Privilege in argument, especially regarding human physical matters

stray thoughts:
Once the concept of humans exploiting shore line marine ecosystems is accepted, then migration of the species becomes more obviously likely.
What is known about early terrestrial hunter gatherers suggest that they followed an annual circuit, exploiting the foods available at certain places during various seasons. If we assume a more shoreline centric view, then wandering along the shore, exploiting shellfish abundance then moving on up the beach/shore becomes a more likely habituation, leading to extended migrations rather than moving within a closed circuit.

 

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Yes, if we assume that non-humans behaved like certain groups of humans, then we can draw some conclusions.

Is this good reasoning?

 

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Let us begin by rephrasing or at least better defining "non-humans ".

If we restrict our discussions on these anthropological matters to human ancestors, then defining "human" it's self, may be entering arbitrary randomness into the mix.

lineage of man
As we evolved, we developed new and exotic behaviours. We also retained much of what came before.
Delineating, or assigning priorities to, those 2 variables may be a reasonable step to understanding.

If we are indeed descendents of Australopithecines, and if those early ancestors exploited the shoreline marine bounty,
Then is filling this ecological niche something we inherited from those ancestors?
If so, then where do we draw the arbitrary line delineating us from them--without delineating "us" from us?

"Good reasoning"
seems best defined through the rear view mirror.

 

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Or, instead of assuming, we could observe such behavior and record its physical correlates. Mechanism based on observation of physical fact seems a reasonable basis for discussion, no?

We might then use such observation in our reasoning, without being mocked personally and dismissed arbitrarily (no actual argument) by people on record as taking seriously - discussing with respect - phallic display, reaching for high food, and seeing over tall grass, as serious hypotheses for the origin of bipedalism in hominids.

Or, in the spirit of the thread topic, we might discuss why such observation and reasoning from it is sometimes, for no apparent reason at first glance, treated with complete contempt and summary dismissal by a "scientific" consensus.

 

OK, so you've done a great job of dodging the question. Good work, aquatic ape person, without dodging scientific questions, this hypothesis will be rejected.

Let's step back, though.

The reasoning is this:

1. We know that humans make long treks from region to region.
2. Those treks could include shorelines.
3. Let's assume that human ancestors do what humans do or that we're all one big group so that what one part of the group does, the whole group does.
4. So these ancestors will make long treks from region to region. (Even though they will develop large physiological changes do to exposure to a different environment than that in which they lived and in which their physiologically different descendants will live.)
5. Despite this propensity to make large treks, this will all end when the reach the shore; they will only trek up and down the shore.

So, because of their propensity to behave as all humans do and range from territory to territory, these humans will not trek from territory to territory long enough to develop special traits preferred by this environment, until they once again resume behaving like all humans do and trek from place to place, carrying with them the special traits of that specific environment, just never again inhabiting that environment for which all these special traits developed.

 

Now we know why you confined yourself to cryptic one-liners and insults, earlier.

Why are you talking about "long treks", and what in all that is holy are you attempting to argue there?

 

I'm just trying to present sculptor's argument above in its best possible light.

 

Nothing in your post has anything to do with Sculptor's argument. If you intend to connect all that crap about treks and new environments with Sculptors side point about shoreline range expansion potentially leading to migration out of a given geographical region altogether (because ocean shorelines don't make loops within given ecological regions), which is interesting but tangential, you need quite a bit of argument and a chain of reasoning.

If on the other hand you are having trouble figuring out what people are talking about in this thread, as seems reasonably likely on the evidence, feel free to ask polite questions. Refer to the OP, for starters.

 

I'm just pointing to another "just-so" story that comes up with the aquatic ape hypothesis that makes no sense upon further research. That kind of thing is why it gets rejected: speculation, more (bad) speculation), no research evidence that supports it. The aquatic ape proposes large physiological changes to "humans" that didn't get reversed with the change to a different environment. Indeed, why the change to the different environment at all?

If there are evolutionary reasons why these aquatic features would be retained, then there is a reason why they would have been favored in the first place by non-aquatic "humans".

 

No, you aren't. You are posting incoherence of your own devise, claiming without grounds that it has some relevance to other people's actual arguments or side commentary or whatever you meant to address, and reaching through that claim to wading ape hypotheses in general. You have to make that case - it doesn't make itself.

Exactly. Hence the OP: why are some conjectures and hypotheses subjected to that kind of garbage throwing by a self-professed and even actual "scientific" consensus, and others of far less apparent plausibility treated with respect?

No. That's not how Darwinian evolution works. That's completely mistaken, basic error.

It's not only possible, but standard and normal and common and everyday expected mainstream conventional Darwinian wisdom, that features having emerged under a much earlier (even long vanished) set of pressures or circumstances have been exapted and adapted and become further evolved in different, later, roles. Flight feathers adapted from insulation feathers in birds are one famous example, used to illustrate the principle in high school introductory biology classes for many decades now. That's how most of the major features and characteristics of most of the large organisms on this planet are thought to have evolved.

This is biology 101, being flunked by a "scientific consensus" of professionals in the field. How does that happen?

 

Actually, I do not think that you "got it" at all.
A. afarensis was not built for "long trecks".

When exploiting shell fish, trekking "up and down the shore" would be/have been counter productive.
Continuing up the shore in one direction would lead to untapped resources.

The alternate would be a land based circuit. Wherein, a group would exploit resources at various locations as the seasons dictated, coming round in a full circuit annually.

 

I had the vague memory of actually having made a similar point in a complaint-thread in the feedback section, but it was either deleted or I never did really. I'm not even one who exactly defends the "aquatic ape theory", but this rebuttal seems to be just lumping it with even plain-wacko theories like "ancestral bipedalism". I believe this sort of "refutation" actually increases the appeal of the fringe theories for its fans or potential fans, not unlike creationists would brag between themselves and potential converts if someone just stated that "life was already created in the lab", and blocked a thread from further messages.

To complicate things further, even the alternative defended is far from what the mainstream actually says. "While it is suggested that all life evolved from water initially, it goes back to the first ancestry mammals evolving and coming out of the oceans and they were not ape like in any way. (They were probably closer to seals/sea lions)". When mammals didn't initially originated in the oceans or rivers, but from long terrestrial tetrapods, back then already long time terrestrial "reptiles"; aquatic mammals went back to water. But I think that even most "aquatic ape" theorists don't posit that it would have been something of a comparable level of adaptation and specificity of seals, but nearly just a figure of speech, in comparison. But there may well be those who do, anyway.

 

There is a valid point though, that if the trait is adaptive in the present environment, it could well have evolved just there, instead of in a hypothetical different ancestral environment. The different ancestral environment isn't required, so it's more parsimonious to assume that it's not the case. It can still be a possibility, anyway, but not necessarily a requirement. So it's a nearly null point, can be counted "for" either scenario.


...

I wonder if similarly is there the "mole cave-ape/men theory" of human evolution. Humans were famously cavemen, which is like being mole-apes, and you know what? There are naked mole-rats, which are also a social species! That's why humans are naked!

 

I don't see how you got a different split-time from the reasoning above the last phrase.

And regarding the last phrase, shellfish+foods found elsewhere is more food than just shellfish. That would be a pressure to a more generalist adaptation, then that's probably why humans are not some strictly coastal Macaca-like ape/hominid.


Are there AA analogs to the hunther-gatherers (such as the San) that mainstream scientists point as having the most ancestral life style, but being strictly coastal fishers, and perhaps even deep-divers? How do they map genetically in comparison with peoples living as non-strictly coastal hunter-gatherers?

Do AA theorists posit that European/Caucasoid body proportions (longer torso, better adapted for swimming, perhaps even for taking deep breaths) are closer to the ancestral aquatic phenotype?

 

Interesting topic. I have no particular stance on the subject, although I do think AA is interesting, and that there are some morphological suggestions of this 'coastal ape'. Unfortunately, so little is known that it seems difficult to say - although I had thought there was more evidence of savannah hominid movements.

Edit: here's a link that will help to confuse the issue.

http://www.livescience.com/15377-savannas-human-ancestors-evolution.html

What vegetation lined the rivers of early hominid habitats? At what point in time? And did anyone measure C12/13 ratios in extant riverine vegetation vs. savannah and woodlands? Heh. Looks like a fun puzzle.

 

I hav e not read every Post to this Thread & I apologize in advance if my Post includes thots already Posted.

One problem with the Aquatic Ape theory is that there are large numbers of fossils in areas far removed from lakes & seas compared to the number of fossils close to bodies of water.

 

Actually ... no. Most hominin fossil sites are associated with wet conditions upon the death of the specimens. Close to all key hominin fossils from Toumaï to the hobbit has been unearthed from then waterside scenarios. The Taung child was catalogued along with fossilized turtle eggs, Lucy with crab claws and the like. Most of the circa 1,000 known hominin specimens in the fossil archive died and fossilized at water's edge.

To be fair, the counter to that is, that in itself it cannot be argued as unequivocal evidence for these specimens being particularly semiaquatic or not, since being buried in waterside sediment is one of the rare situations in which fossilization is likely to occur; it's labeled preservation bias amongst paleontologists and paleoanthropologists. It would hardly exclude these hominins being old beach apes or some such, but at the same time we are in a situation, where the fossils cannot answer the score of questions we have still about our origin; They cannot even answer, when we lost our fur, for instance. We have to turn to other venues of natural science to try to grasp just some of them. And in that, the very core of AAH and other waterside concepts is seeking analogies for human unique traits (amongst the apes) in the rest of the mammalian clade. In that, some level of aquaticism to explain them is a lot more parsimonous than any known fully terrestrial scenario, especially that we should somehow have developed them on the African grasslands. This is why it's preposterous, that AAH and similar ideas are still being derided as obvious nonsense by even trained academics, 'cause it just isn't that obvious.

To reiterate:

 

Saw Stephen Fry present the so-called Blaschko's lines on QI (which is usually not visible, but aparently all us Homo sapiens have them).

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I'm just gonna say it. I can't help but think the genetic beginnings of possible aquatic camouflage. But ... do other apes or simians have something similar? Anyone know?

 

I suspect that almost all animals have striated development that can sometimes be visible.

What is ridiculous is that something that is completely invisible is the beginnings of camouflage. The beginnings of camouflage must be visible, or it cannot be selected for.

 

I don't know. Selection would have to start somewhere. And some people do get those stripes. It's considered a dermatological condition, but hell, maybe it isn't.

But offer me a source for chimps or gorillas etc. having the exact same thing, and I'll drop it.