THWOTH wrote:

Animavore wrote:I'm sorry. I haven't looked up this thread in ages. What the fuck is going on? What does any of this small/large canine stuff have to do with creationism? In a nutshell.

Currently jayjay#'s is maintaining that the dentition of proto-humans and contemporary hominids demonstrates that the scientific consensus about our species evolutionary development and lineage is errant, having been unduly influenced by a wilful and short-sighted desire to exclude the deity of a particular tribe of iron age, Middle-Eastern goat bothers as a possible, and indeed by his lights more probable, explanation for both our species existence and all life on Earth.

THWOTH wrote:

Animavore wrote:I'm sorry. I haven't looked up this thread in ages. What the fuck is going on? What does any of this small/large canine stuff have to do with creationism? In a nutshell.

Currently jayjay#'s is maintaining that the dentition of proto-humans and contemporary hominids demonstrates that the scientific consensus about our species evolutionary development and lineage is errant, having been unduly influenced by a wilful and short-sighted desire to exclude the deity of a particular tribe of iron age, Middle-Eastern goat bothers as a possible, and indeed by his lights more probable, explanation for both our species existence and all life on Earth.

Calilasseia wrote:Oh look, it's Lies And Bullshit TimeTM again, brought to your TV by your regular host JayJay ...

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:But my point is(a) that the lack of fangs in Australopithecus should have immediately created the inference that they instead used hand held weapons that made them dangerous to attack.

Bollocks. First of all, there are plenty of organisms that don't possess big canines, and which don't use tools.

Calilasseia wrote: Second, Sahelanthropus had small canines, but never once during its 3 million year history left behind evidence of tool use. Oh dear, there goes your fantasy once again, destroyed by DATA.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: It’s nonetheless true that the long sharp canines of other higher primates do make them dangerous attack. They are ferocious biters.

Oh wait, how often have you been presented with DATA, JayJay, demonstrating that a significant proportion of the use of those canines, focuses on competition between rivals of the same species for a highly desirable resource?

Indeed, how many primate species exhibit manifest sexual dimorphism in this regard, which makes NO sense whatsoever in the light of your obsessive concentration on defensive biting as purportedly the sole reason for this dentition, even before we factor in such things as diet? Because one of the elementary thoughts that immediately crosses the mind of anyone who has paid attention in biology class, is that a defensive capability of this sort would be useful to members of a given species regardless of gender, if a pressing need accompanied by a measurable selection pressure was present for said capability. The mere fact that something as functional as dentition, undergoes gender biased modification, tells those of us who paid attention in biology class, that your obsessive fantasising about defensive biting is precisely that, because modification of this sort would not affect significantly, a feature already subject to an alternative strong selection pressure.

Calilasseia wrote: But this is another piece of DATA you keep ignoring whilst trying to peddle your sad little fantasy as purportedly constituting fact,

Calilasseia wrote: regardless of how much DATA destroys that fantasy. DATA such as:

1: NO hominid weapons older than 100,000 years have ever been found;

Calilasseia wrote: 2: ALL tools reliably associated with Australopithecus have been FOOD PREPARATION TOOLS;

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The other day I asked a local expert on primates “Do primates bite?” and she said yes, and that her body is full of scars as evidence of that. When I looked tremendously interested she thought it was her body that excited my interest and became a bit stiffly cold.

If your approaches to her were the same as your approaches to us with respect to the proper conduct of discourse, I'm not in the least surprised about that last part.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is a pic of Sahelanthropus showing that it had longer canines than Australopithecus , suggesting that the adaptation was in progress roughly around that time.



A New Hominid From The Upper Miocene Of Chad, Central Africa by Michel Brunet, and others here]

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:[b]Differential diagnosis. Sahelanthropus is distinct from all living great apes in the following respects: relatively smaller canines with apical wear, the lower showing a full occlusion above the well-developed distal tubercle, probably correlated with a non-honing C–P3 complex (P3 still unknown).

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:Sahelanthropus is distinguished as a hominid from large living and known fossil hominoid genera in the following respects: …from Gorilla by smaller canines and lower-cusped cheek teeth
]from Ouranopithecus…by markedly smaller but mesiodistally longer canines, apical wear and large distal tubercle in lower canines
Frim Sivapithecus16, smaller canines with apical wear, and thinner cheek-teeth enamel
Sahelanthropus is also distinct from all known hominid genera in the following respects:
from Homo ….non-incisiform and mesiodistally long canines,
from Ardipithecus[/i….; less incisiform upper canines not diamond shaped with a low distal shoulder and a mesiodistal long axis, bucco-lingually narrower lower canines with stronger distal tubercle, and P4 with two roots;….
from [i]Orrorin … non-chimp-like upper canines with extensive apical wear.

Again, note the frequent references to small canines with apical wear

Calilasseia wrote:

Shea, 1988 wrote:Lithic use-wear analysis can provide functional infomation about stone tool assemblages and insights into prehistoric hominid behaviour. The criteria by which hafter stone spear- and arrow-points can be recognised have been extensively documented by other researchers (Ahler 1971; Fischer, Hansen and Rasmussen 1984; Odell and Cowan 1986). Indentifying such wear patterns in the Middle Palaeolithic can indicate both the geographic and temporal variation of prehistoric hunting strategies. Wear patterns on stone tools from the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic sites of Kebara, Qazfeh, and Hayonim caves suggest that technologically-assisted hunting may have been an important part of hominid subsistence as early as 50,000-100,000 years ago.

Oh wait, what did I spend several posts in this thread schooling you on? LITHIC WEAR ANALYSIS. Namely, the analysis of the different tool usage marks that different tool usages leave upon the tools in question, and which scientists have been pressing into service to analyse ACTUAL tool usage. Yet more DATA you keep ignoring. Indeed, I even schooled you on the fact that scientists went to the trouble of making their own prehistoric stone tools, in accordance with the known toolmaking methods deployed by earlier hominids, and then subjected those tools to a range of usages, to provide a database of use-wear analysis data. Indeed, I told you about this in this same post in which I provided the paper discussing the use of this technique to determine actual tool usage. I cited no less than four peer reviewed scientific works covering this topic in that post, and presented the full papers in two of those instances. So your assertion that I didn't back up my statement is a BARE FACED LIE.

This is all you have to offer here, JayJay, made up shit accompanied by bare faced lies and other well-documented forms of creationist duplicity. I and others here, on the other hand, have REAL DATA to bring to the table.

Now, since I've already made numerous references to lithic wear analysis, and how this allows scientists to distinguish which usage a given tool was put to, I think we can all safely conclude that I've provided more than enough substance allowing a weapon to be distinguished from, say, a food preparation or materials handling tool, because, lo and behold, as scientists have discovered experimentally, all of these usages leave distinct and analysable wear patterns on the tools in question. A weapon would have different usage marks to a food preparation tool, which in turn would have different usage marks to a materials processing tool. Indeed, the Shea paper I provided earlier mentions a specific experiment conducted to establish use-wear patterns on stone tools, viz:

Shea, 1988 wrote:Whatver approach or combination of approaches is employed, archaeological analyses must be accompanied by a demonstration of each analyst's ability to reliably reconstruct the functions of experimentally-utilised stone tools. It is only from such a demonstration that accuracy levels and confidence intervals can be assigned to archaeological interpretations. In the course of learning the "low magnification" approach, six independent blind tests of the author's ability to reconstruct stone tool uses were conducted over three years (Shea 1987). These tests involved a total of 243 uses on 111 artefacts (with 33 unused "dummy" specimens). All artefacts had been used, without the author's participation or observation, by graduates of lithic technology workshops and had been subjected to simulated archaeological screening and washing. The test results suggest the following accuracy levels and confidence intervals for archaeological application: location of use = 237/243 correct (x=97%±1%); action employed (of 16 possibilities) = 222/243 correct (x=91%±5%), worked material (of 12 possibilities) = 200/243 correct (x=82%±5%). No statistically significant differences were noted in the accuracy rates for different actions and worked materials, or between retouched and unretouched edges. Only the duration of tool use and the type of lithic raw material appeared to significantly affect analytical accuracy.

So the author not only engaged in an experiment aimed at determining which wear patterns accompany which tool usage, but also aimed at determining his ability to deduce correctly the requisite wear usage. Now the mere fact that I brought that paper here, on its own tells anyone appraising this thread honestly, that I did more than sufficient to establish my case. Namely, that scientists have rigorous methods allowing them to tell the difference between tools used as weapons, tools used for food preparation, and tools used for material processing by prehistoric hominids. They have the DATA. The mere fact that you couldn't be bothered to examine that paper, alight upon this DATA yourself, then fabricated a bare faced lie to the effect that I failed to support my statements robustly in this vein, again destroys your fantasy.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is a pic from that site [Wikipedia hand axe]:

Which, funnily enough, is followed shortly after by the entire section on evidence from wear analysis that you never bothered reading. I wonder why you never bothered reading it? would this have something to do with the fact that all the scientific literature pertinent to this DESTROYS your fantasy assertions?

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Would a primate holding a hand axe like that, be dangerous to attack? My sense is yes but with a major reservation; something is missing; a means to keep a predator at arms length.

Oh wait, what usage wear analysis exists to support your fantasy about weapon wielding Australopithecines? NONE.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:That primate would need a stopper tool either in its other hand or held in two hands by another member of the troop. Think of a dog attacking you- you would need something to stop it with and something to punish it with. But of course, sticks unlike stones are highly perishable and relatively unlikely to be found as fossils.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

JayJay, we have in existence FOSSILS OF TREES DATING BACK ALL THE WAY TO THE CARBONIFEROUS. Under the right conditions, wood can fossilise, and persist for OVER 300 MILLION YEARS. The oldest known tree, Watteiza, dates back all the way to the middle Devonian, 385 million years before present. Archaeopteris is only slightly younger at 383 million years.

Calilasseia wrote: But of course, none of this in the least supports your sad little fantasy, about Australopithecines wielding weapons like some sort of prehistoric Call of Duty spec-ops troop. All the DATA says your fantasy never happened.

Fenrir wrote:I'm left handed.

Does that mean i have an offensive defense?

Or a defensive offense?

:shrug

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Oh look, it's Lies And Bullshit TimeTM again, brought to your TV by your regular host JayJay ...

After an opening like that, I don’t expect a civil or reasonable discussion from the rest of your post.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
It’s not a fantasy, not sad, or even little. It’s a strong INFERENCE that Australopithecus used hand held weapons to make them dangerous to attack. You used that word “fantasy” 16 times in your post.

Jayjay4547 wrote: So the possible use of an Oldowan hand axe to smash a predator skull wasn’t even considered. And if a hand axe was used for that purpose, it might well not have been used often enough to show wear patterns,

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Oh look, it's Lies And Bullshit TimeTM again, brought to your TV by your regular host JayJay ...

After an opening like that, I don’t expect a civil or reasonable discussion from the rest of your post.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:But my point is(a) that the lack of fangs in Australopithecus should have immediately created the inference that they instead used hand held weapons that made them dangerous to attack.

Bollocks. First of all, there are plenty of organisms that don't possess big canines, and which don't use tools.

Armadillos would be an example of animals that don’t possess big canines and don’t use tools.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The issue isn’t about “tools” in general, but specifically about hand held weapons, used to make a species dangerous to attack.

Jayjay4547 wrote:For that, an animal would need hands capable of grasping a weapon, means to carry a weapon around, it would need to be of a certain absolute size where kinetic weaponry can be effective, and a certain size relative to predator.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Australopithecus satisfied those criteria

Jayjay4547 wrote:and higher primates generally are near the edge of it, shown by Kortlandt’s 1960s experiments with chimps and a dummy leopard

Jayjay4547 wrote:and by Boesch’s account of chimps taunting a cornered leopard using sticks.

Jayjay4547 wrote:We have been over those a few times.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Anyway I came across a cute supporting anecdote the other day, about someone who, hoping to protect his car bonnet and windscreen wipers from damage by baboons in the Cape Point nature reserve, left a rubber snake on the dashboard. When he got back to his car he found the windscreen had been smashed by baboons, using stones.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Second, Sahelanthropus had small canines, but never once during its 3 million year history left behind evidence of tool use. Oh dear, there goes your fantasy once again, destroyed by DATA.

I will get back to Sahelanthropus canines a bit later

Jayjay4547 wrote:but really its no more needed to find tools tied to an ancestor of Australopithecs, than one needs to find bones stuck in the teeth of T.rex to figure out it ate meat.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Palaeontologists had not trouble figuring that out, long before they found marks left by those animals.

Jayjay4547 wrote: On top of that, Your “3 million year history” is more correctly a 3 million year GAP between the date of one fossil actual or near ancestor, and Australopithecus.

Lovejoy, 2009 wrote:Referential models based on extant African apes have dominated reconstructions of early human evolution since Darwin’s time. These models visualize fundamental human behaviors as intensifications of behaviors observed in living chimpanzees and/or gorillas (for instance, upright feeding, male dominance displays, tool use, culture, hunting, and warfare). Ardipithecus essentially falsifies such models, because extant apes are highly derived relative to our last common ancestors. Moreover, uniquely derived hominid characters, especially those of locomotion and canine reduction, appear to have emerged shortly after the hominid/chimpanzee divergence. Hence, Ardipithecus provides a new window through which to view our clade’s earliest evolution and its ecological context. Early hominids and extant apes are remarkably divergent in many cardinal characters. We can no longer rely on homologies with African apes for accounts of our origins and must turn instead to general evolutionary theory. A proposed adaptive suite for the emergence of Ardipithecus from the last common ancestor that we shared with chimpanzees accounts for these principal ape/human differences, as well as the marked demographic success and cognitive efflorescence of later Plio-Pleistocene hominids.

Lovejoy, 2009 wrote:Ardipithecus ramidus. Ardipithecus ramidus now reveals that the early hominid evolutionary trajectory differed profoundly from those of our ape relatives from our clade’s very beginning. Ar. ramidus was already well-adapted to bipedality, even though it retained arboreal capabilities (19–25). Its postcranial anatomy reveals that locomotion in the chimpanzee/human last common ancestor (hereafter the CLCA) must have retained generalized above-branch quadrupedality, never relying sufficiently on suspension, vertical climbing, or knuckle walking to have elicited any musculoskeletal adaptations to these behaviors (26–28).

Moreover, Ardipithecus was neither a ripe-fruit specialist like Pan, nor a folivorous browser like Gorilla, but rather a more generalized omnivore (19, 25). It had already abandoned entirely the otherwise universal sectorial canine complex (SCC), in which the larger, projecting upper canine is constantly honed by occlusion against the lower third molar of anthropoid primates (25), demonstrating that the large, projecting, interlocking, and honing male canines of apes had been eliminated before the dawn of the Pliocene and before the emergence of the dentognathic peculiarities of Australopithecus. What’s more, it appears to have been only slightly dimorphic in body size (25). Finally, the environmental context of Ardipithecus suggests that its primary habitat was not savanna or grassland, but instead woodlands (26–28).

In retrospect, clues to this vast divide between the evolutionary trajectories of African apes and hominids have always been present. Apes are largely inept at walking upright. They exhibit reproductive behavior and anatomy profoundly unlike those of humans. African ape males have retained (or evolved, see below) a massive SCC and exhibit little or no direct investment in their offspring (their reproductive strategies rely primarily on varying forms of male-to-male agonism). Although they excel at some cognitive tasks, they perform at levels qualitatively similar to those of some extraordinary birds (29, 30) and mammals (31). The great apes are an isolated, uniquely specialized relict species surviving today only by their occupation of forest refugia (32). Even their gut structure differs substantially from that of humans (33).

Lovejoy, 2009 wrote:Loss of the projecting canine raises other vexing questions because this tooth is so fundamental to reproductive success in higher primates. What could cause males to forfeit their ability to aggressively compete with other males? What changes paved the way for the later emergence of the energy thirsty brain of Homo? Such questions can no longer be addressed by simply comparing humans to extant apes, because no ape exhibits an even remotely similar evolutionary trajectory to that revealed by Ardipithecus.

When the likely adaptations of early hominids are viewed generally rather than with specific reference to living chimpanzees, answers to such questions arise naturally. Many odd hominid characteristics become transformed from peculiar to commonplace. Combining our knowledge of mammalian reproductive physiology and the hominid fossil record suggests that a major shift in life-history strategy transformed the social structure of early hominids. That shift probably reduced male-to-male conflict and combined three previously unseen behaviors associated with their ability to exploit both trees and the land surface: (i) regular food-carrying, (ii) pair-bonding, and (iii) reproductive crypsis (in which females did not advertise ovulation, unlike the case in chimpanzees). Together, these behaviors would have substantially intensified male parental investment—a breakthrough adaptation with anatomical, behavioral, and physiological consequences for early hominids and for all of their descendants, including ourselves.

Lovejoy, 2009 wrote:Adaptive suites. An alternative to referential modeling is the adaptive suite, an extrapolation from optimization theory (35). Adaptive suites are semiformal, largely inductive algorithms that causally interrelate fundamental characters that may have contributed to an organism’s total adaptive pattern. One for the horned lizard (Phyrnosoma platyrhinos) of the southwesten U.S. serves as an excellent example (Fig. 1) (36, 37). For this species, the interrelation between a dietary concentration on ants and its impact on body form imply, at first counterintuitively, that elevation of clutch size and intensification of “r” strategy (maximize the number of offspring by minimizing paternal care) are the ultimate consequences of this specialization (35–37).

Such character and behavioral interdependencies can have profound consequences on evolutionary trajectory, as demonstrated by the equally notable differences in clutch size in the common leopard frog (3500 to 6500 eggs) versus those of numerous species of so-called poison dart frogs [typically less than 30 eggs; Table 1 (38)]. To enhance survival of their (as yet) nontoxic offspring, the latter engage in relatively intense male parental investment, a shift that has had a profound adaptive impact on their entire life-history strategy.

The effective power of adaptive suites is demonstrable by their explanatory success. A virtually identical character constellation to that of the horned lizard has been discovered in an unrelated Australian ecological vicar, Moloch horridus (37), which is also an ant specialist. Even given such unexpected consilience, however, adaptive suites are obviously speculative, even for living organisms. In addition, for extant species, the processes by which current characters have emerged are also necessarily hidden in the past and, therefore, are no more accessible than for extinct taxa. Nevertheless, adaptive suites can serve as organizational procedures by which to examine evolutionary processes with increasing acumen. Of further benefit is the fact that they often pose novel testable hypotheses that might not have arisen without them.

Many key human specializations are related to our reproductive physiology and anatomy; human reproduction is as extraordinary as our dentition, locomotion, and encephalization (39). Although it remains possible that such uniqueness emerged only during the Pleistocene, this is less likely in light of Ardipithecus, which shows very early evidence of a major social transformation (25). Moreover, it is the modern African apes that are most derived in many characters, whereas those which are specialized in human evolution (SCC elimination, bipedality) are now known to have been present near the origin of our clade. Our massive brains are obviously a Pleistocene development, but they are also probably sequelae to other major shifts now more fully recorded in the earlier fossil record. It is therefore possible, even likely, that many physiologies and soft tissue features that do not fossilize may have also evolved early in hominid evolution. If so, why were these characters exaptive to our advanced cognition and singular demographic success?

Notwithstanding the revelations now provided by Ardipithecus, it should be noted that extensive studies of African apes and other primates have provided likely details of the sociobehavioral context from which hominids most likely first emerged (1, 11). These details were presumably present in the last common ancestor we shared with the African apes, and they almost certainly included aspects of great ape demography and social behavior, including male philopatry (males remain in their natal group), female exogamy (females transfer from natal group at sexual maturity), and prolonged inter-birth intervals, all cardinal characters of an intense “k” (maximized parental care of few offspring) reproductive strategy (32, 40). Moreover, investigations of the behavior of other living primates now provide a wealth of information that allows many contextual details of earliest human evolution to be reasonably hypothesized.

Sperm competition. Two key factors dominate anthropoid reproductive behavior and are therefore diagnostic of socio-sexual structure: (i) sperm competition and (ii) male-to-male competition for mates. Various anatomical correlates distinguish monogamous or single male primates from other species whose males engage in sperm competition. Among the most obvious is the much higher ratio of testes volume to body mass. Human ratios are generally similar to those of monogamous gibbons and solitary orangutans, but the ratios are three times higher in Pan (41, 42) and other sperm-competing species such as Brachyteles (43). Moreover, human testes are most similar to those of gibbons with respect to their higher proportion of intertubular (nonseminiferous) tissue (42). Mammalian sperm competition is generally accompanied by elevated ejaculate quality (44), which is also notably poor in humans. In Homo sapiens, the absolute rate of sperm production is only about 20% that of much smaller rhesus macaques (45). Another measure, spermatogenesis efficiency (daily sperm production per gram of testes), “varies from about 2.65 × 107 in rabbits to <0.6 × 106 in humans” (46). [NOTE: figure corrected in accordance with erratum at the end of the paper]. The estimated corresponding value in chimpanzees is greater than that of humans by two orders of magnitude (42).

The muscular coat of mammalian vasa deferentia can reasonably be regarded as a correlate of sperm transport rate during sexual stimulation. It is substantially thicker in chimpanzees than in humans or orangutans (47). The seminal vesicles of some monogamous primates are inconspicuous, whereas those of multimale (i.e., ovulating females usually mate with multiple males) macaques and chimpanzees are large; those in humans are only of moderate size (39). Whatever the social caveats may be, human ejaculatory rates (along with those of the monogamous genera Aotus and Symphalangus[i]) are lower than those of 20 primate species (including [i]Pan and Gorilla) by one order of magnitude (48, 49), and human sperm counts decrease at ejaculation frequencies of >4 per week (50).

Human sperm midpiece volume, which reflects mitochondrial density and motility, falls in the lowest quartile of 21 primate species examined (51). Especially important is the coagulating reaction between some seminal proteins and prostate vesiculase (52). This coagulum, which blocks penetration of competing sperm by forming a vaginal plug, characterizes primates that robustly spermcompete (e.g., Ateles, Brachyteles, Macaca, Pan). This reaction is absent in humans and common marmosets, whose ejaculates are merely gelatinous (53).

The structures of semenogelins I and II (SEMGI and SEMGII) (primary plug coagulates) illuminate the natural history of vaginal plugging. SEMGI suggests a selective sweep in chimpanzees and conversion to a pseudogene in gorillas; humans exhibit neither (52). Together, these data strongly suggest that the social structure in earlier hominids is unlikely to have been typically multimale. This conclusion is supported by recent analyses of primate immune systems, which compared basal white blood cell counts among primates with respect to the likely number of sexual partners as determined by social system (female mating promiscuity). Results showed that “humans align most closely with the [single male] gorilla ... and secondarily with … [the] monogamous gibbon” [(54), p. 1170].

Humans have the least complex penis morphology of any primate. Complexity is generally associated with multimale social structure (47), and humans lack keratinous penile surface mechanoreceptors that may promote rapid ejaculation that is common in many primates. Finally, humans are the only catarrhine without an os baculum (39).

Competition for mates. If they did not spermcompete, did early hominid males instead compete for single or near-solitary control of female groups? The cardinal indicator of male-to-male agonism in hominoid primates is the SCC. It is regularly employed during both territory defense and dominance disputes. Hominids are often characterized as having reduced canine dimorphism (55). Such reduction is only a secondary consequence of the primary hominid character, which is elimination of the SCC in its entirety. The SCC is not male-limited; that is, it is always expressed in both sexes of all anthropoids, even in species with reduced dimorphism (e.g., some New World atelines). Although females may express the SCC for advantage in conflicts with other females, they principally express its underlying structure themselves because amplification in their male offspring (presumably by androgens or reduced estrogens) enhances their fitness. Hylobatid canine monomorphism is sometimes erroneously confused with that of hominids, but gibbons evolved amplification of the female canine. Ar. ramidus shows that elimination of the SCC in hominids is unique among all higher primates and occurred long before Australopithecus.

A frequent explanation of canine reduction (and bipedality) is that hand-held weapons replaced the SCC (56, 57). But if male-to-male agonism had been fundamental to early hominid fitness, what selective agency would have reduced its signature character? Additional human attributes belie the improbability of the weapons argument. An absence of sperm competition in gorillas and orangutans is accompanied by a dramatically reduced testes size and the elimination of a free scrotum (their testes are more judiciously sequestered in a post-penial bulge) (42, 58). In contrast, not only are human scrota more pendulous than even those of chimpanzees (58), but bipedality makes them extraordinarily vulnerable during upright combat (59). It seems illogical to attribute habitual uprightness to weapons that would demand even greater selection for testes sequestration than is present in other primates [which target them with their functional SCCs (60)].

Available evidence now suggests that the loss of the SCC was, as is theoretically most likely, a social adaptation. This evidence, derived from Ardipithecus, includes the following (25): (i) Change in the more socially important upper canine preceded that in the lower, (ii) progressive shape modification made the canine not only smaller but less weaponlike in form, (iii) male canines erupted relatively earlier than in large-canined species with high male-to-male agonism, making this event less likely to have represented a social signal of male maturity, and (iv) all of these changes took place within a dietary context that preceded any of the profound changes seen in later hominid dentitions.

Humans are also unique among primates in lacking vocal sacs, which play a major role in the territoriality of all apes. Though there are no current means by which to judge the evolutionary history of the hominoid vocal apparatus (61), it does have potential developmental interactions with basicranial patterning, including an impact on location of the foramen magnum. The dramatic anterior translation of this foramen during the Plio-Pleistocene is almost certainly a corollary of cerebral reorganization and/or expansion (62). However, early hominid vocal apparatus reduction may have influenced initial differential trajectories of cranial form, currently only just detectable in P. paniscus and Ar. ramidus (29). Both cerebral reorganization and facial patterning are clearly central elements of that trajectory, and early reduction of vocal tract mass is thus a potential modulating factor, particularly because it is a possible social corollary of loss of the SCC.

It has long been argued that Australopithecus was unusually dimorphic in body size, implying a largely single-male group structure, but this hypothesis has been biased by comparisons of temporally and geographically disparate samples (63). Of greater importance are (i) the absence of any useful correlation between body-size dimorphism and social structure in hominoids, because both chimpanzees and gorillas exhibit intense male-to-male agonismbut exhibit opposite polarities in skeletal dimorphism (63); and (ii) the fact that male body size in many primates is not associated with competition for mates. Rather, it is equally likely to be an ecological specialization derived from reduced size of females (64) and/or male enlargement by selective agencies unrelated to mate acquisition. In any case, Ar. ramidus now transcends the debates over dimorphism in early Australopithecus because available samples indicate that it was minimally dimorphic, suggesting that this was the primitive hominid condition (19, 25) and that dimorphism increased in later hominids (see below).

Lovejoy, 2009 wrote:(Right column) The demographic dilemma (32, 79) generated by intensified K selection. A solution for a hominoid confronting such selective forces is elaboration of sex-for-food exchanges observed in chimpanzees and bonobos. These and other elements shared with Pan acted as possible “social catalysts” [highlighted in red (e.g., copulatory feeding, extractive foraging, male-male patrols)]. Increased male body size and enhanced male-to-male cooperation in Au. afarensis reduced mortality during distance foraging by multiple-male patrols (whose role was optimal foraging rather than territory defense). This culminated in savanna scavenging, primitive lithics for meat acquisition, marrow extraction, and cooperative hunting in Homo. This profound economic shift selected for advanced adaptations to bipedality, further enhanced social cohesion (reduced same-sex agonism in both sexes), increased energy available for parenting (and alloparenting), promoted survivorship and reduced birth spacing, and elevated the selective ceiling acting against metabolically expensive tissues (e.g., the brain).

Lovejoy, 2009 wrote:Reproductive crypsis: the most unique human character. Elimination of the SCC and the ecological context of Ardipithecus at Aramis, Ethiopia, and earlier sites are consistent with the inference that male provisioning via resource transport (and concomitant terrestrial bipedality) antedated 4.4 Ma. Might such behaviors have first evolved nearer the base of the hominid clade? An obvious issue with the hypothesis outlined above is that Pan males prefer females with prominent signs of active ovulation (estrus). If minimal ovulatory signaling in the earliest hominids was primitive (as it is presumably in Gorilla), why did hominid females not prolong and intensify such signs so as to encourage sex-for-food exchanges?

First, the extreme ovulatory-related displays in Pan appear to be derived, because they are associated with comparatively unique molecular signatures of accompanying adaptations (such as proteins necessary for vaginal plugging) absent in other hominoids, as well as appropriately specialized penile morphology. Second, it is unlikely that copulation offered by a female would be rejected by a male—this would be counterproductive given the substantial variability of the primate menstrual cycle and the rarity of hominoid females available for impregnation. Furthermore, habitual provisioning of a target female, even while still lactating for a dependent infant, would still make the repeatedly attendant male most likely to sire any successive offspring upon first reinstatement of ovulatory cycling.

The latter point is critical. One of the most frequently cited objections to male provisioning in early hominids is the problem of cuckoldry during times that males would have been separated from a selected mate while in search of food (83, 84). But ovulation in hominoids is an exceptionally rare event, and it probably occurs only after extensive, 3- to 4-year-long periods during which female lactation amenorrhea prevents it. Male provisioning of rarely but obviously fertile females would enhance his fitness by several means: (i) Regular copulation would probabalistically establish an attendant male as the most likely to sire the target female’s succeeding offspring, provided that his mate did not “advertise” her ovulation and/or solicit multiple copulations. (ii) Repeated provisioning would accelerate reinstatement of ovulation by replenishing fat stores depleted by lactation. (iii) Accidental or pathological death of her dependent offspring (a not infrequent event) would also reinitialize ovulation, and selection would obviously favor habituation with nonaggressive males not predisposed to infanticide, which is already unlikely because of philopatry.

To prevent cuckoldry, male provisioning within the context of a multimale group therefore requires selection of females with reproductive crypsis. That is, males could only succeed by provisioning mates with self-crypsis; they would otherwise be unprotected from female copulation with more dominant/aggressive males while ovulating. Broadly (but not entirely) nonovulatory copulation, as in Brachyteles (69, 70), would permit prolonged exclusivity in operational pair bonds, especially when provisioning males showed preference for females who were not observed to copulate with other males (85). In this context, it is therefore relevant that human females do not externally advertise ovulation [other hominoids exhibit some degree of ovulatory swelling, even if minimal (86)] and also fail to exhibit its substantial physiological self-perception, despite moderately elevated proceptivity during ovulation (39, 87).

Lovejoy, 2009 wrote:Conclusion. As Au. afarensis was progressively revealed during the 1970s, its anatomy and antiquity still permitted a possible chimpanzee-like CLCA. Many models of human origins, largely referential, employed this perspective. Previous nonreferential attempts (32, 79) argued that only major changes in the social behavior of Au. afarensis and its ancestors could satisfactorily account for its unique combination of postcranial anatomy and unusual demographic success. The tempo and mode of such hypothetical earlier evolutionary events, however, have remained shrouded from our view. This has led to rejection of the hypothesis by many who preferred the comparative comfort and safety of more referential accounts.

Even as its fossil record proliferated, however, Australopithecus continued to provide only an incomplete understanding of hominid origins. Paradoxically, in light of Ardipithecus, we can now see that Australopithecus was too derived— its locomotion too sophisticated, and its invasion of new habitats too advanced—not to almost entirely obscure earlier hominid evolutionary dynamics.

Now, in light of Ar. ramidus, there are no longer any a priori reasons to suppose that acquisition of our unique reproductive anatomy and behavior are unconnected with other human specializations. The evidence is now conclusive: Elimination of the SCC occurred long before the eventual dentognathic hypertrophy of Australopithecus, and long before the likely horizon at which sufficient reliance on tool use would have encouraged abandonment of food and/or safety in the arboreal substrate. It is far more likely that our unique reproductive behavior and anatomy emerged in concert with habituation to bipedality and elimination of the SCC (Fig. 2). It is also now equally clear that Pan’s specialized reproductive constellation has been driven by an entirely different locomotor and dietary history.

We currently know very little about the postcranium of hominids older than Ar. ramidus (e.g., Sahelanthropus, Orrorin) (105, 106). More fossils will further advance our understanding of the CLCA, and we anxiously await their discovery. Meanwhile, the opportunity of devising adaptive suites for both species of Pan and for Gorilla—grounded in hypotheses generated in light now thrown on the gorilla/chimpanzee/human last common ancestor and CLCA by Ar. ramidus as to their locomotion, diet, and social behavior—is an intriguing prospect whose alternative outcomes will probably provide additional revelations.

When viewed holistically, as any adaptive suite requires, the early hominid characters that were probably interwoven by selection to eventually generate cognition now seem every bit as biologically ordinary as those that have also affected the evolution of lizards, frogs, voles, monkeys, and chimpanzees. Comparing ourselves to our closest kin, it is somewhat sobering that the hominid path led to cognition, whereas that leading to Pan, our closest living relatives, did not, despite the near-synonymy of our genomes.

As Darwin argued, the ultimate source of any explication of human acumen must be natural selection (78). The adaptive suite proposed here provides at least one evolutionary map by which cognition could have emerged without reliance on any special mammalian trait. The perspective offered by Ardipithecus suggests that our special cognitive abilities derive from a unique earlier interplay of otherwise commonplace elements of locomotion, reproductive biology, neurophysiology, and social behavior. In retrospect, we are as ordinary as corvids (107) and voles (108), although we are much more fortunate, if self-cognition is deemed fortunate. We should never have doubted Darwin in his appreciation that the ultimate source of our matchlessness among mammals would prove commonplace when knowledge became sufficiently advanced. Ar. ramidus now enhances that knowledge. Even our species-defining cooperative mutualism can now be seen to extend well beyond the deepest Pliocene.

Jayjay4547 wrote:You demand for evidence, a tool found in that gap, to be positively tied to Sahelanthropus, for lack of which you pronounce my “fantasy” destroyed by “DATA”.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: It’s nonetheless true that the long sharp canines of other higher primates do make them dangerous attack. They are ferocious biters.

Oh wait, how often have you been presented with DATA, JayJay, demonstrating that a significant proportion of the use of those canines, focuses on competition between rivals of the same species for a highly desirable resource?

Indeed, how many primate species exhibit manifest sexual dimorphism in this regard, which makes NO sense whatsoever in the light of your obsessive concentration on defensive biting as purportedly the sole reason for this dentition, even before we factor in such things as diet? Because one of the elementary thoughts that immediately crosses the mind of anyone who has paid attention in biology class, is that a defensive capability of this sort would be useful to members of a given species regardless of gender, if a pressing need accompanied by a measurable selection pressure was present for said capability. The mere fact that something as functional as dentition, undergoes gender biased modification, tells those of us who paid attention in biology class, that your obsessive fantasising about defensive biting is precisely that, because modification of this sort would not affect significantly, a feature already subject to an alternative strong selection pressure.

To repeat, I’ve sidestepped that whole trope about sexual selection

Jayjay4547 wrote:by just sticking to the point that the long sharp canines of other higher primates make them dangerous to attack, which is significant for their ecology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Consider that video clip I showed about humans very circumspectly trying to attack a group of baboons occupying and then rifling a car. The large male on top of the car intimidated the men, keeping them away until the baboons had got what they wanted. The observation by Cheney and others that all the members of troop get involved in a mobbing attack doesn’t contradict that the sexually dimorphous male primates are the ones who can damage- and everyone knows that instinctively.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is a problem for you.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Suppose that primate sexual dimorphism in canines is driven by sexual selection. Why is it then that men and ancestral Australopithecus males lack long canines? Why is it that we men have inherited such girly skulls?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Were Australopithecus utterly above such crude competition for the possession of females, as Darwin put it?

Jayjay4547 wrote: Seems to me that the Australopithecus males competed using stick fights just like young tribal men today.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And those skills were turned against predators, making a hominin troop dangerous to attack.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Intraspecific competition in primates and access to females is just a cruel trick by “nature” to keep testosterone filled individuals from breeding out of the gene pool.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: But this is another piece of DATA you keep ignoring whilst trying to peddle your sad little fantasy as purportedly constituting fact,

It’s not a fantasy, not sad, or even little. It’s a strong INFERENCE that Australopithecus used hand held weapons to make them dangerous to attack.

Jayjay4547 wrote:You used that word “fantasy” 16 times in your post.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: regardless of how much DATA destroys that fantasy. DATA such as:

1: NO hominid weapons older than 100,000 years have ever been found;

When I look at your so called DATA it turns out to date the appearance of hafted weapons used for hunting by fully modern Homo sapiens. That’s only a bit less ridiculous than demanding to see a rifle before admitting weaponry.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: 2: ALL tools reliably associated with Australopithecus have been FOOD PREPARATION TOOLS;

One of the uses of an Oldowan hand axe would have been to ding the skull of a predator. Edged tools have been used for woodworking as you say later in your post- that isn’t food preparation.

Jayjay4547 wrote:What do you imagine Australopithecus might have whittled away at wood FOR?

McPherron et al, 2010 wrote:The oldest direct evidence of stone tool manufacture comes from Gona (Ethiopia) and dates to between 2.6 and 2.5 million years (Myr) ago1. At the nearby Bouri site several cut-marked bones also show stone tool use approximately 2.5 Myr ago2. Here we report stone-tool-inflicted marks on bones found during recent survey work in Dikika, Ethiopia, a research area close to Gona and Bouri. On the basis of low-power microscopic and environmental scanning electron microscope observations, these bones show unambiguous stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access. The bones derive from the Sidi Hakoma Member of the Hadar Formation. Established 40Ar–39Ar dates on the tuffs that bracket this member constrain the finds to between 3.42 and 3.24 Myr ago, and stratigraphic scaling between these units and other geological evidence indicate that they are older than 3.39 Myr ago. Our discovery extends by approximately 800,000 years the antiquity of stone tools and of stone-tool-assisted consumption of ungulates by hominins; furthermore, this behaviour can now be attributed to Australopithecus afarensis.

McPherron et al, 2014 wrote:DIK-55-2 (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Information) is a right rib fragment of a large ungulate, probably size 4 (cow-sized) or larger. Marks A1 and A2 are perpendicular to the cortical surface, V-shaped in cross-section with internal microstriations and diagnosed as high-confidence stone-tool cut marks. Mark B is a more obliquely oriented mark that shaves off the bone surface within which are microstriations, all consistent with a high-confidence stone-tool-inflicted mark from cutting, scraping and/or percussion. An indentation (mark C) with microstriations and crushing of the bone surface is a high-confidence hammerstone percussion mark described in Supplementary Information.

DIK-55-3 (Fig. 3 and Supplementary Information) is a femur shaft fragment of a size 2 (goat-sized) young bovid. The surface is densely marked (Fig. 3a). Mark A is perpendicular to the cortical surface and has clear microstriations running out one end (Fig. 3b, c), diagnosed as a high-confidence cut mark. Mark D (Fig. 3d–f) is a dense cluster. One prominent mark within D (Fig. 3d) has crushing of the bone surface with microstriations and is diagnosed as a high-confidence percussion mark. Mark E (Fig. 3g, h) is obliquely oriented, shaves off surface bone, has microstriations and a shouldered edge highly consistent with a stone-tool cut mark. Marks H1 and H2 overlap. H1 has clear microstriations, is associated with the broken edge of the bone and swirls in a way typical of a percussion mark. H2 shaves off bone surface and has clear microstriations, consistent with stone-tool cut marks and a scraping motion. DIK-55-3 has other high-confidence stone-tool-inflicted marks, and there is at least one mark (mark I) of uncertain agency (Supplementary Information). This specimen does not have any notches of the type that are sometimes associated with hammerstone percussion on long bones8–10, but this may be owing to post-depositional breakage of the edges that removed such notches.

The cut marks demonstrate hominin use of sharp-edged stone to remove flesh from the femur and rib. The location and density of the marks on the femur indicate that flesh was rather widely spread on the surface, although it is possible that there could have been isolated patches of flesh. The percussion marks on the femur demonstrate hominin use of a blunt stone to strike the bone, probably to gain access to the marrow. The external surfaces of ribs have thin sheaths of flesh, so the scraping marks on the fossil rib suggest stripping off of these sheaths.

McPherron et al, 2014 wrote:It is not possible to demonstrate from the modified bones whether the stone tools were knapped for this purpose or whether naturally occurring sharp-edged stones were collected and used. No stone artefacts or sharp-edged stones were found in association with the bones at DIK-55. However, stone tool production and consequently archaeological accumulations are not expected at this locality given the sedimentary environment characterized by the palaeo-Awash River emptying into a nearby lake3,4. In this relatively low-energy depositional environment, clasts suitable for stone tool production are not present (few particles larger than fine gravel, 8 mm diameter). Within the exposed SH Member, the distance from DIK-55 to cobble-sized raw materials (>64 mm) is ~6 km (at Gorgore; Fig. 1). Thus, in this instance the absence of evidence for stone tool production in the immediate vicinity of the cut-marked bones may reflect landscape-level raw material constraints.

McPherron et al, 2014 wrote:The bones presented here are the earliest evidence for meat and marrow consumption in the hominin lineage, pre-dating the known evidence by over 800 kyr2. Pending new discoveries, the only hominin species present in the Lower Awash Valley at 3.39 Myr ago to which we can associate this tool use is A. afarensis[i]5,15. Whether [i]A. afarensis also produced stone tools remains to be demonstrated, but the DIK-55 finds may fit with the view that stone tool production predates the earliest known archaeological sites and was initially of low intensity (one-to-a-few flakes removed per nodule) and distributed in extremely low density scatters across the landscape such that its archaeological visibility is quite low16. The evidence presented here offers a first insight into an early phase of stone tool use in hominin evolution that will improve our understanding of how this type of behaviour originated and developed into later, well recognized, stone tool production technologies.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The most plausible task would have been, to fashion a pointed stick to keep predators at arms length.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Sure as hang, if you slept in a cave and a leopard appeared at the entrance, who had already eaten your aunt and two nephews, and you could whittle away at wood, you would make a pointy stick.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The other day I asked a local expert on primates “Do primates bite?” and she said yes, and that her body is full of scars as evidence of that. When I looked tremendously interested she thought it was her body that excited my interest and became a bit stiffly cold.

If your approaches to her were the same as your approaches to us with respect to the proper conduct of discourse, I'm not in the least surprised about that last part.

My approaches to posters here doesn’t include calling anyone+- a liar, a masturbatory fantasist, talking bullshit, etc etc.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Your concept of “proper conduct of discourse” involves zero commitment to civility.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Besides that, you sidestep that expert’s account did support the view that other primates are proficient and ready biters.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is a pic of Sahelanthropus showing that it had longer canines than Australopithecus , suggesting that the adaptation was in progress roughly around that time.



A New Hominid From The Upper Miocene Of Chad, Central Africa by Michel Brunet, and others here]

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:Differential diagnosis. Sahelanthropus is distinct from all living great apes in the following respects: relatively smaller canines with apical wear, the lower showing a full occlusion above the well-developed distal tubercle, probably correlated with a non-honing C–P3 complex (P3 still unknown).

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:Sahelanthropus is distinguished as a hominid from large living and known fossil hominoid genera in the following respects: …from Gorilla by smaller canines and lower-cusped cheek teeth
]from Ouranopithecus…by markedly smaller but mesiodistally longer canines, apical wear and large distal tubercle in lower canines
Frim Sivapithecus16, smaller canines with apical wear, and thinner cheek-teeth enamel
Sahelanthropus is also distinct from all known hominid genera in the following respects:
from Homo ….non-incisiform and mesiodistally long canines,
from Ardipithecus[/i….; less incisiform upper canines not diamond shaped with a low distal shoulder and a mesiodistal long axis, bucco-lingually narrower lower canines with stronger distal tubercle, and P4 with two roots;….
from [i]Orrorin … non-chimp-like upper canines with extensive apical wear.

Again, note the frequent references to small canines with apical wear

.

I extracted from your quote above, the bits directly relating to canines.

Jayjay4547 wrote:They do support my claim that this possible ancestors of Australopithecus had canines intermediate between those of apes and Australopithecus.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here’s a pic of another possible ancestor Ardipithecus Ramidus- without canines that show “extensive apical wear” (ie worn down from on top)

Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s not essential to pin down the habits of ancestors of Australopithecus

Jayjay4547 wrote:to see that even the early Australopithecus afarensis canines shows that they had already fully responded to relief from having to bite their predators.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Shea, 1988 wrote:Lithic use-wear analysis can provide functional infomation about stone tool assemblages and insights into prehistoric hominid behaviour. The criteria by which hafter stone spear- and arrow-points can be recognised have been extensively documented by other researchers (Ahler 1971; Fischer, Hansen and Rasmussen 1984; Odell and Cowan 1986). Indentifying such wear patterns in the Middle Palaeolithic can indicate both the geographic and temporal variation of prehistoric hunting strategies. Wear patterns on stone tools from the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic sites of Kebara, Qazfeh, and Hayonim caves suggest that technologically-assisted hunting may have been an important part of hominid subsistence as early as 50,000-100,000 years ago.

Oh wait, what did I spend several posts in this thread schooling you on? LITHIC WEAR ANALYSIS. Namely, the analysis of the different tool usage marks that different tool usages leave upon the tools in question, and which scientists have been pressing into service to analyse ACTUAL tool usage. Yet more DATA you keep ignoring. Indeed, I even schooled you on the fact that scientists went to the trouble of making their own prehistoric stone tools, in accordance with the known toolmaking methods deployed by earlier hominids, and then subjected those tools to a range of usages, to provide a database of use-wear analysis data. Indeed, I told you about this in this same post in which I provided the paper discussing the use of this technique to determine actual tool usage. I cited no less than four peer reviewed scientific works covering this topic in that post, and presented the full papers in two of those instances. So your assertion that I didn't back up my statement is a BARE FACED LIE.

This is all you have to offer here, JayJay, made up shit accompanied by bare faced lies and other well-documented forms of creationist duplicity. I and others here, on the other hand, have REAL DATA to bring to the table.

Now, since I've already made numerous references to lithic wear analysis, and how this allows scientists to distinguish which usage a given tool was put to, I think we can all safely conclude that I've provided more than enough substance allowing a weapon to be distinguished from, say, a food preparation or materials handling tool, because, lo and behold, as scientists have discovered experimentally, all of these usages leave distinct and analysable wear patterns on the tools in question. A weapon would have different usage marks to a food preparation tool, which in turn would have different usage marks to a materials processing tool. Indeed, the Shea paper I provided earlier mentions a specific experiment conducted to establish use-wear patterns on stone tools, viz:

Shea, 1988 wrote:Whatver approach or combination of approaches is employed, archaeological analyses must be accompanied by a demonstration of each analyst's ability to reliably reconstruct the functions of experimentally-utilised stone tools. It is only from such a demonstration that accuracy levels and confidence intervals can be assigned to archaeological interpretations. In the course of learning the "low magnification" approach, six independent blind tests of the author's ability to reconstruct stone tool uses were conducted over three years (Shea 1987). These tests involved a total of 243 uses on 111 artefacts (with 33 unused "dummy" specimens). All artefacts had been used, without the author's participation or observation, by graduates of lithic technology workshops and had been subjected to simulated archaeological screening and washing. The test results suggest the following accuracy levels and confidence intervals for archaeological application: location of use = 237/243 correct (x=97%±1%); action employed (of 16 possibilities) = 222/243 correct (x=91%±5%), worked material (of 12 possibilities) = 200/243 correct (x=82%±5%). No statistically significant differences were noted in the accuracy rates for different actions and worked materials, or between retouched and unretouched edges. Only the duration of tool use and the type of lithic raw material appeared to significantly affect analytical accuracy.

So the author not only engaged in an experiment aimed at determining which wear patterns accompany which tool usage, but also aimed at determining his ability to deduce correctly the requisite wear usage. Now the mere fact that I brought that paper here, on its own tells anyone appraising this thread honestly, that I did more than sufficient to establish my case. Namely, that scientists have rigorous methods allowing them to tell the difference between tools used as weapons, tools used for food preparation, and tools used for material processing by prehistoric hominids. They have the DATA. The mere fact that you couldn't be bothered to examine that paper, alight upon this DATA yourself, then fabricated a bare faced lie to the effect that I failed to support my statements robustly in this vein, again destroys your fantasy.

I did miss your citing a paper that dated the earliest weapons to 100 000 years ago, being hafted hunting weapons.

Jayjay4547 wrote:As to lithic wear patterns, a lithic laboratory workshop in which participants didn’t face predation would be a markedly poor reconstruction of Australopithecus natural context.

Jayjay4547 wrote:So the possible use of an Oldowan hand axe to smash a predator skull wasn’t even considered.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And if a hand axe was used for that purpose, it might well not have been used often enough to show wear patterns

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is a pic from that site [Wikipedia hand axe]:

Which, funnily enough, is followed shortly after by the entire section on evidence from wear analysis that you never bothered reading. I wonder why you never bothered reading it? would this have something to do with the fact that all the scientific literature pertinent to this DESTROYS your fantasy assertions?

The only fantasy around here is your overbearing fantasy about destroying propositions that you don’t like.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Would a primate holding a hand axe like that, be dangerous to attack? My sense is yes but with a major reservation; something is missing; a means to keep a predator at arms length.

Oh wait, what usage wear analysis exists to support your fantasy about weapon wielding Australopithecines? NONE.

A stone like that could have crushed many a skull without showing wear patterns.

McPherron et al, 2010 wrote:In January 2009, the Dikika Research Project systematically collected fossils from localities just opposite the DIK-1 locality in the Andedo drainage, which predominantly exposes the Sidi Hakoma (SH) Member of the Hadar Formation (3.42–3.24 Myr ago; Fig. 1). Archaeological survey was conducted simultaneously in these same localities. In the course of this work, four fossils were identified with surface modifications which, based on field observations, resembled stone-tool cut marks7. These fossils were subsequently studied with optical and environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) (see Methods and Supplementary Information). Secondary electron imaging (SEI) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectrometry data show that the marks on two of these fossils (DIK-55-2 and DIK-55-3) formed before fossilization. Optical and ESEM observations show that the marks lack the morphology indicative of trampling and biochemical marks, and that these two specimens have modifications clearly indicative of stone tool use, including cutting and percussion.

McPherron et al, 2010 wrote:DIK-55-2 (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Information) is a right rib fragment of a large ungulate, probably size 4 (cow-sized) or larger. Marks A1 and A2 are perpendicular to the cortical surface, V-shaped in cross-section with internal microstriations and diagnosed as high-confidence stone-tool cut marks. Mark B is a more obliquely oriented mark that shaves off the bone surface within which are microstriations, all consistent with a high-confidence stone-tool-inflicted mark from cutting, scraping and/or percussion. An indentation (mark C) with microstriations and crushing of the bone surface is a high-confidence hammerstone percussion mark described in Supplementary Information.

DIK-55-3 (Fig. 3 and Supplementary Information) is a femur shaft fragment of a size 2 (goat-sized) young bovid. The surface is densely marked (Fig. 3a). Mark A is perpendicular to the cortical surface and has clear microstriations running out one end (Fig. 3b, c), diagnosed as a high-confidence cut mark. Mark D (Fig. 3d–f) is a dense cluster. One prominent mark within D (Fig. 3d) has crushing of the bone surface with microstriations and is diagnosed as a high-confidence percussion mark. Mark E (Fig. 3g, h) is obliquely oriented, shaves off surface bone, has microstriations and a shouldered edge highly consistent with a stone-tool cut mark. Marks H1 and H2 overlap. H1 has clear microstriations, is associated with the broken edge of the bone and swirls in a way typical of a percussion mark. H2 shaves off bone surface and has clear microstriations, consistent with stone-tool cut marks and a scraping motion. DIK-55-3 has other high-confidence stone-tool-inflicted marks, and there is at least one mark (mark I) of uncertain agency (Supplementary Information). This specimen does not have any notches of the type that are sometimes associated with hammerstone percussion on long bones8–10, but this may be owing to post-depositional breakage of the edges that removed such notches.

The cut marks demonstrate hominin use of sharp-edged stone to remove flesh from the femur and rib. The location and density of the marks on the femur indicate that flesh was rather widely spread on the surface, although it is possible that there could have been isolated patches of flesh. The percussion marks on the femur demonstrate hominin use of a blunt stone to strike the bone, probably to gain access to the marrow. The external surfaces of ribs have thin sheaths of flesh, so the scraping marks on the fossil rib suggest stripping off of these sheaths.

McPherron et al, 2010 wrote:It is not possible to demonstrate from the modified bones whether the stone tools were knapped for this purpose or whether naturally occurring sharp-edged stones were collected and used. No stone artefacts or sharp-edged stones were found in association with the bones at DIK-55. However, stone tool production and consequently archaeological accumulations are not expected at this locality given the sedimentary environment characterized by the palaeo-Awash River emptying into a nearby lake3,4. In this relatively low-energy depositional environment, clasts suitable for stone tool production are not present (few particles larger than fine gravel, 8mm diameter). Within the exposed SH Member, the distance from DIK-55 to cobble-sized raw materials (>64mm) is ~6 km (at Gorgore; Fig. 1). Thus, in this instance the absence of evidence for stone tool production in the immediate vicinity of the cut-marked bones may reflect landscape-level raw material constraints.

McPherron et al, 2010 wrote:The bones presented here are the earliest evidence for meat and marrow consumption in the hominin lineage, pre-dating the known evidence by over 800 kyr2. Pending new discoveries, the only hominin species present in the Lower Awash Valley at 3.39 Myr ago to which we can associate this tool use is A. afarensis5,15. Whether A. afarensis also produced stone tools remains to be demonstrated, but the DIK-55 finds may fit with the view that stone tool production predates the earliest known archaeological sites and was initially of low intensity (one-to-a-few flakes removed per nodule) and distributed in extremely low density scatters across the landscape such that its archaeological visibility is quite low16. The evidence presented here offers a first insight into an early phase of stone tool use in hominin evolution that will improve our understanding of how this type of behaviour originated and developed into later, well recognized, stone tool production technologies.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Answer the question.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Or let me put it another way: Can you imagine a better shape for a stone intended and held so as to crush a skull?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:That primate would need a stopper tool either in its other hand or held in two hands by another member of the troop. Think of a dog attacking you- you would need something to stop it with and something to punish it with. But of course, sticks unlike stones are highly perishable and relatively unlikely to be found as fossils.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

JayJay, we have in existence FOSSILS OF TREES DATING BACK ALL THE WAY TO THE CARBONIFEROUS. Under the right conditions, wood can fossilise, and persist for OVER 300 MILLION YEARS. The oldest known tree, Watteiza, dates back all the way to the middle Devonian, 385 million years before present. Archaeopteris is only slightly younger at 383 million years.

If you want to play that game, the oldest stones date back nearly ten times longer than your oldest fossil wood.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Oldowan hand axes are preserved till today except for a chance finding their way into a grinding stream bed or glacial floor. But whatever sticks Australopithecus made using stone tools, would only be preserved under exceptional circumstances.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:But of course, none of this in the least supports your sad little fantasy, about Australopithecines wielding weapons like some sort of prehistoric Call of Duty spec-ops troop. All the DATA says your fantasy never happened.

Call of Duty? That might be your fantasy, but I haven’t presented Australopithecus that way.

Jayjay4547 wrote:A weird habit of Australopithecus enabled their males to have girly skulls

Jayjay4547 wrote:and so unlike other primates, freed them from holding up evolution of the species.

Jayjay4547 wrote:OK that’s just a shadow of the truth

Jayjay4547 wrote:but it’s a lot more true than the story line in Darwin’s Descent of Man where female allure provoked their menfolk into evolving.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
It’s not a fantasy, not sad, or even little. It’s a strong INFERENCE that Australopithecus used hand held weapons to make them dangerous to attack. You used that word “fantasy” 16 times in your post.

Changing the word "fantasy" to "inference" doesn't make your argument any stronger JayJay. Whichever word you use, you're still making stuff up in an evidence free environment.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: So the possible use of an Oldowan hand axe to smash a predator skull wasn’t even considered. And if a hand axe was used for that purpose, it might well not have been used often enough to show wear patterns,

Ahhh, classic theist argument. "just because you can't see the evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen/doesn't exist/isn't there."

Sendraks wrote: My inference is that Australopiths defended themselves using a form of highly sophisticated hand to hand combat, which employed their great strength to good effect. This combat form would've been, at least, as formidable as anything developed in China millions of years later.

Sendraks wrote: Of course the bones of Australopiths don't show any signs of these formidable technique being used to deter predators, but that probably only happened rarely, which explains that away and alleviates me from the burden of evidence.

It also alleviates me from the burden of rational discourse or the burden of anyone taking my views seriously.

Sendraks wrote: I feel wonderously floaty and light free of these constraints.
Like myself and my arguments suddenly lack all substance.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Why not try some straight discussion.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
The short blunt canines of Australopithecus IS evidence.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s very striking evidence that unlike other higher primates, Australopithecus was not a formidable biter.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
If I happened across an Australopithecus unarmed that would be quite different from coming across one carrying a hand axe as illustrated. The first experience might make me reach for a camera, in the second case it would strike me that the creature was carrying a murder weapon.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Skill in hand to hand combat wouldn’t have been any use against hyena.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Only a moron would seriously suggest that Australopithecus used “hand to hand combat” against predators including hyena. In your case, you make a moronic suggestion to obliquely imply that the inference of defensive weapon use is also moronic, which it isn’t.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Why not try some straight discussion.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
If I happened across an Australopithecus unarmed that would be quite different from coming across one carrying a hand axe as illustrated. The first experience might make me reach for a camera, in the second case it would strike me that the creature was carrying a murder weapon. That perception would arise from its shape and my understanding of what a hand holding the stone is capable of doing. I wouldn’t need to call for a forensic analysis of the stone nor would the absence of traces of skin and bone on it convince me that the stone wasn’t a weapon.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
It’s not a fantasy, not sad, or even little. It’s a strong INFERENCE that Australopithecus used hand held weapons to make them dangerous to attack. You used that word “fantasy” 16 times in your post.

Changing the word "fantasy" to "inference" doesn't make your argument any stronger JayJay. Whichever word you use, you're still making stuff up in an evidence free environment.

The short blunt canines of Australopithecus IS evidence. It’s very striking evidence that unlike other higher primates, Australopithecus was not a formidable biter.

JayJay wrote:

The short blunt canines of Australopithecus IS evidence. It’s very striking evidence that unlike other higher primates, Australopithecus was not a formidable biter.

Oldskeptic wrote:
The short blunt canines of A. afarensis is evidence that they, their cousin species, their descendents, and ancestors going back to the chimpanzee homo split didn't smell or taste good. There was no need for sharp and tall canines, or tree climbing, or pointy sticks. Large predators simply avoided eating them because their smell was unappetizing and their flesh was unpalatable to all but the most desperate large predators.

Oldskeptic wrote:

JayJay wrote:

The short blunt canines of Australopithecus IS evidence. It’s very striking evidence that unlike other higher primates, Australopithecus was not a formidable biter.

The short blunt canines of A. afarensis is evidence that they, their cousin species, their descendents, and ancestors going back to the chimpanzee homo split didn't smell or taste good. There was no need for sharp and tall canines, or tree climbing, or pointy sticks. Large predators simply avoided eating them because their smell was unappetizing and their flesh was unpalatable to all but the most desperate large predators.