Privilege in argument, especially regarding human physical matters

Just for fun, maybe discussing this article would be a start

WAS MAN MORE AQUATIC IN THE PAST?
by Professor Sir ALISTER HARDY, FRS. The New Scientist, 17 March 1960
ON 5 MARCH I WAS ASKED to address a conference of the British SubAqua Club at Brighton
and chose as my theme "Aquatic Man: Past, Present and Future". I dealt little with the present, for
Man's recent achievements in the underwater world were so well illustrated by other speakers and
by films. I ventured to suggest a new hypothesis of Man's origin from more aquatic ape-like
ancestors and then went on to discuss possible developments of the future. I did not expect the wide
publicity that was given to my views in the daily press, and since such accounts could only be much
abbreviated, and in some cases might be misleading, I gladly accepted the invitation of The New
Scientist to give a fuller statement of my ideas.
I have been toying with this concept of Man's evolution for many years, but until this moment,
which suddenly appeared to be an appropriate one, I had hesitated because it had seemed perhaps
too fantastic; yet the more I reflected upon it, the more I came to believe it to be possible, or even
likely. In this article I shall deal with this hypothesis; next week I shall treat of the future.
Man, of course, is a mammal, and all the mammals have been derived, as indeed have also the birds
but by a different line of evolution, from reptile ancestors that flourished more than a hundred
million years ago, when the world was populated by saurians of so many different kinds which have
long since become extinct These reptile ancestors in turn were derived from newt-like animals -
amphibian creatures - which had only partially conquered the land and had to return to water to
breed as do most of our salamanders and frogs of today. It is equally certain that these earlier
amphibians were evolved from fish which, like those primitive lung-fish that still survive in certain
tropical swamps today, had developed lungs with which to breathe. Some of these air-breathing fish
were able to climb from the water on to the land.
This history of the emancipation of animal life from the sea is very well known. I repeat it only
because it forms the background to another story, one that is not quite so familiar to those who are
not trained as zoologists. At the same time as this conquest of the land was extending with
continually improving adaptations to the new terrestrial life, we see (in the fossil record) a different
act repeating itself again and again, first with the amphibians, next with the reptiles, and then with
the mammals and indeed the birds as well. Excessive multiplication, over-population, shortage of
food, resulted in some members of each group [Footnote: The amphibians went back only into
freshwater (for certain physiological reasons) not into the sea.] being forced back into the water to
make a living, because there was not enough food for them on the land. Among the reptiles I need
only remind you of the remarkable fish-like ichthyosaurs, of the plesiosaurs, of many marine
crocodile-like animals, and of turtles, not to mention water-snakes. Then, among the mammals of
today we see the great group of whales, dolphins and porpoises, with the vestigial remains of their
hind legs buried deep in their bodies, beautifully adapted to marine life; or again the dugongs and
manatees belonging to an entirely different group. The seals are well on their way to an almost
completely aquatic life, and many other groups of mammals have aquatic representatives which
have been forced into the water in search of food: the polar bears, the otters (both freshwater and
marine), various aquatic rodents, like water voles and the coypu, or insectivores like the water
shrew: and, of course, we must not forget the primitive duckbilled platypus. There are, indeed, few
groups that have not, during one time or another in the course of evolution, had their aquatic
representatives: among the birds the penguins are supreme examples.
The suggestion I am about to make may at first seem far-fetched, yet I think it may best explain the
striking physical differences that separate Man's immediate ancestors (the Hominidae) from the
more ape-like forms (Pongidae) which have each diverged from a common stock of more primitive
apelike creatures which had clearly developed for a time as tree-living forms.
My thesis is that a branch of this primitive ape-stock was forced by competition from life in the
trees to feed on the sea-shores and to hunt for food, shell fish, sea-urchins, etc., in the shallow
waters off the coast. I suppose that they were forced into the water just as we have seen happen in
so many other groups of terrestrial animals. I am imagining this happening in the warmer parts of
the world, in the tropical seas where Man could stand being in the water for relatively long periods,
that is, several hours at a stretch. I imagine him wading, at first perhaps still crouching, almost on
all fours, groping about in the water, digging for shell fish, but becoming gradually more adept at
swimming. Then, in time, I see him becoming more and more of an aquatic animal going farther out
from the shore; I see him diving for shell fish, prising out worms, burrowing crabs and bivalves
from the sands at the bottom of shallow seas, and breaking open sea-urchins, and then, with
increasing skill, capturing fish with his hands.
Let us now consider a number of points which such a conception might explain. First and foremost,
perhaps, is the exceptional ability of Man to swim, to swim like a frog, and his great endurance at it.
The fact that some men can swim the English Channel (albeit with training), indeed that they race
across it, indicates to my mind that there must have been a long period of natural selection
improving Man's qualities for such feats. Many animals can swim at the surface, but few, terrestrial
mammals can rival Man in swimming below the surface and gracefully turning this way and that in
search of what he may be looking for. The extent to which sponge and pearl divers can hold their
breath under water is perhaps another outcome of such past adaptation.
It may be objected that children have to be taught to swim; but the same is true of young otters, and
I should regard them as more aquatic than Man has been. Further, I have been told that babies put
into water before they have learnt to walk will, in fact, go through the motions of swimming at
once, but not after they have walked.

 

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Does the idea perhaps explain the satisfaction that so many people feel in going to the seaside, in
bathing, and in indulging in various forms of aquatic sport? Does not the vogue of the aqua-lung
indicate a latent urge in Man to swim below the surface?
Whilst not invariably so, the loss of hair is a characteristic of a number of aquatic mammals; for
example, the whales, the Sirenia (that is, the dugongs and manatees) and the hippopotamus. Aquatic
mammals which come out of the water in cold and temperate climates have retained their fur for
warmth on land, as have the seals, otters, beavers, etc. Man has lost his hair all except on the head,
that part of him sticking out of the water as he swims: such hair is possibly retained as a guard
against the rays of the tropical sun, and its loss from the face of the female is, of course, the result of
sexual selection. Actually the apparent hairlessness of Man is not always due to an absence of hair:
in the white races it is more apparent than real in that the hairs are there but are small and
exceedingly reduced in thickness: in some of the black races, however, the hairs have actually gone,
but in either case the effect is the same: that of reducing the resistance of the body in swimming.
Hair, under water, naturally loses its original function of keeping the body warm by acting as a poor
heat conductor; that quality, of course, depends upon the air held stationary in the spaces between
the hairs - the principle adopted in Aertex underwear. Actually the loss or reduction of hair in Man
is an adaptation by the retention into adult life of an early embryonic condition; the unborn
chimpanzee has hair on its head like Man, but little on its body.
Whilst discussing hair it is interesting to point out that what are called the "hair tracts" - the
directions in which the hairs lie on different parts of the body - are different in Man from those in
the apes; particularly to be noted are the hairs on the back, which are all pointing in lines to meet
diagonally towards the mid-line, exactly as the streams of water would pass round the body and
meet, when it is swimming forward like a frog. Such an arrangement of hair, offering less
resistance, may have been a first step in aquatic adaptation before its loss.
The graceful shape of Man - or woman! - is most striking when compared with the clumsy form of
the ape. All the curves of the human body have the beauty of a well-designed boat. Man is indeed
streamlined.
These sweeping curves of the body are helped by the development of fat below the skin and,
indeed, the presence of this subcutaneous fat is again a characteristic that distinguishes Man from
the other primates. It was a note of this fact in the late Professor Wood Jones's book Man's Place
among the Mammals (p. 309) that set me thinking of the possibility of Man having a more aquatic
past when I read it more than thirty years ago. I quote the paragraph as follows:
"The peculiar relation of the skin to the underlying superficial fascia is a very real distinction,
familiar enough to everyone who has repeatedly skinned both human subjects and any other
members of the Primates. The bed of subcutaneous fat adherent to the skin, so conspicuous in Man,
is possibly related to his apparent hair reduction; though it is difficult to see why, if no other factor
is invoked, there should be such a basal difference between Man and the Chimpanzee."
I read this in 1929 when I had recently returned from an Antarctic expedition where the layers of
blubber of whales, seals and penguins were such a feature of these examples of aquatic life; such
layers of fat are found in other water animals as well; and at once I thought perhaps Man had been
aquatic too. In warm-blooded water animals such layers of fat act as insulating layers to prevent
beat loss; in fact, in function they replace the hair. Man, having lost his hair, must, before he
acquired the use of clothing, have been subjected to great contrasts of temperature out of water; in
this connection it is interesting to note the experiments carried out at Oxford by Dr. J. S. Weiner,
who showed what an exceptional range of temperature change in air Man can stand, compared with
other mammals. Man's great number of sweat glands enable him to stand a tropical climate and still
retain a large layer of fat necessary for aquatic life.
This idea of an aquatic past might also help to solve another puzzle which Professor Wood Jones
stressed so forcibly, that of understanding how Man obtained his erect posture, and also kept his
hands in the primitive, unspecialized, vertebrate condition; for long periods, the hands could not
have been used in support of the body as they are in the modern apes, which have never mastered
the complete upright position. The chimpanzee slouches forward with his body partly supported by
his long arms and with his hands bent up, to take the weight on the knuckles. Man must have left
the trees much earlier; in all the modern apes the length of the arm is much longer than that of the
leg. In Man it is the reverse. The puzzle is: how in fact did Man come to have the perfect erect
posture that he has - enabling him too run with such ease and balance? Some have supposed that he
could actually have achieved it by such running, or perhaps by leaping, but this does not seem
likely. Let me again quote from Wood Jones, this time from his book The Hallmarks of Mankind,
1948, p. 78:
"Almost equal certainty may be attached to the rejection of the possibility that he ever served an
apprenticeship as a specialized leaper or a specialized runner in open spaces. But it is by no means
so easy to reject the supposition that he commenced his career of bipedal orthograde progression as
what might be termed a toddler, somewhat after the fashion followed in some degree by the bears."
It seems indeed possible that his mastery of the erect posture arose by such toddling, but performed
in the water, like children at the seaside. Wading about, at first paddling and toddling along the
shores in the shallows, hunting for shellfish, Man gradually went farther and farther into deeper
water; swimming for a time, but having at intervals to rest - resting with his feet on the bottom and
his head out of the surface: in fact, standing erect with the water supporting his weight. He would
have to raise his head out of the water to feed; with his hands full of spoil he could do so better
standing than floating. It seems to me likely that Man learnt to stand erect first in the water and
then, as his balance improved, he found he became better equipped for standing up on the shore
when he came out, and indeed also for running. He would naturally have to return to the beach to
sleep and to get water to drink; actually I imagine him to have spent at least half his time on the
land.

 

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Tied up with his method of assuming the erect position is the problem of the human hand. Let me
quote again from Wood Jones (ibid., p. 80):
"In the first place, it seems to be perfectly clear that the human orthograde habit must have been
established so early in the mammalian story that a hand of primitive vertebrate simplicity was
preserved, with all its initial potentialities, by reason of its being emancipated from any office of
mere bodily support. Perhaps the extreme structural primitiveness of the human hand is a thing that
can only be appreciated fully by the comparative anatomist, but some reflection on the subject will
convince anyone that its very perfections, which at first sight might appear to be specializations, are
all the outcome of its being a hand unaltered for any of the diverse uses to which the manus of most
of the 'lower' mammals is put. Man's primitive hand must have been set free to perform the
functions that it now subserves at a period very early indeed in the mammalian story."
Man's hand has all the characters of a sensitive, exploring device, continually feeling with its
tentacle-like fingers over the sea-bed: using them to clutch hold of crabs and other crustaceans, to
prise out bivalves from the sand and to break them open, to turn over stones to find the worms and
other creatures sheltering underneath. There are fish which have finger-like processes on their fins,
such as the gurnards; they are just such sensitive feeling organs, hunting for food, and they, too,
have been known to turn over stones with them while looking for it.
It seems likely that Man learnt his tool-making on the shore. One of the few non-human mammals
to use a tool is the Californian sea-otter, which dives to the bottom, brings up a large sea-urchin in
one hand and a stone in the other, and then, whilst it floats on its back at the surface, breaks the seaurchin
against its chest with the stone, and swallows the rich contents. Man no doubt first saw the
possibilities of using stones, lying ready at hand on the beach, to crack open the enshelled
"packages" of food which were otherwise tantalizingly out of his reach; so in far-off days he
smashed the shells of the sea urchins and crushed lobsters' claws to get out the delicacies that we so
much enjoy today. From the use of such natural stones it was but a step to split flints into more
efficient tools and then into instruments for the chase. Having done this, and learnt how to strike
together flints to make fires, perhaps with dried seaweed, on the sea-shore, Man, now erect and a
fast runner, was equipped for the conquest of the continents, the vast open spaces with their herds of
grazing game. Whilst he became a great hunter, we know from the middens of mesolithic Man that
shell fish for long remained a favourite food.
In such a brief treatment I cannot deal with all the aspects of the subject: I shall later do so at greater
length and in more detail in a full-scale study of the problem. I will just here mention
one more point. The students of the fossil record have for so long been perturbed by the apparent
sudden appearance of Man. Where are the fossil remains that linked the Hominidae with their more
ape-like ancestors? The recent finds in South Africa of Australopithecus seem to carry us a good
step nearer to our common origin with the ape stock, but before then there is a gap. Is it possible
that the gap is due to the period when Man struggled and died in the sea? Perhaps his remains
became the food of powerful sea creatures which crushed his bones out of recognition, or could his
bones have been dissolved, eroded away in the tropical seas? Perhaps, in time, some expedition to
investigate tropical Pliocene (coastal) deposits may yet reveal these missing links.
It is interesting to note that the Miocene fossil Proconsul, which may perhaps represent
approximately the kind of ape giving rise to the human stock, has an arm and hand of a very
unspecialized form: much more human than that of the modern ape. It is in the gap of some ten
million years, or more, between Proconsul and Australopithecus that I suppose Man to have been
cradled in the sea.
My thesis is, of course, only a speculation - an hypothesis to be discussed and tested against further
lines of evidence. Such ideas are useful only if they stimulate fresh inquiries which may bring us
nearer the truth.

 

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Scan of the original article, with illustrations.

I think the key section in Hardy's presentation is this:

"My thesis is that a branch of this primitive ape-stock was forced by competition from life in the trees to feed on the sea-shores and to hunt for food, shell fish, sea-urchins etc., in the shallow waters off the coast. I suppose that they were forced into the water just as we have seen happen in so many other groups of terrestrial animals. I am imagining this happening in the warmer parts of the world, in the tropical seas where Man could stand being in the water for relatively long periods, that is, several hours at a stretch."

Anything fanciful in this? Anything crazy? This is what inspired Morgan and is basically still what's being argued today by leading AAH-proponents, from Algis Kuliukas to Stephen Cunnane to Marc Verhaegen. Hardy merely suggested that our ancestors could've been coastal shallow water apes rather than the classically perceived grassland apes. And yet detractors flock to mock this idea for talking about dolphin apes and mermaids and all sorts of nonsense! Some of those bullies are actually professional academics!!! With degrees in the natural sciences! You'd think they were capable of reading a fifty year old source text that spans four pages!!!

Can we discuss what's wrong with perceiving humans as old beach apes? Or is it so much more fun to mock something, that hasn't been proposed?

 

The ignorant tend to mock that which they do not understand.
And if the mocked are perceived to be in a minority, so much the better.

Admittedly, we have learned much since 1960, but we still know so little.

Let us consider the differences between chimps and humans:
It seems more and more likely that evolutionary changes happened in both lineages (Homo as well as Pan)
rather than that nearly all evolutionary changes happened in one lineage (Homo) and that the
older Taung skull is nearer to the ancestors of the living species (Fox et al. 1999), so that both
chimpanzees and humans had more australopithecine-like ancestors ( see Verhaegen 1994, 1996)
So as we became more "human" our cousins became more "ape like".

This pushes the envelope back millions of years, plenty of time to develop a fondness for the sea and lake sores, and the bounty therein. It takes considerably less weight of shellfish to make a meal than almost any other potential foods.

 

The issue would not be ignorance leading to error, but blind spots and reactionary dismissal persisting in a group of scientific experts despite their expertise and comprehensive knowledge.

The professional scientists chorusing that "GMOs are safe" are not ignorant of basic Darwinian evolution, statistics, the context of agribusiness and ecology involved, or the details of the engineering being done. The professional scientists who dismiss the hazards of reliance on nuclear power plants and exaggerate grossly the difficulties of solar power collection are not, or at least are in a position to not be, ignorant of the situations created and the realities of the world. The professional scientists who bought so completely into the savanna walking origin of bipedalism in hominids that they had it written into all the textbooks as standard scientific theory were the best, not the worst, informed in the matter.

And their mockery, their dismissal with prejudice rather than argument, of what are apparently ordinary and soundly reasoned objections and alternatives to their consensus of expertise, is not universal, not an inevitable property of scientific endeavor in uncertain fields - is it?

 

as/re "blind spots" : Is not willful ignorance still ignorance?

Mockery ain't just a property/behavior of "scientists", actually people who happen to be working within the field of science, but rather of the nature of man.

Would it be easier to tolerate if it were indeed universal?

 

There is a difference between having information that could guide or lead to better judgments, and not having it. Poor judgments made by informed people in defiance of the information they possess are different, in cause and often in effect, from poor judgments made by people unacquainted with the circumstances involved.

Getting a handle on the emergence of a "scientific consensus" based on denial, rather than absence, of information, is the OP topic.

 

[Deleted post]

 

If you assume the migration out of Africa, then migrating pre-humans would come in contact with all types of new environments. The coast and lakes would be part of those places they will find. It is not out of the question.

The idea of migration itself, brings up an interesting variable, in that why would the pre-humans continue to migrate if there are many good places to settle? If you have a million pre-humans it will not take much land before they can't find each other and each family group has enough food. There is not much need to travel the whole earth. What were the pressures or lures to keep moving?

Was one pressure connected to an internal primal instinct connected to looking for a home, that was like the one they had originated ,in the shadows of the distant past? Many animals migrate and return. In such a case, they can find good places, but have the urge to find home, in cycles.

Or there could be other pressures from competing life, that pushes them out and onward. Why head north into the cold of the last ice age? That seems dumb unless it was the lessor of evils. Or they did not know how to stockpile, so they needed to constantly find a new source of ready food?

I can see them finding the coast, but once there migrating walking along the coast, unable to settle. A coastal walk of many generations would allow them to develop skills for that environment. But since they are looking for home, they don't stop for good, but keep looking for the primal home of their dreams.

 

The theory I like, is out of Africa and migration was connected to an alliance between pre-humans and wild dogs. Dogs are pack animals with all the skills the pre-humans will need to migrate anywhere. An alliance between these two species solves many problems and explains many things with one theory. The pre-humans are smart and learn all the skills needed to be be successful.

These would not be domesticated dogs, but a symbiosis between two wild species of apex animals. All it takes is the pre-humans finding a litter of pups, which grown up to being wild, but still connected in a semi-stable way. The dogs are meat eaters, and omnivores, which will become the way of the hairless apes. Meat allows survival in area where there are no human plant food sources, but only grass, weeds or less.

Dogs work in packs using a chain of command. They are better designed for survival anywhere, having more speed and stamina. They like to chew on sticks and will make weapons (points on sticks). They will guard the human pups along with their own, even from other apex predators. They can herd and hunt animals, which allows humans a way to having a mobile food supply or food on demand in hostile areas. Dogs live in burrows so caves will be something they will seek out and can drive out bears and other big animals.

If you ever owned a tough dog breed, they will often challenge you for alpha. Standing upright would be a way for the pre-humans to look larger, to help meet the constant alpha challenge. When dogs challenge for alpha, they still see you as a pack mate. The challenge is more about placement in the pack. So humans having to up their game before they can lead. The alpha has the most dangerous job, which is why he is alway challenged (training). Humans don't become alpha until the time dogs become domesticated; grasshopper you are ready will the skills of two species.

 

In speculations regarding the origin of bipedalism in hominids, that is an example of an "argument" that has been accepted and discussed and in all respects treated with respect by the mainstream, standard, scientific establishment. When rejected, it has been rejected on grounds, for reasons pertinent to it.
http://anth.la.psu.edu/research/jablonski-lab/research/JablonskiLabbiped.pdf
http://www.riverapes.com/Papers/Wading Paper/Supporting Files/model/s2_3_1.html

See, for example, the respectful presentation of wellwisher quality arguments involving everything from" phallic display" and "charging carnivores" to "reaching up toward food sources" in the mainstream Wikipedia article, compared with its relegation of wading etc to its list of fringe notions identified by person and "not accepted": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism

 

The waterside concept is the only reasonable scientific theory I know of, that is always followed by that disclaimer: "Is not accepted by mainstream science." That is apparently so important to make sure, that uninitiated are made aware of first hand, so they don't stop to think to hard about this issue. I still fail to see why the wet suggestion merits such a constant prejudice by otherwise relevant experts, when now dead and gone savannah-based theories are never listed with a similar heads up, even though they should be. On Wikipedia's bipedalism link, there is no such disclaimer what so ever. Only the waterside ideas is treated with this warning, and that simply does not make any sense. Other than the tiny little fact that the chief prononent behind the wet concept was a provocative scientific amateur. That is the only thing that makes any bloody sense as to why the splash-splash ideas hasn't been mainstream for decades already. Or at least treated as an equal. Elaine Morgan's contribution to the anthropological debate simply does not have the scientific problems, mainstream anthropology desperately wants it to have. All it has is a sociological problem. It is so frustrating and depressing to witness that we haven't moved a single step since Copernicus.

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Remember this image, apes. This is one of your unsung giants of contemporary science. Mainstream anthropology should be bloody ashamed of themselves.

 

In the OP I listed a couple of other scientific/technological matters with what I think are similar sociological thumbs on the scale: the risks and cost of nuclear power, the effectiveness and cost of solar power, the risks and costs of agribusiness GMOs, and a few others mostly minor (gun and car safety, standardized tests of various kinds, some environmental matters, the evolution of apparent "race" and other minor physiological traits, etc).

The wading ape issue seems more overtly and virulently irrational than most, but the difference is one of degree (and not that great a degree - try insisting, on some "scientific" forum, that converting almost the entire North American food supply to a narrow band of genetic modifications, quite different from anything in our agricultural history, essentially unmonitored and uninvestigated, entails serious risks, and see how you're treated).

So the issue of shame among a scientific "consensus", in the aftermath of illegitimate and overzealous attacks on the persons as well as the arguments of reasonable hypothesizers, arises in a variety of areas. It arises independently of the eventual verdict on the hypotheses, btw - if it turns out that phallic display really did drive the evolutionary development of bipedalism in hominids, and wading was never involved; if it turns out that all the GMOs currently marketed and under development are boons to mankind without deleterious side effects or consequences; if the essential breakthrough in utterly harmless nuclear fusion arrives by the grace of currently invisible genius next week and solar power vanishes as unviable; the issue of the contemporary state of discourse remains.

 

let us speculate as to the identity of a wading ancestor.

I nominate a. afarensis

 

It could be any bipedal hominin. All the way back to Sahelanthropus, if they were bipedal as has been argued.

Some aquatic ape mongers have even speculated, that bipedal wading could've been a factor much earlier in even hominoid evolution, during the spurt 10-15mya, where ape fossils are found around the then tropical Tethys Sea, the Mediterranean and across Southern Eurasia (as far North as Hungary). Alledgedly, some of those fossils show signs of bipedalism. Which would lend the mutual ancestors of humans, chimps and gorillas (and possibly orangutans) having been bipedal and semiaquatic as well, where only humans kept those traits. But to be honest, I don't know what to think of that.

 

all i've seen is most of a skull for Sahelanthropus ,,, 6-7 million years ago?
small canines likely indicate diet & maybe tool use?, but fall short of indicating bipedalism?

I chose a. afarensis as a wader because of small hip, knee, and ankle joints along with flat feet.
most likely bipedal, but not designed for running, and wading seemed appropriate for the physiology. as it would most likely be lower stress.

Pushing bipedalism back more'n 4 million years?
Australopithecus anamensis seems to've been bipedal
Perhaps too of all Australopithecines.

I doubt that any of 'em could have been good runners.
So, what then is left?

 

As for Sahelanthropus, they say the angle of the hole for the spine in the bottom of Toumaïs skull is close to 90 degrees. This would indicate bipedalism. Had it been a bigger angle, it would indicate a quadrupedal gate. But that's all it's based on, 'cause no postcranial fragtments of Toumaï were found.

Link

 

You may be incorrect:

It seems that the foramen magnum [the hole through which the spinal cord exits the skull] of Toumai is positioned towards the back of the skull as in apes, indicating that the skull was held forward and not balanced on top of an erect body.

I think that we simply do not have enough material to make a certain determination. Erring on the side of caution, means not yet extending bipedalism back before the australopithecines.