Jayjay4547 wrote:

zoon wrote:
The species Ardipithecus ramidus lived about 4.4 million years ago, before Australopithecus afarensis. It had an upright stance, but unlike australopithecines, its big toe was still grasping. Ardipithecus ramidus was better adapted to climbing trees than australopithecines, and, like them, lived in open woodland, as described in a 2015 article by Prof Tim White and others here:

Scenarios about hominids arising in open savanna environments go back to Lamarck in 1809 (15). It was widely expected that pre-Australopithecus hominids would continue to be found associated with open African habitats. However, the uniquely high-resolution set of diverse contextual data surrounding the Ar. ramidus remains indicate that Ardipithecus preferred wooded habitats that were neither a closed tropical forest nor open grassland savanna.

The hands of Ardipithecus ramidus had a shorter thumb than more recent hominins, so it probably did not have a strong precision grip, as described in a different 2015 article here:

Fossil hominins fall within the modern human range, but Ar. ramidus exhibits a shorter thumb (within the gorilla-hylobatid range), implying limits to its precision grasping capabilities.

The teeth of Ardipithecus ramidus are much reduced by comparison with, for example, chimpanzees, as illustrated in Tim White’s 2015 article , section 16, linked here.

Is it your view that Ardipithecus ramidus must have used sharpened sticks to ward off leopards (or whichever predators were climbing trees at the time)?

Yes. In this passage White attribes the “feminization” of Ardri canines to “social behavior”:
Ar. ramidus shows dramatic male canine height reduction but no obvious signs of masticatory enhancement. It is therefore far more likely that reduction of male canine size and height, especially of the upper canine, signals a fundamental change in social behavior. Moreover, bipedality and male canine feminization appear to have been evolutionarily coupled.

I’m arguing that small canines would have made a troop vulnerable to predation and restricted access to resources during the day, unless that function was provided by using hand weapons. And that White is following a convention started by Darwin, of telling a human origin story where there are no other players than the ancestors.

But he might have been right to couple male canine feminization with bipedality: in the view that Ardri, when walking, would have had to be carrying hand weapons and been adroit at handling them.

You are saying that Ardipithecus ramidus, a species which was as well adapted for tree climbing as for walking bipedally, would have been carrying sticks when on the ground; are you saying that they would also have been carrying sticks when climbing trees?

I’m also failing to see just how the stopper and stone bashing works? Using an unsharpened or minimally sharpened stick at best keeps the predator at a distance, where it can’t be reached to hit it, hopefully in a vulnerable place, with a stone?

If a group of Ardipithecus, like a group of baboons, managed to close in on a leopard without holding sticks, they would have been able to damage vulnerable parts such as eyes and ears. Even biting through, or tearing, the skin at any point leaves a wound which can become infected, leopards need to avoid any damage to their bodies. A group of Ardipithecus would have been no less dangerous than a group of female chimpanzees, which are capable of driving off a leopard, according to Boesch here (an article which has been repeatedly linked in this thread). Quoting from the article (my bolding):

Example 3. An adult female attacked by a leopard.
"On 23rd February 1989, I was following a party of 4 adult females with their infants moving within a noisy but spread out group of chimpanzees. At 9.38 hrs, a chimpanzee, about 50 m away, made loud frightened calls. Instantly, 3 of the 4 mothers rushed barking aggressively towards the calls. Just before arriving, I heard them making loud mobbing calls suggesting that the rescuers were chasing a predator away. I arrived some 30 seconds later just in time to sec 5 of the 6 adult males of the community arriving and without hesitation rushing westwards, the direction the females, now in the trees, were facing. Ella, one of the dominant females, had her face, chest and legs covered in blood, and had 19 wounds visible on her body, but none looked serious. I presume that, when she was attacked, she was out of sight of others with her 5-year old son, who was now sitting unharmed nearby. ...... The leopard footprints found near the site clearly showed that it had been coming from the west towards the noisy chimpanzees”
In this case, I had the strong impression that the leopard must have directed his attack at Ella's 5-year old son and not against the adult female. Ella most certainly saved his life by facing the leopard before it could reach him.

If 4 female chimps can drive off a leopard, why should this be beyond a dozen Ardipithecus ramidus?

It does seem to me that the increased sociality which Tim White and other researchers give as the reason for reduced canines, could have been selected for as an anti-predation strategy? I don’t know what Spearthrower would say there, whether it was more likely to have been anti-predation or competition with other groups of the same species? All your posts about baboons being a match for leopards stress the fact that the baboons had numerical strength on their side, and needed it? If atheists are saying that early ancestors of humans became more social at least in part because this enabled them to discourage predators, then the atheists are not ignoring the effect of predation.

zoon wrote:If atheists are saying that early ancestors of humans became more social at least in part because this enabled them to discourage predators, then the atheists are not ignoring the effect of predation.

The way to tell this story (because that is all it is at this level) is that ancestral primates became more social, this led to more effective repulsion of predators, and therefore, enhanced fitness. "Because" is the wrong word to use, there. You have nearly as much tendency to fruit-looping teleology that JJ exhibits not least because the cause-and-effect formalism may be out of place, here. Sociality might simply have enhanced survival of the offspring of the earlier generation. The fact that you don't invoke god is irrelevant, here, because you so entirely fuck up precedent and antecedent.

Well Fallible, I think, why didn’t YOU watch the video and say, whether “the chimps mauled his face, nearly ripped off his ear and mangled his hands” involved a chimp biting the man. Instead of a direct response you made a play on the word “maul”

Umm... again, no. It's you who's making a play on the word 'maul - in fact, you're attempting to found an entire suite of assertions based on that word-play.

Given what is presented by you and other frequent posters here, I do sometimes worry about my sanity.

Join the club.

What if I see a video and interpret it as showing a man being bitten by a chimp,...

Even the sentence you're building contains contradictions.

See
Video
Interpret

If the VIDEO is of a chimp biting a man then you'd necessarily SEE it in a VIDEO - there's no need for some contorted hermeneutic contextual analysis: if the video is meant to exhibit X event and the event is not seen on the video, then the video does not provide any support for claims that X event occurred.

That you need to 'interpret' something to accord with your presuppositions is precisely the point I've made to you many times, and other people have also pointed out to you.

That's why we have the Questioning JJ's Sanity Club which you are more than welcome to join. There's no membership fee, just an obligation to pour the tea.

... and Spearthrower thinks that is ludicrous and that anyone else would agree

No one else has agreed.

What I think is ludicrous is the thing that I said is ludicrous, not your rendition of what I am supposed to have said.

What I think is ludicrous is that something you can't actually see happen in the video you declare to have happened in the video because you presuppose it. If you're just going to go on declarations regardless of observation - what exactly is the point of showing the video? The video doesn't show the very thing you cited the video to offer material support for.

It's very hard to explain this in terms other than delusion.

well, am I being crazy?

Yes. Yes, you really are - and I mean that entirely genuinely. If you really think that not seeing X in a video means you're right that X occurs in the video, then I do think it's time to ask a friend or trusted source to consider whether you need some emotional support.

I think chimps are dangerous biters, that is projected as crazy here.

No, it's dismissed as irrelevant and banal. Biting is 'dangerous' with respect to damage to flesh because teeth or other hard mouth parts are typically well suited to rending flesh.

What makes chimpanzees dangerous - regardless of biteyness - is the chimpanzee in toto. It's a very strong, emotionally charged animal that has the capacity to inflict significant harm on animals smaller than it, and on weak or ill-prepared humans. Where you go whack-a-doodle is thinking that the chimpanzee's capacity to inflict harm makes it suddenly a significant threat to a predator which routinely hunts it.

And of course, the other problem is that it's all just a babushka of a babushka of a babushka - on and on and on - an endless series of nested arguments wherein you never admit error. In fact, your babushkas are erected specifically to evade admitting error.

But I notice that adult chimps aren’t allowed to walk around freely.

And yet they do walk around freely, so you've 'noticed' nothing.

Alternatively, there's the banal sense implying that chimpanzees are not permitted to walk around freely in, say, cities on the other side of the world. But at the same time, by making such a claim you're necessarily avoiding acknowledging that the vast majority of animals are 'not permitted' to walk around freely in cities, and this doesn't mean the reason is necessarily because those animals are a potential bitey danger to humans - they're also at risk of injury, they may wander into roads and cause crashes, they may dig in dustbins and foul the streets etc.

The only animals which are freely allowed to walk around in cities are either a) too small and numerous to be able to manage b) incapable of being stopped like birds or c) a narrow selection of domesticated animals, such as cats and dogs.

Problematically for the non-banal, non-sequitur aspect of your argument, both cats and dogs are very much capable of being bitey - dogs in particular pose a serious risk in the bitey department and frequently cause harm and even death to humans every year.

Thus we knock down another babushka in full knowledge that more are certain to be erected.

Considering the odds here, I do put up a reasonable fight...

1) That you see it as a 'fight' is indicative of why you keep trying to win not realizing that you're losing every time you do so because 'win' must-needs mean 'be aligned with what's manifestly true'.

2) You're not doing well at all. Perhaps, to extend your metaphor, you're punch-drunk? In fact, I would go so far as to say that you are single-handedly acting as a panacea against all things Creationism on this forum. Even people who have never once engaged with you have happened past and noted how devoid of reason your arguments have become and wondered why anyone even bothers with you.

So many times I've actually offered you ways out. I've suggested you should engage in other subfora here so that you stop having such blinkered vision, get to know people more, expand your horizons a little. You sneered. I've offered to help you understand anatomical jargon you're clearly under-equipped to deal with. You sneered. I've given you opportunities to retreat with some dignity by allowing you to walk through an example which would help you see a point rather than knee-jerk dismissing it. You sneered.

Even when you were raving about how you would leave if you were shown wrong (a remarkably ironic angle for you to take), I told you more than once that I don't actually want you to leave. I actually said that what I wanted you to do is stop playing silly-buggers. You, of course, always interpret these things in your ideologically hostile way where it's you versus us - it's like you never learned to play nice. It really is a case of you making your bed, JJ. You can blame everyone else until you're blue in the face, but you don't just choose to be here, you also choose the manner of your engagement on this forum and double-down on it nearly every post. You must like this kind of engagement, it must be what you're here for, or you must be 'crazy' because you're the only one ensuring that it never changes.

Maybe I should have responded to that. Maybe I shouldn’t come here if I don’t, but partly I’m just holding on in the hope that someone with the quality of zoon (and there are several others who drop by), will take up issues.

You keep doing this praise of Zoon, but of course everyone following this thread noticed how snarky you were to her before.

Really, the point is that you have a faint glimmer of hope that Zoon is someone you can convince. That's why the praise.

But isn't that rather tragic - and also something that's already been noted - that you seek out confirmation and dismiss anything that's contradictory? It means you're in a protective bubble, a Morton's Demon. You can't find truth that way, JJ. You can find beauty, honesty, or anything real or worthwhile behaving like that. You're not a child anymore, stop thinking like one.

In every field I work in, tyres need to be kicked and kicked hard. You have to learn not to be precious about your ideas. First rule of creative development, for example, is "Kill Your Darlings". They're called 'darlings' because they're precious to you, they're something you want to hold onto and squee with... but if they don't work, then they're hampering your ability to move forward. Set them aside, move on, grow: evolve.

More importantly, I am excited by continuing to understand more about the influence of atheist ideology on human origin stories.

Well, you're not 'continuing' to understand anything. You're failing to understand because you're operating on a faulty premise which has offered you no utility at all. In fact, it's caused you endless problems. You are still, many years later, unable to even show that the premise is valid, let alone have managed to develop it and show what use it has towards understanding.

You WANT desperately for there to be an 'ideology' because it's just typical Creationism: atheism is a religion, evolution is faith, science is an ideology... it's actually a tacit admission of the frailty of your own position that you attempt to weaken what you perceive as your opposition by comparing it to your own position. It's really just classic projection.

Zoon wrote:If 4 female chimps can drive off a leopard, why should this be beyond a dozen Ardipithecus ramidus?

And if female baboons and juveniles can take part in driving off a leopard, yet need neither impressive canines nor hand-held weapons... then so much for that idea.

It does seem to me that the increased sociality which Tim White and other researchers give as the reason for reduced canines, could have been selected for as an anti-predation strategy?

Let's be clear here: it's a relaxed selection pressure on canines that previously were selected for due to agonistic social dynamics. If males fight for access to females, then just defeating the opponent is half the battle as they also need to live long enough to enjoy the fruits of the labour and consequently pass those contest-winning genes onto the future generations, i.e. when traits potentially become adaptive. Winning against a competitor of the same species often involves contest against an individual with very similar capabilities (nothing remotely comparable to contest against a predator intent on eating you). It would be a bit absurd in the majority of contexts if most such contests resulted in all the males participating taking mortal wounds or succumbing to infection. As such, complex specie-dependent ritual behaviors have evolved. Bears will stand on their hind legs, gorillas will make a cacophony, great whites will swim alongside each other apparently comparing length and girth as it were, and baboons - particularly those carefully selected chacma baboons - will, among other behaviors, wrench back their lips in a truly weird fashion to flash their "impressive canines".

Each of these represents intra-specific communication, a way to communicate advantage without coming to blows. It's better for the guy who already has the girls to not win a Pyrric victory, and it's better for the interloper to live to try again another day. Even then, the contest may escalate to mortal combat if the antagonist is particularly enthusiastic, or if there's little variation to be detected between their capacity to signal their capabilities. All of this represents a clear selection pressure. Whatever the evolutionary suite of anatomical and behavioral adaptations the species has inherited, they represent their window of opportunity to pass those same contest-winning genes onto the next generation.

But of course, shit changes. If things didn't change, we'd all be single-celled proto-organisms without a care in the world, just ignorantly budding off copies of ourselves. Complexity ratchets up through interaction, and sexual selection is all about that ratcheting effect of interactions. So what happens when a behavior evolves which means that coalitions tend to form whenever there's violence, and individual prowess is no longer a path to genetic victory? Or if pair-bonding becomes common-place and consequently there's much relaxed contest for 'resources' in terms of mates? Then whatever traits that were previously adaptations for those agonistic interactions cease being selected for - or at least, that particular pressure on them is relaxed; perhaps they may still be co-opted for some other behavior and be retained, or perhaps they'll be retooled by other pressures towards some other adaptation. But one of the 'laws' of evolution is that you lose what you don't use, because otherwise you're paying the cost without getting rewarded for it - well, not 'you' but the statistical aggregation of genes in the next generation is not preferentially skewed towards that prior adaptation - individuals which don't bear that cost may 'invest' it elsewhere and consequently benefit in fitness terms.

So I wouldn't say that increased sociality was an anti-predation strategy; although that doesn't mean that such a benefit did not occur as a result of increased sociality, but as with topics we discussed previously; any benefit that accrued happened as a consequence, not a cause. But an increase in sociality can confer benefits independently, but cannot confer this specific benefit until after it has already occurred and thus can't be considered supervened on predator avoidance. It's a fortuitous outcome that may end up being leveraged by selection, or intelligence, or culture as in our case.

I don’t know what Spearthrower would say there, whether it was more likely to have been anti-predation or competition with other groups of the same species?

The latter is a good point, and it's a level of complexity to the discussion I haven't even bothered to introduce yet when we're still 'struggling' with much simpler modeling. Inter-group conflict between the same species. That's actually quite interesting when talking about primates, and presumably given our history, it's something that may well be considered to be an ancestral driver of our own evolution.

All your posts about baboons being a match for leopards stress the fact that the baboons had numerical strength on their side, and needed it?

It really is rather glaring, isn't it?

JJ's goalposts have moved considerably from when mobbing was first introduced into this thread and summarily dismissed, but even he's apparently willing to acknowledge it exists without actually admitting any error or addressing the ramifications thereof.

If atheists are saying that early ancestors of humans became more social at least in part because this enabled them to discourage predators, then the atheists are not ignoring the effect of predation.

If atheists are saying X about evolution, I still want to know on what observation they're basing that idea because, as far as I am concerned, there's little reason at all to conceive of a genetic fallacy to be a valid operational consideration.

One thing not yet mentioned is that long canines have a real downside. Tooth infections are nothing to sneeze at and if left alone can easily cascade and move to the nasal cavity and the brain.

https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/ ... ss-in-dogs

felltoearth wrote:One thing not yet mentioned is that long canines have a real downside.

It's unfortunately a common Creationist trope to see traits as being win-win situations ala Pokemon. No sense of the cost of bearing a given trait is ever recognized.

Cito di Pense wrote:

zoon wrote:If atheists are saying that early ancestors of humans became more social at least in part because this enabled them to discourage predators, then the atheists are not ignoring the effect of predation.

The way to tell this story (because that is all it is at this level) is that ancestral primates became more social, this led to more effective repulsion of predators, and therefore, enhanced fitness. "Because" is the wrong word to use, there. You have nearly as much tendency to fruit-looping teleology that JJ exhibits not least because the cause-and-effect formalism may be out of place, here. Sociality might simply have enhanced survival of the offspring of the earlier generation. The fact that you don't invoke god is irrelevant, here, because you so entirely fuck up precedent and antecedent.

“More effective repulsion of predators, and therefore, enhanced fitness” looks like cause and effect to me, in somewhat obfuscated language. Again, when you say: "Sociality might simply have enhanced survival of the offspring of the earlier generation", you seem to be saying that the sociality on its own caused the enhanced survival?

You are conflating teleology with causality. Teleology is about purpose, forethought, design, pre-planning. Causality is about one event causing another, without any need for teleology. For example, if someone says a fire happened because of a lightning flash, they are not saying that Thor or Jehovah or any other spirit pre-planned the lightning or the fire.

Yes, in evolution by natural selection, the individual mutations are indeed effectively random, but each mutation only happens in a single individual. If a mutation leads to a significant change in the phenotype, then the subsequent selection which leads that mutation to spread and eventually become fixed in the population is not random, and is not acausal.

To say that evolution by natural selection does not involve cause and effect just because the initial mutations which are selected are effectively random, is as mistaken as to say that evolution is pre-planned and guided by a creator. To be pressured by creationists into using language which is unclear, or incorrect in the opposite direction, isn’t much improvement.

As Spearthrower has just pointed out (in post #4666 above), it’s unlikely that the selection pressure which led to increased sociality in hominins was anything to do with predation, so my guess wasn’t a good one. He has also pointed out that it’s all too easy to assume that a possible selection pressure is the one that was actually operating, and more caution is in order than I was exhibiting. But to suggest that a significant change, over millions of years, in the social behaviour of an entire population may have been uncaused, or the result only of genetic drift, seems unlikely to me; Spearthrower has suggested a number of possible alternative selection pressures.

zoon wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

zoon wrote:If atheists are saying that early ancestors of humans became more social at least in part because this enabled them to discourage predators, then the atheists are not ignoring the effect of predation.

The way to tell this story (because that is all it is at this level) is that ancestral primates became more social, this led to more effective repulsion of predators, and therefore, enhanced fitness. "Because" is the wrong word to use, there. You have nearly as much tendency to fruit-looping teleology that JJ exhibits not least because the cause-and-effect formalism may be out of place, here. Sociality might simply have enhanced survival of the offspring of the earlier generation. The fact that you don't invoke god is irrelevant, here, because you so entirely fuck up precedent and antecedent.

“More effective repulsion of predators, and therefore, enhanced fitness” looks like cause and effect to me, in somewhat obfuscated language. Again, when you say: "Sociality might simply have enhanced survival of the offspring of the earlier generation", you seem to be saying that the sociality on its own caused the enhanced survival?

How do I seem to be saying that? I carefully avoid injecting causality into discussions where we're not in a position to establish such relationships. Otherwise, we're engaging in philosophy.

Had you said, "early ancestors of humans became better able to resist predation because they became more social", would you not have been saying something different, without necessarily injecting causality? It's just speculation. Yes, Spearthrower is pointing out that it's a stretch to suggest sociality is a response to some unspecified selection pressure.

But to suggest that a significant change, over millions of years, in the social behaviour of an entire population may have been uncaused

Language like this is careless, if not something worse, It may be acceptable discourse in some academic communities as long as certain conditions are applied; you'd have to ask a professional. When you cannot identify causes, you needn't reference them, unless you make it clear you'd rather be engaging in philosophy. Observation of "a significant change over millions of years" shouldn't tempt you to cite causes, as if you had physics envy.

Sociality is an advantage in some environments occupied by specified populations. The situation changes, and it can become a liability. I think that's what JJ wants to say, but hasn't the focus to attempt it.

JJ; I've just read 'The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being', by Professor Alice Roberts, and she discusses a hypothesis almost exactly the same as yours while she (an atheist) is discussing the evolution of human hands, arms and shoulders.

Perhaps you should go and read it, along with some more modern books.

There is no 'atheist ideology' holding back your hypothesis, just a lack of evidence.

fluttermoth wrote:JJ; I've just read 'The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being', by Professor Alice Roberts, and she discusses a hypothesis almost exactly the same as yours while she (an atheist) is discussing the evolution of human hands, arms and shoulders.

Perhaps you should go and read it, along with some more modern books.

There is no 'atheist ideology' holding back your hypothesis, just a lack of evidence.

Thanks for that, I read a Guardian review of that book and ordered a copy. If Roberts discusses (favourably I suppose) the "hypothesis" I get such flak for here, then why am I getting such flak? Anyway it's less a hypothesis than an obvious inference drawn from what has been known for nearly a century about the body plan of our primitive ancestors and the distinctive abilities of us their modern descendants.

Lack of evidence my eye.

There's nothing to stop an atheist from seeing the role that a distinctive habit of our ancestors played in enabling human speech and co-evolution with objects. But it sure has slowed that appreciation and that is material for science-history, assuming that Roberts' "hypothesis" does in fact become established.

I don't think that it's coincidene that the last two books I have bought were both by women (Dorothy Cheney "in the mail").According to Google: In Greek mythology, Gaea (or Gaia), the primordial earth or mother goddess was one of the deities who governed the universe before the Titans existed". If "natural" hierarchy is a vital part of human origins then we may have an intuitive understanding that "Nature" s female: the birther.

Jesus...

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Thanks for that, I read a Guardian review of that book and ordered a copy. If Roberts discusses (favourably I suppose) the "hypothesis" I get such flak for here, then why am I getting such flak?

Oh wow... this post is just absolutely perfect. I need to index this page to recall it for future posterity!

It's like a testament to Morton's Demon.

So about that desperately grasping at confirmation and outright ignoring everything which doesn't conform to your beliefs: you haven't even read the book, you don't know what it contains, and you can't even know which 'hypothesis' Fluttermoth was referring to, but still you perceive yourself to be have been triumphantly vindicated regardless!

Jayjay4547 wrote:Anyway it's less a hypothesis than an obvious inference drawn from what has been known for nearly a century about the body plan of our primitive ancestors and the distinctive abilities of us their modern descendants.

Inference formation in science is how the process of science commences, not the end point, and certainly not the hypothesis itself. Therein rather lies the problem... the evidence and observation verification part of the process; that's the bit where you're struggling and will continue to struggle as you appear unable even to acknowledge that this step is obligatory. Historically, 'obvious inferences' tend to be shown to be at least incomplete when actually studied because 'obvious inferences' are things which were previously taken as fact without being scrutinized.

You are, once again, showing how readily this is the case with scientifically illiterate people. You've been educated about 'body plan', yet you're still repeating the same mistake. It's not an 'elementary mistake' as that supposes there's some degree of skill there being misapplied... this is just outright nonsense.

Likewise, the 'distinctive abilities' of modern H sapiens are also 'distinct' from our ancient ancestors - a fact you've worked hard to wave away with your reinterpretation of afarensis anatomy without actually talking about afarensis anatomy.

The same continues below after your next amusing nonsensical interjection.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Lack of evidence my eye.

Evidence of...?

Because the only 'evidence' insofar as you actually know right now is that there's a book written by Alice Roberts. I have a feeling you're going to find reading it far less comforting than you imagine!

Worse, it's essentially a tacit admission that you'd not yet managed to find or provide any evidence for your position, so that's why you're grateful to latch onto this as a legitimate source... even while not knowing what it actually contains!

There's nothing to stop an atheist from seeing the role that a distinctive habit of our ancestors played in enabling human speech and co-evolution with objects. But it sure has slowed that appreciation and that is material for science-history, assuming that Roberts' "hypothesis" does in fact become established.

The 'distinctive habit' of our ancestors with regards to 'speech' is.... what? Your argument is 'bipedalism'. Are you currently sitting there in your armchair thinking that Roberts' book vindicates this non-sequitur?

So about ostriches speaking.

And yes, wrong again about 'co-evolution' as you've already been educated. When you refuse to learn, you will only remain wrong.

You're once again counting chickens without even having any eggs. Show me data on how this alleged atheist refusal to see X has 'slowed' scientific progress. What data set are you comparing it to? An alternative universe you imagined into existence? You've not actually identified any failings in the progress of evolutionary biology - you wave your hand at the claim every now and then, but that's certainly not clear to anyone honestly witnessing the dramatic advance in biological knowledge over the last 100 odd years.

Roberts' book doesn't actually contain a 'hypothesis' in any regular sense of the word aside from when she refers to various hypotheses in embryology, evo-devo, and anatomy - the book really isn't a polemic of a particular argument that is 'not established' and preparing to overturn the scientific world in favour of something similar to anything you've written - quite the contrary, she's explaining to a lay audience what evolutionary biology has discovered over the last several decades to show our current scientific understanding, only towards the end does this really pertain strictly to modern humans. If there's any polemical component to the book it is... to a beautifully ironic degree given how excitedly you've committed to this... about how fucking batshit modern Creationism is!

Jayjay4547 wrote:I don't think that it's coincidene that the last two books I have bought were both by women (Dorothy Cheney "in the mail").

And I don't think that you really know what the word 'coincidence' means.

Jayjay4547 wrote:According to Google: In Greek mythology, Gaea (or Gaia), the primordial earth or mother goddess was one of the deities who governed the universe before the Titans existed". If "natural" hierarchy is a vital part of human origins then we may have an intuitive understanding that "Nature" s female: the birther.

You mean, according to https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/goddesses/gaea/ - Google didn't write it.

Mythology, of course, being a word that necessarily implies that the stories are pre-modern, ethnoreligious, and not objectively true.


Anyway, this was a beautiful exemplification once again providing an object example of exactly what I've been saying about how you arrive at your beliefs, how you protect those from scrutiny, how you bias yourself towards validation, and how you're permanently unwilling to countenance anything contradictory.

What's actually disturbing about how blindly you're led down these paths, though, so that your treatment of people changes when you believe they're providing support to you. Snotty and rude to fluttermoth before, now you're ever so grateful because you believe she's tossed you a lifebuoy. You're being led around by the nose by your own manufactured beliefs! I'm torn between amusement - because you really are not a pleasant chap and consequently there's a form of justice in watching you make a plonker out of yourself in public... and depression that people like yourself can get lost in such uninspected lives.

Fenrir wrote:More burnt straw in a white whine jus.

Get over yourself JJ

There is a BOOK!

HALLELUJAH!

A BOOK EXISTS!

Therefore I am absolutely vindicated in everything EVAR!


I wonder if we all just pat him on the head and tell him what a good boy he's been, and how jolly clever he is... whether that will be enough for him to finally not need to prove something here with respect to his sense of self-worth, and he can trundle off and do something more useful with his remaining years?

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/anthr ... l#p2721873

Spearthrower wrote:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1731-0

Many ideas have been proposed to explain the origin of bipedalism in hominins and suspension in great apes (hominids); however, fossil evidence has been lacking. It has been suggested that bipedalism in hominins evolved from an ancestor that was a palmigrade quadruped (which would have moved similarly to living monkeys), or from a more suspensory quadruped (most similar to extant chimpanzees)1. Here we describe the fossil ape Danuvius guggenmosi (from the Allgäu region of Bavaria) for which complete limb bones are preserved, which provides evidence of a newly identified form of positional behaviour—extended limb clambering. The 11.62-million-year-old Danuvius is a great ape that is dentally most similar to Dryopithecus and other European late Miocene apes. With a broad thorax, long lumbar spine and extended hips and knees, as in bipeds, and elongated and fully extended forelimbs, as in all apes (hominoids), Danuvius combines the adaptations of bipeds and suspensory apes, and provides a model for the common ancestor of great apes and humans.

A further iteration supporting the idea that bipedalism, or preadaptations of bipedalism, predate the divergence of the human lineage from the other great apes.

This chap would have been living at approximately the time when the orangutan lineage evolved, and not long before the ancestor of gorillas.

Our common ancestor already had a more bipedal posture, using the reach of longer limbs and upright position to manoeuvre around in the trees. Bipedalism in our lineage evolved as an adaptation for arboreal not terrestrial locomotion.

D'oh!

And I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for you atheists!!!!

zoon wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

zoon wrote:
The species Ardipithecus ramidus lived about 4.4 million years ago, before Australopithecus afarensis. It had an upright stance, but unlike australopithecines, its big toe was still grasping. Ardipithecus ramidus was better adapted to climbing trees than australopithecines, and, like them, lived in open woodland, as described in a 2015 article by Prof Tim White and others here:

Scenarios about hominids arising in open savanna environments go back to Lamarck in 1809 (15). It was widely expected that pre-Australopithecus hominids would continue to be found associated with open African habitats. However, the uniquely high-resolution set of diverse contextual data surrounding the Ar. ramidus remains indicate that Ardipithecus preferred wooded habitats that were neither a closed tropical forest nor open grassland savanna.

The hands of Ardipithecus ramidus had a shorter thumb than more recent hominins, so it probably did not have a strong precision grip, as described in a different 2015 article here:

Fossil hominins fall within the modern human range, but Ar. ramidus exhibits a shorter thumb (within the gorilla-hylobatid range), implying limits to its precision grasping capabilities.

The teeth of Ardipithecus ramidus are much reduced by comparison with, for example, chimpanzees, as illustrated in Tim White’s 2015 article , section 16, linked here.

Is it your view that Ardipithecus ramidus must have used sharpened sticks to ward off leopards (or whichever predators were climbing trees at the time)?

Yes. In this passage White attributes the “feminization” of Ardri canines to “social behavior”:
Ar. ramidus shows dramatic male canine height reduction but no obvious signs of masticatory enhancement. It is therefore far more likely that reduction of male canine size and height, especially of the upper canine, signals a fundamental change in social behavior. Moreover, bipedality and male canine feminization appear to have been evolutionarily coupled.

I’m arguing that small canines would have made a troop vulnerable to predation and restricted access to resources during the day, unless that function was provided by using hand weapons. And that White is following a convention started by Darwin, of telling a human origin story where there are no other players than the ancestors.

But he might have been right to couple male canine feminization with bipedality: in the view that Ardri, when walking, would have had to be carrying hand weapons and been adroit at handling them.

You are saying that Ardipithecus ramidus, a species which was as well adapted for tree climbing as for walking bipedally, would have been carrying sticks when on the ground; are you saying that they would also have been carrying sticks when climbing trees?

I emphatically agree with you that our ancestors would not have carried sticks or stones into trees. Except, just possibly, up onto platform-like nests for night defence against climbing predators.

zoon wrote: I’m also failing to see just how the stopper and stone bashing works? Using an unsharpened or minimally sharpened stick at best keeps the predator at a distance, where it can’t be reached to hit it, hopefully in a vulnerable place, with a stone?

Your assumption of an “unsharpened or minimally sharpened stick” reminds me of a slide in the PBS video “When humans were hunted” where hominins pick up twisted branches that happen to be lying around. But I found that as an inexperienced worker, using a stone like an Oldowan hand axe, I cut a minimally sharpened stick out of a thicket, in half an hour. That’s as long one chimp might groom another? Hominins had strong motivation to make hand weapons as effective as they could and quite possibly, to pass weapons down several generations. Even if it was extremely difficult for them to make such tools. Like I said, a swallow can build a nest out of mud, even though it’s darn difficult and expensive for the bird.

The danger a pointed stick holds for the predator might include that in a charge, its own momentum might be enough to impale it. For that reason, a lion might hesitate to tackle a gemsbok head on. But beyond that, a predator that has lost its initiative that way and is necessarily involved with a stick, might be vulnerable to being smashed on the head with a stone. Or a knob kerrie- but there I feel I’m on shaky ground, because a kerrie is much more difficult to make, being cut from a fork in a relatively thick branch.

zoon wrote: If a group of Ardipithecus, like a group of baboons, managed to close in on a leopard without holding sticks, they would have been able to damage vulnerable parts such as eyes and ears. Even biting through, or tearing, the skin at any point leaves a wound which can become infected, leopards need to avoid any damage to their bodies.

I’ve heard that about avoiding any damage, but is it true? Felids play rough sports and they don’t live long in the wild anyway.(leopard 12-15 years, lion 15 years, cheetah 10-12 years according to Google): about half their lifespan in captivity.

In Cheney and Seyfarth’s accounts, baboons did surround a leopard in the day but they only closed when it had involved itself with a man and after that it escaped. There is ambivalent information on how easy it is to hurt a leopard. Cheney and Seyfarth again, cite a dead leopard being found alongside two dead male baboons. On the other hand in the blog I quoted earlier, a mob of baboons mobbed and then worked over a leopard for over two hours while it “almost shammed” death, then it got up and walked off with its kill.

With their relatively small canines and gape, a group of Ardipithecus would have been as ineffective against a leopard as a group of modern humans (except for our easily torn skins which they might not have had). I just don’t see it. If the hominins, ancient of modern, had sticks it would be another matter.

zoon wrote: A group of Ardipithecus would have been no less dangerous than a group of female chimpanzees, which are capable of driving off a leopard, according to Boesch here (an article which has been repeatedly linked in this thread). Quoting from the article (my bolding):

Example 3. An adult female attacked by a leopard.
"On 23rd February 1989, I was following a party of 4 adult females with their infants moving within a noisy but spread out group of chimpanzees. At 9.38 hrs, a chimpanzee, about 50 m away, made loud frightened calls. Instantly, 3 of the 4 mothers rushed barking aggressively towards the calls. Just before arriving, I heard them making loud mobbing calls suggesting that the rescuers were chasing a predator away. I arrived some 30 seconds later just in time to sec 5 of the 6 adult males of the community arriving and without hesitation rushing westwards, the direction the females, now in the trees, were facing. Ella, one of the dominant females, had her face, chest and legs covered in blood, and had 19 wounds visible on her body, but none looked serious. I presume that, when she was attacked, she was out of sight of others with her 5-year old son, who was now sitting unharmed nearby. ...... The leopard footprints found near the site clearly showed that it had been coming from the west towards the noisy chimpanzees”
In this case, I had the strong impression that the leopard must have directed his attack at Ella's 5-year old son and not against the adult female. Ella most certainly saved his life by facing the leopard before it could reach him.

If 4 female chimps can drive off a leopard, why should this be beyond a dozen Ardipithecus ramidus?

So much that can be taken from that marvellous account. I notice that of the females, only the mother was hurt, so the others apparently didn’t close with the predator. I see them taking a “stopper” role, and the leopard running away because it had lost the initiative and knew that the enraged strikers would arrive soon, with their teeth.

zoon wrote: It does seem to me that the increased sociality which Tim White and other researchers give as the reason for reduced canines, could have been selected for as an anti-predation strategy? I don’t know what Spearthrower would say there, whether it was more likely to have been anti-predation or competition with other groups of the same species? All your posts about baboons being a match for leopards stress the fact that the baboons had numerical strength on their side, and needed it? If atheists are saying that early ancestors of humans became more social at least in part because this enabled them to discourage predators, then the atheists are not ignoring the effect of predation.

Firstly, I’m uncomfortable with the notion of “atheists” ignoring or not ignoring something. There is a practically universal acceptance among secularists, atheists and even the minority of Western scientists who are theistic of a human origin story that I argue, has been messed up by atheist ideology.

White et al.(2005) argue: ”Moreover, bipedality and male canine feminization appear to have been evolutionarily coupled. Just as its hands, feet, and pelvis indicate a unique locomotor behavior and ecological role for Ar. ramidus, so too do its face and teeth suggest that stem hominid social behavior was novel...

This novel social behaviour is something different from the general primate correlation between canine size dimorphism and fighting between males. So, I think they mean that Ardri males didn’t fight each other the way baboon males for example, do. That is sexual selection.

But in terms of natural selection, the male canines have a role in predator avoidance. It’s strange that the obvious linkage doesn’t seem to be discussed: what we might call the Top Gun effect: during the Vietnam War the US military learned that pilots who were trained in dog fights against opposing instructors performed much better in real combat. The analgy is that when those hooligan male baboons come up against a leopard they already know how to handle themselves against an enemy.

White et al. also don’t discuss the possibility that the teeth show shat Ardri didn’t bite its predators.

I think my posts on baboons have stressed the massive canines of the males as much as their numbers. The adaptive pressure is surely to reduce the number of baboons that can stop a leopard from predating on a troop because that goes to the troop’s robustness.

But I found that as an inexperienced worker, using a stone like an Oldowan hand axe, I cut a minimally sharpened stick out of a thicket, in half an hour.

Did you quickly grow an A. afarensis hand, wrist, and brain too?

No?

Oh well, so much for your foray into experimentation then.

The danger a pointed stick holds for the predator might include that in a charge, its own momentum might be enough to impale it.

Again, you don't need to be a biologist or even have any clue about biology to comprehend the component you've not considered.

The force of the charging predator has to be at least matched by wielder of the spear in order for the charge's momentum to drive that spear through the charging body.

If you just spent a tiny fraction of the time considering flaws in your ideas instead of trying always to confirm them, you wouldn't keep making such elementary errors.