s a Kurzweil singularity nut.
Ah, “Pointer Theory” has arrived here. This is how Algis tried to run away from what convergent evolution says (“characters that are similar in structure and function but have arisen separately rather than from a common ancestor are termed convergent.” – Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution 1988, by Robert L. Carroll ). As I said after he first came up with “Pointer Theory”:
Algis (and other AATers) has regularly invoked convergence (or vague Greenfieldism) between us and various aquatic and semiaquatic animals, including flamingos, elephant, babirusa, walrus,
cetacean, sirenia, hippo, pinnipeds.
Morgan has used flamingos, penguins, herons, frogs, and moose. Verhaegen has used flamingos and ostriches among others.
Here’s a common tactic among AAT/H/WHHE proponents:
ie., he’s not saying we were like dolphins, so if you say he said so he’ll call you a liar, because he’s just saying we had enough evolutionary pressure to have the same phenotypic change as dolphins.
Bonus Algis: “As long as you use my definition and not your straw man, I have never come across a difference between humans and chimps that wasn’t best explained by a waterside scenario.”
So says the proven liar and bullshitter that nobody should take their word as an expert OPINION. Third party evidence is required for AK to be believed on any claim. Funny how all the evidence is from him and filtered through his aqua colored glasses and delusions. Prima facie CRANK/LOON behavior.
Bonus anthro-slur-guy: Jim has been misrepresenting Dan Dennett’s clear and open support off Elaine Morgan’s work for years. I wrote to him recently to ask if, like Jim has been suggested, if he really did bracket the idea along with creationism.
Dennett made it clear that he did not, at all.
But despite this clear correction, Jim Moore just cannot admit to any fault, and issue a Mea cukp, even now. Ask him a direct question like this…
Do you accept that your repeated claims that Dennett was bracketting the “AAT” with creationism was a complete misrepresentation now? or do you still claim that is what he was doing?
…and he’ll dodge it.
Algis Kuliukas
PS… Correction, I’m passing “the biscuit” to Nerd… Honestly, what is his(?) problem ?
algis, give up. The fossils say dry land, the diet says dry land, everything we have documenting our ancient ancestors says rainforest to savannah with no waterside effects great enough to change our ancestors. Until you can come up with actual fossil evidence or genetic evidence that points otherwise you are a crank. I read the talkrational thread,well parts anyway, and you come off a pseudoscience promoter. A loon practicing cargo cult science. Your idea doesnt mesh with any of the data that is continously being gathered and keeps reinforcing an arboreal to land transition without water as even a minor factor. Where are your fossils? Put up or shut up.
re 740
The fossils say “waterside habitats”, actually. Exactly as I do.
I don’t think you’ve really been listening, have you?
All you guys can do, is misrepresent the argument and thow childish names.
It’s all the more pathetic that you’re really just aping the like of PZ Myers and Henry Gee in these tactics.
Algis Kuliukas
The crank is back with more OPINION, not one iota of evidence. NO SALE!
When will you learn, nobody gives a shit about your inane idea?
Over a month later and Kuliukas is still whining?
Dafuq?
@anthrosciguy
That sounds a lot, to me, like he’s saying we’re like dolphins.
740 AK: “I don’t think you’ve really been listening, have you?”
Well, ~somebody~ hasn’t been listening, that’s for sure.
Sorry AK, I don’t listen to cranks/loons babbling bullshit, but your “evidence”, not filtered through your aqua colored glasses, say savannah, conclusively. And I believe the real evidence, not your aqua colored interpretation of said evidence.
Time for you to shut the fuck up and listen: NO SALE!
Algis is fond of these “have you stopped beating your wife” questions (which have typically been answered and/or corrected for him many times before, of course). This one he’s been pushing at TRF in an attempt to distract from his not wanting to support something stupid he said. His claim was that in a 2007 paper, Dan Lieberman et al. were claiming that early hominids were “chasing elephants” across the savanna (that formulation came from a dumb strawman David Attenborough was quoted as saying in a recent news article). I asked Algis to point to where Lieberman et al. said that and Algis has been pushing this recycled Dennett thing again instead of pointing… it’s almost as if Lieberman et al. didn’t say that and Algis knows it despite claiming they did. :)
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=2127387#post2127387
Yes, it does, but then in the same sentence he says he’s not; Algis has proven himself perfectly capable (“perfectly capable” is not something you can say about Algis very often) of saying two contradictory things within the space of a single sentence.
But that’s the magic of Pointer Theory. You should hear about Darwinian Default. Then the AAT/H has a history of proponents trying to make up new evolutionary concepts, or change the names of well-known ones (like Elaine Morgan tried to do for convergent evolution in the 90s).
I don’t have a science degree and barely went to college, but the way you promote your idea is just like the Discovery Institute, just like John Edwards, just like a huge variety of those who want the acclaim of science but don’t want to actually do the work. And don’t start with that stupid bullshit about your waterside hypothesis explaining the fossils, because it doesn’t. Since you don’t understand how the bones are shaped by wear and tear and how different environments leave different alterations to the skeleton, and that all the skeletons show having lived on dry land for nearly all their life. Since you also don’t understand and refuse to learn what taphonomy is, you cant be trusted to interpret the data correctly. The data has spoken and your idea has lost, and has been losing for a long time now.
You. Are. A. Failed. Scientist.
You sicken me.
Get off the internet and go do some actual research for once in your life.
Sorry for the harshness, but this guy has started to grate on my nerves so much it’s forced me to de-lurk.
My above should be for Algis, thought I had included that.
Is Algis still fapping out his pathetic lies?
While Algis faps away, real science moves on. Take a look at this:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/13/one-protein-shows-elephants-and-moles-had-aquatic-ancestors/
Pertinently:
If this holds up, it would mean that positively charged myoglobin is a de facto marker of aquatic ancestry, and it is possible to delineate even a small amount of partial water-living.
So if swimming had been a significant selection pressure of human ancestors but not with for chimpanzees, thus accounting for the “significant” differences between the two, the signature of this past selection pressure should be present in human myoglobin. Human myoglobin should differ from chimpanzee myoglobin and have more positively charged amino acids in it.
So how does human and chimpanzee myoglobin compare?
http://todd.jackman.villanova.edu/HumanEvol/WilsonKing1975.pdf
One amino acid difference.
Well, so much for that.
But this means that AAH supporters have an obvious next step before them. Myoglobin happens to be just about the most studied, the best known, protein in the animal kingdom. Show us that human myoglobin possesses this signature of an aquatic ancestry, and then do the molecular dating to show us WHEN that aquatic ancestry occurred. Of course, will they accept the results that such research would yield? We can already see that IF there was any selectively significant aquatic phase in human ancestry, it must have occurred before the human-chimp split, and chimpanzees and bonobos must have also shared that part of our ancestry, at the very least.
As an interesting side-note, this research indicates that elephants and hyraxes really might have had an aquatic common ancestor (which could have lived as long as 65 million years ago). The AAH people can take some solace in THAT thought.
That’s interesting, in and of itself but also because the idea that elephants had a semiaquatic ancestry is big in the AAT/H (even though it provides no evidence for it) but has always been based on one really thin strand of data and another really stupid claim. It’d be interesting if there’s some actual evidence for it.
Ah, smell the real evidence presented by Amphiox that refuted the aquatic bullshit once and for all. Watch the decaying idea drift out to sea and slowly sink beneath the waves. bye-bye egotistical fuckwittery.
Time for AK to fade into the bandwidth. His dishonesty, lack of scientific integrity, and overly big ego probably makes this impossible for him to do. Let’s see if he is honest enough to acknowledge defeat, or if he must try to pretend he is still right since his ego won’t accept reality that his idea is all wet.
Stay tuned as the ego meets the facts.
@anthrosciguy
The comparisons between AAHers (I absolutely refuse to lend it the accolade of “theory”) and creationists are becoming more and more apparent.
Come up with a hypothesis (in the case of AAH, an admittedly very interesting one, initially) based on one logical explanation for an observed trait, then try to make the evidence fit the hypothesis. When it becomes clear the evidence doesn’t quite fit the hypothesis, confirmation bias and ad hoc rationalisations ensue, and the pig-headed refusal to let go of your pet theory becomes entrenched.
The fact Kuliukas and his ilk have the brass nerve to use these tactics and still referr to themselves as scientists is infuriating. The older I get, the more it becomes apparent that my idealistic teen admiration for Atheists and scientists was really just the result of rose-tinted glasses.
Re 747
A beautiful illistration of the Jim Moore “School of Science” (Department of Discreditology) methodology that PZ Myers, has publicly endorsed.
It’s the bait and trap technique.
He posts something that’s a bit provocative. In this case it was asking the question “Who posits that [“easier than chasing elephants and wildebeests across the savannah”.] (at least who posits that happening earlier than maybe a half million years ago or so — perhaps)?”
Now, I have to admit, I fell into the trap. I saw the wildebeests bit and I read Jim’s caveat about half a million years, and I answered….
Silly me. I should have known, by now, after years of banging my head against the wall with The Nerd of Slurs, that I should have seen the elephant in the sentence, because this was Jim’s gambit.
Of course, it was part of the lie slur preparation technique he’s master at.
Just around the corner at TR came this…
and hereon PZ’s blog …
In isolation, out of context, it sounds terrible, doesn’t it, but when you read it in the original context, it’s at worst a tiny mistake. But Jim doesn’t care about that.
No doubt this will be thrown at me now for years to come as yet more “evidence” of terrible “AAT/H Research methods”. You never know, it might even make into Jim’s BIG 4 “shock horror” revelations where, among others, he reveals that Elaine Morgan (or was it her typesetter) once missed an ellipsis out of a Darwin quote where a few totally irrelevant words were ommitted.
He used the same trap technique with Elaine, years ago, on sap. Having discovered the damning missing ellipsis (Oh joy! What a nugget of gold it must have been for him) he asked her on a newsgroup about whether she deliberately missed omitted words out of quotations. Elaine replied that she usually didn’t, but whenever she did, she would put three little dots in to indicate something had been missed.
BINGO! Jim must have been jumping with joy. On top of the damning typo error, he now also had her with one of his hallmalk lie slurs! Job done.
Brilliant, isn’t he PZ?
These tedious, nit pickings, blown up into accusations of malpractice at best, outright lies at worst, are what Jim Moore does. Amazingly this sleazy shit from a totally unqualified ex-car mechanic seems to be the best response mainstream science has managed to come up with in over 50 years to the damned aquatic ape – and the people who defend the mainstream ignorant sneering response seem to be proud of it.
This is the kind of thing PZ Myers, apparently, admires so much!
“The Definitive Web Resource”, he calls it!
BULL SHIT!
I keep asking PZ if he even read it. Is he really defending this sort of shady journalism?
PZ’s “replies” have been to call me an “idiot”, “loon” or “kook”. Brilliant.
…
MEANWHILE, what Jim HIMSELF is desperately trying to distract attention from is his repeated evasion of this simple question….
See, Jim’s been misrepresenting Daniel Dennett’s views on Elaine Morgan’s work 180 degrees for years. Again and again, he’s claimed that Dennett was bracketing the “AAT” with creationism when he wasn’t.
Do a Google search of “anthrosciguy Dennett” if you don’t believe me. It’s there, in the newsgroup archives for all time for anyone to read.
Dennett actually thinks it’s a pretty good idea – he told me that himself – and he was clearly distinguishing between the people who support ID and those who are trying to do some science on ideas that have been deemed “fringe” by the mainstream. In his NYT article he told them to “get in line behind” people like me who are only trying to do some science.
So, who’s being most dishonest here?
Me, for falling into Jim Moore’s elephant trap four days ago, or anthro-slur-guy, for deliberately and repeatedly completely distorting the words of Dan Dennett, one of the most respect thinkers about Darwinian theory today, about Elaine Morgan’s work – for years and then continue to deny he’d done anything wrong even after I wrote to Dennett asking him directly about it?
Don’t tell me guys… the pseudoskeptic gang here will all side with Jim Moore, right?
You’ve really assembled a great crowd of rational independent-thinking people here, PZ.
Well done!
Algis Kuliukas
algis the koooooooooooook, you know if you stop picking at this thread it will die all on its own? Your chance of winning any arguments here is exactly zero….
Anyone else got to the point where they’re only reading this thread because Kuliukas’ childish outrage is quite amusing?
I find Algis’s behavior to be more mentally disturbed, and it is disturbing for me to read. But I’m learning how how he thinks, and seeing much similarity to religious “thinking”, so there’s an education.
I learn a lot in threads like this, both from reading other comments, and from researching for my own–I just looked up Guinea worm (eww) and also researched diseases of chimps. Too busy for good reply today, though.
Algis sure needs a lot of words to almost admit he just said something stupidly wrong because he didn’t think much about what he was saying.
That’s what most folks say over at TRF, and why they’ve followed the thread since the Dawkins forum shut down. There’s been some really interesting stuff presented: odd and amusing bits of craziness from Algis, and good factual stuff from others. One of the interesting things I’ve seen, from many years of this sort of back and forth online with several of the big fish in the tiny pond that is the AAT/H, is how seldom the proponents of the idea actually come up with info. But others do, like Amphiox presenting the very interesting Science paper (which I’d love to read if it weren’t firewalled). In the past, I’ve made the mistake of assuming Algis had come up with some paper or such that was being discussed online and invariably it turns out one of his opponents did so. Viurtually the only thing he’s come up with that he accurately described has been from pop science books and snippets — formulas, for instance — from books that he admits he does not understand.
Amphiox, thanks for the link to the myoglobin thing; very interesting stuff. From what I can see of the data, the pattern among extant diving mammals is remarkable. The business about elephant ancestry not so much. But I haven’t seen the article itself.
Pertaining to the link I provided, when you obtain the original article (it’s behind a paywall, so you have to have some sort of access to Science, unfortunately) and look at the supplemental data, it turns out, interestingly, that the authors analyzed a wide spectrum of mammals, INCLUDING PRIMATES AND HUMANS.
So let’s take a look at what it actually says about primates and humans.
This is from table S2 in the supplementary material, for those who can access the link. They’ve presented pretty much the entire mammalian clade and given Z-values for their myoglobin charge. The higher the value, the more aquatic the ancestry.
Whales and Pinnipeds are in the 3-5 range.
The Polar Bear is 1.98.
The American Water Shrew is 2.54.
The African and Asian Elephants are 2.11.
And humans?
0.65.
Exactly the same as all the tested Hominoidea (great and lesser apes) except for Orangutans and Chimpanzees.
Which were, wait for it….
0.98 for Orangutans, and 1.29 for Chimpanzees.
There is no hint of aquatic ancestry here in the entire primate clade, and chimpanzees (AND Orangutans) score HIGHER than humans.
So much for that.
Do they say anything about how these ‘surface charges’ might affect the oxygen-binding characteristics of different myoglobins?
So does this (if the data holds up to replication) mean absolute falsification of the entire AAH idea?
It’s pretty close to it, though to be fair, it is not completely so.
There is one exception that stands out in the data set. Sirenians score low. The myoglobin data pertains specifically to swimming, diving, and breath holding. As shallow water specialists, the Sirenians manage to be aquatic without needing to do much if any diving or breath holding.
So there’s a loophole here where Algis can drive his bipedal wading apes through.
But all the swimming/diving/breath holding arguments are nixed. So no more babble about naked skin, and diving reflexes, and babies “instinctively” knowing how to float. No more talk about buoyancy or muscle density or whatnot. Humans did NOT have ANY phase of their ancestry since the origin of primates where swimming and diving were significant selective pressures in any way. Period.
We’re left with a scenario where human ancestors spend enough time in water for wading to be a significant selective pressure, but for all that time, somehow, there was no swimming, no diving, no breath holding. The Sirenians apparently did it, so it is not entire ridiculous to contemplate, but still.
AND the chimpanzees and orangutans score HIGHER than humans. That means either that there was no difference in swimming/diving/breath holding selective pressure between humans and gorillas (also score 0.65 like humans) on one hand and chimpanzees and orangutans on the other among the great apes, and the differences are stochastic, and below the threshold of sensitivity to indicate anything meaningful about aquatic ancestry, OR, that chimpanzees and orangutans had MORE exposure to water, and MORE selection pressure from swimming/diving/breath holding than humans, which would turn Algis’ scenario into one where the human ancestors were wading but NOT swimming or diving or breathholding or otherwise putting their faces under water, while the chimpanzees ancestors, while NOT wading (and thus no bipedality), WERE swimming and diving and holding their breath under water.
I think one would need to petition for presidential dispensation for special pleading to get that one through….
Now, with Amphiox’s reported data, anybody who is a scientist and looking OBJECTIVELY, NOT EGOTISTICALLY at the data would be dropping all mention of the aquatic ape idea. I drowned due to lack of data.
So AK, do you have sufficient honesty and integrity to finally shut the fuck up? Stay tuned for the latest installment of Crank/Loon Thread.
I keep reading this thread for the amazing science like the myoglobin study. I’m still scratching my head over star-nosed moles being aquatic. Huh? Water-shrews sure, but moles?
I worry if I think too much about the fact that Algis has years of higher education and does not seem to understand how science works.
In the discussion, the authors had this to say:
The ancestral reconstructions in the paper do depend on existing fossil specimens, as they have to factor in estimated total body mass into their calculations.
It is still therefore possible for some AAH diehard to try to shoehorn the theory into a gap in the primate fossil record, wherein the primates went aquatic, gained the myoglobin charges, then trooped back onto land, and subsequently re-lost all the myoglobin changes, neatly erasing the evidence completely from modern investigative techniques.
Heh. They’ve done something similar in the past with other sorts of fossil evidence that countered their hobby horse.
But once we get to THAT level of gap prospecting and special pleading, how, exactly, is the AAH and its proponents any different from the creationists?
http://www.animalplace.net/mammals/star-nosed-mole-facts-characteristics-habitat-and-more/
But it is telling. The degree of “aquatic-ness” of star-nosed moles isn’t huge. Not much different conceptually than a hypothetical wading water-side ape. And yet the signature of aquatic ancestry is easily seen in their myoglobin. You would expect a similar to signature to be just as easily seen in humans, if it existed, and it is not.
And of course, no more talk about how much “better” modern humans are at swimming and diving than chimpanzees. If we are so, it must be a recent (very recent!) adaption that has not persisted long enough to have any impact on our myoglobin, and thus of no evolutionary relevance pertaining to our origins within the ape clade.
Incidentally, this also nixes the Space Ape Hypothesis too. Breath holding is likely to be important for interplanetary migrators….
Thanks for posting that part of the paper, Amphiox.
In the past, confronted with evidence, Algis has categorically stated that nothing will convince him. The only thing he says will is if someone does a dangerous, unethical test that no one will do, and although people have pointed out ways Algis could do variations of that test which would be cheap, practical, and ethical he has refused to do it.
In other words, the answer to your question is “no”.
Thanks Amphiox, you rock!
Re 752
Putting to one side the slur about me “fapping away” (presumably by that, he means me pointing out anthro-slur-guy’s nauseating double standards, which, I note no-one here has yet had the courage to comment on)…
… thanks, “Amphiox” for linking us to a timely and excellent piece of pertinent science. A brilliant paper, indeed.
S. Mirceta et al., Science 340,1234192 (2013). DOI: 10.1126/science.1234192
A big step up from his “you are disgusting” slur post recently.
I have only just got the paper and will read it today but there are a few points in that have already come to mind which should be noted before the aquaskeptics here get too carried away with their knee-jerk triumphalist gloating.
No. 1 on that list has to be, simply, this (from the supplementary materials p 19)…
Stella’s Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) and the Dugong (Dugong dugon) both score 0.68, almost the same as Homo sapiens (0.65) and the Florida Manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) scores -0.27 by their computer modelled ZMb (net surface charge) figure.
So, as no-one here, presumably, is denying that manatees and dugongs are not very aquatically adapted, this is already a bit of a show stopper to this line of evidence, isn’t it?
Clearly, there must be other biochemical/physiological markers of adapations to swimming and diving other than the one they modelled through myoblobin surface charge.
From the paper…
(p 1234192-3)
So there is scope for comparing humans and other great apes in this area and seeing how those figures compare.
So much for that argument.
2nd is how interesting it is that this evidence is supportive of the argument, long held by Elaine Morgan and others, and long sneered at by aquaskeptics, that elephants might have also had a more aquatic past.
(p 1234192-2)
So, I expect aquaskeptics will exhibit less sneering on that idea from now on.
But, having read Amphiox’s triumphalist 765 post – despite admitting the sirenia data above completely contradicts the whole argument – I doubt that.
See how blatant contradictory evidence is simply flipped away…
“No swimming, no diving, no breath holding”, note. Whilst at the same time admitting that the sirenians did it… “but still”!
And this…
What? the very data in the paper, as “Amphiox” admitted showed that sirenians had a similar (or even less) score than humans. No need for any shoe-horning at all.
I repeat I am certainly not arguing that humans were ever any where near as aquatic as manataees and dugongs. If humans swam and dived (of course close to the surface) a little more than chimps since the LCA it would be remarkable if any selection would have occurred pertaining to myoglobin function.
I do agree and accept, however, that there should be some physiological markers for some kind of increased blood oxygen carrying which discriminate humans from chimps and gorillas if there is anything in the idea that humans were subjected to more selection from swimming and diving than our ape cousins.
If, upon further investigation, such markers were found in manatees (and other more aquatic mammals) and the data showed that humans were at the more terrestrial end of the spectrum, by these markers, than chimpanzees were, I would, of course, concede the idea is wrong.
Algis Kuliukas
Damn!
That should, have read…
“So, as no-one here, presumably, is denying that manatees and dugongs are very aquatically adapted… ”
Sorry.
Yawn, liar and bullshitter still lying and bullshitting. His IDEA IS DEAD, DROWNED IN ITS OWN LACK OF EVIDENCE.
Long past time AK to show us you are a scientist, and not just a CRANK/LOON. SHUT THE FUCK UP.
*shakes head*
Algis apparently missed the part about shallow water diving
Or he saw the word loophole, and proceeded to wedge his aquatic ape in the wrong one.
Re 773
That is simply an outrageous and blatant lie.
(Great “web resource” this, eh PZ?)
Note how anthro-slur-guy does not back this up with anything – even one of his cherry-picked, out-of-context, microquotes.
My model is completely based on all the evidence I am aware of and is open to rejection, or modification, as more evidence emerges, either new, or existing that I am currently not aware of.
Note this garbled mess…
… is simultaneously arguing that “no one will do it” and at the same time that I have “refused to”!
Brilliant at slurs, this guy, isn’t he?
What Jim doesn’t report, note, is the actual test itself – the one that, if shown to be negative, would cause me to drop the idea like a stone in a pond, never to return.
It’s a thought experiment because, Jim’s right about one thing, it would be unethical to test in this way…
Infant Drowning Rescue (thought experiment) Test
Given an infant and mother pair and a circular pool, of 3m radius and 3m depth.
Take the infant from the mother and place it in the centre of the pool. Observe.
Repeat with 100 such pairs.
Prediction: If the species is Homo sapiens every single infant will be rescued by the mother. If the species is of the genus Pan, every single infant (and a few mothers) would drown.
This is because a) the human infant, due to its increased adipocity, would float long enough for her to enact a rescue and b) the human mother, also being more buoyant will be able to get across to the infant even if she has never swam before.
I put it to you that you couldn’t ask for a simpler, more stark, test of waterside hypotheses in humans and our nearest relatives than this.
I have repeatedly said that if ever this test (or something unequivocally similar, perhaps through computer modelling) was done and proved the prediction very wrong – specifically that there would be no significant difference in the rescue rates, then I would drop the idea.
Jim knows that I haven’t “refused” to do this. It’s just another lie of his. He knows that my area of research has been bipedalism and the wading hypothesis but, amazingly for god’s gift to anthropology, he does not seem to realise how dificult it is to do empirical research and get it published – especially one like this.
And, today I’ve now added another test which, if proved false, would also cause me to drop the idea.
The Miceta et al (2013) paper cited by Amphiox is brilliant but it does not dent the waterside hypothesis one jot because, by the one thing they measure – a computer modelled indication of Myglobin surface charge, humans are almost the same as members of sirenia.
However, if a similar study was done which found some cluster of metrics clearly pertaining to manatee shallow diving and on that scale, humans came closer to the terrestrial end of the spectrum than chimps, again, I would drop the idea.
That’s two.
Your turn. What evidence would make you accept that humans swim better than chimps because of some selection from doing so more than their ancestors did since the LCA?
Algis Kuliukas
Re 778
What? Humans and manatees & gugongs score around the same. So much for the argument that this paper dents the AAH.
I can imagine that you must feel really gutted but we have to go by the evidence, right?
Algis Kuliukas
Still nothing but hot air from AK. Still no EVIDENCE that his idea hasn’t died the death of a bad scientific idea. Unless he can link to real evidence, NO SALE!
Typical Crank/Loon, can’t admit he is WRONG, and must evidence, not bullshit, his way right…
That would be silly wouldn’t it? Would you say humans were as aquatic as star-nosed moles?
Why would humans follow the one exception, rather than the common trait among all the rest of the aquatic animals?
You mean like the data that was just spoon fed to you above?
The chimpanzees and orangutans score HIGHER than humans, so apparently you think the water was full of wading primates. Nevermind the fearsome beasties that lived in the shallows where the human and chimp lines were apparently cavorting.
I’m sure you would just ignore it, and post more about your sadistic science “experiments”.
You are dishonest, and more than a little creepy.
I can imagine that you must feel really gutted, but we have to go by the evidence, right?
Re 782
The “one” exception? What you mean ignoring manatees and dugongs?
They’re MUCH more aquatic than I envisage humans ever being but clearly, even their myoglobin has not needed to evolve along the lines you seem to think would have left a smoking gun for humans. Who, exactly, is trying to cherry pick here?
Well, as that dataset placed fully aquatic mammals such as manatees and dugongs next to humans, no, obiously not.
I mean a dataset of a physiological measure that showed manatees to be at one end of a spectrum and their terrestrial Paenungulata cousins, say Hyraxes, at the other. If, on that spectrum, humans were closer to Hyraxes, and further from Sirenia, than chimps, I’d concede the argument is dead.
Measures like.. the size of RBC’s, the amount of Haemoglobin per cell etc.
Well all I can say is that you’re wrong about that. I have always been driven by the evidence. You know – the fact humans do swim and dive better than chimps and that the one place apes are most predictably bipedal is in waist deep water. That evidence you flick away as nothing.
There is nothing “sadistic” about a thought experiment that has been specifically designed to clearly discriminate between humans and chimps on the exact degree of selection I am talking about.
Rather than just repeating the slurs of the lynch mob you are a member of, maybe you’d care to point to an incident where you think I have been “dishonest” so that I might have the opportunity to give my point of view on the matter.
As always, all you guys can do is peddle ignorant mob-like slurs, misrepresent the argument and deny evidence.
Algis Kuliukas
Anyone notice that neither “Tethys” nor “Nerd…” took their turn and offered to state a piece of evidence that would cause them to change their minds on this, like I have done (twice).
While we’re at it, can you point to anyone in mainstream anthropology that has done this recently, or indeed, ever? Philip Tobias is remarkable for at least admitting that he got the savannah theory completely wrong but I can’t think of any other examples.
Maybe PZ Myers might chip in here with something! (Yeah, right!)
Maybe Jim Moore, with his excellent “library research” techniques, might be able to point us to an example in 150 years of anthropological literature.
…
And I’m the one castigated as some pseudoscientific “kook”!
Algis Kuliukas
Talking about people telling lies…
Here’s a post anyone who trusts anthro-slur-guy should read if they have any pretence of being open minded.
Great “web resource” eh, PZ?
Algis Kuliukas
Dear fucking GOD Algis.
That experiment is one of the most vile things I’ve ever heard about. You’d expose infant apes (either human or not) to the possibility of drowning. Babies can drown in an inch of water if they swallow the water.
Re 786
It’s a thought experiment.
I wouldn’t deliberately expose anyone to any risk of anything.
What’s wrong with you people?
I see you’re not going to comment on anthro”sci”guy’s double standards or offer you own piece of evidence that would change your mind on this. Just, the usual slurs…
Algis Kuliukas
Wrong question. What’s wrong with you Loon/Crank if you can’t understand your idea doesn’t hold water when faced with the evidence. Any real scientist would have rejected your idea by now. As we all have.
You aren’t a scientist. You are nothing but a liar and bullshitter. Your word is considered nothing but drivel.
Dan Dennett’s opinion: still completely irrelevant.
Jim Moore’s opinion about Dan Dennett’s opinion: still doubly completely irrelevant.
Algis Kuliukas’s opinion about Dan Dennett’s opinion: ditto.
Algis Kuliukas’s opinion about Jim Moore’s opinion about Dan Dennett’s opinion: still so completely triply irrelevant that NOBODY CARES AND NOR SHOULD THEY.
but I realize that this thread is now just another front in a long war of attrition.
But guys, there IS evidence. Humans ~do~ swim better than Chimps –we have the youtube videos. Well, that’s his argument, isn’t it?
:-D
That’s the point; it’s an experiment he can be assured will never ever be performed, so there is no chance of the results being anything other than what he imagines them to be. Several people last month at TRF pointed out ways this could be tested by Algis in ethical, safe ways, but he has (typically for him) refused to consider doing so. (Of course in real life this experiment has essentially been performed, with the resulkts that drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for infants in the USA and Canada.) For my part, I’ve pointed out that his scenario, where an infant is somehow snatched from its mother and thrown into the middle of a deep pool, is nonsensical, especially if you consider how often this would have to happen for any selection pressure to result from it. I suggested that a realistic scenario would be for an infant to fall from its mother’s or caregiver’s grasp in water no deeper than the mother felt comfortable in, and that the infant would be immediately picked up. The result in such a case would be identical for humans or chimps.
Here’s an example where the mother isn’t even next to the infant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjvnQwJbF8w
What’s most interesting to me, however, about this thought experiment is that it mirrors others that Algis comes up with; what they have in common is barbaric cruelty. Another he came up with was putting a group of apes in an inescapable arena and filling it with water to see if they swam or drowned. Part of this is probably just his wanting to make sure his claims can’t be tested, and so he can claim that he would drop his idea “if” while being certain that “if” cannot happen, but it is disturbing that he comes up with these cruel ideas.
BTW, manatees are able to dive for relatively long times (they usually don’t, and need to rest between dives if they do) because of their unusually low metabolic rate. We’re not just talking about unusually low compared to humans, but compared to other marine mammals (similar studies have not been done on dugongs, AFAIK, but they are presumed to be similar due to their similar habits and diet).
“Manatees have been reported to exhibit metabolic rates as
low as 25 % of that predicted on the basis of body mass
(Scholander and Irving, 1941; Gallivan and Best, 1980, 1986).
This low metabolic rate, together with their herbivorous
feeding behavior (Campbell and Irvine, 1977; Best, 1981),
makes them unique among marine mammals.”
and
“Although manatees exhibit metabolic rates lower than that
predicted by body mass under normal conditions, they have
been reported to reduce their metabolic rate by an additional
23 % during fasting (Gallivan and Best, 1986).”
Those from “THYROID HORMONE CONCENTRATIONS IN CAPTIVE AND FREE-RANGING WEST
INDIAN MANATEES (TRICHECHUS MANATUS)” RUDY M. ORTIZ, DUNCAN S. MACKENZIE, AND GRAHAM A. J. WORTHY in The Journal of Experimental Biology 203, 3631–3637 (2000)
BTW, they found that this low metabolic rate was not due to lower thyroid hormone:
“In spite of lower metabolic rates,
thyroid hormone concentrations in captive manatees were
comparable with those for other terrestrial and marine
mammals, suggesting that the low metabolic rate in
manatees is not attributable to reduced circulating thyroid
hormone concentrations.”
This argument could be made if humans and chimpanzees both scored the same low Z-number.
But Chimpanzees scored HIGHER than humans.
If you have had the opportunity to actually look at the data presented in the supplemental material, you see that the authors have exhaustively examined every single major clade within mammalia, with several representative species for each, among the apes they were thorough enough to have BOTH gibbons AND siamangs (how many researchers are thorough enough to do that, including both of them even when the primates weren’t the main group of interest for the study), orangutans, chimpanzees, humans and gorillas.
The Sirenians are the ONLY exception in the entirety of mammals. And for the Sirenians we actually have a documented plausible mechanism for why they might be an exception – their low metabolic rate.
There is no such plausible mechanism that could make humans an exception, and no mechanism that could make chimpanzees a REVERSE exception (of which, if Algis’ contention is true, they would stand as the ONLY such reverse exception in the entirety of all the mammals)
Shall we turn Algis’ little phrase around?
If humans swam and dived (of course close to the surface) a little more than chimps since the LCA, so little more that it would be remarkable if any selection would have occurred to pertaining to myoglobin, then what cause have we to suspect that such little selection difference would have occurred pertaining to bipedal locomotion?
More typical two-faced dishonest babbling from Algis yet again.
Simply disgusting.
Algis, following the example of Elaine Morgan, has often used diving world records as “evidence”, so it’s disingenuous for him to now say he’s not talking about much diving. But then he’s always been ready to change direction radically as long as it allows him to keep his core belief (no matter how many of its supports he has to jettison to do so). For example, now the key comparison is not chimps — or orangs — and humans, it’s sirenia and hyrax. But this throws his past statements right out the window. Here’s a few such (a couple are from this comment thread):
Algis has also long held that the proper null in biology is not drift, as textbooks say, but selection; it’s his made-up principle of “the Darwinian Default”. Along with this he holds that extremely slight selection, selection so small he has been told by professional geneticists that it would be indistinguishable from drift, necessarily causes phenotypic change. If these two things were true than he has to feel that the myoglobin differences between humans and chimps is the result of chimp ancestors doing more diving than ours. But this is the opposite of what he claims so instead he has flung his longstanding belief in “Darwinian default”/slight selection right into the trash bin.
When he does things like this it’s exactly like Biblical literalists who don’t obey large swaths of the Bible but nevertheless insist they follow it literally.
Quite frankly, if a chimpanzee could be trained to do the hyperventilation and other preparation that human divers must do, it would not surprise me if the chimpanzees would EASILY outperform humans at diving from the simple fact that their substantially smaller brains would be metabolically substantially less demanding. And when it comes to holding your breath, it is your brain’s metabolic needs that is, at least in apes, always the rate limiting step.
Disingenuous but completely predictable. Algis hasn’t been anything but disingenuous since I’ve had the displeasure of being exposed to his screeds.
At the moment it is floating suspended in the vacuum, levitating by magic.
One of the facts I came across some years ago in looking at all this is that untrained dogs can hold their breath somewhat longer than can untrained humans.
Re 789
Chas, that’s sweet that you think it’s all irrelevant but the fact of the matter is that tribal group think in science (especially anthropology) is rife, and opinion matters.
Why then, did Sir David Attenborough get publicly lambasted recently for (shock horror) being open to waterside hypotheses?
Why does PZ Myers feel the need to openly sneer at the idea in places like this?
Is his opinion irrelevant too?
The material point is that anthro”sci”guy has received an incredible amount of uncritical acclaim from people who should know better. My supervisor at UCL, Leslie Aiello, referred me to it after I had critiqued John Langdon’s straw man paper. That’s right, the then editor of JHE, having realised that I could easily answer every point in the only paper in an anthro journal attempting some kind of critique of the so-called “AAH”, that she must have let through peer review as editor, even though the paper is very unscholarly and would get have got a red line through it if submitted as an essay to an anthro tute – then referred me to the gossip-filled, nit picking web site of a totally unqualified ex car mechanic with a huge chip on his shoulder!
It would be funny if it wasn’t so shocking.
PZ Myers says it’s the “definitive web resource” on this idea! But the trouble is… it’s shit.
Jim Moore has, for years, twisted everyone’s words, every fact and every argument. He’s searched the internet for the tiniest, most tedious errors and trumped them up as evidence of malpractice at best, or shock-horror sordid dishonesty at worst.
The fact that he has been completely twisting the clear support of someone as well known as respected as Daniel Dennett for years (hundreds of times) is simply a symptom of the malais. He’s done the same thing with Derk Denton, Philip Tobias and everyone else.
PZ Myers should write here and defend this shoddy practice or disavowe his support of Jim Moore’s “work”.
Algis Kuliukas
I’m not saying elephants could never have been partially-aquatic, I’m just wondering if the sheer size of the buggers gets them into some special oxygen needs.
Re 793
The differences between human and chimp/gorilla myoglobin are minor and probably due to simple random error. So I think you are clutching at straws there. If we take this data literally, we’d have to assume that chimps and gorillas have done more diving than humans since the LCA, which completely contradicts the evidence from extant forms which, I should remind you, is that many thousands of humans have been observed diving in > 2m depths but no chimps or gorillas.
The fact that sirenian myoglobin did not need to evolve in the same direction as cetaceans and other aquatics simply shows that there are other evolutionary pathways to adapt to a diving life style.
It would be interesting if, in a follow up paper, some physiological marker were found which enumerated those physiological markers and they were analysed in a similar way to this brilliant paper.
I promise you this, if such a paper is published that includes such markers where there are no obvious aquatic mammals as outliers, like here, and Humans do not clearly rate closer to the ‘more aquatic’ end of the spectrum than Pan in that analysis, I will concede that the idea is dead in the water, as far as I am concerned.
Algis Kuliukas
Your promises aren’t worth the electrons used to post them. YOU MUST EVIDENCE YOUR IDEA. You keep arguing like a creobot and godbot, where you are right until proven wrong. IF YOU ARE SCIENTIST, YOU ARE WRONG UNTIL YOU EVIDENCE YOURSELF RIGHT. YOU HAVEN’T DONE THAT, AND APPARENTLY CAN’T DO THAT.
Since you refuse to be scientific, nothing you say will cause you to make any headway here. The null hypothesis is you lie and bullshit for your inane and all wet idea. You are obviously a CRANK/LOON who can’t shut the fuck up.
Desperado at “work”.
Jim, stop it. You’re embarassing. They are thought experiments, as you know. This is science. Thought experiments do not have to take account of (only very selective) touchy feely-ness. I am not proposing that anyone actually do these experiments in the way I have described them, but if anyone produces evidence from similar, ethically sound, research that gives unequivocally comparable data that shows my predictions to be wrong, I’ll drop the idea.
What’s your similar guarrantee? Which evidence, that might be produced, would cause you to drop your obsessive hostility to this idea?
While, we’re at it, why don’t you want to talk about the hundreds of times you’ve completely misrepresented Dan Dennett’s clear support of these ideas? Not very honest are you?
Algis Kuliukas
Which is it, Jim…
a) the experiment can never be performed, which is why Algis is promoting it,
b) the experiment can be performed, but Algis “refuses” to do it, or
c) it doesn’t matter, as long as I get to slur another “aquatic ape” guy.
I think it’s “c”.
Algis Kuliukas
Re: 795
But Jim, it would be ridiculous to go on this one figure, wouldn’t it?
If we did, we’d have to conclude that chimps were far more aquatic than manatees.
I haven’t “flung” anything.
If the Mirceta et al data placed all aquatics (including Sirenia) at one end of a spectrum and terrestrials at the other, with humans closer to the terrestrial end than chimps, then, yes, this paper would be a bit of a show stopper.
But guess what… it just didn’t.
You are like the bible literalist here, cherry picking the bits you like and ignoring the bits you don’t.
No-one who has followed your work with a critical mind – just me apparently – should be surprised at this.
Your “interpretations” have been shown to be faulty for years. This is how you have managed to twist Dennett’s clear support of Elaine Morgan’s work and pretend it is bracketining it with creationism hundreds of times.
Algis Kuliukas
Any evidence today, Mr. Kuliukas? Any at all? No? Should I check back tomorrow then? You know, at some point, your new fan base here is going to figure out that you don’t have any evidence and that no amount of begging and pleading, on their part, is going to get you to post something you don’t have. See, this constant bawling about ASG’s masterful disassembly of you and your hobbyhorse does not constitute evidence in support of your hypothesis –this much I think we can agree on. So then the question becomes “What else has he got?” Nothing. So why are you even here? Is it because PZ thinks you’re a loon? So what? Everybody else thinks you’re a loon, too. Are you trying to muscle in on the Internet Whack-job Hall of Fame? Are you and Ed Conrad vying for the biggest hat? What do you think you’ll gain with such a trophy? “Oh, there goes Algis Kuliukas, biggest damned fool this side of Poughkeepsie!” Hardly seems worth it, does it? And what about the family? Are you gonna keep at it ’til they have to put a grocery bag over their heads whenever they leave the house? Seems counter productive to me, but then you’re the master of your own destiny. So far, you seem hell-bent on augering yourself into the ground. But hey, don’t let me stop you. You’ll be back tomorrow and so will I. You –sputtering and bumping into walls, and me, laughing so hard I fall out of my chair.
I know, why don’t you post your list of evidence here at Pharyngula? That should be good for a few giggles. No? You want me to post it for you?
Still no new evidence from AK. Crank/Loon at work. The idea drowned in the sea of unevidence. Give it a rest monomaniac. You have nothing scientific to offer. All you have is ego, attitude and bullshit. Not a combination to sell an evidenceless idea at a SCIENTIFIC web blog.
NO SALE!
Re 805
Michael, as you know, I have provided a list of evidence for you many times over at TalkRational but, just like the most devout creationist, you simply deny that it is evidence.
No 1 on that list is the most simple, blatantly obvious, piece of evidence imaginable, the most pertinent, the most clear cut – simply that humans swim and dive better than chimps.
Now why oh why should that be? We swim better because we’re clever? We swim better because we’re bipedal? We swim better because we’re fat? We swim better because we have a brachiating arm? We swim better because we … [Enter your favourite just-so story here]
Whatever it is, the one thing you people cannot ever consider is the one thing that is usually the only thing that it considered when comparing how well two species move in a given substrate… natural selection.
Suddenly, here and only here, natural selection is the last thing to be considered.
Parsimony gone mad.
Yes, your denial of this is good for a giggle. Pity you can’t see how silly your pretence of rigour is.
Algis Kuliukas
Look, another evidenceless post by AK. His OPINION isn’t and never will be evidence. Welcome to real science AK. You lose.
808:
Oh, thank you, Algis! That saves me the headache of looking it up myself. I’m sure the folks here will be amazed at your carefully manicured list and, let’s face it, be provided with whole minutes of knee-slappers. We won’t tell them that your list has been run through a Cuisinart and found to contain ~no evidence~ but I’m sure that any very brief perusal will yield a similar conclusion. Thanks again and please keep ’em comin’! Hey! Maybe you should take your act to the stage, eh? I see income potential!
Here is one of Algis’s bits of so called evidence. Look how he provides the most parsimonious explanation, and immediately rejects it in favor of stupid speculation.
Chimpanzees and bonobos both fashion sticks, rocks, leaves, and grass into tools for various purposes. (most of them food related)
With the exception of the upper canine/cuspid, human teeth and chimp teeth are proportional to their respective jaw. Humans have a greatlly reduced mandible to accomodate their greatly expanded cranium. It is so reduced that most humans have issues with the third molar.
I am most amused by the coastal ecosystem sentence. Gathering shellfish at the coast requires a digging stick at low tide and enough intelligence to get back to the beach before the tide turns. You will get your feet wet, but there is zero swimming involved.
While it is true there are relatively few large predators in more temperate areas of the coasts, in the area where humans evolved there are several of them. Salt-water Crocs and various sharks spring immediately to mind. There are also several animals which aren’t predators, but they are pretty lethal. Hippos account for several human fatalities yearly. I can’t imagine their ancestors were less territorial. Not to mention all the lethal to stinging critters like jellyfish, fireworms, sea urchins which our naked skin would offer little protection against.
Parsimony says no to AAT. It says primate which began eating and cooking other critters, in addition to plants and roots. Cooperative foraging selected for increased manual dexterity, and increased bipedalism.
He got lambasted for belieiving in something despite the evidence, and for making up starwmen about early hominids “chasing elephants” across the savanna, something so dumb even you finally admitted it was dumb.
Pretty clear (I doubt others found it so hard to grasp as you did). a) is so; b) needs to read “a variation of the experiment can be performed easily and ehtically, but Algis “refuses” to do it; c) ha.
I am aware they are thought experiments (I’m certainly under no illusion you intend to do the research you regularly castigate others for not doing for you). I’m just taken aback at how barbarically cruel your thoughts are.
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=1508743#post1508743
BTW, Michael Clark, a very nice bit of trolling there. Perhaps not the elegance of a Bart, but with a nuts and bolts non-surreal angle that in many ways surpasses his work.
Why, thank you Jim. Coming from the master, that is high praise indeed! Yes, bobbing-for-fruitcakes isn’t my only talent. I also do crop dusting and once worked as a Stromotologist from Iowa. Who can forget Philbert Desenex, eh? :-D
Algis:
Actually, a bully is more like, “There’s more of ME than of any of you.” The big guy tries to bully all the littler people. You keep telling us how much more brain and education you have, and blustering and screaming in all caps, and defining all the rules to suit yourself. You, Algis, are bullying. And projecting.
What will you accept as unequivocal? Given your antics here, I assume there’s nothing. You’ll probably say that swimming didn’t start ’till adolescence or something. Or go back to wading.
But mostly, there’s absolutely no reason to think that humans swim better than chimps, and there’s no reason to do an experiment. You picked up that delusion from your holy book, and you will not let it go.
No, I’m not saying that, and you are sad for trying such passive-aggressive shit. Twisting up a strawman seems good to you, eh?
I’m saying you got off on one book/concept, and have stuck with it ever since. You are not rational about the aquatic ape nonsense.
Almost all the literature on the AAH is by supporters. As you keep whingeing, nobody else writes any. And reading all the positive literature about something and getting further stuck in is a common trait of conspiracy theorists.
I read the Aquatic Ape books as a teen, and even believed ’em. And now I have a stack of creationist crap in my library, so I can keep aware of the other side.
Again, a very common whine. You could sieve through all of science, and not find anything refuting the “purple zebras on pogo sticks in Antarctica” theory, either. Do you even think, Algis?
Fossils form near water, mostly because of water-related deaths, such as mudslides, where the body is buried. Fossilization—the mineralization—is the slow leaching of minerals, which is again, water.
Dead animals out in the savannah simply disappear in a few days—that’s been observed. You know, tested.
But, yeah, humans get near water to drink, bathe and wash. Then the clumsy bastards fall in and fossilize, instead of swimming ashore. Which is to say that people dying in water is possibly evidence against the AAH.
As for habitat, nobody in your time-frame left water-related evidence such as shell middens.
No, we are the serious adults here, you are the all-caps, multiple-exclamation-marks, goal-post-moving, name-calling arguer. You, Algis, are projecting.
See, insults from you. Again, we aren’t following anybody. You are following the AAH people, and acting exactly like every conspiracy loon on the ‘net.
Again with the insults and names. And again, I have NOT read his stuff—I’m just going off this thread and you, Algis, and if you are the best of the AAH, it sucks.
No, you wouldn’t. You haven’t.
Aware being the key word there. You’ve a bad set of blinkers combined with “aqua-colored glasses” (such a lovely image).
Cruel and poorly designed.
It could be done other ways, and I bet you a dime that a mother chimp will get there quicker, just by jumping, or swinging or scrambling. I’ve been near two child-drowning incidents, and in both cases the mother was useless. We have lifeguards for good reasons, and they are trained, not instinctive.
But humans DON’T swim and dive better than chimps. You picked that up from the AAH books, and you cannot let it go. Some humans swim more, but that’s all you can say. The rest is your delusion.
Apes are bipedal in water because they fricking hate water. If they loved it, they’d settle down and swim. You torture your reasons the way you torture a sentence—“the one place” and “most predictably” don’t really work together. (You sound like a commercial.)
Again, you decide what someone else did, and then what someone else is doing. Algis, you really think you are a god.
Algis, you are the obsessive hostile here. Seriously, dude, I’ve seen people like you before, and you ain’t healthy.
Hundreds of times? Completely? Clear support? Again, you exaggerate and twist and push just as far as you can.
No, they don’t. You’ve never done a test. You just assume.
Physically, I can see advantages to chimps in swimming. They’ve got long arms, and their back feet would really move water—our back feet are pretty much useless.
The best primate swimmer that I know of is the probiscus monkey, and they are on the other side of chimps, body-wise. We are all stiff and clunky, by comparison, with little hands and useless feet—even our best swimmers, and the rest of us are horrible.
Besides, I thought you were back to wading? Why do you keep harping on swimming?
We swim better because you think we do. I, personally, can’t swim for shit.
I certainly can’t outswim a probiscus monkey, and chimps look more them than we do.
Of course we look for natural selection. But again, Algis knows what’s going on, and us puny mortals should listen.
And where does that “one thing … only thing” thing come from? Everybody knows about emergent properties and spandrels, except Algis.
That happens to not be the case.
Softer ones like shrimp in the shell? Gritty foods with sand in them? You need to show which foods are softer, and where they grew, and some evidence that they were eaten.
It’s also low in fat, the stuff you need for brain growth.
Which coast is all that? And again, show us the middens. Show us the people who now live there like our ancestors did.
Look, Algis, the biggest difference between chimps and us is our feet. The rest of bipedalism is postural, but our foot is a freaking freak show. You need to explain our feet, first and foremost.
Our foot is a runner’s foot, with a heel and an arch and a big toe. It is not a chimp’s foot, it is not a swimmer’s foot, and it is not a wader’s foot. It is a narrow foot, suited for game trails in the savannah, and it works well for that.
It sucks for wading, by the way. A nice chimp foot to grip rocks, or to spread out in mud, or even to clasp closed on the forward step, would be better. (And, oh doggies, a quadrupedal posture would have saved me some skin, sometimes.)
When it comes to swimming (if you are considering swimming today, Algis) the chimp’s lower body has more flex and power, and those nice cuppy, spready feet to kick with.
Our lower bodies are worthless in swimming. Seriously, grab a kickboard and try to move by just kicking with your legs. We suck at kicking water.
A chimp’s upper body has longer arms and longer hands. They could out-do anyone at paddling a surfboard. Put their legs in there, and they’d beat Michael to the marijuana.
And, as you admit, human swimmers have more hair than they need, so they shave it off sometimes. And some of us are damned hairy. Human hair is finer than a chimps, but not less frequent, and hairiness varies widely among humans, but the AAH started off with comparing.us to dolphins. (The same with fat, by the way—the subcutaneous fat beloved by the AAH is just not consistent.)
Algis, you keep saying we swim better than chimps, and are adapted to water. I say the opposite is likely true. So?
As for chimps not swimming, well, I’d not go swimming in a river in chimp territory, not unless I wanted to catch a whole lot of diseases and parasites. There’s a vid somewhere of a baby chimp playing happily in water, and his mom dragging him out—it’s possibly hard-learned culture, to stay out of the water to stay healthy.
Our brain is bigger than a chimp’s, partly because we eat high-fat foods. Such fatty foods aren’t usually found on a tropical seashore. (The fish-eating cultures I’m familiar with craved beef, they just couldn’t afford it.)
Our smaller jaws could have come from slurping oysters, sure, but you’ve got to find the shell-middens that later cultures left piled all over hell. And you’ve got to find the species the proto-humans likely ate, where and when they ate them. (You can pretend there was a magic species, which was eaten to extinction, if you like.)
Cooked food is soft food, and safer, too—much seafood is poisinous, in one way or another. But cooking isn’t easy on a tropic shore, and almost impossible in a swamp—if we’re back in the swamps, today, Algis. You need dry wood, and tropic shores are humid and short on hardwoods. Savannahs, on the other hand, have dry grass, scrubby trees and dried dung all over the place.
—===—
“What’s brown and sounds like a bell?”
“Dung!”
Re 813
Typical Jim Moore. He pops in a link to one of his posts as if that was the last word on the matter.
I answered this post here and here here but Jim never replied.
These people are evidence deniers, just like creationists.
Algis Kuliukas
Re 817
Typical Algis Kuliukas. He pops in a link to something of his outside this thread as if that was the last word on the matter.
I addressed him here in this thread but Algis never replied.
That person is an evidence assumer, just like creationists.
Menyambal
Like the three creationists you picked as better sources of info on human evolution than Richard Leakey is? :)
Hey everyone, I went and checked that thread Algis linked. Guess what, ASG didnt have to reply because everyone else answered and tore his arguments to shreds. So Algis, got any actual science and not your references to books and your own “papers” to substantiate you hypothesis? Any at all?
Algis has a little problem with the myoglobin paper. In it there’s one clear outlier, the sirenia. We have an explanation for why they can be an outlier (metabolic rate). Humans are not an outlier among primates. So Algis has only a couple choices: accept the evidence and admit it’s a huge blow to his claims; or pretend that humans are some sort of outlier and sirenia are not.
Ha, I didnt read far enough ahead. ASG does respond. Algis is a liar, there is no other explanation for his posts. He is a shameless liar.
Self-quoting, but I think it’s forgiveable: “Your obsession with the idea of me as the person who makes you look bad is the wrong focus for you; it is you who makes you look bad, with your ill thought out ideas and claims and your responses to those claims being shown to be ill thought out. And this is so for virtually all the various AAT/H proponents and their arguments and claims. You are, by far, your own worst enemy.”
But only when it’s convenient. See: pigs vs. whales as opposed to pigs vs. squirrels.
The disgusting spectacle that Algis proposes is most definitely NOT a “thought experiment”.
A real thought experiment is a scenario, where through deduction and inference, one can arrive at an actual conclusion, preferably one which can then actually be tested in a REAL experiment later.
What Algis proposes is nothing of the sort. You can’t derive any insight or result just by thinking about it. You do, actually, have to do it.
And that is no “thought experiment”.
What it is, is psychopathy.
The molecular data in the myoglobin paper, pertaining to the elephants and hyraxes, suggests an aquatic ancestry WAY in the past (30-65 million years ago). The aquatic LCA could even have shared the earth with the last of the dinosaurs. It is quite unlikely that it would have been anything significant in the way of size. We’re most likely talking about something akin to a water “shrew” here.
Not only are humans not an outlier among primates (incidentally, humans also score lower than all the old world monkeys, which have Z scores of 0.98 to humans’ 0.65), but chimpanzees are, in the other direction. Chimpanzees have the highest Z score among all the great apes, almost twice that of humans.
Algis has to explain why humans are an outlier in one direction (but the gorillas, gibbons, and siamangs, which have the same Z score as humans are not), while at the same time the chimpanzees are an outlier in the OTHER direction, with a higher Z score despite NOT having an aquatic ancestry like, as he proposes, humans did.
It would be one thing if the apes were just one uniform group, all with low Z scores. Then one could try to say that the apes for one reason or another are an outlier clade like Sirenians. But that is not the case. There is a pattern WITHIN the apes, and that pattern is the precise OPPOSITE of what Algis’ contention should have produced. One wouldn’t go so far as to call that a flat out falsification of Algis’ ideas, but it sure comes close.
Parsimony has never been Algis’ friend.
As are you AK, you deny evidence, and present none. CRANK/LOON behavior. Scientific behavior would be for you to abandon the aquatic ape idea and find an more evidence idea to promote to the SCIENTIFIC community (and ignore blogs).
Amphiox, thanks for the info on elephant ancestry. I do learn a lot here.
I’m learning that there is a clear pattern of non-scientific thought. Algis is a case study, indeed.
I’m now wondering if chimps went all aquatic, caught something nasty, and the survivors are those with an irrational fear of water. They would do well in water, both swimming and wading.
I worked for a river-based park for a while, and had to do a lot of wading. I took water samples, seined for fish surveys, and did stream-flow profiles. It was fairly clear water on gravel bottom, and about the best case for wading. I’ve also waded Michigan swamps, Washington state beaches and Indonesian shores. As I said, I’d go quadrupedal chimp for most of it.
I’d not go on rocks with barnacles without shoes. Ow.
I’ve also walked cow paths and game trails in very light shoes—I don’t go barefoot around poop, thanks. I can place one foot in front of the other on a narrow trail a lot better than I can swim.
I was once running through a field of tall wheat, and noticed that I instinctively switched to a gliding step that made it a lot easier to get through. It didn’t feel like I figured it out, it just happened.
In water, on the other hand, it took me many years to learn to do anything other than thrash about, and I still suck at swimming.
The gay term for guys with enough body hair to shame a chimp is “grizzly”, I think. I’m not going to Google that to check. Hairless humans, my hairy ass.
Easy. Random drift.
It’s funny how aquaskeptics rail against n.s. when there is overwhelming evidence in favour of the (crazy, I know – as bad as space apes, right?) idea that human ancestors might have been subjected to more selection than chimps from wading, swimming and diving – i.e. we do swim and dive better than they do.
Then, natural selection, we are told, needs to be demonstrated. Anything but n.s. should be assumed first. It doesn’t matter what. Big brains, bipedalism, being fat, having brachiating arms, drift, any just-so story will do as long as it doesn’t face the elephant in the room.
But when there’s a paper which comes up with a computer model for one estimate of one parameter of one molecule that shows chimps to be more aquatic than humans (and, incidently, also Sirenia!!), suddenly the rules change and, of course, it’s natural selection that should be considered. Drift? Schmift.
Listen, I know it must be a terrible disappointment to all the desperate aquaskeptics here that this paper, which Amphiox was dancing in the streets about, actually doesn’t dent the idea at all but please try to remember that no-one ever argued that humans were aquatic in anything like manatees and dugongs are (similar myoglobin to us) leet alone whales and dolphins etc.
Deny. Distort to discredit. Slur…. as always.
Algis Kuliukas
I’m always amazed how far group think gang mentality allows (I’m sure) otherwise rational and sensible people to go in their lynch mob mentality.
So, because I am open to the idea that humans were more exposed to some (perhaps only slightly more) selection pressure from moving through water than chimps (evidenced by the overwhelmingly obvious and pertinent fact that we do swim and dive better than them), this makes me fair game for any amount of hostility, does it?
Reading some of the posts here you’d think I’d been found guilty of some crime.
Apparently, thinking Hardy might have been right, even in some small way, means that not only are you an idiot and stupid about everything, but it also means you’re dishonest and psychopathic. Unlike all those people who think Hardy was nuts. They’re all clever, knowledgable about everything, honest, lovely and sensible people.
Please, get a grip and try to be a little more rational and less hostile. It’s just an idea.
I blame PZ. This is his blog. If he had any responsibility he’d step in a try to act as some kind of voice of reason here. Instead, he’s leading the lynch mob with his own ignorant sneering.
Shameful.
Algis Kuliukas
rather an understatement, don’t you think?
Not really, Chas.
It’s the ad hoc nature of the counter arguments and the bizarre hostility of people, who can’t begin to tell you why humans are so different from chimps but are certain that whatever it was could’t have been anything to with water, that drives me more than anything.
algiskuliukas:
Well of course the counterarguments are ad hoc. We can’t quote from S. Morgenstern’s Nobel Prize-winning proof that we are NOT aquatic, because there isn’t any scientific work to quote from—as you, Algis, keep bitching. We have to make our own case here, and as we have said, that’s the nature of this corner of the internet.
But, you, Algis, want scientific authority to take you seriously. You want to be a scientific authority so bad you are pissing down your leg. Well, you might be able to write your way to a degree, but you are making a laughingstock out of yourself and your case—whatever your case is today … wading, is it now?
You have a two-part problem, Algis. First, the Aquatic Ape, or Wading Ape or whatever the hell you are arguing for at the moment, is bunk, bupkis, beans, bull, blank or bad—there is nothing there. Second, and let me emphasize that this is a separate issue, you, Algis, are acting like a raving nutcase. You sound like every other conspiracy clown, and not because you support the AAH, but because of the way you support it. The “bizarre hostility” isn’t directed toward the AAH—there’s nothing there—it is a reaction to your bizarre antics and your sneering hostility toward everyone.
We are not so different from chimps, really, and … we’ve covered all that. I’m going to go walk the dogs …
algiskuliukas:
No, its an obsession. Go away and heal thyself.
They do, but I don’t think a bit of myosin 2 will make them that much denser…
Argumentum ad hominem, all the way to poisoning the well.
Still no shame?
Right – except I don’t pick cherries; I respond to everything that I think needs to be addressed, and I keep it in context.
What… no. You are arguing that our ancestors waded in the water on occasion, and were able to escape crocs & hippos by climbing. Well, if you’re attacked while wading, you first need to get out of the water, run to the nearest tree, and then climb it, unless the tree is standing in the water.
In other words, you are proposing that convenient trees were located in the water. I just pointed this out, because you seem not to have noticed what you’re saying.
Think your own ideas through, please.
We’re not led. We’re hosted.
You keep not getting it. We’re not discussing if it’s crazy. We’re discussing if it actually happened, based on what the evidence tells us. Lots of crazy shit has in fact happened or is still ongoing!
Don’t you notice that you are the one who keeps chanting “space apes” as a mantra???
What, pray tell, is there magical about vertical climbing and brachiation?
Hint: exaptation, not “preadaptation”.
We’ve been traumatically injured by Ockham’s Machete?
If this weren’t true, there still wouldn’t be any terrestrial animals, let alone flying ones.
They did – it was after the Middle Ages were over that bathing stopped. (Apparently there was too much sin going on in the bathhouses.)
Hyraxes, too? Now that’s interesting – and makes sense out of sea cows and hyraxes being more closely related to each other than either are to proboscideans.
That’s not an accolade, it would simply mean it’s a big overarching explanation for a lot of things. Being specific to a phase in human or hominid evolution, it’s simply too small to be a theory.
Omitting words from a quote counts as a lie!
Perhaps it doesn’t among writers like Morgan – but among scientists, it does; I’m not in the least exaggerating.
You don’t even know how scientists react to omitting words from a quote, and then you complain about somebody not being a professional scientist?
What, seriously, are you doing in a PhD program???
And you will never get over how fucking irrelevant this is, you will never discuss the topic, you will repeat this quote again every 5 or 10 comments because you can use it to discuss people!
Learn to be ashamed.
What? Journalism?
And you’re somehow incapable of discussing substance because you can’t get over the fucking tone.
People calling you names doesn’t make our ancestors wade for a living. Really, it doesn’t.
Who cares what Dennett said? I care what the bones and the stones say, not what a person says. You keep distracting from that.
What nonsense. Dennett isn’t even a scientist, he’s a philosopher. Futuyma and Dawkins come to mind, the Grants, Gould…
If Moore sides with me, that’s his problem, not mine.
All seconded.
Desmans are aquatic, and they are moles.
Alternatively, living underground, where oxygen is relatively scarce, may cause selection pressure for such things. Does the paper mention other moles, or burrowing rodents, or golden “moles”, or marsupial “moles”? (Admittedly, the latter two live in desert sand, which is probably much better aerated.)
Uh, yeah. In particular, apes lack the extremely low metabolic rates of sea cows. Didn’t you know that?
…Then why isn’t there evidence for such a reduction in our myoglobin sequence?
I don’t know how you did it, but you somehow managed to completely overlook the part where comment 765 explains that sea cows don’t actually dive much.
Excuse me, why can’t you learn to spell adiposity? Doesn’t it at least help that the adjective is adipose?
Uh, that makes it completely useless. You can’t simulate a chimpanzee in your brain, let alone 200.
Seconded.
Silliest attempt at a tu quoque argument I’ve seen in a long time.
…Because he was wrong?
PZ hasn’t shown up in this thread in weeks!
Of course. What’s relevant is the evidence he cites, even indirectly (by citing aquaticape.org in this case).
Really, what’s so hard to get about this?
Will you finally stop these arguments from authority?!?
“Probably”? That sounds like you’ve calculated the probability. Show your work!
(…Also, comment 827.)
Yes, trouncing your metabolic rate, which we evidently haven’t done.
Any other ideas?
How about you test those hypotheses?
Hmmmm?
Dental reduction? We retain very thick enamel, and most of us still grow wisdom teeth despite all our snout reduction – retaining three out of the three eutherian molars per jaw quarter.
Some professional swimmers have feet so huge they’d have real trouble buying shoes over here. Like, I’ve never seen shoes with those sizes offered for sale; they probably have to be custom-made.
There are plenty of Mesolithic middens. I’m not aware of older ones.
No; it’s actually surprisingly similar to a sauropod foot. It’s a walker’s foot. Look at the feet of running mammals, let alone dinosaurs!
Words cannot describe how utterly, contemptibly pathetic Algis sounds when he makes posts like this. And how pitiful it is that Algis seems utterly oblivious to just how pathetic he makes himself sound whenever he posts screeds like this.
In the myoglobin paper they found that species that burrowed or had other types of hypoxic selection pressure, did not have the same elevated Z-score for myoglobin positive charge that aquatic species did. For example, the burrowing but non-aquatic moles all scored low. Other burrowing mammals also scored low.
They were incredibly thorough. They examined the myoglobins of hundreds of species right across the mammalian lineage. Virtually every single aquatic and semi-aquatic mammal clade correlates. Even within clades where only one of a closely related group of species was semi-aquatic, that species had the high Z while all the others had low Z. The Sirenians were literally the only exception.
If chimpanzees are truly denser than humans, that should, if anything, make them BETTER adapted to swimming and diving. If you are a diving animal, you WANT to be dense. One of the hallmarks of whales is their very dense bones.
I’ve provided several examples of Morgan changing quoting in ways that altered their meaning so as to support her, but the main reason I’ve said she lied about this matter is that despite her having left out words from various quotes without indicating it, she later claimed, rather haughtily, that she had never ever done so. (“I have never even in my green and unregenerate days omitted words from even the most long-winded quotation without indicating by a row of dots that words had been removed.”)
Algis displays some classic pseudoscience habits, and this is one. On the one hand, he regularly denigrates working scientists by, for example, calling the many years of work by the team of researchers who worked on the Ardi fossils merely Owen Lovejoy’s “opinion”. On the other hand, he also regularly invokes authorities. I’ve said this is exactly like what archeologist John Cole in 1980 (“Cult Archeology) referred to as:
Another rather telling error here.
It is the difference between chimpanzee and HUMAN/GORILLA myoglobin that is the issue. The human and gorilla myoglobins are identical, both with a Z-score of 0.65 (also identical with the myoglobin of gibbons and siamangs). It is the CHIMPANZEE myoglobin that is different, with a Z-score of 1.2.
The Z-score of 0.65 is the primitive condition among all the apes, great and lesser. Humans RETAINED the primitive myoglobin. Chimpanzees (and Orangutans) are the ones that evolved some differences in their myoglobin.
If the difference is stochastic then we default to the null, which is that NONE of the great or lesser apes had any significant degree of water-based selection in their histories since the beginning of the ape clade. If the difference is meaningful, then it suggests that chimpanzees had MORE water-based selection in their history than humans, since we split from the LCA.
No matter how you slice this, this data simply and flatly contradicts Algis’ contention that greater water exposure was a selection factor that produced significant (or indeed, any) differences in humans compared to chimpanzees.
There’s another interesting aspect to this. A few years back at the Dawkins forum a poster other than Algis claimed greater plantar flexion in humans as an aquatic adaptation, and Algis quickly seconded him, obviously without thinking. I had to point out that humans, relative to chimps, have greatly reduced plantar flexion. One of the unusual traits seen in some (maybe most?) champion swimmers is a highly unusual degree of plantar flexion compared to us regular folks, allowing for much swimming ability. It seems certain that, whatever the potential ability of African apes re swimming, to have their plantar flexion ability would be an enormous benefit.
Algis referred to my presenting this fact as “gossip”. He has a number of idiosyncratic definitions for common words.
Given that all the common swimming strokes are utterly counter-intuitive, culturally dependent, non-instinctive, and require special instruction and training to master, the null hypotheses pretty much has to be that humans swim better than chimpanzees because of our bigger, cleverer brains, that allow us to teach our bodies to move in ways that we had not evolved to move.
This would put swimming on par with a vast array of other similar types of human physical activity, be it gymnastics on parallel bars, javelin throwing, archery, hopscotch, figure skating, judo, typing, juggling, etc, all of which humans do better than chimpanzees.
The dog paddle seems intuitive; it’s the instinctive stroke used by all mammals AFAIK. Even kangaroos, which ordinarily move their hind legs together, use a dog paddle while swimming. But Jan Wind, in two papers I think I mentioned upthread, pointed out that for us the dog paddle requires a special position which is not our usual when locomoting, and in our normal position the dog paddle is ineffective at best and at worst tends to drive us underwater. For African apes the situation is even worse as they tend to tip forward. This results in them and us being some of a very few mammals which do not swim instinctively. For us, all effective swimming strokes are, as you say, utterly counter-intuitive, culturally dependent, and non-instinctive.
Obviously we can overcome this but it seems that this might well have been expected to have been bred out of us via natural selection, if we had enough selection to cause all these other claimed changes. This is along with reactions like having an instinct to breath in when we run out of oxygen even when we’re underwater — a reaction which aquatic mammals do not have.
If I recall the AA books, there was a list of traits, all of which are not found to be actually the case. We can’t swim, we don’t have a layer of subcutaneous fat, we are covered with fully-functional hair follicles, we have a walker’s foot (thanks, David M), we have landlubber myoglobin, and nobody lives the life aquatic. How are we supposed to be aquatic apes, again?
What is the theory, anyhow? Algis has changed it from sporting among the waves to slogging through swamps or scrambling over barnacles. He’s also changed it from mildly interesting to extremely embarrassing.
Re 836
Funny how aquaskeptics are always so sensitive to any criticism of their chosen prophet, anthro”sci”guy. The special one. I mention the fact that he is an unqualified ex-car mechanic and even PZ Myers is woken out of his slumber and has to chip in. I point out his outrageous misrepresentation of Dan Dennett – 180 degree distortions of what he was saying, hundreds of times over several years – and the gang have to close ranks and form a line of shields around him. I point out that one missing ellipsis (of a completely inconsequential set of words from a Darwin quote that had no bearing on the argument) that could have been a mistake by a typesetter, is scraping the barrel to say that it is the No 1 allegation of incompetence, from 40 years work, and David Marjanovic picks this out for his special attention – it “needs to be addressed”!
I thought that in academia critical thinking wasn’t just one-way, gang-like sneering. I thought – surprising this, eh? – that it was supposed to work for for and against one’s point of view.
Apart from the notable exception of Chas Peterson here the other day, I’ve never witnessed any significant criticism of Jim Moore’s contribution in a public place like this from people who pretend to be critical thinkers. So, either this guy has written work that is just perfect, or he tends to attract a gang of sheep like followers who are so biased they cannot bring themselves to say one word against him.
I think it’s option b.
See, some of us don’t have this uni-directional-criticality-only problem. I have criticised Hardy, Morgan and most other proponents of waterside ideas. I’ve publicly fallen out with Verhaegen et al several times. If anyone is showing open, fair minded two-way critical thinking here, it’s me, not you guys.
Are you not ashamed?
Gasp. Holy Misrepresentation! Jesus. Have you no shame?
Ahem. Ever heard of gallery forests – riparian habitats?
See, it’s this kind of thing that really gets my goat. David Marjanovic wheels in here as some “expert” to beat down the silly, amateurish, “aquatic ape loons” with hard nosed sciency stiff – and this is the kind of “argument” he comes up with!
Every time I read something like this, or like PZ Myers going on about SPACE APES and how “mockery is good”, or Henry Gee equating these ideas with CREATIONISM, it makes me realise that the counter arguments are really, really shit.
If, after 53 years this is all you people can do, you should not be surprised that open minded fellows like me, who are reluctant to go along with sheep-like mentality, will keep being drawn to the idea.
Not me, m’lud. PZ Myers started this whole blog with it! He’s the one who said “mockery is good”. Nothing to say about that? No, I didn’t think so. A bit biased, aren’t you?
I have been mocking your gang’s pathetic, ignorant mockery, though, true. Until PZ, or someone, comes out with something half intelligent to show that they now regrets doing that, or has the intellectual capacity to actually discriminate between the plausibility of idea that some (perhaps only slight) selection from wading, swimming and diving and the idea that the entire universe was created in six days just for us, I’ll keep doing so.
Magical, in the sense that it is supposed to have made us optimal terrestrial bipeds, like we are today, from day one, before we’d even started stepping out onto open ground.
If not, how come Crompton et al’s work on the A. afarensis gait (that they walked like us) has not been criticised?
The current fashion to brush the whole bipedal origins debate under the carpet and say “Hey, we were always bipedal. Problem solved” is just yet another palaeoanthropological absurdity that Elaine Morgan would have ripped into if she had written “Descent…” today.
Oh sure you have. It’s so parsimonious not to assume that n. s. might explain the difference in swimming and diving abilities between humans and chimps and, instead, to insert whatever just-so special pleading is seen as cool today.
It’s so parsimonious to imagine that the very vertical climbing preadaptation that led to bipedalism was the very thing not needed for the great ape that became optimally bipedal, but those geat apes that still vertically climb today became quadrupedal.
“Small”? It is not one, there are several waterside hypotheses. Different timescales, different modes of selection, different aspects of human physiology… all (heretically) involving that wet stuff beginning with “w” – so all requiring lots of sneering and ridicule and no science at all to reject.
Or, it could have just been a tiny mistake by her typesetter.
Hey, let’s not give the witch any slack, eh? She missed an ellipsis out. In 40 years work, and she missed an ellipsis out, once. Shock horror. Sling her up, eh?
It was a popular science book, not an article in a scientific journal. The missing words didn’t change the context one jot. If they had, and if she’d done this more than once, then you’d have a point.
David, I think you are proving yourself as just yet another biased gang member.
Oh, just trying to do some science. You know, that thing people are supposed to do when they see something interesting that needs investigating.
I thought the wading idea was a pretty good one and couldn’t understand why the field had ignored it for 50 years. Terrible, eh? Clearly, I should have just written a shitty, gosssipy web site and then maybe people like PZ Myer’s would have given me some credit – only if I wrote what he agreed with though, of course.
So irrelevant, you picked it out for your special attention because, as you say, “it needed addressing”.
I will not stop mocking PZ Myers for backing Jim Moore’s shitty, misrepresenting, masquerading web site until he either writes here and defends, in full, Jim’s methods or disavowes his support of it.
It’s a shocking indictment on a field of science that rather than cite the peer reviewed literature, people are recommended such sleazy rubbish. If you are not ashamed about that then I question your integrity as a scientist.
http://www.aquaticape.org (!) is an exercise is shady journalism. It’s hardly better than News of The World. Have you read it yet?
I’m discussing the substance and I’m mocking the tone. Both. Get over it.
The fact that a bunch of pseudoskeptics have to be so hostile to people whose only crime is to take Hardy’s idea seriously speaks volumes of their lack of intellectual courage.
Clearly Jim Moore does, otherwise why misrepresent his views so often, so consistently, for so long? Respected opinion matters, whether you like it or not. Why was Sir David Attenborough publicly sneered at for going to the recent London conference, if nobody cares about such things?
Are you endorsing Jim Moore’s misrepresentations of Dan Dennett’s views, or not? Why are you trying to brush this under the carpet?
You’d think anthropologists would understand this better than anyone but they seem to be more guilty of group think than most fields.
But unqualified (in science) ex car mechanics… wow, they’re really important, right?
See this is the kind of ad hoc argumentation aquaskeptics always do.
When it’s a playwrite or a marine biologist or a philosopher or a documentary presenter – who cares what they think, they’re not proper anthropologists, like we are.
When it comes to pointing to the “definitive web resource” on this subject – who cares that it’s written by an unqualified ex car mechanic. You’re arguing ad hominem if you say anything.
This is what David seconded… “We’re left with a scenario where human ancestors spend enough time in water for wading to be a significant selective pressure, but for all that time, somehow, there was no swimming, no diving, no breath holding. The Sirenians apparently did it, so it is not entire ridiculous to contemplate, but still.
All remaining respect evapourates.
Clearly there is more than one way for evolution to favour diving in mammals.
I have never argued that humans were very aquatic. Nowhere near as aquatic as manatees and dugongs, let alone whales and dolphins.
The evolution of myoglobin beautifully reported by Mirceta et al speaks of significant diving adaptation in some mammalian taxa. If I were in the Marc Verhaegen et al camp, who argue that humans ancestors were part time divers, this paper would cause me to seriously rethink, but I am not. I have consistently argued that humans are close to 100% terrestrial and probably always have been. I stress the fact that even a slight degree of selection could still make a significant difference to phenotypes in relatively short evolutionary timescales.
Exactly. And neither did human ancestors, as far as I am concerned. Nobody, not even Marc Verhaegen et al, would claim that human ancestors dived even as much as manatees, so I think you have shot the aquaskeptic argument in the foot there.
Oh, good argument that. Spelling’s never been a big deal to me. I know it is to some. English should be like Lithuanian where all the words are spelt phonetically, in my opinion.
Well not really. It illustrates a simple scenario where a regime of selection could result in the remarkable difference between human and chimp infant/mother phenotypes.
It would surprise me, considering the anecdotal evidence shows thousands of humans diving and zero (or is it one?) chimp(s) doing so.
Clutching at wishful thinking straws, me thinks.
But how do you know that? You don’t. What you mean is… there are lots of us clever scientists who all think he is wrong. We all think this idea is so silly we needn’t even do any science to show it’s wrong. Even an ex car mechanic’s gossip is enough.
Humans do swim and dive better than chimps.
The one place chimps and gorillas move (not just pose momentarily) bipedally with 100% certainty is in waist/chest deep water.
Why are you so sure that these facts are irrelevant in the debate on human evolution and that something else (and who cares what) as long as it’s something other than some selection from wading, swimming and diving – is all that needs to be considered?
Then why are you spending so long here? Why am I? Why are we all?
Hypocrite! You just told me his opinions are irrelevant because he’s only a philosopher. Apparently only those special people, called palaeoanthropologists understand anything about human evolution.
One or two mutations in 5-7Ma since the Pan-Homo LCA. The fact that such mutations caused the “net charge” affect to go one way or another is likely to be random.
Clutching at straws, I think. So, only Sirenia, out of all the Mammalia have this special “low metabolic rate” now?
Please explain.
Yes, it’s all down to me. Proper scientists just don’t do the “a” thing, right? That’s for kooks.
I’ve been looking at bipedal origins. I did a thorough lit review of 30+ models and evaluated them all. I found some weaknesses in the wading hypothesis, as reported to date (ca 2000) in the literature, and I attempted to do some scientific testing there.
That took years. Please don’t peddle the Jim Moore cheap slur that I should also have done the swimming studies, the infant adiposity (corrected!?) studies, the olfactory receptor studies etc etc and also gone to Eritrea to look for fossils.
He often derides me for not doing more science and for spending for too long being a critical voice to him. (Funny that). The fact is I’ve done both on top of earning some kind of living as a database guy.
I agree. We are adapted, most of all, to efficient striding bipedalism. Ideally, that works best on the sorts of substrates we have made for ourselves – carpets, lawns, pavementts etc. Now, where in the natural world, do you find substrates like that?
Algis Kuliukas
AK
ARE YOU, AK, NOT ASHAMED FOR PROMOTING AN UNSCIENTIFIC IDEA FOR MONTHS, AND NOT TAKING NO SALE! FOR AN ANSWER?
That’s lovely wet sand, there, Algis. Where’s the nutrition in it, and why does it make my calves hurt to run on it?
Your crime isn’t liking the wading hypothesis, your crime is acting like a raving fucktard of a troll all over PZ’s blog. You’ve sneered, insulted, lied, whined, ignored, acted lofty, acted martyred and just generally been a conspiracy crank for much, much too long.
Then you deny your assholery, even though it’s up there in plain text. PZ gave a conditional, “Next time someone brings up the soggy monkey story, I’m just going to reply with “Space Ape!” You started with a conditional in all caps, “SPACE APE!” repeated, then went on to claims that it had been said to you many times, in all caps with multiple exclamation marks, repeated many times, and repeated that in many different comments. This is you, Algis: “…then anthropologists get all in a panic and start lashing out irrationally. (“SPACE APE!! SPACE APE!! SPACE APE!! SPACE APE!!) What’s your problem? Why are you guys all so hydrophobic?” Then you, Algis, pretend you’ve never done any such thing.
Seriously, dude, this is the most creatively-insulting blog I know—I come here partly for the sheer poetry of it—and you have been getting off very easy. Very easy. But you snarl out puny insults, and claim to be a martyr because this comment section of a blog isn’t doing lofty scientific discourse.
If you don’t like it here, go the fuck away!
And now you admit you are just trolling to get what you want. You said, “I will not stop mocking PZ Myers … until he ….” … does what you want him to do. That’s trolling.
Bring the banhammer, PZ, this kook has crumbled.
space ape
space ape
spaceape
spape
spape
spape
Gasp. Over to the right, there are an endless source of highly nutritious fish (perfect diet for brain growth). At low tidy you could pick over shellfish. If (scary, I know) you actually went swimming you’d doubtless find some shellfish attached to rocks in the shallows. Easy pickings. Over to your left, if you walk a few hundred metres would be a fresh water stream, maybe an estuary, maybe a mangrove forest.
Dunno. Maybe you’re just not fit. How would your calves (not to mention your feet) hold up running across the open savannah, or was that just a straw man Elaine Morgan invented? Walking on the wet beach, right by the water’s edge, it is flat, firm vegetation free – perfect for our striding efficient bipedalism. Why is it crazy to consider that this might have been where it evolved?
How’s that? Chipping in and answering slurs and hostile sneering? Me? I’m the “raving fucktard”? Not you and your sad pals like “Nerd… ” et al?
The rest is just the usual biased, ignorant, lynch mob hostility.
Algis Kuliukas
LOLZ You guys think you’re debating the AAX, donchya. No, you’re feeding K’s psychosis. At some point you’ll realize this and either a). play along or b). shitcan his ass. Personally, I’d go with “b” since you really don’t want this place to become a playground for lunatics. Or do you?
I see the anti-scientist AK is still being a CRANK/LOON. Nothing but bullshit, backed by arrogance.
@AK:
Fish are low in fat, which is essential for brain growth. This was mentioned no less than three times in the last fifteen posts.
As per this part of your rant:
Or, we haven’t read it. Option c.
I can take apart (some of) your AAH arguments without being a paleoanthropologist, paleontologist, paleobotanist, evolutionary biologist, or any of those. I’m a Management: Information Systems major (it’s business and computers together.)
The reason I can do it is because I’m paying attention, I’m reading arguments. I’m seeing numerous times people have answered your statements, and seeing you veer off of that statement for a moment and head right back to it later, as if you haven’t learned anything that was stated. You argue exactly like a creationist!
(Paraphrased)
AK: Seashores are flat!
Everyone else: So are paths in the savannah.
AK: Humans dive and swim better than chimps!
Everyone else: Chimps are actually better developed for swimming, but don’t have the training.
AK: Seashores are flat! (repeat)
RC: Evolution says dogs will give birth to cats!
Everyone else: That would disprove evolution, actually.
RC: Microevolution is real, but macroevolution is not!
Everyone else: The only difference between micro and macroevolution is time, which we’ve had plenty of.
RC: Evolution says dogs will give birth to cats! (repeat)
AK:
Gee, JM isn’t the one making any effort to bully us into believing in their anti-scientific idea. You, AK, are the one who must evidence, not talk, yourself into being scientific. And being scientific has first and foremost the concept your idea can be wrong if there is no evidence for it. And there is no conclusive evidence for your idea.
You, AK, are the one on trial. Only you the arrogant and ignorant Crank/Loon.
Wrong. Only the very first whales had very dense bones, as hippos do still (maybe that’s the reason hippos can’t run). All later whales have had collapsible lungs. Once the water pressure collapses your lungs, you’re no longer positively buoyant, you’re in fact negatively buoyant, something that is counteracted by very spongy bones – osteoporosis instead of osteosclerosis (and/or pachyostosis) – to reach neutral buoyancy.
Sea cows are pachyosteosclerotic. They’re easy to recognize by their banana-shaped ribs. They never dive so deep that their lungs collapse.
Placodonts are pachyosteosclerotic; plesio- and ichthyosaurs are osteoporotic.
*blink*
Wow, have you missed the point.
Remember when I wrote he should cite more? It’s near the end of the previous page.
I don’t even remember him saying anything about Dennett. I haven’t read all of aquaticape.org in the last few years.
You misunderstand. This is not special attention, it is background attention. I have SIWOTI syndrome; not commenting something I can comment requires a deliberate effort of holding back.
Nope. It’s that few people care that much about such a fringe hypothesis.
That’s exactly why professional scientists other than Langdon don’t write critiques of the AAH, so that “an ex-car mechanic” ends up doing it because nobody else does.
Yes, and I’ve been to some. Most of the year, even such forests don’t have trees standing in the water. You wade out into the water and are attacked by a croc or hippo, you have a problem.
Mangroves might be an exception, but you aren’t the one who proposes our ancestors drank saltwater…
*blink*
I’ve never called myself an expert in this thread, have never implied I’m a paleoanthropologist (I’ve specifically said I’m not one instead), and have never called anybody “aquatic ape loons” (not just because those would be ape loons that are aquatic, because of the missing hyphen). I’ve called arguments silly, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t called people silly; and being an amateur isn’t some kind of automatic problem – look up John R. “Jack” Horner, who ended up getting an honorary doctorate –, so I’m quite sure I’ve never implied otherwise; after all, when it comes to paleoanthropology, I’m an amateur, too! I work on 300-million-year-old animals, not 3-million-year-old or 0.3-million-year-old ones.
Do you have some kind of inferiority complex because I’ve defended my doctoral thesis and you haven’t yet? I don’t get it.
(Oh, and, I’ve been a regular on this blog for seven years now. You are the one who has wheeled in; you weren’t even here when this thread started, FFS – you only arrived when Marcel Williams was leaving.)
Open-minded? Frankly, you come across as treating your hypothesis as dogma. Any time you see a counterargument, you either ignore it and shout “we swim and dive better than chimps”, or you ignore it and shout “unqualified”, or you shout “misinterpretation”, or you ignore it and shout “SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE! SPACE APE!” the same way other people shout “LALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”.
WTF? PZ said it once. You say it, like, once per hour. That’s why I wrote “keeps chanting […] as a mantra” instead of simply “says” or “writes”.
I generally mean what I say!
…Because it’s fully consistent with the bipedality observed in gibbons, orang-utans, Oreopithecus, and apparently Afropithecus and Pierolapithecus? Gibbons walk bipedally on horizontal branches even if they never step out onto open ground.
And what do you mean by “optimal terrestrial bipeds”?
Would have, could have, didn’t. So you need to do it. Begin already. We’re fucking waiting!!!
An appeal to hypothetical authority as an excuse for not discussing the evidence. The intellectual dishonesty boggles the mind.
Why do you write comment 846 without addressing 844?
*sigh* First, no, I’ve always talked about brachiation, not about vertical climbing in general; second, no, orang-utans are not quadrupedal, they’re semibipedal. You haven’t been paying attention, your rage has clouded your eyes.
It could have been. That would be a very odd mistake for a typesetter to make, but it could have been. However, in that case, Morgan would still be responsible for overlooking this when she corrected the proofs. In science, cutting stuff out of a quote without indicating this is not a “tiny” mistake, it’s a really grave one.
Hey, let’s put sexist slurs in my mouth, eh?
Asshole.
Once in 40 years? What do you say to comment 840?
…Apparently you don’t say anything. You even went on to write comment 850 without so much as mentioning it.
Translation: “I’m allowed to be sloppy to the point of flat-out lying to the general public. Only when talking directly to the scientific elite do I need to be honest. No point in disclosing the whole truth to the unwashed masses, I’m just trying to separate them from their money, LOL.”
That’s how you come across when you say such things.
Let that sink in for a while.
Try harder. :-)
1) Again, not special, background; 2) what I’ve commented on wasn’t who said something, but your obsession with it.
Good luck, then. I’m sure he isn’t reading this thread. He has a whole blog to manage, never mind his time-consuming day job (teaching at a university) and all those conferences he goes to.
…That’s because there is no peer-reviewed literature, other than Langdon’s outdated paper, on this subject. :-| It’s a bit difficult to cite something that doesn’t exist.
I still don’t understand why you call it journalism. It’s informal science writing, much like a blog post or a popular science book.
I only see you complaining about the tone and getting outraged by the substance.
See? Complaining about the tone again.
Taking it seriously means trying to disprove it. You’re not trying to disprove it; you see any attempt at disproving it as an attack on yourself, and then you try to respond in kind.
You’re not getting it.
Because – he – was – wrong! And laughably so.
We scientists care about ideas. We do not care about the people who talk about them. That’s what you’re somehow not getting.
If he does, that’s his problem. He shouldn’t care who said anything, you shouldn’t, and I don’t either.
You misunderstand. I haven’t bothered looking up either what Dennett said or what Moore said about whatever Dennett said. Not knowing it, I can’t endorse or defend it. This thread takes enough of my time already.
Moore’s character, or Dennett’s character, is simply not the issue! I don’t care about that! The issue is whether our ancestors waded for a living.
…what… no. People, no fucking matter how qualified, are unimportant. What’s important are hypotheses and evidence. Stop trying to tie people to that! Stop this useless distraction!
Dennett isn’t automatically right because he’s a philosopher, and Moore isn’t automatically wrong because he once was a car mechanic. I don’t understand why this isn’t sinking into your skull.
Quite the opposite. It’s simply that people aren’t important. It’s not “who cares what they think”, it’s “who cares what they think”, “who cares what anyone thinks”. I’m sorry, I could probably have made this clearer.
Hypotheses must be evaluated on their own merits. Who came up with them doesn’t count among their own merits.
Good. Respect for people is a distraction when discussing hypotheses. It only leads to argumenta ad verecundiam and ad hominem.
We’re not discussing you or me here. We’re discussing what the evidence says about the hypothesis that our ancestors waded for a living.
What? The fact that I mention it in this thread doesn’t mean I think it’s an argument! :-D It fits your pattern of superficial reading, though.
Oh, I agree. I love this page.
It is useless, because you can’t determine the outcome by just thinking about it. You can’t simulate a chimp, or 100, in your brain. That’s my point.
Wow, are you a lazy citer. Let’s try again:
Was that so hard?
Trouble is, you have no idea if that’s just due to lack of motivation and opportunity.
Practically every human above a certain but tender age can learn to read and write. Yet, writing was only invented a few thousand years ago, and it has generally not spread to hunter-gatherer cultures: such cultures simply have little to no use for it. Indeed, all great apes can learn to recognize a few hundred abstract symbols; and yet, in the wild, they don’t. Gray parrots can learn to speak and read, and yet, in the wild, they don’t.
Oh no, it’s pretty obvious to myself that he was wrong, independent of what other people think.
Easy: those other things can easily explain it all on their own, and they have no problems explaining the size and shape of our feet, for example.
You misunderstand, because I said two things at once. Let me separate them:
You said that Dennett is some kind of famous thinker about evolution and implied that therefore he’s more likely to be right.
I said that:
1) that’s an argument from authority and thus a fallacy;
2) it’s also, as it happens, an argument from false authority, because there’s no reason to expect Dennett to know more about paleoanthropology than Moore does. This little fact is irrelevant because of 1), but it’s still a fact, so I point it out. It’s also a little funny: you’re not even doing your fallacies right.
Not in a protein that’s under such strong stabilizing selection.
How can I tell it’s under strong stabilizing selection? From the fact that it’s identical in all apes, ourselves included, except for the slight deviations in chimps and (to an even lesser extent) orang-utans.
:-) Yes, only Sirenia, out of all of Mammalia, has these special low metabolic rates. They’ve been called “essentially reptilian”. This is well known among people like me who have been following the discussion about the metabolic rates of Mesozoic dinosaurs – sorry, I should have explained that.
Or, y’know, you could have read comment 792, which puts actual numbers to this, though the quote in it is misleading in implying that these low metabolic rates are only unique among marine mammals.
Not even. The burden of evidence is always on the people who propose a new hypothesis.
…If you don’t have time or money to test your hypotheses, I’m not surprised you can’t get them published in peer-reviewed journals.
The first thing to do when you have an idea is to try to disprove it; when you fail, you write a manuscript about it and see if the reviewers manage to disprove it; when they, too, fail, it gets published, so that everyone else can try to disprove it.
Have you tried to walk on a pavement barefoot? I often walk on pavements while wearing shoes with too little padding under the heel. I have to be careful at every step; if I’m not, I get a headache, and if I somehow ignored that, I’d end up with a concussion.
A savanna that has recently undergone rain and grazing should be considerably less of a problem.
Note the complete absence of trees in that photo.
No. Trolling is to try to make people angry so you can laugh at them when they lose their shit. This is just narcissism: our friend here thinks he’s so important he can make PZ keep up with this thread. Actually, it’s a deeply pathetic attempt at bullying, pathetic on several levels and in several ways.
How are you gonna catch them? With your bare hands? In this environment?
So, our ancestors needed to walk pretty far every time they needed to drink…
It’s not crazy. It’s just massively unnecessary. We’ve been explaining this for weeks now, and you’ve hardly tried to disprove it – you just repeat your position instead.
1) “We” can’t shitcan his ass, only PZ can.
2) What do you mean by “playground for lunatics”? There’s one, on one thread; he’s not disrupting the blog as a whole, he’s not threatening people, he’s not a problem. He provides entertainment and collateral knowledge.
I think that, because he’s so obsessed with persons, Algis reads one comment, replies to it, and only then – if ever – reads on to see if some other comment has something enlightening to say about that. It looks like he believes he’s fighting a series of duels instead of engaging with a list of arguments and facts. He wrote 846 replying to my 836 without, evidently, having read 844… and that’s far from the first time he did that.
He’s not. His version of the AAH is.
(Actually, all versions are, but nobody’s defending any but his anymore.)
Algis has long had difficulty with the concept of phrases meaning somewhat different things depending on the context. It has been said that australopithecines “walked just like us” and “didn’t walk just like us” and both are true outside of rigorous scientific speech. The first is an answer to the question of whether they walked with bent over style like pop science often suggested — no, they didn’t, they walked like us. The second is an answer to “did they walk exactly like we do with no differences at all?” – no, their gait was slightly different and this continued through early homo.
Yes, the current fashion, much like earlier fashion in paleoanthropology, is to use the best available evidence. I’m sure Morgan would’ve ripped that notion to shreds if she were writing yet another book, but why you’d consider that a good thing…
But as you know, even in my brief set of examples she did so more than once. And what her typesetter (her acolytes used to say it was her publisher who did it) was doing changing her newsgroup posts between the time she typed them and hitting “send” will no doubt always be one of those mysteries that surround the AAT/H.
Only insofar as Morgan claimed it as support and ignored, for instance, what he said about why he brought it up in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (“as an illustration of a deeper worry”, that deeper worry being the use of just-so stories in evolutionary theorizing). And to point out that what he had asked people to do in that book re the AAT could not be done by most people for ideas widely accepted as pseudoscience. I gave a few examples, such as Chariots of the Gods and several pseudoscience books that Morgan’s then publisher advertised alongside her book. In fact, I asked Algis to try to do so (provide a detailed, off the cuff outline of “exactly why [it] must be wrong”) and he naturally failed miserably. This is not an indictment of him; most people couldn’t do it unless they had spent a good deal of time specifically looking at the book(s) in question.
I was going to reply to Algis here, but instead think it’s best to just use this as an illustration of his methods. He’s had this paper for a few days now, says it’s “excellent” and “brilliant”, and of course it’s highly apropos to the idea he claims is “potentially one of the best ideas in human evolution since Darwin” (that’s the longest, most nuanced version; he started by just calling it the “best idea since Darwin”). Yet he could not ask this question if he’d actually read the paper through. He apparently reads by skimming for keywords related to water. At least that is the only explanation we’ve managed to come up with that doesn’t involve him simply being completely dishonest on a conscious level. (His past indicates an extremely effective Morton’s Demon at work.)
Or any of it. Instead it’s none of it. The context here is that Algis has spent, by conservative estimate, around 4 years or more of 40-hour work weeks arguing online instead of doing any of this work. One excuse he’s given is to say that getting permissions to do, say, a swimming study would take several years work of 40-hour work weeks.
One of the things that indicates the worth of the AAT/H is that, in over 50 years, it has generated virtually no primary research; the proponents of the idea have done virtually nothing on it, nor have they funded any (Morgan had best-selling books and at least one large cash prize yet, AFAIKJ, has not funded any primary research; Hardy endowed a trust to fund research after his death, but not on the AAT. He left his money to study the paranormal).
A) folks who studied this — non-AAT folks who understand evolutionary theory — found that while DHA is certainly present, sufficient DHA is available in terrestrial settings, and it’s easier to get the required overall food energy in terrestrial settings.
B) fish are not all that easily come by outside of after floods when they’re stranded
C) brains contain rather large amounts of DHA, and a recent paper found that not only were our ancestors hunting and butchering small ungulates a couple million years ago, they were taking skulls. This, BTW, is an activity that one of the dietary wing of the AAT/H has repeatedly claimed was nonsense to suggest. Yet we know it happened.
And note the ZING!ability, the way these beasties have everything they need at all times. Loads of saltwater fish but plentiful fresh water. This ability of the beasts to be wherever and whatever they need to be to slip the bounds of valid criticisms is an old AAT/H method, hence my coming up with the term ZING!ability some years ago.
Algis has a hard time with the fact that so many people can independently come up with the same objections to the AAT/H that he has fixated on the idea that everyone somehow gets infected by my website. At times he’s taken this so far he writes things that suggest I infected folk decades before I first looked up the first thing about the AAT/H.
A few years back a couple or primatologists set up some tests of several of the common “reasons to be bipedal” as applied to chimps. They used chimps in a zoo, and a couple were food-getting and carrying (which BTW has consistently been the one thing that is most often correlated with bipedalism in apes) and observing. For the observing test they set up a wall and something on the other side to look at. Not all that much action on that one, but they recognized and mentioned that one thing they couldn’t determine is if they simply hadn’t given the chimps something compelling enough to look at.
@ASG:
Maybe it’s through some kind of Internet osmosis. We’re on the same blog page arguing and even though I haven’t read any of your page, you’ve transmitted all the information as datas through the Internet to my brain.
Or maybe I realize it takes more than a “maybe that’s plausible” to be science.
I was wondering something about this as I was looking for info online the past few days. I notice (in the Wikipedia article for instance) that hyraxes are said to have a low metabolic rate. Do you know how this compares to the sirenia? (For that matter, are there any synopses of metabolic rates among a whole lot of mammals?)
Hardy said we were spear-hunting porpoises during the fossil gap. :)
Over at TRF we’ve found that, besides the Morton’s Demon problem and demonstrated dishonesty, Algis has a genuinely poor memory even for short-term matters.
Couple funny things popped into my brain when I read your comment. One is Alister Hardy’s work on evolution, which was that he thought the paranormal, specifically telepathy, played a major role in evolution, via “the psychic pool of existence”. The other was when Algis, for some time, conflated the word “conceivable” (which a genetics expert had used) with “plausible”.
David Marjanović @855:
Can you point me at more information on parrots reading? I can find discussions of their use of language (including articles claiming that it’s a Clever Hans effect) but that’s all about spoken language, not written.
(I knew there was a reason I was still looking at this thread, I just didn’t know it was to learn about avian intelligence.)
:-D :-D :-D
No, but it’s probably much less extreme, or I’d have heard about it… sirenians and hyraxes are sister-groups, though.
Probably. Chas? Can you recommend a vertebrate physiology textbook?
Admittedly, I haven’t heard about reading a text for understanding or suchlike. All I’ve seen on TV is pronouncing arbitrary words as written.
The researcher is Irene Pepperberg. Ask Google. You’ll find some amount of controversy.
I see that someone has pointed out that fish are damned hard to catch without spears or nets or traps.
I want to emphasize that crawling around on sea-side rocks is not easily done barefooted by us club-footed humans. I’d try it, though, if I had hand-like back feet … like a chimp. And digging for clams sounds like chimp work to me.
I’ll also say that the striding along on sand that Algis loves is going to be desperately needed just to get to the food. See, a beach is a linear thing—savannah is an area. If you evolve to walk twice as far in a day, you double your sustainable-harvest area, up or down the beach. Out on the savannah, walking being able to walk twice as far quadruples your harvest area.
On a beach, walking and sweating are needed, but don’t pay off well. Out on the savanna, walking and sweating are greatly advantageous.
Tsunami.
I can barely type this for the memories it brings back, but a sea-side ape is going to be wiped out by a tsunami sooner or later. The entire population, along a thousand miles of coast, is going to ….
Another thing about the beach is fucking seashells, goddammit I hate them. Why would you walk along the seashore and step on all those goddamned seashells! Razor clams have required more than enough band-aids.
Not dissimilar to txpiper, who, let us not forget, was left to fester on various threads for years and years before PZ finally lost patience with his insipid boringness and confined him to Thunderdome (not even banned, though it may be that it will be effectively a ban if txpiper persists in refusing to go to Thunderdome)
Traditional human hunter-gatherers who harvest shellfish generally avoid wading into the water. They wait for low tide, WALK out on the now TERRESTRIAL terrain, gather the shellfish, and WALK back before the tide comes back in. And the ones that miscalculate their timing and end up forced to wade back? Not infrequently, they don’t come back at all.
My only exposure to you is what you have written here on this comment thread.
See? David happily SIWOTI’s all sides of any given conversation he participates in.
Wasn’t it just the late Alex, though? (Who seems to have been something of a genius among parrots). The other parrots in Pepperberg’s study tend to not even come close to what Alex managed to do.
Though there are anecdotal reports among pet owners of pet parrots achieving similar feats to what Alex had been described to do in the literature.
David Marjanović, thanks for catching my errors, and thanks for all the great info. As for spelling reform, yeah, it’d be nice. I like Indonesian for the phonetic pronunciation, but some of the word-building is just insane—my moniker is the first one I figured out (it’s “making sambal” (chili sauce)).
I think a nice beach would be a great place to be a knuckle-walking chimp. Aside from all the advantages in clamming and crabbing and climbing as a quadruped, I mean.
And I also haven’t gone off to ready anything related to this, except this thread. I read the AAT long ago, but otherwise, it is just the arguments presented here, and Algis’s bizarre behavior. Which I’ve said a few times already.
I always thought the ease of Indonesian was overstated*, because while the beginning is, by the time you get to the end of a beginning course of instruction you’re into some mighty strange goings on, as you say in word-building. One of the things that English is awfully good at is that you really can jumble things together pretty ungrammatically and still get the point across. “Restaurant eat you they me evening” is horrible structure but pretty clear. Spelling not so much, although in helping out a Swiss guy learning more English some years back I was surprised that he found homonyms easy to deal with; it was words with close but not exact sounds he found problematic (he gave the example of “do not” and “doughnut”; by the time he realized someone wasn’t talking about doughnuts he’d have lost the thread of the conversation. Homonyms he found easy because of the context.).
*OTOH, try learning Thai — for speakers of most languages it’s incredibly difficult.
Re 856
Nice slur, thanks. Why, if I’m the one “obsessed” with persons, is it that you are the people who throw slurs all the time?
The fact of the matter is that I am in a minority here (as usual). It sucks, but what is one supposed to do? Rip out one’s pre-frontal lobes, stop any critical thinking and become one of the sheep who all nod along and say the same things? I don’t think so.
I do not have infinite time to read through, and reply to, all the posts here.
But, equally, I see it as a kind of duty to be a voice of reason on this idea, and to be critical of the incredibly weak arguments against, so I feel obliged to pop in and see what people have written today. I notice that 31 posts have been made since my last one, and I am not going to be able to answer them all. Sorry.
My strategy, therefore, has to be selective.
Unlike David Marjanovic, who sifts through all the posts and picks out random, cherry picked micro quotes to rail against (without a clue as to who wrote them), I find it more helpful to pick one or two, put in a “h ref” link back to their post, so people can ensure my comment is not misrepresenting them.
I have to make a decision as to who to reply to, as I do not have all day.
So, what I have been doing is pick one or two posts (or people) that I think are deserving of a reply.
This immediately precludes posters like “Nerd…” who just posts ignorant insults and who I doubt has any understanding of anything. Michael Clarke has also proven himself to be a nasty piece of work elsewhere, so I don’t have much time for him either. I thought “Amphiox” was another typical ignorant gang member until he posted a link to the excellent Mirceta et al paper, so he’s definitely gone up in my estimation.
There’s always anthro-slur-guy, of course, and I try to find time to point out his daily hypocrisy – but, to be honest, that’s getting very boring.
What I am really looking for is some evidence of a slightly lowered level of bias against the dreaded ‘a’ factor and a cappacity for two-way critical thinking. It is incredibly rare in debates on this subject, which quickly become polarised into slanging matches, but I keep looking.
So far, here, only Chas Peterson has shown something along those lines, but even then he made sure that ,in addition to his remarkably open criticisms of Jim’s web site, he was quick to add even stronger ones of my critique. Better than nothing, I guess.
Just have to finish with one point, before going to work… re 853
WHAT!? It could have been mentioned a hundred times, it doesn’t make it any more true. (Incidentally, WHERE was it mentioned? I can’t remember reading one.)
Fish are rich in all the essential fatty (e.g. DHA) acids and many of the micronutrients (e.g. Iodine) required for brain growth.
(Look at table 3 here)
Algis Kuliukas
Still no conclusive evidence by AK. His idea is scientifically dead, and nothing can revive it short of an evidence transplant. AK can’t talk his way out. He must shut the fuck up and point to evidence from legitimate sources (peer reviewed scientific literature) outside of himself and his sycophants. That is science AK, not the bullshit you think is science.
a few. (ironic understatement; it’s a gigantic literature)
You’d be most interestied in Brian McNabb’s new book.
Here are two recent primary references that offer an entry into the rest of the literature:
2010
2013
They also did not receive anything like the amount of training and practice Alex had. (Irene* never has had much research money.)
*whom I know through an ornithologist ex-wife /[kwok]
from:
directly to:
Nice slur, thanks.
It’s pretty insulting that you seem to think you’re the only person thinking for her/himself around here.
I did what you asked me to do read both pages, in the order specified, and compare them. Spining it as ‘I made sure to quickly add’ is disingenuous.
Watch Algis disingenously claim that a completely accurate, and essentially value-neutral, description, with an entire thread of Algis’ own output as evidence to back that up, to be a “slur”, and in the very next breath throw out REAL slurs of his own with abandon.
Pathetic and disgusting.
Thanks. I wondered because, although I figured there would be a lot of info on various beasts, too many times the total doesn’t get pulled together. I’ll check those out.
Chas @884: Your first link is megaborked.
oops!
McNabb
Algis:
Posted right after some of the sheep diverge into a discussion about language, and a little below another aside about parrots.
Algis, you remind me of a young person I knew during its early teen years. It was convinced there was a horrible conspiracy against it, and that everyone was picking on it. The conspiracy was proved to its satisfaction because everyone always said the same things to it, and those things were horribly rude.
The rude things that were so often said were entirely true—the kid WAS a raving asshole, and DID indeed smell like a dead hobo. And the kid behaved worse and worse because it felt it was a martyr, and it refused to change its lack of bathing. So things got worse and worse.
You, Algis, are in that same situation. You are, indeed, a raving asshole, and your hypothesis stinks like a wet ape. That’s why everyone keeps saying the same things to you.
Seaweed is also rich in those nutrients, and is much easier to catch than fish. Other plant sources are purslane*, and flax. The fatty acid EPA is found in in cold water fatty fish, including salmon, tuna, mackerel, lake trout, sardines, and herring.
All of these fish live in cold, deep water. There is no way humans ate enough of these fish to affect their brain development. Hypothermia alone makes the idea ridiculous, not to mention lack of proximity.
*A common and widespead plant. It is similar in texture to watercress with a slightly sour flavour.
There’s a nature series on the TV right now, _North America_, which is pretty good. (It has a few too many people and references to the film-making process, for me, but it has lovely images.) In it, the bears getting ready for winter in Alaska are eating fish. To get enough fat from the fish, they catch salmon who are ready to spawn, and they often eat only the belly and the eggs.
As was just said, these are cold-water fish. They are also jumping into the bears’ mouths, sometimes.
No primate catches fish, except tool-using humans.
Humans can dry fish to preserve them because some fish have no fat at all.
There is a difference between nutrients needed for brain growth, and the fat need for the building of it. Like vitamins and calories, like mortar and bricks, like great greasy globs of fat needed to keep us fat-headed folks functioning.
Algis, much like the moon-hoaxers and the 9/11 truthers, hasn’t thought through his own arguments at all.
Re 885
Well it shouldn’t be insulting to you as you are the one person here who I pointed out as being the exception.
I’m only reporting it like it is.
There have been 892 posts in this thread so far and if you can point me to a post written by someone other than Marcel or me that has shown the slightest evidence of two-way critical thinking on this matter, I’d like you to do so.
You are a rare exception in that you did actually write a short passage that was critical of Jim Moore’s web site. But, save that, who else?
Is this your usual experience when discussing science? It’s not mine. I thought people should be their own biggest critics. Here, led by PZ, it’s been like a lynch mob sneering at some poor fellow about to be hung for a crime he didn’t commit.
I’m just going from my experience of arguing about the heretical “aquatic ape hypothesis” in places like this over many years. Mainstream scientists get (understandably) nervous about appearing to be too open minded about the idea.
Just look at the sneering response to anyone who has.
I simply cannot believe any academic would read Jim’s web site with a critical eye and not conclude it was a travesty. My critique, at least, is fair and balanced.
That you felt the need to describe my critique of his gossip in worse terms than you did his stuff, is not surprising considering the context, but it is not, itself, above criticism.
What do you have to say you about Jim Moore’s complete misrepresentations (hundreds of times over many years) of Dan Dennett’s views on this idea?
Are you going to sit on the fence about that and say “who cares?” Or do you have the intellectual courage to call a spade a spade. Hundreds of deliberate distortions, note, in contrast to Elaine’s (or her type setter’s) “shock horror” single, irrelevant, missing ellipsis error – to pick his No 1.
This, is absolutely typical of Jim Moore’s “work”.
As someone who is able to think for himself, as an academic and a scientist, are you just going to look the other way on PZ’s support of anthro”sci”guy under the carpet? Or dare you criticise him for it?
Algis Kuliukas
Nobody here gives a shit about Jim Moore, Dan Dennett, or Algis Kuliukas. Only AK is obsessed with all three, like the CRANK/LOON he is.
AK, you must evidence you idea, or shut the fuck up about it if you are a scientist. Your inability to do is prima facie evidence you are an irrational CRANK/LOON, nobody to be listened to, and everything you say to be mocked and ignored.
Try acting professional for a change. Ignore slights, and concentrate on presenting third party evidence, If you have no evidence, don’t post. Welcome to science and rationality.
Aside from some artificial ones, all languages have homonyms (as far as known), so he came (consciously or not) with the expectation that English would have some.
Yeah, a language with six tones isn’t what I’d pick as the first tone language to learn. And the spelling system is… I’d say a bit like French in terms of its relation to pronunciation.
Hang on a second.
If you don’t have time to read all comments on a thread, you don’t have time to contribute to it.
If you write a comment without having read all preceding ones, you risk repeating things that others have said, and you risk saying things that others have already disproved.
…I… can’t grasp the mindset that would lead anyone to writing comments blind, into the blue, without caring what has already been said.
If you seriously do that, there’s no point in replying to anything you write.
Then you need to slow down, so the whole thread can slow down. By commenting at the rate you do, you keep it too fast-paced for yourself!
You are the one who cherry-picks. I have read everything on this thread, and I quote everything that I can say something about that hasn’t already been said. It’s not random – it’s comprehensive.
See comment 878!
Ooh, *large air quotes* “deserving”. Milord believeth his replies are worth their cyber-weight in gold, and writing one constituteth a most exalted honour. Milord believeth he can judge, forsooth, which comments are worthy of a reply even though he hath not read all of them. Milord believeth he can, verily, conduct a scientific discussion as if it were a feud, a duel – beweaponed with honour and nobility instead of evidence and logic.
Methinketh I shall whip out the Shakespeare Insult Generator to properly mock this laughable arrogance. Nothing less would do it justice.
Two paragraphs, all about persons, with not even a mention of evidence.
Why do you have time to write about such irrelevant topics? Perhaps if you cut that crap, you’d have more time to read!!!
Another paragraph about a person instead of about the topic.
You’re just wasting everyone’s time, including yours.
What would that even mean? Concluding that everyone is equally wrong?
Nothing, because I’ve never read what he wrote about Dennett’s views on anything – and I simply don’t see a point in changing that.
(Indeed, the only thing by Dennett himself I’ve ever read is the essay Quining Qualia.)
What’s important is what Jim Moore writes about the evidence. Views are not evidence, facts are.
You keep trying to evade this point. That’s shameful.
Re 895
You are just exaggerating in order to make a slur just like the Jim Moore school of science would recommend.
I said I didn’t have time to read through and reply to all the posts. I usually flick through most of the posts, apart from ones written by people like “Nerd…” from whom I am yet to read a single post that is not just ignorant name calling.
You’re also a bit hypocitcal. You and others have made points here contra to evidence of reading ones I’ve made previously, indicating that if you had read my posts, you didn’t do so very thoroughly.
I have also made several points that you either haven’t read, or just conveniently ignored. I’m not sure which is worse.
I do not dictate the pace of this, or any thread. I reply to those that need replying to most.
None of us have infinite time. I spend far too long in places like this as it is.
You are not being very generous here.
Not so. You ignore bits you’d rather not address. You can’t possibly address everything either.
Your sneering interpretation is not very helpful here. I meant it in a less ‘superior’ tone than you image. Even you, who claim to be “comprehensive” do not reply to everything. To do so would be a collosal waste of time.
It might have escaped your notice but some people tend to post insults, whilst others tend to argue more rtionally and using evidence. I’d rather debate with the later than the former.
It might have also escaped tyour notice but this whole thread started when PZ Myers openly sneered at the idea and people who are open minded about it.
Two-way critical thinking is when you are critical both of an idea and the arguments used against it. I thought it was supposed to be what scientists did all the time.
I have seen very little evidence of it here, or anywhere when this idea is discussed.
You seem proud of the fact that you corrected someone on the density of whale bones here once. That’s good, but compared to the crap against this idea that you say you ‘ve read and haven’t said one word about… it’s a bit paltry.
I repeat: It’s like a lynch mob.
So, the guy PZ Myers says wrote the “definitive web resource” on this idea totally misrepresents someone’s view hundreds of times for years and you admit you have nothing to say on the matter.
That’s shameful.
If it’s all about evidence and nothing about opinion how come the evidence that humans swim better than chimps, or that the one place great apes are most predictably bipedal (waist/chest deep water) are flicked away as nothing?
Suddenly, your (and other aquaskeptic) opinion trumps that, right? It’s silly.
The fact of the matter is that to get anything published in a peer reviewed journal, it has to be reviewed by people like Henry Gee (who apparently cannot discriminate between the idea that humans might have been exposed to some selection from wading, swimming and diving and the idea that the entire universe was created in six days just for us). That’s opinion, whether you like it or not.
No I don’t. The fact that you need to try to peddle such a slur is the thing that’s shameful.
I have critiqued what he writes about the evidence too, not just opinions. As with all his writings, he is highly selective. He cherry picks the bits he thinks makes the idea look silly and ignores the bits that make it sound reasonable.
How come the key fact in the whole debate – that humans swim and dive better than chimps – cannot be found on his “magnum opus”? It’s the most pertinent piece of evidence imaginable on the subject and yet Jim Moore would rather cite snippets about “penguin colonies”, “frog jaws” etc.
How come, on Jim Moore’s “evidence based” web site, he does not have a single page about the wading hypothesis and it hardly gets a mention, but it has an order of magnitiude more about relatively minor points he can more easily sneer at, such as the salt tears argument, that Elaine disavowed support for herself 16 years ago? Straw man, is being kind.
I expect you not to evade these points. I expect you to show critical thinking here.
Algis Kuliukas
Considering you show no critical thinking, no scientific thinking, nothing but slavish attempts to rationalize a CRANK/LOON position on a scientifically untenable idea?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA.
Funny are you AK.
No. I repeated what you had written. If that’s not what you actually meant, that’s your problem.
See, you just did it again: you flick through most of the posts – instead of reading all of them.
Is that not what you mean?
Examples, please.
Think before you write. With you on one side of the discussion and everyone else on the other, you can slow this thread down as much as you want. We can only reply to your latest comments when those comments actually exist!
And you judge this without knowing if those points, or your counterarguments, have already been addressed.
Does it never occur to you how stupid this is?
That’s because there’s nothing to be generous about here. I repeat: if you don’t have time to read this thread, you don’t have time to write in it. If that’s not searingly obvious to you, your priorities are massively fucked up.
Examples, please.
I don’t address stuff that other people have already addressed to my satisfaction. Everything else I do address.
Oh, it’s entirely possible that you’re not aware of your attitude. That’s exactly why I spelled it out in such detail.
A very subjective thing to say!
You’re doing it again. Drop that unscientific attitude. Instead of debating with people, discuss the topic.
Insults and evidence are not somehow mutually exclusive!
What does that have to do with anything?
What, in particular, does it have to do with whether our ancestors waded for a living?
Uh, no, because there aren’t always exactly two sides. In fact, there almost never are.
You make it sound like being critical means being unable to consider anything really improbable, so that one would end up with the fallacy of the golden mean. Is that what you have in mind?
Proud? No. I’d be an asshole if I had left that unaddressed.
“Once” is also incorrect. It has, somehow, escaped your attention that I’ve also spoken out several times against the hypothesis that long-distance running after prey was a key driver of selection in our ancestry, that I went into a lengthy digression about an off-topic problem on the website Michael Clarke likes to cite, or that Chas didn’t know adult hippos can’t swim (or run) and have osteosclerotic limb bones before I told him in this thread and cited a source.
What is it that you believe I secretly disagree with but shut up about for tribal reasons???
You decided right at the start that it’s like a lynch mob, and now you try very hard not to let the evidence disprove this hypothesis.
You misunderstand. I have nothing to say about the question whether that site misrepresents anybody’s views, because I haven’t tried to find out. Not interesting enough for me. What I care about is whether it misrepresents the facts that we’re allegedly discussing here.
Besides… as I understand it, “definitive” just means there’s nothing better around. Is there?
What a massively ignorant thing to say.
How many times have you submitted a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal? Once or never? Seriously, I can’t imagine you’ve tried more than one journal.
I’ve had two manuscripts rejected. One I reworked (even the reviewer who got really upset about it had a few constructive things to say!) and submitted to another journal; it was published in Contributions to Zoology close to five years ago. The other is on the back burner, but I’m working on it and will submit it to another journal, too. Rejection is a normal fact of life for a scientist.
No I don’t. The fact that you need to try to peddle such a slur is the thing that’s shameful.
I’m not lying. I really believe you keep trying to evade this point.
…Though maybe I’m wrong and you plainly don’t understand it. That’s really hard to imagine, however, because how hard can it be to understand that ideas aren’t right or wrong because of who came up with them or who agrees with them?
What do I care? I’m not discussing Jim Moore, and I’m not discussing his website. I’m discussing the hypothesis that our ancestors waded for a living!
You seem to see science as a web of social relationships. That’s why I put “beweaponed with honour and nobility” into my mockery.
And will you please stop calling it a fact? Nobody knows how well chimps would swim or dive with a decent amount of training and incentive. This has been pointed out several times on this page, and you keep… overlooking it somehow.
These are points about aquaticape.org, which is not the subject of this discussion. The subject is your hypothesis.
Jim Moore came in to discuss it, and you immediately went off topic and attacked him and his website.
I repeat: shame on you.
Speaking of insulting behavior:
No Algis cupcake, it is nothing like a lynch mob. Lynched people can’t post blog comments, and you are not being corrected by the horde due to your skin color.
You are being called an idiot because you clearly ARE an idiot. I’m still waiting for a reply to my fish comment where you claimed that humans developed big brains by eating fish. Not just any fish either, but PELAGIC species that require ocean going boats and nets to catch.
I am not a scientist of any sort, but I know that Lamarckianism is invalid, and has been in the dustbin of science for centuries. If eating fish drove brain growth, you would expect brown bears and lampreys to also evolve bigger brains.
Calling you an idiot is being generous.
———–
David Marjanovic
Do you mean that they can’t run on land? Because they certainly can run in the water, and for short distances on land. There is an awful youtube video of an adult male hippo attacking and killing a baby hippo in the water, and the adults are definitely running.
I don’t think he said that, though; I think he only said this made it possible.
What do you mean by that?
On most issues, honest critical thinkers do their two-way (multi-way) critical thinking on their own time, BEFORE posting on a forum.
That’s what I did with ideas like “rape is wrong” for example, so when I post on blogs I do NOT waste time being critical of “the arguments used against it”. Because I’ve already spent the time to do that work, on my own, rather wasting other people’s time with bad ideas and bad arguments.
So it is with this one.
Look for the video on youtube David. I’m sorry for not finding it for you, but I do not want to ever watch it again. It is a female hippo with calf, and a male who kills her calf. They are in a pond, and they are all definitely running.
As far as Algis is concerned, how is saying that eating fish possibly drove brain growth any different from Lamarckianism? He knows better than that, and if he doesn’t than his degrees should be revoked.
He will not do that. He refused to do it with his “fossils found in waterside environments must mean the organism lived by the water” lie. He refused to do that with his multiple lies about Jim Moore. He refused to do it with his dishonest “vertical climbing” vs brachiation claim. He has not done it with anything of substance on this issue since he’s been here.
He calls things “fact” when he wants to and doesn’t care that they are not. He does exactly the same thing with “ad hominem”, “parsimony”, “just-so stories” and the like.
He thinks that he is personally entitled to change to definitions of words to suit his own preferences, and to hell with what anyone else thinks.
This is why I lost patience with his intellectual dishonesty and no longer waste my time or effort reading any of his fappings, and only take note of things he writes if they are quoted by someone else.
Are they biomechanically speaking running, or are they just walking fast? Hippos can walk quite fast on land – make sure you never have an angry one behind you.
Scroll up to your comment 811, where you provide the quote – I can’t get “driving” or anything more than “making it possible” out of it.
Algis follows Elaine Morgan in believing that knocking down mainstream theories makes their idea more likely. This is a longstanding problem in the AAT/H, in virtually all versions of it, and it’s one of the things they do that is like creationists (especially since they don’t knock down actual mainstream theories, but strawman versions).
Example from Algis (there are many such from Algis and other AAT/H proponents):
“If there are 4 possible explanations for a human trait and one is damaged
by a piece of evidence then it makes the case for the other three stronger,
right?”
I responded to this with an illustration of why this isn’t so:
“You give 4 kids a simple math problem: 4 + 6 = ? They return their 4 answers and they’re all different: 5, 7, 23, and 14. You point out that 23 is wrong; are the other answers any more correct now? Is the case for the other three answers being correct any stronger?”
Algis’ response to that was:
“Listen, anthro-dumb-guy, there is just a slight difference between simple
arithmetic and speculations surrounding ideas on human evolution.”
There have been many other instances like this with Algis, where simple, easy to understand, examples were provided for him. He has so far failed to grasp why this is a problem.
On the Golden Mean front, Algis has repeatedly tried to claim there should be a middle ground between two extremes where the truth lies. Since he also creates the two extremes, for instance making strawmen by saying people like me think either we had no water use and that we think the AAT/H is thinking of “mermaids”, this middle ground is of course his claims. To that I’ve pointed out to him that there is no middle ground between facts and fantasy (I used the example of his claiming that if we’d evolved in savanna environments we should expect our infants to be “up and running” within minutes after birth, and how he refused to admit that he was there talking about ungulates — that we should be expected to have evolved to be like ungulates in that feature — and that he later claimed he was talking about baboons being “up and running” within minutes after birth.) Algis has also failed to grasp that point despite repeated attempts.
And Morgan follows the creationists and the DI in believing that knocking down evolution theory makes creationism/intelligent design more likely.
A rich diet of anything doesn’t “drive” brain or any other growth.
What it can do is alleviate the negative selection pressure against evolving larger brains from metabolic cost. It turns larger brain variants from being detrimental due to metabolic cost to neutral, allowing such variants a greater chance of persisting through genetic drift. This in turn gives a greater likelihood for some other, positive selection pressure to favor the larger brains later. It makes it more likely for larger brained variants to be present in the population when and if positive selection pressure for larger brains appears.
Several professionals have pointed out that the brains argument, as formulated by the AAT/H brigade (several of whom are academics with degrees in nutrition but sorely lacking in knowledge of evolutionary theory, judging from their claims) assumes there is always selection for ever-larger brains. If anything, the reverse is true, with the result that organisms tend to end up with “large enough” brains. Brains require energy; using less energy is a plus of you can get away with it. Using more energy than you need to is dangerous in an evolutionary sense.
I define running as moving fast with two or three of four feet off the ground at a time.
This hippo is running, and leaping around like a gazelle albeit quite briefly and while mostly submerged.
an edited version of the clip, I can’t find the longer original from the nature documentary
hippo running in water
I’ve also seen documentary footage that showed them intimidating crocodiles, and charging up out of the water at land animals. They didn’t run more than a few steps on land , true, but they can do it with a running start or lunge from the water to build up momentum.
Re 898
No, you didn’t, you wrote…
… that is not what I had written, that was your special interpretation.
I do not write comments “blind”. I respond to specific points that are made that I think are worth replying to.
I do not read all the posts. Anything headed by “Nerd…” gets ignored on principle. I notice you haven’t replied to this guy either. So much for your “comprehensive” boast.
I read most of the points. I read Amphiox’s post on the Mirceta et al paper and had it within minutes, even though I’d previously dismissed him as a bit of a nasty aquaskeptic too.
Big deal. You’re wasting our time here.
In post 503, 1 June, I wrote “My papers were both published in peer-reviewed journals actually…” in the post you just made you wrote this… “How many times have you submitted a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal? Once or never?”
In post 521 I point out just one of many of Jim’s web pages that is a travesty. Your reply, 524, demonstrates you didn’t read it very carefully.
If I had more time I’d find more examples.
Oops. So much for your boasting.
I came in a bit late but I’m aware of all the arguments that have been made here. There is nothing much that’s new. I’ve heard all these arguments many times before.
You are twisting my words, in the usual distort to discredit way of pseudoskeptics.
My point really was that I don’t have time to reply to all the points, not that I do not read most of them. (and by “most”, I mean I ignore people like “Nerd..”)
What is really stupid is trying to twist this into yet another slur.
Seriously, why are you guys so self-righteous on this? Do you follow the Jim Moore mantra – that the world is divided into two groups – those that are open to Hardy’s ideas being right and those who just know – without the need for any of that tedious science stuff – they’re stupid. The former are, error-prone, incompetent and dishonest, the later are perfect good guys who always tell the truth.
No, of course not. I am simply pointing out that on some ideas, such as this one, the usual criticality which is applied for for and against one’s arguments, is mysteriously absent.
On the “aquatic ape” if anyone, even some unqualified ex-car mechanic who is good at copying micro-quotes out of one context and pasting into another to make deliberate misrepresentation, writes something – the response is to turn critical thinking off and just applaud. Just like you did in post 684. Any gossip from uncle Jim, and you guys swallow it uncritically.
John Langdon writes a critical piece that mentions (so he knew it existed) but did not draw one sentence, or argument, from the one scientific symposium on the subject (Valkenberg conference, published in Roede et al 1991) and yet it sails through peer review and is published in JHE. Student essays have been rejected on less than that.
There is this smug, self-righteousness that always comes across from aquaskeptics. They have learned that the idea is pseudoscience. Check. They realise they are in a majority. Check. So they all egg each other on in their silly ignorant sneering. It’s pathetic, it really is.
Deny the evidence, distort the arguments, discredit the proponents.
Even PZ is awoken from his slumber when I dare to criticse anthro-slur-guy.
How on earth can he get away with it? He has distorted the views of Dan Dennett on this idea – to name just one example – for years and not one of you guys has the intellectual courage to criticise him in the slightest for it.
“Who cares?” is best response you can come with.
Imagine if I’d been writing that some respected person had supported the “aah” for years, like this, and then someone wrote to him/her and shown that they thought the opposite. Can you imagine the response? Probably not.
Jim Moore’s crap.
What evidence? Amphiox, Anthrosciguy, Arawthon, Ichthyic, Katherine Lorraine, Lofty, Menyambal , Michael Clark, Nerd, Tethys, Thumper, Vaiyt have all posted stuff that’s pretty hostile to me personally, in just the last dozen days or so. And , of course there’s PZ himself.
I don’t see you asking these guys to stick to the evidence, and keep away from personal issues. I suppose that kind of thing is ok, as long as you’re on the right side of the fence, eh?
Lynch mob.
So, it’s not interesting to you that PZ Myers backs the author of a web site that tells
lies about this subject? Fine.
It does misrepresent the facts, as I pointed out but you said you didn’t care about that either!
Nothing better? Anything is better than a site that distorts to discredit the arguments.
Well, as I have previously posted here that I had two papers published, that is an even more massively ignorant thing to say, especially after you boasting about reading everything and replying to everything and criticising me for not doing so.
I’ve submitted manuscripts to about seven or eight journals, thanks. Two went to peer review and were rejected. Two were acccepted. The rest rejected without review.
Of course it is. No one is denying that. But it’s a scary thought, if you are crazy enough to think that selection for wading, swimming and diving might have influenced human evolution, to think that people in posiitons of authority as gatekeepers of the scientific truth at journals as prestigious as Nature, actually cannot apparently discriminate between the plausibility of such ideas and the idea that the entire universe was created in six days, just for us.
See Aquatic apes are the stuff of creationism, not evolution by Henry Gee, just a few weeks ago.
Shocking. It really is.
Anything to say on that? Or do you not care about that either, David?
I’m not lying either. I am completely open to the evidence. My model was designed around the evidence. If evidence comes up that I was not aware of that affects my model, I change it. If such evidence comes up that would contradict my model, I’d drop it.
You keep repeating this slur that I evade evidence. Please give specifics, or drop the slur.
Then you’re an intellectual coward. PZ Myers says his web site is the definitive web resource on this subject. Here we are on his blog, discussing that subject and you evade any criticism of anthro”sci”guy like the plague.
Pathetic.
No. It’s a fact as much as any behavioual observation in zoology is a fact.
I thought you were interested only in evidence. Suddenly, opinion counts more, I see.
Evidence:
Observations of humans swimming – billions, chimps – a handful, maybe.
Observations of humans infants swimming – thousands, chimps – zero.
Observations of humans swimming over stretches of water > 3km wide – thousands, yet the Congo has seperated the three great apes for millions of years.
Observations of humans diving > 3m – thousands, chimps – zero.
Your “they might be able to do it if they trained” argument is really weak. It’s just special pleading.
I thought evidence denying is what creationists do, not scientists.
This blog, started by PZ Myers, is about the “Response to the Aquatic Ape Nonsense”, remember? Mockery is good – remember?
PZ Myers has openly backed the web site of anthro”sci”guy as the definitive web resource on this idea. He clearly thinks it’s good.
I say it’s shit. I ask that PZ defends the shoddy practices of Jim Moore but he evades doing so like the plague. So, I try to get other scientists, like you, to do the same. You evade doing so like the plague too.
Your defence of anthro-slur-guy is exactly what I have come to expect from pseudoskeptics. One-way only critical thinking and a lot of incredible arse licking of some unqualified ex car mechanic, with a huge chip on his shoulder, the guy who wild horses could not drag to tell the truth on this subject.
Now that’s really shameful.
Algis Kuliukas
Still complaining about that which you have no reason to complain about. Jim Moore is not part of this discussion, but rather your paranoia. Which you should keep to yourself. Nobody is taking JM as an expert, just as nobody is taking your word for expert either. You lack the evidence to back up your assertions. Making you a CRANK/LOON.
Try science for a change. If you can’t cite a third party source (not your own bullshit), don’t make an assertion. That is science. Evidenceless assertions are dismissable bullshit.
Algis, you like just-so stories, so here’s one for you:
You’ve been given a grant to go study chimps in the wild. Well, not much of a grant, you’ve been dumped off at the edge of their range, with no medicine, no radio, and no retrieval. You’ve got to live like the chimps … okay, a big cache of food, and even drinking water, if you want, but no medical kit.
So, here’s my question: Would you go swimming?
It’s hot, sticky and the Congo River is right there. Would you jump in and frolic about? Maybe ingest some of the water, accidentally? Maybe force some mud into that cut on your foot? (Did I say you were forbidden shoes?) Maybe get some river water in your ears?
Hey, it’ll be fine. Those fish that swim up your pee-hole are in South America, right? You’ll be picked up in a year, or was it five years? Never? Never getting to a doctor? Ever?
Me, I’d stay the hell out of the water.
Chimps may not know much about the causes of disease, but I bet they’ve enough sense and enough culture to connect swimming with getting sick and getting dead. (Once the idea spreads that swimming is bad, the few that go swimming will be really noticeable and memorable.) And they don’t have any treatment except prevention. .
Just so my survival training tells me, by the way. When there’s no doctor around, be very, very careful. When it comes to tropical rivers, stay the fuck out.
And since we have video of a baby chimp playing in the water, and his mom dragging him out and teaching him to stay out, I’m thinking the chimps have figured that out.
Chimps’ “aversion” to water may be cultural, and sensible. And since the Proboscis Monkey swims better and more often than most humans, and is on the other side of chimps from us, body-wise, your “obvious” evidence is all wet.
Just so.
Hey! I know, Algis, why don’t you discuss some of that WHHE stuff today? Wouldn’t that be fun? That’d sure surprise your critics here, wouldn’t it? There they are, sittin’ at their desk, waiting for the next deluge of vituperative nonsense and here you come with some evidence. Why, it’d be like a thunderclap. Imagine their bewilderment, eh? (giggle).
I know two definitions.
One says that all four feet are off the ground at a same time. Elephants can’t do that (except maybe when they’ve very young); hippos probably can’t either – except while submerged, as seen in the video, which is like humans leaping on the moon.
The other says in walking, the legs are mostly extended and function as pogo sticks and inverted pendulums, while in running, they’re bent, and the bent joints function as springs. Elephants can do that; I’m not sure about hippos, but it’s possible that they can’t do that unless submerged.
So you do write some comments blind: you don’t know if the specific points you mention have been dealt with elsewhere, and you don’t know if other points have been made.
Can you point me to a comment by him in this thread, other than 911, where he says anything new?
Ah, that was fully deliberate. I have yet to see evidence that any of your publications were peer-reviewed. I know you claim they have been – but the book you coedited was clearly not peer-reviewed, so you’ll understand my doubts. These doubts are further bolstered by the fact that you now act like someone who has either never had a manuscript reviewed, or has only once had one reviewed – by Henry Gee or someone “like him”. No two reviews I’ve ever got are that much alike that you could say all reviewers are remotely like any one particular person.
I just read both again and can’t see how it does that. Please explain.
Also, have you noticed how you shifted the goalposts from “didn’t read it” to “didn’t read it very carefully”?
Please take the time, I’ll happily wait.
In other words, you actually believe you don’t need to read anything, because you already know what it says!
You know, it’s characteristic of creationists to believe everybody is as lacking in knowledge and imagination as they are. You evidently share this attitude.
You blame me for misunderstanding your words?
What do you have a thesis superviser for? The very first thing mine taught me when I started writing scientific papers was that I would eventually be misunderstood – by someone, at some point, for some reason –, and that therefore it was my responsibility to minimize the opportunities for this by expressing myself as unambiguously as possible.
You fail to express what you mean, and then you claim I’m evil for not reading your mind instead of your words? Seriously, that’s rich.
You’re making it up. He himself doesn’t follow this “mantra”; that’s obvious from his writing.
It’s no more absent than it’s absent among evolutionary biologists in the evolution vs. creation “debate”. It looks absent – for the exact same reason – if you don’t look closely enough.
…So, what is the context for the “hypothetical crocodiles” or the “semiaquatic mountain beavers” or Verhaegen’s truly sad belief that he needs to have an institutional affiliation in order to publish? What is the context that excuses them?
The same comment, BTW, contains numerous questions to you that you still haven’t so much as tried to answer. And at the very end, I point out to “uncle Jim” that your vacillation between 7 and 6 may just be a typo.
Funny, then, that you try so very hard to discredit “aquaskeptics” left and right as if that would discredit “aquaskepticism”.
Show us where anybody has denied evidence, and show us where anybody has deliberately distorted an argument.
LOL. The last time he showed up here was in comment 607.
Looks like I need to explain your fundamental misunderstanding once again.
Hypotheses aren’t tested by counting the respected persons that agree with them. No, not even Dennett.
The response to your hypothetical example would be that we’d laugh at you for 1) using an argument from authority and 2) failing even at that because you misunderstood* what the supposed authority even said.
* It’d take a while till we’d even consider the possibility of lying.
In short, if Moore misrepresents what Dennett has said, that’s bad and needs to be corrected; I haven’t bothered trying to find out whether it’s a misrepresentation, or even what Moore claims Dennett has said at all, because it’s wholly beside the point. The point is whether our ancestors waded for a living.
…So you seriously believe I…
I’m out of words.
…
That was supposed to be a rhetorical question. But now it turns out you actually believe I lie all the fucking time. I’m baffled.
…
I can only imagine two reasons why you could possibly assume I could possibly be such an asshole, and that everybody else could be such assholes as to give me incentives to lie:
1) Projection (a logical fallacy);
2) Traumatic experience with assholes, followed by a logical fallacy.
…I’ll just leave it at that.
Our feet, our nostrils, our sweat glands, the carbon isotopes in the teeth of our ancestors (four papers)… and parsimony.
It’s truly impressive that you remember all these names. You must believe you’re incredibly important to remember every one of your critics, even the drive-by ones who only showed up once.
A lynch mob lynches people instead of insulting them on the Internet. In what way have you even metaphorically been lynched or threatened with it?
It would be interesting, though still off-topic, if he in fact believed they were lies.
Misunderstanding. I don’t care if it misrepresents people, because that, while bad, is beside the topic.
Of course I care if it misrepresents facts; name one! However, if it does, that still doesn’t retroactively put our ancestors in the water or next to it.
“Distorts to discredit” implies that the distortions are deliberate. Go and show us that they are.
One of those “papers” is a chapter in a book that was not peer-reviewed.
Which journals were those? I ask so I can have a look at their editorial boards.
And the two that were rejected – why didn’t you overhaul them and submit them to other journals?
…where “people” means “one person”.
Also, not every creationist is a young-earth creationist. Old-earth creationists happily accept the evidence for the age of the Earth and the universe, they “just” believe a series of miracles happened instead of evolution. Day-age creationists – there was a post about one a few days ago right here on Pharyngula – have a sort of compromise beween YEC and OEC in that they stick to the order of events in Genesis 1 but believe that each of the six “days” was a much longer span, in the case of the recent kook 2.56 billion years – which would make not just the Earth but the entire universe older than they actually are. And finally, outside all this Christian stuff, Vedic creationists ascribe truly immense spans of time to the narratives in the Vedas, juggling trillions of years with ease – much like the Scientologists.
OK, let’s pick this apart.
In the second paragraph, Gee makes a valid and important point (“One of the problems with human evolution, as opposed to, say, rocket science, is that everybody feels that their opinion has value irrespective of their prior knowledge”) but then immediately twists it into an argument from authority by conflating this prior knowledge with a degree in evolutionary biology (“(the outraged academic in the encounter above was a scientist, but not a biologist, still less an evolutionary biologist)”). That’s sloppy at best. It’s also sloppy at most parsimonious; there’s no reason to think Gee is being dishonest here. Still, it’s bad; Gee hasn’t mentioned any reason to believe “the outraged academic” hadn’t read up on that stuff. (Probably there are such reasons, but Gee doesn’t say.)
End of the same paragraph: “Adherence to such schemes become matters of belief, not evidence. That’s not science – that’s creationism.” Well, no, it’s ideology in general; calling all of that “creationism” isn’t a good idea. It’s definitely not science, though.
The next paragraph fails to distinguish different waterside hypotheses.
“The space ape idea is deliberately ridiculous – but no more so than the aquatic ape scheme, the reason being that there is absolutely no evidence for either.” That’s not how I’d put it. Parsimony is against both, and there’s evidence against both.
“First: none of the features proposed to support the idea evolved together. The ancestors of humans became bipedal at least five million years ago, but our fondness for seafood is much more recent, emerging, as far as we know, with the origin of our own species around 200,000 years ago.”
Correct, if by “fondness for seafood” he means that any people eat any such stuff at all.
“Second: basing deep evolutionary hypotheses on superficial details of soft-part anatomy is always risky, partly because we know little about when that anatomy evolved. It is possible, even likely, that the distribution of body hair and subcutaneous fat in modern humans evolved very recently and is influenced by sexual selection. This would explain why men and women differ so dramatically in these two attributes.”
Nothing wrong with that, except that the molecular divergence dates of our lice aren’t mentioned.
“Third: some of the features proposed to be relic[t]s from our watery past aren’t unique to humans. The air-spaces in our skulls, the sinuses, might have been buoyancy aids – but as Paul Z. Myers explains, sinuses are found in all mammals, aquatic or not.”
Nothing wrong with that either, except that sinuses aren’t even limited to mammals. At least some other therapsids shared some of them and had some of their own, and archosaurs (crocodiles and birds, to mention just the surviving representatives) have very airy skulls indeed.
Also, it doesn’t apply to your hypothesis, because you don’t propose any buoyancy was needed (AFAIK).
“Fourth: you’d be surprised how difficult it is to use anatomy to infer the behaviour of an animal. You’d never guess from their anatomy that goats, with their spindly legs, lack of opposable digits or prehensile tail, are experts at climbing trees.”
That’s easy to exaggerate, though. Goats are fairly specialized rock climbers, and you can see that in their skeleton; it’s not surprising they can climb trees of many shapes, too.
“Or that my golden retriever, Heidi, with her relative lack of fat and her copious amounts of body hair, is a strong and capable swimmer.”
Oh well. :-)
“Q: Why do elephants paint the soles of their feet yellow?
A: So they can hide upside down in bowls of custard.
So, all you need to do is find elephants with yellow feet, and the fun can begin. […]”
This just illustrates how easy it is to come up with a testable hypothesis of how anything evolved.
So. What is your grave problem with this article again? The only ones I can see are the parenthetical argument from authority near the beginning and the conflation of all ideology as “creationism” in one sentence.
See above: our feet, our nostrils, our sweat glands, the carbon isotopes in the teeth of our ancestors (four papers)… and parsimony.
*blink* Wow.
As you say, we’re discussing that subject, not the resource on it. Criticism of the author of that resource is doubly beside the point; of course I avoid this irrelevancy!
Can’t you see you just made another argumentum ad hominem?!? You imply really, really strongly that the hypothesis that our ancestors waded for a living is right because of who criticizes it.
Let me summarize the discussion so far:
Kuliukas: Soggy apes.
Moore: aquaticape.org.
Myers: LOL, soggy apes! Also, aquaticape.org.
Kuliukas: Moore is a poopyhead; therefore aquaticape.org is poop; therefore soggy apes.
Me: LOL, argumentum ad hominem! Also, our feet, our nostrils, our sweat glands, the carbon isotopes in the teeth of our ancestors (four papers)… and parsimony.
Kuliukas: Nope, soggy apes. See, Moore is a poopyhead; therefore aquaticape.org is poop; therefore soggy apes.
Me: Still argumentum ad hominem. Be ashamed.
Kuliukas: It is critically important that Moore is a poopyhead. You’re all lying and conspiring to ignore soggy apes, but Moore is a poopyhead!
Have I missed anything?
One does not simply swim across the Congo. If one is really lucky, one is eaten by a crocodile or three before one trespasses a hippo’s territory (…aquitory… whatever); also, comment 912.
Besides, few humans can swim 3 km. Few have the stamina to do so. That requires a lot of training.
Nope. Given the anatomical features people have been mentioning in this thread, and given the numerous incentives for chimps to stay out of the water in the wild, it’s really not surprising that they don’t do it even if they can.
Oops, you did it again.
You once again changed the subject: this time from aquaticape.org to Jim Moore himself.
*eyeroll* I simply can’t grasp why you’re so hung on the words “definitive web resource”. The only two such sites I know are aquaticape.org and your site, and your site tries to be a resource on aquaticape.org rather than on waterside hypotheses.
See, you’re so steeped in your concept of science as social hanky-panky that you can’t even see I’m not defending him.
I’m not defending him, because he is irrelevant. So are you and I.
What’s relevant are our feet, our nostrils, our sweat glands, the carbon isotopes in the teeth of our ancestors (four papers)… and parsimony. Yes, I am copying & pasting this.
I don’t care about him, his arse, or his former job. Why would I? I care whether we can find out if our ancestors waded for a living!
See the first paragraph of comment 911.
Right.
And if they don’t, natural selection will take care of it if fondness of and/or aversion to water are even partially heritable. Those chimps who loved swimming have all already been eaten.
Bingo.
We get detailed character studies of Jim Moore, less detailed ones of PZ, now even some of me – but discussion of waterside hypotheses has shrunk to “we swim & dive better than chimps”.
At this stage, Algis’ fat ego has putrified well past rancid.
Calling David M, of all people, an “intellectual coward”?
Utterly disgusting.
*puke*
How AK should do a scientific post that might not be ridiculed:
What not to include:
Egotistical sig at the end of the post.
All complaints about treatment.
All complaints about aquaskeptics.
All complaints about JM, Gee, PZ, and anybody else.
(notice this is about 90% of AK’s posts).
What he should include:
Acknowledgement the savannah hypothesis is the null hypothesis, and what his idea must show explains the overall evidence better from field work.
Link to a piece of data, either proper field work by himself or a third party peer reviewed paper.
Discuss that evidence, and why the wetape idea explains that data BETTER than the null hypothesis of the savannah. Avoid obvious speculation on why it explains the evidence better.
Shut up and await responses to what he posts.
He can’t do that. But that is how a scientist would present his idea.
Oh, I don’t even feel insulted. Calling someone an intellectual coward for not making an ad-hominem argument is just so absurd, it… doesn’t even compute.
It’s like “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”.
These are not only cold water fish, most of these species are not even native to Africa! From what I can tell, those that are native are oceanic–far from the interior of Africa near all these riverbeds & swamps where our fossils are. Are there any significant differences between coastal & interior dwelling prehistoric humans? Can you, algiskuliukas, point to any specific fish inhabitants with high levels of “brain developing nutrients”, living or extinct, that is widespread throughout Africa? I highly doubt it. And shellfish have largely the same distribution problems in my opinion–but they may leave a fossil record with the heaps of shells. I think biology more than environment laid the substrate for our brain size & function from prehistory to present.
Algis, seriously, stop complaining about that website. I don’t even know what one you are talking about, or recall when PZ mentioned it. I haven’t gone there, and have no intention of doing so. I don’t care what it says, nor do most of the folks here. We are arguing HERE, about the evidence you have presented.
Except you’ve presented no evidence, and you aren’t even talking about that any more. Your last comment was six screens of whinging, and about 4 lines saying, once again, that humans swim better than chimps.Which we have explained, repeatedly, isn’t known to be so.
Your whole point now, Algis, is that somebody might go off and uncritically read some bad literature and get all corrupted by it. Which is exactly what we say happened to you. Your biggest fear explains your position, perfectly..
You insist there’s a conspiracy, shortsightedness, rancor, rancidity and rampant un-reason, and we look at you, point at you, sigh sadly, and say, “Yes, yes, there is.” It’s you, Algis. Everything you insist is happening is indeed happening, and it’s all you. You are just as prone to all the human foibles that you claim we suffer from, and the parsimony you so love says that one mistaken man is more likely than that all of science and humanity is corrupted by something that sounds a lot like “acting all Algis”.
But that’s a just-so story, now, innit, Algis?
Here’s what we need to see from you in your next comment, something like:
“The kapini nut tree grows in the Fire Swamp of southern Luganda. The trees stand in water that is an average of one-half meter deep. One-half meter is the depth that most often causes bipedal wading on hominids in the one-meter tall (standing erect) range. The fossil called Cabana Boy, said to represent the transition between quadrupedal and bipedal, is one-meter tall. His teeth show wear consistent with cracking kapini nuts.
Evidence exists that kapini swamps were more widespread in Cabana Boy’s time, but dried up soon after.
At present, the kapini nuts are harvested by wading troops of Languid monkeys, and by local villagers who sell the nuts to gourmets across the world. ‘They just taste like home,’ says renowned gastronome Kopi Luwak.”
I could go on, just making shit up, but you can’t even start showing any evidence.
Algis has had two papers published in peer reviewed journals. One of those is rather suspect as it’s in a pretty obscure and very off-topic journal published and edited by a major AAT/H supporter (Nutrition and Health, head editor Michael Crawford, when I checked in 2010 — several years after Algis’ paper was published — Worldcat showed it held in 65 libraries worldwide; at that time the journal had received 376 cites in its 24 year history; the subject matter for the journal is like the title and completely unlike Algis’ paper). The other was published in Homo, and Algis has both said why it was rejected previously several times at other journals and supplied the reviewers’ comments from Journal of Human Evolution, which had rejected it. These comments contradict his statements about why it was rejected. If you’d like you can read about this in a couple posts at TRF (links below).
As several posters at TRF said, the reviewers’ comments were very polite and quite fair, pointing out problems that virtually everybody has independently pointed out with Algis’ work.
Here are Algis’ reasons for why he said the paper was rejected:
and
Algis’ reasons for doing the study he did probably didn’t help make for a paper that JHE would consider terribly desireable: “Please don’t try to tell me why I designed the experiments of my study the way I did. I chose a BHBK v FU comparison, actually, because Carey & Crompton did. Their study, on a treadmill, was published in JHE so I thought by repeating their study and confirming their findings, but adding more to it – different knee flexions and, of course, water – would make it likelier that my paper would get published in JHE too.”
Algis’ post with comments:
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=837865#post837865
A post from me about those comments:
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=838927#post838927
As I also said at that time: “We’ve been over that before Algis. Unless the paper you’ve had accepted is very different from the one you gave folks here all your paper does is to show that modern humans, adapted for a very effective fully bipedal gait, use more energy when forced to use a bent-over gait that evidence shows is not what our earliest ancestors ever used. And of course animals somewhat adapted to that sort of bent over gait (chimps) have been tested using it and they don’t have that sort of problem with it. So it’s not in favor of even your limited wading caused bipedalism idea. Your paper just showed the results of something that has nothing to do with any stage of our evolution.”
And a remark about the reviewers’ comments from a TRF poster who has been engaging Algis in newsgroups for a long time now:
You may well have noticed this already, but Algis lacks originality. Other than his “Stalin”, “Stalinist”, and “Nazi” (and later, “Kim Il Sung”) insults most of his phrase-bag he’s borrowed. So he saw someone say “mantra” about him and he tried to turn it on others. But he doesn’t seem to understand that an insult like that (“mantra”) must have some basis to work.
There’s also an interesting thing with skin color being dated, or at least date-able (and given that I remember when the MtDNA evidence first started being used and how those kinds of dating techniques have been refined over the years since, I’d like to see more wore and time before absolutely accepting that or the lice studies — and there are several different studies on different lice, which tell us something certainly. They’ve also got some wide ranges in them, as early studies usually do — and which tends to be glossed over and forgotten.). The skin color thing is, if I have it right, MC1R gene sequence.
Compared to not very long ago at all, it’s amazing some of these things are very likely to be knowable, even if we don’t have final results yet.
Look, man, you’re on the internet. Link it please.
Similarly, it’s ridiculous all this bickering about AK’s publications. Somebody just fucking link ’em!
Do I have to do it?
one
two
(looks like he’s also an author on a couple of forensic anthropology papers.)
Is it wrong of me to ask for some sort of wading ape to still be around? If Algis is right, I mean?
Us deluded savannah sheep, who for some reason believe that bipedalism developed in walking hunters, can point to walking hunters still living on savannahs. We even had a generic term for that lifestyle—“bushmen” isn’t used any more. And there are people still living at Turkana, living not much different than Turkana Boy likely did (a friend was just there, and sent pictures—it’s a rough place).
I have argued elsewhere that whale evolution is neatly recapped in extant animals—there is no eco-niche that is impossible to fill, on the way from weasel to whale. And the same holds for human societies, pretty much.
But there is no wading ape, no wading human society, nothing but shell middens from entirely the wrong time. And as has been said, oysters are gathered after the tide goes out. I’ve scavenged off sea-rocks, a time or two, and did it dry-shod (and damned well-shod, thanks).
There’s no trace at all of a wading ape or human. Yeah, we swim, but not all that often, on average. We walk all the time.
I’m going to walk in the kitchen and get me something to eat. And you know, it most likely won’t be seafood—if we’d lived off seafood for umpteen years, I’d expect it to be more of a requirement.
=====
11 years he’s been doing this?!?
I should have, yes, although I haven’t looked at this stuff enough to learn how to do more than accept others (who know more than I do about it) views of its importance. (It sounds interesting but I just haven’t spent the time.)
Paper here:
http://user.xmission.com/~wooding/pdfs/rogers_mc1r04.pdf
A bit from John Hawks about skin color mentioning the dates involved.
http://johnhawks.net/explainer/adaptation/skin-pigmentation#ref1
And page 202 (can be seen in Google books) of Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color By Nina G. Jablonski has a footnote mentioning it (Jablonski’s writing is where I first heard of it).
Longer. Around 15 years now:
As you can see from the above, Algis’ current attitude was set fairly early.
Mind you, I started doing newsgroup posts before that, although with several years at a time off here and there. Mostly on anthro stuff, a lot of AAT, and the usual stuff you got on the anthro message boards and newsgroups. That and Amiga-related. I readily admit to being a bit nutty. :) Still have one of my Amigas.
It’s obvious AK has a real problem in that he identifies himself through the idea of Aquatic Apes, and considers any criticism of the AAIdea to be a personal attack on him. Any scientist can expect some criticism early in doing a paradigm change, but they can win by providing the EVIDENCE required to convince (sell) scientists of the idea. It happened with the “hot blooded dinosaur” hypothesis, where they actually said “this would be present if this hypothesis is true”, and showed some dinosaurs did indeed have those modifications. They evidenced themselves properly.
In AK’s case, he has nothing. No evidence isn’t explained just as well or better by the savannah theory (its better than a hypothesis due to the overwhelming evidence). Any real scientist would have given up on the idea until they found more conclusive evidence than has been presented to date. The burden of evidence is upon AK to show his idea better explains the totality of the evidence, instead of one or two very minor pieces of it.
Re 914
Oh give it up. Time waster. Point out a post a have made which shows the point was rendered wrong by a previously made post that I hadn’t read. Compare that to the number of posts where this was not the case. I predict a 0-50+ score.
You might have infinite time to spend writing in places like this, but I don’t.
I don’t believe you. Later you compound this misunderstanding with another. You say …
… Actually it’s three, or two and a half and it was peer reviewed as much as most scientific books are. So I think you’re bullshitting us.
Look, I don’t care how “comprehensive” you say you are on this blog or how faultless you think your postings are. Read every single line of people like Nerd’s posts, if you like.
You assume you can lecture me on newsgroup posting etiquette but at the end of the day, writing “re post no” before a block of the unsourced quotes you rant against might help people follow your posts better.
You keep blathering on about how it shouldn’t be about personalities, but the evidence, but show your hypocrisy by (surprise surprise) only criticising me for this.
I think you are biased.
Gasp. That’s a rather extreme interpretation. Why am I not surprised?
Apart from the Mirceta et al paper, of course – which only came out last week, there is not one point that has been made here that I have not heard before. I’m sorry about that but it’s not my fault. This does not mean that I think I do not have “to read anything”. That is just a typically ignorant slur.
What!?
Slur peddling is all you people really can do in the end.
Yes. It’s very typical in debates on this subject. Aquaskeptics tend to do so deliberately in my view. The number of times I’ve had to repeat that I do not espose much aquatic selection, the number of times I’ve had to spell out my model river apes … coastal people, etc. shows that.
I have come to the opinion that you are just another member of that group. Your knee-jerk reactions to each and every point indicates that.
No, you’re making it up. From you own admission, you haven’t read much of his stuff. I’ve had the miserable experience of reading it pretty much every day for years.
His “3D” mantra is: Deny and distort to discredit. It’s what he’s beeen doing from day one, over 17 years ago. I note that you, again, have to try to defend the charlatan.
The fact you boast that you “don’t care” that he has lied about Dan Dennett’s views on this idea for years speaks volumes.
Wow! another “expert” boasting that he cannot discriminate between the plausibility that a little selection from wading, swimming and diving might have affected the human phenotype and the idea that the entire universe was created in six days, just for us!
Blimey, with powers of discrimination as bad as that, how can you call yourself a scientist?
Maybe you should read some of Dan Dennett on this – and then read how Jim Moore’s been twisting his words 180 degrees.
So, you want me to do the research you should have done instead of just trusting uncle Jim’s gossip?
As with practically every bit of Jim’s gossip, you can be sure it was taken out of context and given Jim’s special spin.
No, only Jim Moore, really. He’s the special one.
Humans swim better than chimps. You have denied it yourself. You seem to think that if chimps were “trained” they’d be able to swim across the English Channel.
“Trees in the water” – you distorted the blindingly obvious seasonally flooded gallery forest argument yourself.
Many others.
Thank you. It only took about four weeks but we got there in the end.
Jim? Read that? It needs to be corrected.
Let’s please not escalate the language. That’s what Jim Moore does.
I believe that you are biased. I do not believe you lie “all the fucking time”.
I think you give Jim Moore too much credit. You trust his word too much. You are not as skeptical about what he writes as you are about what I write.
As for the reasons…
Aquaskeptics have learned the “aquatic ape theory” is “wrong” even though they couldn’t even tell you what “it” (they, actually) is (are).
There is so little in the literature, Jim Moore’s gossip has been substituted for it.
It must be wrong, so Jim must be right.
How do these “disprove” waterside hypotheses? On the contrary.
It’s this sort of thing that encourages me. Here’s the big, self-righteous “sciency” guy, lecturing me (but no-one else) on being personal and ignoring the evidence, on posting techniques, on logical fallacies, on my understanding of this that and the other. He hasn’t read Jim Moore’s web site, he’s never even heard of John Langdon or Keith’s Hylobation ideas but he’s so absolutely sure the “aquatic ape” thingy is pseudoscience he thinks all he has to do is play the “evidence card” …
Jim Moore will no doubt suck this up as one of his cherry picked, out-of-context, microquotes to spit back out at me for years to come, deliberately misrepresenting this as some creationist slur. It’s what he does.
… when the “evidence” he presents is irrelevant to the argument.
Waterside hypotheses of human evolution, David. Remember? Please try to forget your “aquatic ape” cartoon characature..
Oh, just the usual… slurs on my intelligence and honesty.
Again, I notice you have nothing to say when other people get nasty and personal, only when I try to respond to it.
If you were as impartial as you’d like to pretend you are, you’d be criticising anyone that did this.
Clearly, PZ doesn’t think Jim Moore peddles lies. Like most “experts” on this subject, he seems to trust good old uncle Jim implicitly. Every barrel scraped, nit picked, cherrry picked, out of context microquote, presented as another shock horror revelation is swalloweed uncritically, every time.
I named a few but you said you didn’t care.
It doesn’t report the key fact in the whole debate – humans swim better than chimps (that simple fact you deny!) but mostly cherry picks bits that (out of context) sound silly.
It doesn’t even have a page about the wading hypothesis. It barely mentions it and has an order of magnitude more about relatively minor ideas that Elaine herself disavowed years ago.
Why should I have to do your skeptical work for you? Why are you not as skeptical of Jim Moore’s “work” as you are of anything in favour? Why is your default position to just trust uncle Jim? I thought you were supposed to be the impartial “sciency” guy here.
Read it and read my critique. There are many.
Again. Why do you just trust his word, but not mine?
I have just spent weeks showing that Jim Moore has deliberately, repeatedly, completely misrepresented Dan Dennet’s clear and open support of Elaine Morgan’s work.
And then you ask me to do this!?
Time waster. Evidence denier. Biased aquaskeptic.
See that? I have papers published in the peer reviewed literature (Nutrition & Health and Homo) and David’s hyper skeptical. Even this is not trustworthy. He detects the odour of malice. He wants to know who is on the editorial board.
Jim Moore writes a shit, gossipy web site where he gets to write whatever misrepresentations he likes with impunity. No peer review at all. Not even a blog or a forum for people to give feedback … but that’s all fine and dandy. The onus is on me to show he’s used it as a vehicle to peddle lies and distortions.
Outrageous bias!
Three chapters (well, two and a half – one was co-authered with Elaine.)
The “not peer-reviewed” thing is just another slur.
It was as peer reviewed as most such scientific compilations. At least one authority that I know of – a professor emeritus – was asked to review the book.
I thought you were only interested in the evidence. Suddenly, opinion and arguments from authority are key.
For example, anything to say about my chapter in that book critiquing Langdon’s unscholarly, straw man “rejection”? Are you at all interested? Sorry, I realise that a couple of weeks ago you didn’t even know who John Langdon was, but come on, David, get with the program you slacker.
Well, that someone in a position of authority (as gatekeeper of the scientific truth at Nature) finds it difficult to discriminate between the totally plausible and the totally stupid.
It doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence that any science done about waterside hypotheses would get a fair hearing if submitted to Nature, or any other 1st class journal for that matter.
I asked “You keep repeating this slur that I evade evidence. Please give specifics, or drop the slur” but you didn’t give any specifics and you didn’t stop the slur.
Please give specifics. Where do you think I have evaaded any evidence?
A very stupid distortion. Not worth replying to.
Yes, despite your boasting about never doing this, and being comprehensive, you missed a whole chunk out (about evidence!) and cherry picked a tiny bit out for your own special spin on it.
“Comprehensive”… my arse!
This…
I thought you were interested only in evidence. Suddenly, opinion counts more, I see.
Evidence:
Observations of humans swimming – billions, chimps – a handful, maybe.
Observations of humans infants swimming – thousands, chimps – zero.
Observations of humans swimming over stretches of water > 3km wide – thousands, yet the Congo has seperated the three great apes for millions of years.
Observations of humans diving > 3m – thousands, chimps – zero
On the Congo, your “the crocodiles will eat ya” argument is a bit silly. We’re talking about evolutionary timescales.
You skipped the material point: I thought you were only interested in the evidence, but when overwhelming evidence like this is presented you flick it away as nothing.
Same with the evidence of behavioual contexts of bipedalism in extant great apes.
Evidence denier.
Holy Special Pleading. So David just “knows” that chimps can swim really. Even though there is almost no evidence for it.
And he thinks I’m the guy that needs lecturing on how science is done.
Hahaha! Pull the other one.
You said… “Jim Moore came in to discuss it, and you immediately went off topic and attacked him and his website. I repeat: shame on you.”
If that’s not defending him, what is it?
So do I. But I also care that those people who have been open to the idea and encouraging more science to be done to test it are not misrepresented by ignorant mob-like sneering.
More science needs to be done, agreeed? Or do you think it’s so obvious that wading could not have played a part in the evolution of bipedalism that anyone who disagrees should be hounded in cyberspace as a pseudoscientific fraud?
Algis Kuliukas
Re 918
Catfish.
See, for example…
Stewart (1994)
Broadhurst et al (2002)
Cunnane & Stewart (2010)
Algis
Re 919
Ignoring the vast majority of the post which was just personal (David will criticise Menyambal post for it any minute now, I’m sure…)
Evidence denier.
Humans swim and dive better than chimps. You saying that we don’t know it to be so is clutching at straws. All the evidence suggests it is so. The only significant question is why should this be? You guys cling to exaptation just so stories – it’s because we’re bipedal, large brained, clever, fat, still have brachiating arms etc but it’s possible (isn’t it?) that it could (shock horror) be due to natural selection.
The one place extant apes are most likely to move bipedally is in waist/chest deep water. A bit of a clue, me thinks.
I’ve mentioned this a few times but “Menyambal” says I’ve provided “no evidence”.
David will criticse this guy soon for using opinion instead of evidence. I’m sure he will.
Algis
Re 919
The usual slurs about Nutrition & Health and gossip about the Homo paper.
(And let’s not even consider the how well peer reviewed Jim’s masquerading web site was – zero, not one bit – he gets to write whatever misrepresentations he likes with impunity.)
Note that Jim carefully avoids mentioning the whole point of the studies. Arguemnts of authority and slurs matter more than evidence and science, to some people. David will criticise Jim for this, soon, I just know it.
The first paper report a short pilot study of captive bonobos at Planckendael. It found that on land bonobos were approximately 2-3% bipedal, consistent with previously piublished studies, but in water it was much larger (approx 90%).
Kuliukas, A. Wading for Food: The Driving Force of the Evolution of Bipedalism?. Nutrition and Health 16:267-289, (2002).
The Carey & Crompton paper that my study was based on, did exactly the same, but that was accepted in JHE.
Carey, T., Crompton, R. The metabolic costs of ‘bent-hip, bent-knee’ walking in humans. Journal of Human Evolution 48(1):25-44, (2005).
What they didn’t do, of course, was consider moving through water.
My study did consider this, and varied knee flexion, speed and depth.
The data, again, confirmed the “treadmill only” study – on land BHBK gait was 55% more costly than a fully upright gait. In water this cost differential was reduced.
In waist deep water, @ 0.6 m/s, with a 50 degree knee flextion, it was about 18% more costly. In deeper water, and with greater knee flexions the differential disappeared.
Kuliukas, A., Milne, N., Fournier, P. The relative cost of bent-hip bent-knee walking is reduced in water. Homo 60:479-488, (2009).
Unless one holds the view that the very earliest bipeds were optimised for effiicient terrestrial bipedalism, and adopted a fully upright gait like us, from day one, the results are interesting and pertain very much to the sort of scenario where early bipedalism could have been practiced.
Rather than welcome someone trying to do some science on this idea for the first time in 53 years since Hardy’s paper promoted the wading idea, Jim’s instinct is to peddle slurs to discredit it.
Great, isn’t he PZ?
Algis Kuliukas
The best argument pro AAT is the absence of serious arguments of the opponents.
Discussions on the so-called “aquatic ape theory” are often outdated. Of course, humans didn’t descend from “aquatic apes”, but our Pleistocene ancestors were too slow & heavy for regular running over open plains (google “econiche Homo” for a demolition of the endurance running ideas).
Instead, Homo populations during the Ice Ages (with sea-levels often 100 m lower than today) simply followed the coasts & rivers in Africa & Eurasia, eg, 800,000 years ago, they even reached Flores more than 18 km overseas.
– eBook Was Man more aquatic in the past? introduced by Phillip Tobias http://www.benthamscience.com/ebooks/9781608052448/index.htm
– guest post at Greg Laden’s blog http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/30/common-misconceptions-and-unproven-assumptions-about-the-aquatic-ape-theory
– http://greencomet.org/2013/05/26/aquatic-ape-the-theory-evolves/
– Human Evolution conference London 8–10 May 2013 with David Attenborough, Don Johanson etc. http://www.royalmarsden.nhs.uk/education/education-conference-centre/study-days-conferences/pages/2013-evolution.aspx
– M Verhaegen & S Munro 2011 “Pachyosteosclerosis suggests archaic Homo frequently collected sessile littoral foods” HOMO – J compar hum Biol 62:237-247
– M Vaneechoutte, S Munro & M Verhaegen 2012 “Reply to John Langdon’s review of the eBook: Was Man more aquatic in the past?” HOMO – J compar hum Biol 63:496-503
– for ape & australopith evolution google “aquarboreal”
– http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT
marc verhaegen
Since the idea isn’t scientifically serious, there is no need for serious arguments against it. It is unable to sustain itself with evidence, unless the definition of aquatic ape is diluted into meaningless nonsense, or it happened to late for evolution to do anything.
AK
Sorry, crank/loon, you are the one denying the conclusive evidence trashing your inane idea.
That’s an entirely appropriate response to someone trying to revive a dead, bad, bogus idea. Jim Moore has done excellent work compiling rebuttals to your nonsense, and yeah, I’d say he’s pretty great.
You, on the other hand, are a wanker.
That’s a pathetically low bar you’ve set. That’s the rationale intelligent design creationists use, based entirely on their ignorance of their opponent’s actual arguments.
It might be a pathetically low bar, PZ, but you can’t even reach it, jumping your fat arse up and down on your tippy toes.
You talk about ignorance! Holy Hypocrite!
“idiot” “loon” “kook” … and now… (gosh, what will the great intellectual say next?)… “wanker”.
Brilliant, response, this, PZ. You do realise it will only encourage anyone with an open mind that any “response” to this idea (let alone the moronic shit you describe as “the best response”!) is about as weak as one could imagine.
The great PZ Myers has to descend to the level of a six year old. It’s funny. It really is.
Really? Have you honestly nothing better to say? Can’t you even articulate a paragraph? a sentence, better than to call me “a wanker”? It’s like being back at school. Weren’t those “sciency” guys, David and Chas, supposed to do your thinking for you and run rings around me? That didn’t quite happen either, did it?
You’re clearly so ignorant about this subject, you can’t even discriminate between the idea some selection from wading, swimming and diving might have made us different from chimps and the idea that the entire universe was created in six days.
Dear, oh dear, what a shambles!
Oh well, at least it’s now official</i?… PZ Myers thinks that the lying ex car mechanic, who has been twisting pretty much everyone's words on this for years (most notably and clearly those of Daniel Dennett) is “great”.
Hahaha!!!
Thanks for making your bigotted, ignorant bias clear.
But you’re right about one thing… Mockery is Good!
What a bunch of intellectual cowards!
Algis Kuliukas
Dear old Algae, still no scientist, just a soggy blowhard.
You’re the intellectual coward AK. You are unable to acknowledge your idea doesn’t fly in the face of evidence. I’ve seen your idea. I’ve seen your lack of evidence. Ergo, I reject your idea due to lack of evidence for it, and the myriad of evidence for the savannah hypothesis. That is called being a scientist AK, where you aren’t blinded by idea per se, and evaluate ALL THE EVIDENCE.
Jeez, Algis. My opinion of you was already low. That childish display raises your lowness to new depths. You are one seriously pathetic individual.
I’m not the one doing the childish name calling. That’s PZ.
How pathetic is that?
Algis Kuliukas
How oblivious can you get?
Consider another approach, Mr. Kuliukas. This one really hasn’t worked that well for you, not here nor, apparently, anywhere else for the past 15 years.
Maybe take a hint from your buddy Verhaegen: swoop in, dump your 4-5 best links, and move on. It’s exactly as effective as your belligerent obsessive obstinate persistence but saves everybody concerned lots of time.
You are engaged in childish name calling. For example, you accuse us of intellectual cowardice since we don’t accept your evidenceless idea based on your sayso, whereas you the intellectual coward in that you simply won’t consider your idea is full of urine.
You complain about everybody who criticizes your fuckwitted idea, and take it as a personal insult. That is not the behavior of a scientist, nor anybody using their intellect. It is the behavior of CRANK/LOONS.
Show me where because you accept something on faith (you have no evidence for your idea), we must do the same. Your behavior is that of a proselytizing godbot.
In fact, AK is nothing but a aabot. He repeats the same shit like a recording.
Yeah, that’s funny, Algis. “Wanker”, was it? I think I like Jason’s better:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.anthropology.paleo/FeT6eTd7eCk/mIUaP92NSsMJ
Why is it, do you suppose, that everyone who ever reads your flotsam ends up giving you some kind of unsavory moniker? Is it because all these academics, many with long, published careers, just don’t get it? Are all those PhD’s just plain too stupid and ignorant to see the sheer beauty of the AA[X]? I put it to you that there may be yet another explanation. It is just possible that you and your little coterie of like-minded chandelier swingers couldn’t muster the neurons ~collectively~ to tie your own shoes.
And here you are, providing clear evidence for such a diagnosis.
Congratulations, “Pissboy”. <–My own, and still my favorite.
When you calm down, you can post some evidence. You do have some evidence right? No? Then how 'bout a link to that list you posted awhile back? (giggle)
He’s so wound up that he’s signing his name in italics.
So says the pathetic liar who has been childishly name calling Jim Moore, David M, Chas, and PZ himself, to name but a few, for over half this zombie thread.
So says the pathetic liar who has been labeling everyone who disagrees with his unevidenced, useless, pitiful, ridiculous ideas, “sheep”.
Disgusting.
Why not? His ideas are all bent anyways. Might as well reflect that reality in his signature.
Needed a bit more specific a link to Jason’s post, Michael. But I noticed in there Algis referring to his masters thesis study, his 5 hours of observation at the zoo, as a “pilot study”. He’s done this many times over the years, in that newsgroup, at TRF, and even here. When is the full study happening, Algis? It’s been more than 10 years. During that time, as you know, you have spent several years worth of 40-hour work weeks arguing online in venues like the newsgroup, forums, and here, with people you call ignorant, a rabble, etc. Why haven’t you done the full version of your pilot study?
Of course there is one good reason why someone might not do a full study after a pilot study. If that person finds their idea to have been without merit after the pilot study. Perhaps Algis, deep inside, realizes his zoo visit doesn’t really mean what he’s been claiming all these years? Or is it simply that he’s full of it and is merely offering excuses for his quick and shoddy thesis study?
We are sheep, who are also a lynch mob. (now that is an amusing mental image)
Discrediting Algis’s hypothesis, so simple people with no biological science training can do it easily.
There is a very serious methodological flaw in Algis’s claims about the evidence that supposedly supports his arguments. The scientific method exists for a reason, and that reason is to prevent us from running around and around in circles chasing our tails. Forgive this little review, but I think everyone can use a refresher from time to time.
The first few steps of the scientific method:
1. Make an observation. (Observation)
2. Propose an explanation. (Hypothesis)
3. Generate a testable prediction. (Prediction)
4. Evaluate the evidence gleaned from the test. (Evidence)
There’s more, but this will suffice for the purposes of this post. How do Algis’s claims fit in here? Well, the AAT is a proposed explanation for a variety of observations. For example: Humans swim better than chimps. Ok, so let’s apply the scientific method.
1. Observation: Humans swim better than chimps.
2. Hypothesis: Humans swim better than chimps because of water-related selection (WRS).
3. Prediction: Humans swim better than chimps.
4. Evidence: Humans swim better than chimps.
Please tell me you can see how this is logically circular. The simple explanation for the circularity is this: The evidence and the observation can’t be the same thing.
Now, AATers will claim that this isn’t the only “evidence” they have. But all their other “evidence” follows the same logical circularity.
1. Observation: Humans are relatively hairless.
2. Hypothesis: Humans are relatively hairless because of WRS.
3. Prediction. Humans are relatively hairless.
4. Evidence: Humans are relatively hairless.
And so on and so on. Every single piece of “evidence” they produce is circular with relationship to the thing it is supposed to be evidence for. What is needed to avoid this logical circularity is a robust testable prediction having nothing to do with the original observation. How does this play out in real anthropology? Usually in the form of fossils and artifacts.
Observation: There was a reduction in cranio-facial robusticity during the australopith-homo transition.
Hypothesis: Reduction in cranio-facial robusticity during the australopith-homo transition was due in part to a change in diet involving lower consumption of tough, fibrous, voluminous plant matter and greater consumption of low-volume, high-energy meat.
Prediction: If human ancestors at the time of the australopith-homo transition ate more meat, we should find bones and artifacts indicating sustained consumption of meat corresponding in time with the australopith-homo transition.
Evidence: The first evidence of sustained practice of butchery (bones of butchered animals and hewn stone tools) found in Africa corresponding in time and place with the australopith-homo transition.
This is not circular, because the observation of decreased cranio-facial robusticity is not the same thing as the finding of bones and artifacts. The one supports the other in a linear fashion.
Of course, AATers could always claim that one of their pieces of “evidence” is a natural prediction of the others. For example, if humans are better swimmers because of WRS, then a “predicted outcome” would be that we should have less hair than other apes. But this is not true, at all. Most aquatic animals have dense coats of fur. Hairlessness doesn’t refute the hypothesis, but it isn’t a natural prediction derived from the hypothesis either.
And the same goes for all of their “evidence”. Not a single one of the proposed “aquatic traits” is robustly predicted by the “hypothesis”. None of them refutes it, but none of them is specifically predicted by it, either.
Without any kind of fossil evidence, they’re left with literally zero evidence at all. And their claims that the “aquatic traits” themselves are evidence is circular.
95% of Algis’s arguments boil down to this:
Observation: Humans have trait X.
Hypothesis: Humans have trait X due to WRS.
Prediction: Humans have trait X.
Evidence: Humans have trait X.
The other 5% are factually inaccurate or logically fallacious.
From the point of view of genuine science, the AAT has nothing at all. It is an entirely vacuous exercise in story-telling.
ASG: Yeah, I linked to the post and Googles’ “new” (and improved) groups just gives you the list ~and then highlights the specific post among them. Of course, I didn’t discover this until *after* I posted it but what the hey. The particular post *contains* the part where Jason lights up but it isn’t the exact post. My bad. For those not interested in chasing it, the reference was “..miserable pathetic little prick.”
That would be this Jason Eshleman …
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-eshleman/4/759/741
Dear PZ & co.
When can we have Algis back?
Yours sincerely
Talk Rational
That is up to Algis’ ego.
And for those who don’t know the context, that was after Algis had been spouting off about “Stalinist” this and that for some time (and Verhaegen started insulting Jason even earlier, I think).
Algis:
I was wondering if he’d ever get to noodling for catfish, and I don’t know that he has. “Noodling”, for those of you from civilized places, is “fishing for catfish using only bare hands, practiced primarily in the southern United States.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodling
My daddy learned noodling from his step-dad, but he never taught it to me. It is a method of fishing that could easily be done by wading chimpoids. See, you wade along, feeling underwater, and sometimes dive down, and you stick your hand, blindly, into underwater holes where catfish like to nest/hide. The catfish then bites your hand, you grab onto the catfish’s mouth, and you try to get it out of the water. (A big catfish can drown you, and there are plenty of other hazards.)
Noodling could easily be done by chimps or proto-humans, and I say it could be better done by chimps. They’ve got the long arms and the fast muscles, and they could bite back at the fish a lot better.
So there’s a remnant/vestigial fishing technique that I’ve been waiting for Algis to mention. It is even done in Africa, as part of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argungu_Fishing_Festival http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/africa_fishing_festival/html/1.stm but the main part of the fishing is done with nets and other equipment. The river where the festival is held is narrow—I don’t know what they do about hippos and crocs.It looks like the do get some big catfish.
Catfish, according to Wikipedia, don’t have Omega-3, but instead have Omega-6. I don’t know how that relates to brain growth, but the catfish I’ve seen don’t have the fat that one finds in meat and marrow.
I don’t see noodling catfish as a likely way to fulfill Algis’s Wading Ape scenario, but I am sure he will.
The one place extant Oklahomans are most likely to move bipedally is in waist/chest deep water, noodling for catfish. A bit of a clue, me thinks.
oh, and also when reaching for something off a high shelf at Walmart.
Algi:
Knock of the fat shaming. Silencing tactics such as that are not appreciated here. Nor are they tolerated.
Asshole.
Do you really have any evidence at all for your AAT? Any? Any? Bueller?
One of my objections to the whole wading-to-bipedalism scenario is based on my own experience as a wader. As I’ve said, I didn’t figure out how to swim until I was about 20 years old (I’d figured out how to sail a boat first (so much for instinct), and decided I’d better be able to swim). So when, as a younger person, I was taken “swimming”, I waded a great deal.
I learned to do a “seal walk”, where I mostly floated and walked my hands along the bottom in shallow water, but mostly I walked about, upright. It is slow going, wading, but a lovely floaty feeling when deep, or when crouching.
When I was done wading, I’d stagger ashore, literally. The feeling of having to support my own weight again left me crawling up the bank, and for a few minutes afterward. Algis seems to think that wading hominids went striding ashore, bursting with vitality, chests out, heads up, never again to touch knuckle to ground. Well, it was pretty much the opposite of that.
He could argue that I knew how to wade because my ancestors were aquatic. Or even that wading was an energy savings because I could float, mostly. Wrong. I think my muscles were so tired from fighting the drag of the water, that they couldn’t hold me up on land. (Seriously, an upright ape, wading, is slow and tired and crocodile bait.)
If apes stayed long enough at the right depth to get in the habit of being upright, *maybe* they’d stay that way. But I can say that wadng in a crouch was just as likely, and depended entirely on depth. If there is some scenario that matches the water depth to the fossils, I’d like to see it.
Algis also needs to state what the wading was done for. If it was for transport through the water, for distance, mostly, that’s one thing. If it was to scavenge snails off the bottom, that’s another, and a place where chimps might do better. If it was to harvest overhead grasses, or to noodle for catfish, it has a chance of being confirmable. If it’s just, well, “they waded”, it is trivially true. (I was just thinking that the Nile River led some people north across the Sahara, so there’s a water-based difference in humanity, but it doesn’t mean they waded down it, or that wading shaped them any more than throwing rocks did.)
My experience, wading more than the kids who could swim, is that wading doesn’t lead to upright walking in the water, and certainly doesn’t lead to bounding up the bank into bipedality.
====
My bipedality scenario is easy to pre-load for confirmation. See, the one place where hominids are 100% guaranteed to stand upright is when they are trying to look over savannah grass. If they aren’t standing upright, they aren’t trying, so it is self-fulfilling.
Algis i’m sorry i called you a dishonest piece of shit. Just come home.
Menyambal i like you
Wiki wrongy. :) There are a few places to find info like this online, although most are a bit fiddly and naturally don’t usually have exactly what you’d like to see. That is, you likely not find data on “East African freshwater shellfish” or “small African antelope brains” lying around. But here’s a decent place you can look for info, most of which they get from the USDA.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/
The USDA itself has a site you can look up info on too, but it’s not quite as easy.
http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/
A few representative entries, apropos to this subject (all these amounts are based on levels per 100-gram serving):
Fish, catfish, channel, wild, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 535mg
(Channel catfish is, of course, North American, but it’s the only wild,raw catfish I saw listed)
Mollusks, mussel, blue, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 483mg
Mollusks, oyster, eastern, wild, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 672mg
Fish, tilapia, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 220mg
(Tilapia are pretty common in eastern Africa)
Crustaceans, crayfish, mixed species, wild, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 184mg
Frog legs, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 51mg
Lamb, variety meats and by-products, brain, cooked, pan-fried Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 1610mg (
(Sorry, no raw numbers for most meats)
Game meat, squirrel, cooked, roasted Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 154mg
Game meat, raccoon, cooked, roasted Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 246mg
Game meat, rabbit, wild, cooked, stewed Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 140mg
Game meat, rabbit, wild, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 90mg
(Interesting that cooking may well help)
Game meat, antelope, cooked, roasted Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 100mg
Game meat, antelope, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 70mg
Various nuts range from high to extremely high in DHA, but I don’t see any native African nuts in these lists (may have missed them; I certainly didn’t do an exhaustive search — just more of a search than any AAT supporter ever seems to mange :))
I also don’t have an exhaustive set of refs for research on what our ancestors may have eaten, fat-wise, but this one is one of the people whose been doing work on it for some time now.
http://www.direct-ms.org/pdf/EvolutionPaleolithic/Long%20chain%20fatty%20acids.pdf
Now one of the more interesting bits is this: brains and fat itself. Interesting because, while at least one of the chief AAT proponents from the diet side has poo-pooed the idea that our ancestors could’ve been obtaining brains to eat (and he’s done so by invoking us attempting to hunt African buffalo, which is unlikely for our earlier ancestors), we actually have evidence of our ancestors doing just that with small ungulates.
And look at these DHA numbers for brains:
Beef, variety meats and by-products, brain, cooked, simmered Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 1238mg
Beef, variety meats and by-products, brain, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 1225mg
Then look at the numbers for fat:
Beef, retail cuts, separable fat, raw Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 1070mg
Beef, retail cuts, separable fat, cooked Total Omega-3 fatty acids: 1040mg
I’d like to see numbers for actual wild small ungulates, but I doubt they’d be all that different.
I wrote up a post at TRF the end of April this year with the link to the recent hunting and brains paper, a writeup on it, and some more DHA numbers.
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=2097943#post2097943
I’d encourage anyone in this thread to read it, or at least take a quick glance at it, to see that there is, at the very least, a reasonable amount of apropos and referenced information in it. Algis’ response to it was, in full: “Anthro-slur-guy at “work”.”
Gibb, thanks.
Anthrosciguy, I like your work. I can’t recall where I read it long ago, but it was one of those “obviously” moments: The best thing to eat for nutrition for building a body part, is that body part off the closest animal relative you can stomach. Generally.
So, yeah, getting brains to eat would have helped our ancestors grow their brains. An oyster might have one or two good things, but an antelope brain has it all.
Other scavenger animals would have difficulty cracking open a skull—probably more trouble than it was worth—but a clever hominid with a rock and a stick would have a niche diet that nobody else was getting. (I can imagine some whacks with a sharp rock and a hand on each horn—it’d be like opening a potato-chip bag.)
(I remember a road in Sumatra, when the cattle were being butchered for the big feast/celebration, and the two boys went past on their motorbike with a cow’s head propped up on the handlebars. They were grinning as big as it was.)
Thanks for the links to the papers, I’ll read them tomorrow. (No access here at home, except to the abstracts.)
…oh… wow. The four (!) reviewers said a lot of reasonable things, especially the fourth, who (incidentally) didn’t recommend rejection like the others did. Everybody should read them.
And Algis should read them for understanding this time.
o_O
Almost every comment of mine contains a paragraph where I say you (or “someone”) seem not to have read a certain comment I identify by number!
O_o
One is too many.
Then you can’t write in places like this without ending up missing replies to things you’ve said. That’s my point!
Ah, sorry, I misremembered the number.
Yeah, you keep saying that, and the most charitable interpretation remains that you have no clue what you’re talking about. That book wasn’t reviewed at all – no acknowledgments, lots of simple mistakes that peer review would have caught, as I said to Marcel Williams before you even entered this thread.
This is what a peer-reviewed book looks like.
*eyeroll* This is not about etiquette or social niceties in general. It’s about the fact that you keep missing things and therefore drag discussions that would otherwise be over in a few days out into repetitive dronings that take weeks and weeks.
What for?
Who else does it?
If you don’t share this attitude, why do you act as if?!?!?
I think you need to learn to express yourself better. When people misunderstand you for fifteen years, maybe you are to blame.
Premise 1: I’m an aquaskeptic.
Premise 2: Aquaskeptics are bafflingly evil.
Conclusion: Therefore, I must be bafflingly evil.
Impeccable syllogism.
…Seriously: you start from the assumption that most people are assholes? That’s an evil thing to do.
No, you’re just too stupidly narcissistic to consider a much more parsimonious hypothesis: you’ve just failed at explaining yourself. For example, you like to present all waterside hypotheses as a bundle; no wonder, then, that people fail to notice how profound the differences between your hypothesis and Williams’s or Hardy’s, let alone Verhaegen’s or Morgan’s, are, and mistakenly criticize you for things they have proposed. Indeed, Verhaegen’s hypothesis is at least as different from yours as textbook wisdom is.
…What’s up with you? Have you popped so many capillaries that you’re seeing red fog everywhere? I’ve identified one logical fallacy that you share with creationists – and you twist this into claiming your hypothesis is as implausible as creationism. It’s as if you don’t even read the stuff you quote.
*headshake*
Work on your reading comprehension.
Oh yes. That’s because I have no reason to suspect he’d to something as baffling as lying. You propose the hypothesis that he’s lying – you put the evidence on the table. That’s how it works.
I “can be sure”? But you don’t actually know?
That’s a textbook example of an argumentum ad hominem. I don’t understand why this doesn’t physically hurt you!
You misunderstand subtly but profoundly. Together with Menyambal, I’ve pointed out that we have no reason to think that a chimp with sufficient training and motivation could not swim across the English Channel.
Oh no. Your attention span, it seems, is something else you should work on. Let me walk you through it again:
You propose that our ancestors waded for a living.
I pointed out that wading in a place with crocs & hippos is a bad idea.
You countered that our ancestors were able to flee up trees when attacked.
I pointed out that this only works if the trees are in the water. Wading out of the water first would take way too long – how fucking fast can anybody wade?
I haven’t distorted your hypothesis. I point out what it actually says. I point out that you have failed to think your own hypothesis through.
…See, I’m not used to stating the obvious. It’s not obvious to you, I have only recently figured out, because you absurdly believe that scientists are tribal instead of scientific.
Looks like you’ve failed to read everything to the left of the comma in the part you quoted. As long as nobody shows that it’s misrepresented – I’m not going to do it, it’s off-topic –, there’s nothing to be corrected. :-|
You’ve stated quite clearly that you also believe that I know I’m biased. In other words, you believe I’m lying – I’m knowingly saying things that aren’t true. And since my supposed bias is there all the time, I must logically be lying all the time, all the fucking time.
…And once again I had to walk you through a hypothesis you proposed. It’s… sad.
What?
Do explain!
…You’re not getting it. *headshake*
I don’t care when people call each other assholes. (I’ve done it myself.) I care when people propose testable hypotheses. Accusations that people lie are testable; accusations that people lynch people are testable.
I don’t care when people “get personal”. That’s just irrelevant, and it’s really sad that you’re not getting this. I care when people play down organized murder that was meant as terrorism by implying it’s no worse than people calling each other assholes.
Over here, as well as where I come from, “making National Socialism appear harmless” is a crime. Lynching isn’t quite on par with Nazi rule, but it’s much closer to that than to people calling each other assholes.
Well, yeah. It’s not the null hypothesis that scientists lie (“scientists” here meaning “anybody who is doing science at the moment”, not “professional scientists” or whatever).
You propose the hypotheses (plural!) that barrels are scraped, nits picked, cherries picked, and microquotes ripped out of context – you put the evidence on the table.
You’ve named cases where you think it misrepresents other people’s opinions about the facts. You’ve not named cases where you think it misrepresents the facts themselves.
Funnily enough, you’ve taken the quote out of context.
You said the reviewers you’ve dealt with were all so similar, and all “people like Henry Gee” (who is oh so much beyond the pale for identifying logical fallacies that creationists share with proponents of waterside hypotheses, but I digress). I said it’s extremely unlikely that you’ve encountered so many so similar reviewers – but rather than just proposing the hypothesis that you’re talking nonsense about this and simply proclaiming it to be true, I wanted to test the hypotheses.
There’s no overlap between the people on the editorial boards of Nutrition and Health and HOMO, or even between the institutions where those people sit. Even the overlap between the countries where those institutions are based is minimal (UK, probably US, and that’s it). I consider my hypothesis not disproved so far.
What, one for the whole book? How many people are qualified to review the whole book? ~:-|
Uh, no. If that were the case, peer review would never be anonymous.
Not really, because Langdon’s paper is from 1997. Enough has happened in this field since then that I’m sure Langdon’s paper is outdated to a significant extent.
Oh, for instance in every single comment you’ve written since I linked to the four papers on isotope ratios. Or in every single comment you’ve written since it’s been pointed out that sweat glands don’t make sense if you can take a dip at any time. Or in every single comment you’ve written since it’s been explained at such length that chimp feet are better for both wading and swimming than ours. Or in every single comment since I pointed out that not everybody can use their upper lip to shut their nostrils.
Or in every single comment since it was first pointed out that gibbons brachiate and are bipedal on the ground, that orang-utans brachiate often and are semibipedal on the ground, and that chimps and gorillas brachiate little and mostly knuckle-walk on the ground… it’s all been pointed out several more times, and you ignore it, conflating brachiation (with its selection for very long arms) with vertical climbing in general (with its selection for less long arms) as if I had never pointed out that that’s wrong.
And last time I explained parsimony to you, you basically just shut up and changed the topic.
So, it contains mistakes, but you refuse to tell anyone what they are?
Irrational.
Have all been addressed several times now.
Exactly! Over evolutionary timescales, the crocs and the hippos exert strong selection pressure against trying to cross the Congo!
Those who have tried have died!
Humans don’t swim across the Congo either. They use boats, bigger boats.
:-) The other way around: we don’t know that chimps can’t swim; there’s no evidence that they can’t. Sure, they don’t, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Well, thank you for illustrating my point so nicely! :-D
It’s not defending him. It’s attacking you for going off topic and making argumenta ad hominem instead.
“He’s evil, and therefore any hypothesis he supports is wrong” is a logical fallacy no matter if he’s evil. You seem to have a remarkably hard time understanding this.
That’s fine, but you keep conflating it with the idea itself, to which it’s wholly irrelevant.
Where do you take “fraud” from? You’re not a fraud. What makes you a pseudoscientist is the fact that you repeat arguments that were disproved before you even made them.
Nope, see above.
What evidence? How many chimps have been observed trying?
You keep repeating this as if we had never addressed it.
Menyambal has in fact provided evidence from human foot anatomy. You’ve just… ignored it.
Tomorrow at the earliest. I don’t have access to the papers here.
Yeah, well.
How do gibbons and orang-utans walk?
Hmmm. Somebody seems not to have read any part of this thread since his last appearance about 500 comments and several weeks ago.
Funny that you mention “outdated”. The endurance-running hypothesis is outdated, too, as you would know if you’d have read this thread – I had to explain this to Menyambal.
Most likely by boat or raft, not by swimming.
Yeah, hah, it would suggest that if it were actually present.
And that you write four comments after “fat arse”, which is much more childish than anything PZ has called you. If I weren’t so tired (holy crap, it’s almost 3 am again), I’d giggle.
Good catch! I managed to miss this! :-)
Forget being tired. This made me LOL. It’s funny because it’s true!
Here in Germany, a 2.2-m-long catfish was caught a few days ago. That species (Silurus glanis) doesn’t occur in the US, though.
Omega-6 are the ordinary, common fatty acids. Omega-3 are the special, rare ones that may (or may not) have all kinds of health benefits.
Interesting indeed!
Because walking instead, as you’ve said.
Linkage?
Algis: “Unless one holds the view that the very earliest bipeds were optimised for effiicient terrestrial bipedalism, and adopted a fully upright gait like us, from day one…”
It is not necessary to hold this view. One only need accept that the earliest bipeds preferred bipedalism to quadrupedalism when on the ground. Further selection for terrestrial bipedalism would refine terrestrial bipedalism.
Filler explains how this condition could have arisen in a single generation via a relatively minor genetic mutation.
Two major problems with your view, as expressed by your quote above:
1) You don’t understand modern evolutionary theory, including non-Darwinian evolution. This cripples your ability to understand anything that can’t be expressed as an adaptationist just-so story.
2) You can’t seem to grasp how the best selection pressure for terrestrial bipedalism and weight-bearing would be… terrestrial bipedalism and weight-bearing. Somehow you imagine that non-terrestrial bipedalism and buoyancy would be the ideal selection pressure for… an entirely different activity. That is really, really dumb.
Borked link in#964:
The Armored Dinosaurs, by Kenneth Carpenter
(Is “Vickaryous” a real name?)
One of the standard tactics of AAT/H proponents has been to separate all mainstream hypotheses about, say, bipedalism, ignore that most all, if not all, are complimentary rather than mutually exclusive, and then say that their idea is better because it’s one idea: water did it. But in fact they have a multitude of ideas that make up the various forms of the AAT, and these ideas are by and large mutually exclusive. This they ignore too.
Also, people — most anyway, especially among the opponents Algis is talking about here — are well aware of how little water use Algis is talking about. In fact some no doubt annoying types, like me, make a point of pointing it out regularly. Because Algis, like other AATers, is talking about us gaining features via convergent evolution that are only seen in highly or fully aquatic mammals. For Hardy’s timeframe, despite it being longer than hominids have existed, and for Morgan’s, which used to be the several million years in the fossil gap that existed years ago, this is unlikely at best. For Algis’ tiny amount of water use it’s absurd; far more radical than Hardy’s or Morgan’s claims despite being set up to be “milder”.
I can see that painting an image of dear Lord Myers’ “fat arse” jumping up and down on his tippy toes, bit still failing to reach even the very low bar set by Verhaegen, has touched afew nerves of the pseudoskeptic disciples here.
Sorry about that.
Oh dear. Calling me an idiot, loon, kook, wanker (and not one hint of a more intellectual argument) is, apparently fine and dandy by these moronic sheep, but I obviously went too far in alluding to the idea that PZ might be a bit short and fat.
Shame on me, right?
Hey, why don’t you get even more moronic sheep to gather here, in addition to the new recruits from Talk “Rational”, to slag off the “space ape”-like idea that humans might have stepped in the water every now and then?
After all, most people go by the majority, right? 100 morons can’t be wrong, even if they can’t say anything better than “you’re a wanker”.
Mockery is good.
Algis
Algal kook has totally lost the plot. Do some fucking science, you idiot THEN come back.
@Algis:
You spent a good month dismissing arguments from many people on this blog.
You spent a good month regurgitating a point of contention that had been adressed numerous times by multiple people.
Your hypothesis hinges on an observation which, while observationally true, has no testing to suggest otherwise, and your test for it is barbaric and unethical.
Your most recent posts haven’t had any science, or articulation of evidentiary points, or anything. They’ve been shouting at people, ad hominems against someone who a lot of us on the site have said pretty much “so what?”
You argue exactly like a creationist – you posit a claim, you deny evidence to the contrary, you regurgitate arguments that have already been addressed, you move goalposts, you deny parsimony, your argument claims only deficiences in already established science, you attack the person making the claim, you claim conspiracy or persecution, and you cycle back to the start.
AAH isn’t creationism, but to defend it you must rely on creationist-like debating tactics.
Algis is the only AATer who has ever done any science. His paper about wading that he published in Homo can be interpreted as real science. And that paper definitively falsified the wading hypothesis. Nice job, Algis.
Here’s how it works:
Hypothesis — Wading acted as a selection pressure for weight bearing bipedalism.
Null hypothesis — Wading didn’t act as a selection pressure for weight bearing bipedalism.
And what were the results of Algis’s paper? That as water depth increases, the cost differential between gaits goes to zero. Since the cost differential between gaits is proportional to the selection pressure, if cost differential is zero, then selection pressure is zero.
According to Algis’s results, wading CANNOT act as a selection pressure for weight bearing bipedalism. The wading hypothesis is dead, and Algis killed it. Good job, Algis!
(Of course, anyone with three functioning neurons would know that being buoyed up by water would change the mechanics of walking such that wading would not selection for weight-bearing morphology. So, the paper wasn’t really necessary. But, Algis did it anyway.)
@Katherine: “Your hypothesis hinges on an observation which, while observationally true, has no testing to suggest otherwise, and your test for it is barbaric and unethical.”
If you’re talking about Algis’s baby-chucking thought experiment, it is not only barbaric and unethical, but it is logically circular! It is simply a combination of these two circular arguments.
Observation: Humans swim better than chimps.
Hypothesis: Humans swim better than chimps because of water-related selection (WRS).
Prediction: Humans swim better than chimps.
Evidence: Humans swim better than chimps.
Observation: Fat floats.
Hypothesis: Human babies are fat so that they’ll float.
Prediction: Human babies float.
Evidence: Human babies float.
Even if 100% of human babies floated like corks, and 100% of human mothers swam like Olympic champions to save them; and even if 100% of chimp babies sunk like rocks, and 100% of chimp mothers sank like rocks trying to save them…
… THE ENTIRE EXERCISE IS METHODOLOGICALLY CIRCULAR. It still doesn’t answer the question of WHY human babies are fat or WHY humans swim better than chimps.
Are human babies fatter because fat acts as an energy store, and human babies need to support comparatively large and energy hungry brains? Or is it that human babies need to float?
Are human mothers better swimmers than chimp mothers because of our relative intelligence and behavioral adaptability? Or is our swimming ability an evolved adaptation?
ALGIS’S THOUGHT EXPERIMENT DOESN’T ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS!
None of Algis’s proposed thought experiments or “testable predictions” distinguishes between his story and the alternatives. They all follow this format:
Observation: Humans have feature X
Hypothesis: Humans have feature X due to WRS
Prediction: Humans have feature X
Evidence: Humans have feature X
In the case of the baby-chucking “experiment”, he has just confused the issue by combining two of his circular arguments.
Myers kinda lost me after “wanker.” No wonder he supports Jim Moore’s smear campaign.
The aquatic/waterside stuff has one huge plus over all other models of human evolution. It’s planted firmly in observations of convergent evolution. This “nonsense” wouldn’t exist without them. All the terrestrial models can’t be supported by pointing to a multitude of traits in terrestrial species to explain the differences between humans and other great apes. Amongst aquatics and semiaquatics, they can.
That’s why the space ape mockery is ridiculous, and quite frankly beneath a scientific discussion. Do we have any space life to draw convergences from? But it shows the desperation of the naysayers, now that the inevitable paradigm shift is advancing. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time mainstream scientists have betrayed their own scientific method, just because their life’s work is left worthless. (Arthur Keith springs to mind.) There’s too much prestige in science, and prestige corrupts everything.
The Fenrir is howling on the terrestrials. Elaine Morgan for the Darwin-Wallace medal.
And not one CITATION to the scientific literature to back up this evidenced claim, which dismissed as fuckwittery. EVIDENCE is the bane of the soggy ape theory. There is no evidence to back it up, as its proponents show by wanking about the theory, and not doing scientific research to get papers published.
Dang, typed too fast #976 first sentence:
We can compare humans to aquatic mammals, and guess what? We haven’t or didn’t converge on their adaptations.
nother true believer steps into the arena…
[though for the record, I agree with this: “the space ape mockery is ridiculous”]
Crawford MA, Bloom M, Broadhurst CL, Schmidt WF, Cunnane SC, Galli C, Gehbremeskel K, Linseisen F, Lloyd-Smith J, Parkington J (1999) Evidence for the unique function of docosahexaenoic acid during the evolution of the modern hominid brain. Lipids 34 (Supplement 1): S39-S47.
That’s one place to start. Just that one connection of DHA and Iodine in seafood to the nutrient needs of the human brain is enough to singe it. It’s proven. It’s a no brainer at this point. Humans are old beach apes, and so what?
We can compare humans to aquatic mammals, and guess what? We haven’t or didn’t converge on their adaptations.
I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. Human furless can be construed as comparable to the furlessness
Mister, your mind is stagnant. You’re stuck in Plato’s cave
My brain is singed by your bullshit.
Yet because it’s still there and I’m using it, it’s still telling me you’re wrong. Hint: if you believe something, with your brain, it can’t be a no-brainer, by definition. Even your only-one-possible-nutritional-explanation bullshit requires a brain to believe it. So don’t tell me it’s a no-brainer.
And don’t talk about ‘proving’ shit if you want to be taken seriously, with or without your brain, and no badly how singed.
What? No evidence today, Chris? That’s not like onyou, is it? Oh, wait…
We can compare humans to aquatic mammals, and guess what? We haven’t or didn’t converge on their adaptations.
I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. Human furlessness can be construed as comparable to the furlessness of some aquatics and semiaquatics, e.g. hippos. Especially when coupled to human subcutaneous fat beneath the dermis, which can be construed as a form of proto-blubber, also based from aquatic prevalence. And the additional launadry list of suggested aquatic features.
Mister, your mind is stagnant. You’re stuck in Plato’s cave.
(Gotta get used to this format.)
Name an aquatic or semiaquatic mammal with our hair characteristics.
This is not only impossible for hair, but also for fat, if you describe our characteristics and those of aquatic or semiaquatic mammals accurately. Which is why AATers take at least one of several tacks: describe them inaccurately; be coy about what animals they’re talking about; and/or, as Algis has done (also done, because he does the other two as well), claim an idiosyncratic definition where the requirement of convergent evolution that the feature be actually similar and also similar in function need not apply.
Besides ignoring such things as the fact that we are not hairless, one really big thing AATers typically do is ignore the way both hair and fat changes radically during our lifespans.
Christian Heckmann Engelbrecht, if Myers kinda lost you after “wanker”, there’s really no point in reading your comment … and there wasn’t.
See, “planted firmly in observations of convergent evolution” isn’t even a thing, and there aren’t evidences of convergent evolution. We aren’t hairless, we don’t have subcutaneous fat, we don’t have swimmer’s appendages or closing nostrils, we can’t swim. You’ve just stated that we do have some undefined things, and somehow that makes the other thing, and thingies.
The space ape mockery is was meant to be amusing, and also illustrative. We have just as many space-ape thingies as aquatic thingies, or even more. We’ve flown spaceships to the moon, for instance, and when we went to the bottom of the ocean, we took thingies built much like spaceships–we did not swim. We build and use boats for our water transport—most of us use some sort of flotation aid when we play in water.
Yeah, it is ridiculous. It was meant to ridicule an idea whose supporters don’t respond to anything else. You being a very good example of that. All the discussion we’ve done, and you get pissed about “wanker”. Putz.
You say it is “quite frankly beneath a scientific discussion”, which again shows your complete cluelessness. This isn’t a scientific discussion, this is the comment section of a biology blog, and the topic—wet apes or whatever amorphous variant you think you espouse—hasn’t become any sort of science, yet. Aquaticism is cultic craziness, like believing that some people evolved from lemurs.
But yeah, you blow in here with a snarky comment that shows you are a believer, not a critical thinker, and are offended that we have been following your imaginary rules of conduct in PZ’s own blog, and you huff about lack of science about some undefined craziness. Then you slam all of science, just to keep your ego going.
Algis has been wanking furiously for the last month, all over PZ’s blog, and here you come.
Whereas your mind is stuck up the ass of crankdom.
Only in your delusional mind. Yes, trace organics and inorganics are necessary. Show they don’t exist on the savannah. That is what the soggy ape cranks have to demonstrate. Real evidence, not “just so” evidence, where they cram their idea where it really shouldn’t go.
oh look: Encephalization without aquatic constraint
next?
@Christian:
It seems to me like you haven’t read the post, or you would’ve known that your points were addressed previously, and that the “space ape” theory was a joke which no one takes seriously.
Hint: if you believe something, with your brain, it can’t be a no-brainer, by definition. Even your only-one-possible-nutritional-explanation bullshit requires a brain to believe it. So don’t tell me it’s a no-brainer.
Excuse me, this is what I’m being told, and this is why the DHA and Iodine is the smoking gun here.
Both these nutritions just happens to be available in abundance in seafood, especially in saline waters. DHA (an Omega 3 fatty acid) are extremely rare in terrestrial foods, while iodine is close to impossible to find in terrestrial foods. They are claimed possible to find, but a prehistoric ape has to be damn lucky to stumple on to those exact foods for eons to develop that brain.
Carcass brain is suddenly argued to be a source of iodine for these apes. Does any of you eat cow’s brains? How many of you have eaten oysters? Raw. One of the few sources of proteine we can eat raw.
And how the hell do you get access to a wildebeest’s brain, before the iodine rich tissue spoils? With a frickin’ chainsaw. And where is the DHA in that scenario? How do you get access to the DHA and iodine rich insides of an oyster? With a stone. How many simian species use stones for tools to crack nuts? And which mammal taxa are most prone to develop large brains? The aquatic ones.
And what the hell happened to Ockham’s razor here? You have seafood, abundant in both these micronutrients, but suddenly mainstream insists, that these must’ve come from terrestrial foods somehow or other. In other words, they demand extra assumptions, COMPLETELY contrary to Ockham’s razor. And that’s even before weighing the additional AAH-arguments, furlessness, bipedalism, speech, fat offspring, habitat and bathing behavior and what have you.
This is what I mean about rejecting their own scientific method. And that doesn’t make any scientific sense, but unfortunately it makes damn good academic sense. This idea is an inconvenient truth, because the chief proponent who’d get the praise whenever Academia decides to act right, is not part of the mainstream’s brotherhood. Or should I say clergy?
This claim, which has long been made by a number of AAT proponents, is one I find interesting when it comes to wondering what goes on in their heads as they come up with these statements. Because while it’s nice that there are papers that deal specifically with this issue, all the proponents of the AAT really needed to do to see their idea is wrong is think for a moment and realize that there are, and have been, people who live and lived (without shipping in stuff, and in the days when we weren’t shipping foods back and forth) in areas where they did not partake of aquatic foodstuffs yet developed perfectly normal brains.
This is perhaps the biggest internal problem for the AAT — the proponents of the idea typically don’t even take moments to self-critique.
And this is why the dietary wing of the AAT has been called Lamarckian; they point to larger quantities of DHA and iodine (and ignoring things like eating brains) and claim this makes for the shore being the only place where we could undergo brain expansion in our past. It’s the more is better thing, when what you need is enough. (Here too they could look at fish-eating animals such as herons, many seals, and most dolphin species — they mention only the two larger brained dolphin species and ignore the others, or perhaps never bothered to learn about them — and wonder why they don’t all have very large brains. Why, for instance, most dolphins and all seals are about as large-brained and smart as monkeys.)
Actually, his points have been more than adequately addressed years before this, and on and on when he’s dropped into whatever forum we’ve been frequenting.
human subcutaneous fat [for scale, the red-stained dermal layer is about 2 mm thick]: exhibit A
seal blubber: exhibit B
keep on construin’
*redundant: ‘subcutaneous’ = ‘beneath the dermis’
[oops: scale for exhibit B is inches (@ ~2.5 cm ea.)]
I think y’all need to eat more seafood.
We can have, but it isn’t as AATers claim. Hardy started this, and Morgan followed up, and it’s become a part of the lore for the belief system. Morgan’s claim is that our fat is not attached in the same way as other primates and instead is attached like whales and seals. We do have fat that, assuming we aren’t lean, gets out from the internal depots to which it is attached and gets under the skin, which is certainly “subcutaneous fat”. But so do other primates when they get fatter. A little cut and paste from elsewhere (cause I’m lazy):
Human fat, like the fat of all mammals, is attached to internal depots — we have a wide range of fattiness in humans (from around 2-5% to over 75%) and our fat characteristics — both amounts and where you find them, are similar to other primates which are overfed in captivity. All fat is seasonal; it’s a food source which gets laid on in good times and used up in bad times, for humans as well as all other animals, including aquatic mammals.
Note that many normal, healthy, humans are lean. Some other primates are very lean, some not so much even in the wild (some wild Japanese macaques have fat levels similar to non-obese humans).
Somewhat more on fat and the AAT/H on my website: http://www.aquaticape.org/fat.html
I think one of the most interesting things about the AAT and fat is that Elaine Morgan found a very good source of info (Caroline Pond) and then has completely misconstrued her work (outright lied about it at times) for decades. She’s done this with other sources as well. I find that fascinating, really. But it makes her work unreliable at best. Morgan has also been petulant about Pond not saying what Morgan’s wishes she’d said, for instance in Morgan’s 2008 book (which is available as a free ebook, btw: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dylan.morgan/elainemorgan/Naked%20Darwinist.pdf):
Ponds refuses to do this because it would be untrue to do that.
Morgan also says in that book:
Pond refuses to endorse that idea because Pond shows that idea is not true. It was based on old tests with dead animals and doesn’t apply to living tissue; Pond also provides other reasons for the thermoregulation idea not being so. BTW, let me put in a plug for Pond’s popular but still scientific book The Fats of Life; great book, lots of info, easy to read. Who manages that? :)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Fats-Life-Caroline-Pond/dp/0521635772
I’ve got some more on Morgan’s claims about what Pond has written and why Morgan’s claims don’t add up on my page about Morgan’s 2008 book.
http://www.aquaticape.org/NakedDarwinistReview.html
and also on my page about Morgan’s 1997 book:
http://www.aquaticape.org/aahbook.html
Morgan’s claims are important to know because other AATers simply follow her lead on this.
You know, that’s an excellent idea. I need to do some thinking later, so I guess I’ll drive down to Jones Beach and wade for mackerel.
The problem with Chris Engelbrecht’s assertions about iodine and DHA have been explained to him many, many times. I have explained it to him at least a couple dozen times on two different fora.
His argument goes like this: a) Seafood has lots of iodine and DHA. b) Brain development requires iodine and DHA. c) Humans have big brains. d) Therefore we must have eaten lots of seafood.
That argument is logically identical to this one: a) Air near the seashore has lots of oxygen. b) Brain development requires lots of oxygen. c) Humans have big brains. d) Therefore we must have lived on the seashore.
The obvious response to the second scenario is “but… there is plenty of oxygen in air all over the world; you don’t have to go to the sea shore to find it”. And, exactly the same objection applies to iodine and DHA. There is plenty of iodine and DHA in fully terrestrial diets all over the world. You don’t have to eat seafood to find it.
Not only do modern people live in deserts, savannas, rainforests, prairies, mountains, and even on permanently frozen wasteland of the far north, but we have archeological evidence of human hunter gatherers migrating around the world tens of thousands of years ago in every imaginable terrestrial environment.
100% of the evidence supports the conclusion that these terrestrial hunter-gatherers developed and supported ordinary brains, and 0% of the evidence suggests that they needed any input from the marine food chain.
If you can find enough iodine and DHA in ordinary terrestrial diets to develop and maintain ordinary human brains, then the marine food chain was unnecessary for evolving them in the first place.
This has been explained to Chris over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over … ad nauseum. Yet he continues to bring it up as if it were some brilliant piece of irrefutable evidence and he couldn’t conceive of any objection to it.
Now, see, there’s an insult, just as snarlingly hateful as Algis calling us intellectual cowards, from a person who also insults us for our lack of lofty scientific discourse. The lack of thought and the double-standardry from this latest believer is entirely typical of every other netloon.
As is tearing down all of science in order to keep their pet delusion limping along. To them, scientists are all about prestige, corrupted by a desire for fame and money. Project that onto Elaine Morgan, why don’t you?
——
My own science isn’t long on nutrition, but I find it difficult to understand how all the other animals in the savannalands manage to get adequate nutrition, but our ancestors couldn’t, even if they ate the other animals, and even though there are currently people living in the savannas.
Wildebeest? Suddenly we have to be cracking open the skulls of the secondmost horned-headed creature of the plains? Look, there are smaller animals, dead all over the place, and the general rule is that the work of getting into a skull is proportional to the rewards for doing so. I could get to a rodent brain more easily than I could get into an oyster (BTW, have you tried getting and opening an rock-bound shellfish with just a rock? And no shoes?)
The fact that some nutrients are better found near salt water doesn’t make us “beach apes”. (Hell, I’d like to live where I could see palm trees again, but that doesn’t make me a beach bum.) If we could barely scrape out a living up on the savanna, with goiters hanging down, neurons misfiring, and dehydrating from lack of salt, we’d still be there. We go where we can, and we get along. The best evidence is that we grew up somewhere we walked, sweated and needed hair on our heads. Walking around the plains, picking up rodent brains, would work. Wanting a view of the beach and a little more iodine wouldn’t kill us.
It should be obvious to anyone following this that Engelbrecht’s hypothesis and Algis’ hypothesis are completely different and mutually exclusive. Algis proposes freshwater wading longer than 6 million years ago, because bipedality is definitely older than 6 million years. Engelbrecht proposes salt water swimming and diving less than 3.3 million years ago, since hairlessness is highly likely to be younger than 3.3 million years.
At least one of them must be wrong.
The myoglobin data is a more serious problem for Engelbrecht’s version than for Algis’.