Why do you come here if you have nothing to offer but blind assertions, lies and general dishonesty?

Jayjay4547 wrote:To say it yet again it’s because ‘ancestors interacting with other ancestors’ was preferred over ‘ancestors interacting with their predators’. Because then the only character in the play were our own species, we did it ourselves.

You can say it as much as you like, it is not remotely true. Basing your arguments on things which are not remotely factual, tends to produce dodgy arguments.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I put in caps the text Darwin added, to emphasise that external conditions were not involved in sexual selection.

Don't quotemine JayJay. It is naughty.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Predators aren’t “theologically special”. The truth is that RELATIONS between our ancestors and predators forced optimising adaptations on our species.

Not to the exclusion of everything else though. Which is where your argument falls down, in that you make predators MORE IMPORTANT than everything else and just ignore everything else in order to focus on your irreducibly simple theory of species survival.

Jayjay4547 wrote:There’s something in that and I’m very conscious of it. Maybe I only think as I do because I was once scared by a leopard as a child. But if so, I wasn’t the first hominin to be scared that way so it provided a valid insight into the world.

And when was the first hominin scared that way? Were Australiopiths even capable of being scared "the same way" as you were?

Jayjay4547 wrote:If people who disagreed would only talk more sense I might drop the argument.

Handwaving away perfectly rational and well evidenced arguments because, to you, they don't make enough sense. This sort of behaviour makes painfully clear why it is not possible to make any progress with you in this discussion JayJay.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Example?

Please don't pretend as if this hasn't been covered numerous times in this thread already.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Predators aren’t special, but RELATONSHIPS with predators do tend to be,

This is still you making predators out to be more SPECIAL than anything else when it comes to species survival. It won't wash.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m not a “religion inspired pseudoscientist” , I’m more inspired by the nonsense some ratskep posters say in the name of science.

You really are without shame aren't you. Dismissing the arguments of your interlocutors as "nonsense" just because you don't like the arguments and are unwilling to subject your own argument to criticism. You're simply refusing to listen to anyone and then projecting that fault onto others.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It would seem to be be a seamless fit with ideas involving food preparation, scavenging and/or hunting, nor least since all those ideas would provide extra reasons for tools to be regularly used, as well as more frequently to hand.

Just because there is a seamless fit, doesn't mean that weapon use is the driving force in hominid evolution you make it out to be.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Just because I think differently from ratskep posters on this issue of the human origin story doesn’t make me not a normal person.

You not only think differently, but you debate differently as well. Sufficiently different that no reasoned dialogue with you is possible.

Jayjay4547 wrote: In this situation there is a premium on using the tool with speed, accuracy and decision.

Indeed. And when it comes to hunting, the penalty for failing to use your tool correctly is wasted calories and an empty stomach.

In defending yourself from predators, the penalty for failure is death. So the learning curve is steep and in so far as an individual animal is concerned, not worth the risk.

Furthermore, as has already been covered at length, most of the predators australopiths would be concerned about are ambush hunters and nocturnal hunters. Situations in which a weapon would serve the australopith no good what-so-ever.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Consider also the social context, where a successful defence benefits all who might have been prey in that encounter, drawing favourable attention to the heroes and drawing their attention to the means whereby they gained that favour.

Yet more projection of contemporary hominid thoughts onto the behaviour of hominids which lived millions of years ago.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Consequentiality in excellence of weapon use also arises because to use a hand weapon implies making a choice – for example, between that and climbing a tree. You had better be at least as good at using that weapon as you are at climbing the tree.

Climbing a tree is decidedly less risky than trying to confront a Lion or Hyena with a stick. I'll take my chances with the tree anyday and australopiths were superior climbers compared to modern hominids.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Sure, canines are used by male primates to establish rank order, but dangerous weapons like that are generally used in highly formalised styles to avoid serious damage to the defeated. When boys work out who is king in the school playground they generlly use fists not knives.

As covered already. There is nothing to suggest a predator like a Leopard or Lion or Hyena is deterred by the canines of a Baboon.

Would it help if it was repeated that there are whole parts of biology studying evolution through external pressures? That internal pressure is only one part of the whole and besides Jayjay no one else seems to think it is the only thing being discussed in science? That if he had actual evidence and not just hypothesis people would take it seriously?

I bet it wont because all of that has been said before and ignored. Its hard to admit a pet idea is just that sometimes it seems. Not to mention admitting external pressures caused some change in a species has nothing to do with any claimed atheist ideology. This failed argument has spun around a drain for years now and yet it still has no connection with evidence or with explaining the claimed ideology. Personally I find it incredibly amusing.

Also the external pressures on snails have lead them to use spears. Its a strong argument. Any talk of internal selection is just your ideology making you blind to the reality.

I'd forgotten about the snails! I knew JayJay had provided something about this.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Land snail defenses against predators include cryptic coloration and texture; thickened shells and aperture barriers; defense mucus production including irritating smells and tastes; hiding behaviors, and rapid withdrawal or dislodging movements.

Shame none of this works, as snails still get eaten.

The only way they could be surviving is if they were deterring predators with spears. It is the only irreducibly simple explanation that makes sense.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Maybe you didn’t understand that I said above, which was that the historical sequence was that atheists concluded that ‘this place has no god’ and then AFTER that they developed an ideology that would make them happy as a pig in shit with that conclusion. For example, they developed an origin narrative of self-creation. So I was and are agreeing about the ‘conclusion’.

You've repeatedly failed to explain why 'ancestors attacking predators' would be a remotely philosophically-unwelcome addition to an origin story for an atheist, biologist or otherwise.

To say it yet again it’s because ‘ancestors interacting with other ancestors’ was preferred over ‘ancestors interacting with their predators’. Because then the only character in the play were our own species, we did it ourselves.

But in reality, explanations of evolution regarding 'early-advanced' tool use are about interacting with things in the environment, just not overwhelmingly with predators.

Indeed, you try and suggest that mainstream thinking is dominated by hunting-related ideas, which are not only obviously about interacting with other species, but which would also seem a great fit with your ideas - the strawman biologist who did see hunting as a dominant activity could add 'beating up predators' to their story without blinking.

It only seems to be you who is taking the view that only our ancestors' interactions with each other and with predators qualify for consideration. You haven't provided any evidence that that's how many other people (let alone other people in general) see things, so you have no basis on which to pretend that's how things are.

Jayjay4547 wrote:But like I say the story development was historically contingent. Darwin showed the way in Descent of Man, in which he devoted 2/3 of his space to sexual selection, which enabled a within-species story line.

Given that the book is The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, and the section on sexual selection is about it in general, not just in humans, you're being rather disingenuous there.

Jayjay4547 wrote:About the time he wrote Descent he also revised Origin to emphasise the within-species nature of sexual selection.

That's because that's what sexual selection is. If the selection was coming [directly] from the environment-excluding-the-species rewarding 'good' traits and penalising 'bad' ones, it wouldn't be sexual selection.

Of course, in the bigger picture, the environment is still powerful, just indirectly so as far as the particular feature is concerned.

However, since your claim is that recent and current thinking is desperately polluted by atheist ideology, maybe you whould leave Darwin to one side and give us your idea of what current biological thinking is regarding what changes happened when, why, and how important those changes were.
You obviously must be able to do that if your constant criticism of current biological thinking is well-founded, so why don't you give it a go and provide a decent summary of what leading academic biologists think and what current students are being taught?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote: Indeed, there seems every reason to believe that the kind of person you want to pretend atheist biologists are best-characterised as would find the basic idea philosophically attractive.

Be nice if you could provide even one of those “every reason”.

I already have, many times.
Such as pointing out that someone attracted to the idea of 'man (or proto-man) the mighty hunter' taking control of his environment would be expected to see belligerence against at least some would-be predators as natural.
It's hard to imagine someone attracted to the idea of their ancestors being hunters being attracted to the idea they just ran away as soon as any predator appeared, or put down their weapons and got ready to bite.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote: Clearly, your personal view that predators are somehow philosophically/theologically special is just that - personal, and not obviously an opinion shared meaningfully by atheists or other theists.

Predators aren’t “theologically special”. The truth is that RELATIONS between our ancestors and predators forced optimising adaptations on our species. Those RELATIONSHIPS were part of the web of RELATIONSHIPS in the African biomes, that constituted the toothpaste tube we were squeezed out of.

That's a poor analogy, since by extension, every species is squeezed out of the toothpaste tube, yet the toothpaste tube is itself made from those species living in the physical environment.

Also, you have argued that predators are special, as things 'greater than us', and not simply in a mundane 'they could kill us' sense, but as some sort of philosophical representatives of a 'creative' environment.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote: The difficulty with that, of course, is that your supposed logic just doesn't work.

You attempt to ignore or minimise other potential parts of an evolutionary story by dismissing them with the blanket term of 'self-creative', which you have defined to cover basically any interactions with the environment apart from those with predators.

Example?

All the times you dismiss mainstream explanations as 'self creative' even when they involve a great deal of interaction with the environment.
Indeed, it seems in your world-view as you present here, any story not 'predator-driven' is 'self-creative' and can therefore be dismissed as atheist-inspired without meaningful thought.

But for a start, why don't you try and do what I suggested above, and show everyone just what your understanding of contemporary biological thinking is, particularly what leading representative academics are saying, and what today's students are being taught about what happened when.

Sendraks wrote:I'd forgotten about the snails! I knew JayJay had provided something about this.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Land snail defenses against predators include cryptic coloration and texture; thickened shells and aperture barriers; defense mucus production including irritating smells and tastes; hiding behaviors, and rapid withdrawal or dislodging movements.

Shame none of this works, as snails still get eaten.

The only way they could be surviving is if they were deterring predators with spears. It is the only irreducibly simple explanation that makes sense.

Ahem.

DarthHelmet86 wrote:Look at all those defense tactics. They don't work very well though cause I have seen a snail being eaten by a bird.

So they must use spears. Ipso facto.

Aah, but don't snails also get eaten by French people. Their tiny spears would be no deterrent to a hungry Frenchie armed with white wine, garlic, onions and a large cooking pot. Those pesky snails must have some other survival method. Tricksy snails!

I think you will find that French people eating snails is an internal pressure and is not special. Don't let your ideology blind you even if you don't have one!

Jayjay4547 wrote:There is a difference in consequentiality between defensive weapon use and the use of the same object as a tool. Consider a chimp using a stick to dig up a tuber. It can dig a bit and then put the tool aside and use its fingers again, then go back to using the tool. And it doesn’t matter much how sharp the stick is or how effectively the chimp uses the stick. Primates don’t generally spend all their daylight time foraging anyway so time is not critical. Admittedly one can over-draw this picture of inconsequentiality but there is a clear difference when a tool is used as an antipredation weapon. The whole body of the prey is then revved, pulse rate is high, a hominin would be sweating, it is thinking as hard and fast as it can, everything it does has consequence for its prospect of living.. The predator is itself acting on the calculated experience-based premise of success. And a mammalian predator is skilled and clever. In this situation there is a premium on using the tool with speed, accuracy and decision.

Two problems here seems to be you choosing only to use perspectives which maximise antipredator weapon use while minimising or ignoring other uses, alongside taking a largely either/or approach to things.

Even if we just considered weapon use, wouldn't an ancestor which was a general weapon user be expected to be better at antipredator weapon use than one which somehow (how?) restricted its weapon use to attacking predators?
Even if for the sake of argument people took the position that the payoffs from competent antipredator weapon use were high, that wouldn't require that relevant abilities would develop first for antipredator use only.

It would seem from what you write that you have a basic and deep aversion to the idea of antipredator weapon use being part of a general suite of tool use competence, even in the context where earlier tool use wasn't meaningfully about fighting predators.

Also, it seems you frame evolution a bit differently to the way other people might.
If, for example, we imagine a hypothetical ancestor species did use tools for food collection, with the selective advantages purely in that regard being to do with things like efficient use of energy and minimising time spent exposed to at least some fraction of predators, and meaningfully enhanced survival in seasonal or other times of scarcity, if that ancestor started to use its tools to ward off some predators, it would seem that you would attribute all the 'credit' for the improved survival the antipredator use resulted in to the antipredator use itself, seen as an activity in isolation, and the 'credit' for the antipredator tool use was itself really attributable to the predators, since they are 'actors'.
However, someone else could look at the same situation and point out that the successful antipredator activity itself seemed to depend on the basic skills that everyday practice with regard to food collection resulted in, and the familiarity with tools and the likelihood of having them at hand.
Even if the food collection was 'just' a matter of using sticks to dig and using sticks and stones to crack nuts, it would be a meaningful contributor to good motor skills and the ability to use tools as extensions of the body, but if we imagined it also extended to scavenging, it could involve things quite similar to actual antipredator weapon use, like cutting skin with sharp stones and using rocks and clubs to break bones, as well as providing opportunities for interacting with potentially dangerous competitors whose main focus was on scavenging rather than eating our ancestors, where actions of less-than-adequate competence on our part could be ameliorated by withdrawal and still serve as useful learning experiences in a way which wouldn't be the case with predators which were intent on eating us.

It would seem you'd recognise that as you went to seemingly strange lengths to avoid considering such a situation, to the extent of concluding ancestors 'must have' regularly practised with weapons to be better predator-fighters when such practise without obvious associated immediate reward would seem to be something requiring a meaningful amount of foresight and imagination in ancestors where you deride the idea of 'smarts', or a peculiarly specific instinct.

It would seem that your approach is coloured by a non-scientific desire to give all the credit to predators as agents of the creative environment, yet someone without a particular predator fixation but who still had a predilection for crediting 'the environment' for religious or other philosophical reasons could obviously consider the above scavenging situation and give credit to our competitor species for pushing us to be increasingly good offensive tool users, in what would appear to be the same basic way you do with predators.
That is, someone else could share your basic philosophical leanings and apply them perfectly well to a quite different and more inclusive narrative.
Indeed, wouldn't an environment arguably be more 'wholeheartedly creative' if our evolution was shaped by more of the species we interacted with?

Furthermore, would it seem reasonable to you that ancestors could be good at assaulting predators while being unlikely to have those skills and that belligerent attitude reflected in other aspects of their behaviour (like driving off competing species from food sources)?
I'm not suggesting that such ancestors roamed around like constantly-rage-fuelled psychopaths, and aggression does need to be controlled such that it isn't dangerous to the individual and their kin, but if the skills were there, not to use them where that would seemingly provide an advantage would appear to require some kind of explanation.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Consider also the social context, where a successful defence benefits all who might have been prey in that encounter, drawing favourable attention to the heroes and drawing their attention to the means whereby they gained that favour.

Hero worship? Really?
Doesn't that seem to require some reasonably sophisticated theory of mind on the part of the worshipper?

Wouldn't an ancestor capable of making reasonably 'smart' associations between a weapon and a successful defence be capable of doing the same thing with regard to any tool which provided some immediate reward?

Thinking of other animals, do they need anything more than emotional feelings with regard to fear or danger which are lower in the presence of a potential defender or herd leader or when in a group than when the leader isn't there or they are on their own?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Alpha male primates are talked down somewhat because of their bullying, occasional infanticide and unequal benefit from grooming but experts have told me that if one wants to end the adventurous habits of a troop of primates, you take out the alpha male.

Which doesn't require anything like a concept of 'hero'.

It seems to be aggression or the potential for it which both helps a given animal become a leader by outcompeting rivals and which makes it more likely to face a threat than the average group member.
Recognising aggression seems to be all that is needed.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Consequentiality in excellence of weapon use also arises because to use a hand weapon implies making a choice – for example, between that and climbing a tree. You had better be at least as good at using that weapon as you are at climbing the tree.

Indeed - you already need some meaningful weapon-use competence before trying to use a weapon on a dangerous predator is a good idea.

zoon wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Surely, natural selection was at work, just like gravity is at work when water flows downhill.

Yes, as you say, there’s no question that natural selection goes on; juvenile organisms inherit different characteristics, and some are more likely than others to survive, and pass on their characteristics. The creationist claim is that this process is supplemented to a greater or lesser extent by some supernatural power with humanlike forethought. The scientific claim is that there is no evidence for any such intervention.

You left out the crucial element of variation from your description of natural selection . In the analogy to water flowing downhill, that’s like the water spreading in different directions where downhill might lie. I agree that some creationists do seem to claim that the Creation involved intervention by God in that process. More just reject the entire story and take each species as a special creation. I reject both of those, without wanting to get into an argument with these fellow travellers. It seems to me that natural selection does happen but in a mysteriously creative space realised in large fluxing biomes such as found on the Africa continent. The observer as The Created, can be grateful to be equipped with a skillset because of that. And something might still go wrong with the Creation on this planet if we mess it up enough. So my interest is in the status of the observer and that being inside the Creation, not on top. In other words, unable to explain why the creativity.

zoon wrote: There is plenty of evidence that Homo erectus, which lived from about 1.9 million years ago, used stone tools and hunted ungulates. They were well adapted for walking and running, and not so well adapted for climbing trees. It seems very likely that they would routinely have protected themselves against grassland predators using hand weapons.

You make it sound as if protection against predators was a mere by-product of hunting. But defence and offense are not equivalent, in at least three aspects. First, antipredation gives access to place and more effective antipredation give robustness to that access under the conditions that suit the prey specie while hunting only adds a bit to the food supply. Second, more manual skill is needed to fight a habituated mammalian predator than an antelope one has somehow managed to catch up with. So the skillset for low-tech antipredation weapon use is higher than for hunting. A third difference is that defensive fighting depends on a kind of weapon that isn’t used in hunting. That weapon stops the attacker, takes the initiative from it and distracts it, making the attacker vulnerable to a strike. I have noticed that a wide variety of objects work as stoppers against dogs, presumably varying with type of threat. For example when my friend Mark was attacked by that ostrich he had only one stick which he used first as stopper and then as striker. As stopper, the blunt end slid off the feathers as the ostrich collided with him. And as a striker, the lack of a knob on the stick meant he could only knock the bird down, not kill it. As a different example, my mother who grew up on a Karoo farm told me that shepherds would wrap a blanket around one forearm and entice a leopard to attack that, and then hit it on the head with a knobkerrie. Another example of stopper is the bullfighter’s cape. Of these, neither blanket nor cape would be useful in hunting but a pointed stick could be considered precursor to both defensive pike and offensive thrown spear, and plausibly the most ancient hand weapon.

zoon wrote: However, this discussion is about the earlier Australopithecus species. Australopithecus afarensis, which are dated from about 3.9 to 2.9 million years ago, lived in wooded habitats and were still well adapted for climbing trees, so they could escape from the grassland predators without needing weapons. Their most dangerous predators would probably have been leopard-like animals which could climb trees. A. afarensis were about the same size as modern bonobos, which also have reduced canine teeth and co-exist with leopards, and which do not use weapons. It does not seem to me likely that australopithecines required hand weapons for essential protection against predators.

I showed before that male bonobos (aka “pygmy chimps”) don’t in fact have much reduced canine teeth compared with chimps, plus they have opposable big toes unlike Australopithecus. So biting and fleeing through the forest canopy are both part of the bonobo skill set.

If Australopithecus was so at home in trees, how come no ape remains have yet been found associated with them? The very name “Australopithecus” referred to that genus being out of the range of tree adapted apes.

zoon wrote: At the same time, it does seem to me likely that they used tools and weapons more than modern chimpanzees, which do already throw rocks and wield sticks, as you say, occasionally. A afarensis may have had some stone tools, there is a recent discovery of worked stones from 3.3 million years ago. You are making a binary distinction between the occasional use of weapons (as in chimps), and their use as part of a wired-in skillset (as in modern humans and very possibly Homo erectus), and as far as I can tell you are claiming that the jump between the two must have been organised on a single occasion by some supernatural creative force. I see no need to make such a binary distinction, and I think there is every reason to suppose that australopithecines were somewhere in between. An intermediate use of weapons, between occasional and routine, is suggested by the available evidence, and would be expected as the result of gradual evolution by natural selection.

I don’t know where you got that “single occasion by some supernatural force”, seeing that I had said earlier that I accept natural selection, which implies unbroken generations of mother-child where each mother recognised her children. The binary distinction I do draw is between two body plans: one involving defensive biting and the other defensive weapon use. The first is represented by chimp, bonobo, gorilla and the other by hominins. I accept “binary” because the two styles are mutually exclusive. An ape needs two hands to grab the enemy it is biting in order to tear out a gash. A kinetic hand weapon user needs space from its enemy to put kinetic energy into the weapon. With feet like that and canines like that, Australopithecus look fully adapted into the latter skillset.

zoon wrote: I’m considering the possibility of sudden supernatural creative jumps, but they still don’t seem to me remotely as probable as that the occasional use of tools (as seen in chimps) initialised the evolution of tool-using in hominins, and that the use of tools and weapons gradually increased during the evolved changes from australopithecines to homo species and through to us. You are saying that natural selection is enough to explain the difference in tool use between Homo erectus (hand axes) and homo sapiens (the neolithic toolset); why should it not be enough to explain the difference in tool and weapon use by chimpanzees (occasional) and Homo erectus (probably routine)?

Again, your “sudden supernatural creative jumps” doesn’t reflect my understanding. The speed of jumps between Ardipithecus and Australopithecus and then Homo, is unknown at present. Maybe the first took a million years. It was creative in the sense of ending with a novel skillset, that of hand weapon use whereby a primate without opposable big toe and with short blunt canines shared its environment with leopard and baboons but chimp ancestors didn’t live there. It seems to me that “occasional” use of tools as seen in chimps is incompatible with those big toes, those canines and that highly tree-adept leopard. The adaptive gradient would be towards optimised weapon choice and their effective use with speed and accuracy. What was “supernatural” about that jump or can I say “spooky” was that it preadapted Australopithecus for the egg-shell skull and the long-helpless infancy that we see in the speech-using Homo Sapiens. If you don’t think that’s spooky then fine, no pressure.

I didn’t actually claim that natural selection is enough to explain the difference between Homo erectus (hand axes) and Home erectus (the Neolithic toolset). What to my mind is enough to explain any part of the Creation is natural selection having optimised phenotypes within a creative matrix realised in large fluxing biomes. Even technological development which I suppose is what you are getting at in your question. They start at one site and then sweep through a population of users. The place they start is where someone is exposed to a creative possibility. For example, after a few million years of knowing that hand size pebbles could be found in stream beds and then that these could be given an edge by striking them with other stones, some ancestors found themselves where particular rocks far from stream beds could be much more reliably shaped to produce sharper edges. So then mining and maybe trade were “invented”. Such stories are in Rudyard Kipling but they are unevidenced so as a Neo-Cuvierian creationist I should eschew them.

zoon wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

zoon wrote:
Chimps have been observed to use crude weapons, are you saying that teleology was responsible?

It shows that chimps are close to but not at the precise conditions that existed when our own ancestors developed the skill set of defensive hand weapon use. Instead chimp ancestors stuck with the typical primate skillset of being consummate biters and climbers.

It might not help but the way I personally visualise that is our ancestors wandering around a stage and they suddenly fell down a small hole that took them down a narrow slippery tunnel leading to the stage where Australopithecus walked around. To dress the visualisation up a bit, the place could be called the inverted observable fitness landscape. To dress it down from there, human evolution happened inside a giant creative context.

Again, this suggestion of a sudden evolutionary saltation on a single occasion seems extremely unlikely to me. There are very few fossils of chimpanzees or other forest animals; rainforests tend to recycle bodies quickly, and this would have included the ancestors of australopithecines. It seems to me most probable that they evolved slowly rather than by a single event as you are suggesting, even though only very few of the intermediate fossils have so far been found.

Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole that turned into a well, either the well was very deep or our ancestors fell very slowly for they had plenty of time as they went down to look about them and to wonder what was going to happen next. Equilibrium was then being punctuated.

Oooh. New catchprases.

"Large fluxing biomes"

Amazing after a month nothing has progressed. It is like monks walking round the quadrangle who are on certain days allowed to speak. Just imagine trying to hold a discussion. That is what this sounds like.

Amazing?

You're new round here, aren't you?

I believe that humans and gastropods can coexist in peace.

Fenrir wrote:Oooh. New catchprases.

"Large fluxing biomes"

I'm sure that is a misquote. Should be: "Fucking large biomes".

Alan B wrote:

Fenrir wrote:Oooh. New catchprases.

"Large fluxing biomes"

I'm sure that is a misquote. Should be: "Fucking large biomes".

No still wrong it should be "Large fucking biomes" which are large biomes filled with fucking. And guarded by snails with spears.

Fluxing biome?

Oh this is going to be fun, if only from a schadenfreude standpoint ... and now I'm back from my job interview, I can round this off after the delays arising therefrom.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Sorry for the delay everyone, but entomology activities detained me for a while, plus I've had to spend time tracking down more scientific papers .../This will be in five parts. Welcome to Part 1.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Let's take another look at the DATA JayJay keeps avoiding because it's lethal to his assertion-laden fantasy:

Far from being my fantasy

Yes, we know you keep pointing to Dart's obsolete 1925 paper with respect to this, and as far as the view of Australopithecines as tool users of any sort is concerned, the paper is obsolete, because we now have another 80 years or more of collected DATA faslifying that view. None of which you've bothered taking notice of.

In truth I have discussed many post-1925 sources.

We've all seen your idea of "discussing" those sources, namely quote mining them and making shit up to try and peddle the idea that they agree with your blind assertions, when even an elementary perusal thereof demonstrates that they don't.

Jayjay4547 wrote:In those 90 years since Dart’s description of the Taung child, accumulating data has been used to build an origin story where the only players were members were our ancestors themselves.

Complete bullshit. Oh wait, the Treves & Palmqvist paper you repeatedly quote mine and misrepresent, contains a detailed exposition of how isotope data has been used to determine the likely diets of predators. Specifically for the purpose of determining which of those predators were likely to include hominid species in their diet. This on its own renders your above assertion null and void, even before we take account of the numerous other papers devoted to the same topic that I've presented here.

Jayjay4547 wrote:For example, Treves and Palmqvist’s 2007conclusion that the adaptive solution to the higher predation pressure of the end Miocene and Pliocene was a social adaptation that preceded any elaboration of material culture.

Oh wait, we observe the same development of social groups in other primates. What's more, we also observe the emergence of social behaviours within those groups, directed toward minimising predator encounters, or dealing with predators once encountered. None of which involve becoming arms manufacturers and video game warriors.

Indeed, from that paper, we have this:

Treves & Palmqvist, 2007 wrote:Hominins armed with weapons may have counterattacked more often, but we find no compelling evidence that material culture sheltered hominins from ambush and stalking predators before the advent of controlled fire.

What part of the words "NO EVIDENCE" do you not understand?

Oh, and guess what? Treves & Palmqvist also present in their conclusion, a suggestion that their ideas can be tested experimentally, viz:

Treves & Palmqvist, 2007 wrote:Modern humans may retain traces of some of the anti-predator adaptations of our ancestors. In particular, predictable behavioral responses and aversion to areas with dense vegetation or areas without suitable refuge (e.g., wide, open areas) should both be deeply embedded in human cognitive and perceptual abilities. These predictions are not trivial given that taxa differ based on selective pressures imposed by ancestral environments (Byers, 1997). Some animals perceive holes as refuges, while others perceive dense vegetation or open areas as avenues for escape (Lima, 1993). Experiments with sleeping sites, vigilance and group formation could test these ideas about ancestral human anti-predator adaptations;

The authors then continue with this:

Treves & Palmqvist, 2007 wrote:In the following section, we consider some terrestrial mammalian taxa that live in environments with high predation pressure and display social organizations that share one or more of the following characteristics: inconspicuous, minimal internal conflict, or coordinated vigilance. For each we make predictions about the fossil record if one or more lineages of hominins had displayed such a social organization, and we make predictions about modern human behavior assuming we retain ancestral anti-predator adaptations.

Let's take a look at those analyses and predictions in more detail, shall we?

Treves & Palmqvist, 2007 wrote:Medium-Sized, Inconspicuous Groups

Individuals in groups of 10–15 animals can detect threats early and warn associates efficiently if distractions due to associates are few. For example, the Asian Hanuman langur (Semnopithecus entellus) forms large groups (averaging 29 members in 22 populations: Treves & Chapman, 1996), yet noisy, costly competition over resources seems to be muted by a combination of kinship bonds and even distribution of resources (Borries, 1993; Borries et al., 1994; Koenig, 1998). Male-male fighting is infrequent within groups because one male often monopolizes mates and evicts rivals. However, this calm evaporates when multiple males compete (Boggess, 1980; Borries, 2000). If modern humans retain traces of such a social organization, one should see higher vigilance among males watching for nongroup rivals, and a significant increase in distractions and within-group vigilance when male rivals co-reside in a group. Hominins displaying such a social organization between 6.0–1.8 Ma would show marked sexual dimorphism associated with polygynous mating. Their dentition might also reflect the use of evenly distributed, low-quality foods, such as foliage or grasses.

So, the authors provide a prediction: if (and I emphasise if) ancestral hominids relied upon stealth combined with a group size of 20+ individuals, similar to that observed in Hanuman Langurs, they would exhibit marked sexual dimorphism, a polygynous mating system, and a dentition indicative of utilising abundant but low-nutrition foods.

Treves & Palmqvist, 2007 wrote:Small Groups with Male Protector

Small, inconspicuous groups with a protective individual occur among terrestrial primates (e.g., gorillas: Doran & McNeilage, 1998). One version would include females attracted to watchful males, where female-female rivalry would be strong because the male’s protective sphere would not be infinitely divisible among many females. If modern humans retain traces of this social organization, one should see higher vigilance among males than females and the greatest increase in within-group vigilance when multiple females are present in a group. Among early hominins, one would expect strong sexual dimorphism with polygynous mating, but dentition would reflect a high-quality diet due to low group size.

And another prediction: if ancestral hominids had a social system similar to that observed in modern gorillas, they would exhibit strong sexual dimorphism, a polygynous mating system, and a dentition indicative of a high-quality diet.

Treves & Palmqvist, 2007 wrote:Small, Cooperative Groups

Small groups within which individuals cooperate in anti-predator behavior can survive under heavy predation pressure. The use of coordinated vigilance or sentinel systems is particularly important in such conditions because one or two individuals survey the surroundings while the remainder of the group forages uninterrupted. Upon detection of a predator, the sentinel gives a visual or acoustic signal as an alarm and the group takes defensive action. Modern humans use sentinels, of course. Sentinel systems are also seen today in many cooperatively breeding species (Wickler, 1985; Savage et al., 1996), but also among less cooperative groups that must forage silently (Horrocks & Hunte, 1986). Of particular relevance may be the social mongooses Herpestidae found in African woodland savannas. High levels of cooperation and reciprocity appear critical under heavy predation pressure (Rasa, 1986, 1989); pressure that leads to the retention of juveniles and sub-adults in their natal groups (NB: also a modern human trait). If modern humans show traces of this social organization, the sexes will be equally vigilant, and familiar associates may readily coordinate defensive behavior. Hominins using this system would show little sexual dimorphism and delayed maturation, as in modern humans. Dentition would reflect a high-quality diet due to low group size.

A third prediction: if ancestral hominids operated in small, cooperative groups, they would exhibit little sexual dimorphism, equal vigilance on the part of both male and female individuals, delayed maturation, and a dentition indicative of a high-quality diet.

Treves & Palmqvist, 2007 wrote:Solitary Foragers

This form of inconspicuous social organization is seen in orangutans among the living apes and has been interpreted as a response to food scarcity (Sugardjito et al., 1987), and perhaps to avoidance of threats posed by conspecifics rather than predators (Setiawan et al., 1996; Treves, 1998). Nevertheless, early hominins might have foraged alone and aggregated only at superabundant resources or at sleeping sites. If modern humans retain traces of such a social organization, one should expect no coordination of vigilance within their groups and increases in vigilance with party size, particularly when reproductive females encounter nonfather, adult males. Fossil hominins displaying such a system would presumably show extreme sexual size dimorphism (Rodman & Mitani, 1987) and evidence of high-quality diets.

And that's a fourth prediction. Once again, based upon observation of present day primate species exhibiting the requisite social organisation. In short, we should expect to see appropriate anatomical correlates indicative of social behaviour classes. And, on the basis of this, and the fact that different anti-predator strategies are observed arising within different systems of social organisation in those present-day species, the requisite conclusion is that the social system adopted by our hominid ancestors would also have had an effect upon the prioritising of different anti-predator strategies, on the basis that this is observed in extant primates right across the taxonomic spectrum.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Their conclusion is the opposite of the truth

Bullshit. What part of "different anti-predator strategies are correlated with different social behaviour systems right across extant primate taxa" do you not understand? Game fucking over, not only for your fantasies, but for your duplicitous quote mining of this paper.

Jayjay4547 wrote:which is that the end Miocene and Pliocene saw a unique adaptation by our ancestors to material culture in the form of hand weapons used defensively to provide access to savanna resources.

Crap.

Once again, all the DATA with respect to Australopithecine tool use, points to that tool use being for food processing, not beating the shit out of big cats.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Oh, and as I've already pointed out as a result of reading Dart's paper in full, Dart hypothesised that Australopithecines made weapons for hunting, not for beating the shit out of predators. Which means Dart never supported your fantasy to begin with. Not that any of these inconvenient facts will prevent you from continuing to assert that he did.

It’s not a fantasy that Australopithecus used hand weapons defensively, rather a strong inference.

Bullshit. You keep blindly asserting this bullshit, despite the fact that ALL THE DATA IN EXISTENCE POINTS TO THE REQUISITE TOOL USE BEING FOR FOOD PROCESSING. We observe NO recognisable weapons in the fossil record dating back 3.3 million years, we observe NO instances of big cat fossils with bone damage consistent with weapon attacks (which would be present in quantity if your fantasy was anything other than the product of your rectal passage), and we observe in addition that they didn't occupy the sort of habitats that your fantasy asserts to begin with. Made up shit doesn't equal "inference", as I've already schooled you on. Once again, Game Fucking Over.

Jayjay4547 wrote:When you read Dart’s article “in full” you would have come across this passage on p197:

Dart (1925)p197 wrote:Bipedal animals, their hands were assuming a higher evolutionary role not only as delicate tactual, examining organs which were adding copiously to the animal’s knowledge of its physical environment, but also as instruments of the growing intelligence in carrying out more elaborate, purposeful, and skilled movements and as organs of offence and defense. The latter is rendered more probable, in view, first, of their failure to develop massive canines and hideous features, and, secondly, of the fact that even living baboons and anthropoid apes can and do use sticks and stones as implements and as weapons of offence (“Descent of Man”p81 et.seq.).

Already dealt with that in a previous post way back on age 88 of the thread, viz:

But the fun part is, after this data is presented, the latter part of the paragraph is a manifest exercise in anthropomorphism that, whilst not raising eyebrows in 1925, would be considered seriously out of place in a modern-era scientific paper, and also contains manifest speculation that has not been supported by data since its inception. Just because modern apes have been observed using sticks and stones (a behaviour that, moreover, is very far from universally adopted amongst these animals), doesn't mean that Australopithecus adopted the same behaviour, and moreover, in that landmark video footage shot by David Attenborough featuring chimpanzees hunting smaller monkeys for meat, the chimpanzees did not use weaponry, but killed with their bare hands, so to speak. A little detail that makes one wonder if the observed instances of use of weapons by chimpanzees in other circumstances, is opportunistic rather than deliberately planned. After all, if chimpanzees deliberately set out to use weapons in defensive actions, they would almost certainly use them for offensive actions as well. But I digress - the point being made here is that Dart's final words in that paragraph were more than a little speculative, not least because of the later DATA that was alighted upon by scientists after his 1925 paper, [b[DATA[/b] which those scientists paid attention to, and which you have wilfully and deliberately ignored whilst peddling your sad little fantasy.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I bolded the text where Dart asserted that the short blunt canines of Australopithecus showed that they didn’t bite defensively which he used to support the inference that they used hand weapons..

Except that oops, chimpanzees have canines capable of inflicting serious damage (as you took a creepy amount of glee telling us all in previous posts, with that hideous photograph you posted repeatedly), but are also known to use sticks to drive away predators. Consequently, your own examples you've posted here destroy the correlation you're trying to pretend exists.

Then we have those antecedent hominids with small canines, which left behind NO evidence of any propensity for tool use or manufacture of ANY sort, let alone weapons. Which you keep avoiding addressing substantively because that DATA is lethal to your fantasy.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:the notion that Australopithecus was distinctively a weapon using ape, was the view of the man who described the genus

Scientists have acquired a vast amount of additional DATA since 1925, all of which you ignore when it destroys this fantasy you keep clinging to. Plus, I spent time reading Dart's paper in full, from which I presented earlier in this thread a detailed exposition of his work on the head balancing index, or did you forget that I had done this?

So What that you read Dart’s article in full and picked up his appreciation just from the skull, that Australopithecus had been bipedal. Everyone knows that.

Congratulations on missing the point entirely, as is usual with your apologetics. What part of "recognising that he was correct on some matters, doesn't mean he was correct with respect to his manifest speculations" do you not understand?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:That work isn't superseded by modern data, which is one of the reasons Dart's paper remains a landmark in the field with respect to the actual anatomical analysis, and the conclusions about the identity of the fossils derived therefrom,

Well that’s true.

But his speculations ARE superseded by modern data. Again, Game. Fucking. Over.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:and has nothing to do with his wildly anthropomorphic speculations at the end, which were acceptable at the time because of a paucity of DATA pointing elsewhere.

What “wildly anthropomorphic speculations” are you talking about?

Are you being deliberately obtuse here?

That entire paragraph, in which he speculated about Australopithecines brandishing weapons, constitutes practically an archetype for anthropomorphic speculation. No one else failed to understand this upon reading my post.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Just before his acknowledgements and after noting Darwin’s prescient claim that humankind had evolved in Africa, Dart wrote this:

Dart Feb 27th 1925 p197 wrote:
..In Southern Africa, where climatic conditions appear to have fluctuated little since Cretacious times, and were ample dolomitic formations have provided innumerable refuges during life, and burial places after death, for out troglodytic forefathers, we may confidently anticipate many complementary discoveries concerning this period in out evolution.

Presumably what you call “wildly anthropomorphic” is Dart’s notion of our ancestors being “troglodytic” and using caves as refuges.

Is your reading comprehension so atrocious, that you can't work out that I was referring to his final paragraph, despite me explicitly referencing it after you posted it, or is this merely feigned ignorance on your part for duplicitous apologetic ends?

As for the part on his assertion about purported climactic stability since the Cretaceous, I covered that at length in separate paragraphs. Try paying attention to what I actually fucking write.

Jayjay4547 wrote:My attempts to entice you into visualising how human ancestor could have reacted to a predator crawling into their cave refuge at night, sent other posters racing to fetch images of the Flintstones.

Actually, I was among them. Apparently this is something else you failed to pay attention to.

Jayjay4547 wrote:But the notion that our ancestors needed sleeping refuges has remained important (see Treves and Palmqvist again), Dart’s prediction about finding human ancestors in dolomitic caves proved correct (spookily, seeing that the Taung child hadn’t come from a cave).

Er, do I have to repeat that list of hominid fossils of the requisite era found in open locations again? Here it is a second time, since you obviously never bothered reading it the first time:

KNM-LT 329: found in the Apak member of the Nachukui Formation, 15 km west of Lake Turkana, Kenya - open location.

KNM-KP-271: found in the Apak member of the Nachukui Formation, 15 km west of Lake Turkana, Kenya - open location.

Laetoli footprints: found at Laetoli, Tanzania, 45 km south of Olduvai Gorge - open location

LH 4: found at Laetoli, Tanzania, 45 km south of Olduvai Gorge - open location

KSD-VP-1/1: found in the Afar region of Ethiopia - open location

KT-12/H1: found in the Kanem Region of Chad - open location (in this case, a flat desert plain with little topographical relief for many miles in each direction)

DIK-1/1: found at Dikika, Ethiopia, south of the Hadar formation - open location

AL 288-1: found in the Hadar Formation, Ethiopia - open location

Al 200-1: found in the Afar Depression, Ethiopia - open location

Al 129-1: found in the Hadar Formation, Ethiopia - open location

The Hadar Formation and Dikika are river bed formations, and the other formations are again out in the open, a good distance from any caves.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And of course, the latest find of Homo naledi supposedly taken for burial deep in a dolomitic cave also shows Dart’s prescience.

And it's creationist quantifier abuse time again. Learn once and for all, that one find of a fossil in a cave, doesn't mean that the entire species was cave dwelling. See above. Plus, until the Homo naledi finds are properly dated, which has yet to take place, it's impossible to determine where they fit in the fossil jigsaw.

Jayjay4547 wrote:So if that was the paragraph you called “wildly anthropomorphic” then you missed its being one of the most prescient passages ever written about human origins by a scientist.

Bollocks. Oh wait, how many hominid fossils have been found in open locations again? Hundreds, if not thousands. Many of them have been found between layers of volcanic pumice tuffs, sandwiching the sedimentary layers containing the fossils, and these rocks are almost never found in caves.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Indeed, several of the statements at the end of the paper are now known to be mistaken, such as this one:

Dart, 1925 wrote:It is generally believed (vide A. W. Rogers, "Post-Cretaceous Climates of South Africa", South African Journal of Science, vol. xix., 1922) that the climate has fluctuated within exceedingly narrow limits in this country since Cretaceous times. We must therefore conclude that it was only the enhanced cerebral powers possessed by this group which made their existence possible in this untoward environment.

Unfortunately, we now have DATA pointing to significant climate change in the Eocene, which involved elevated global temperatures associated with high concentrations of greenhouse gases.[followed by accounts of parrots in Eocene London and Denmark and a giant snake in South America, and CO2 levels]

Dart was only right about the big picture: that South African climate didn’t experience the complete turnover of species that the Northern hemisphere ice sheets imposed on Europe after the Cretaceous.

Global climate change didn't only affect Europe. The Gondwanathere multituberculate mammals, which had representatives in Africa (including Madagascar) became extinct in the Oligocene. An entire biome, the Laurasian subtropical forests, along with many of its species, disappeared in the transition from late Miocene to early Pliocene, an isolated survivor of the flora being Dracaena cinnabari on the island of Socotra. That disappearance is broadly synchronous with the growth of Antarctic ice.

Throughout the pre-Pleistocene Cenozoic, there were no less than four major climate events - the two Eocene thermal maxima, the Oligocene cooling due to the closing of the Tethys Seaway and the opening of the Drake Passage, and the Middle Miocene Disruption. As the data gathered grows, more may be alighted upon.

Then, of course, species turnover for reasons other than climate was still happening in Africa, as any examination of the fauna from the Eocene to the Pleistocene readily reveals. For example, the extinction of large numbers of grazing mammals that did not possess high-crowned teeth, that affected taxa worldwide due to the expansion of silica-rich C4 grasses.

But none of this detracts from the fact that Dart was wrong about the stability of the climate over the past 65 million years, as was his cited source.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The last glaciation in South Africa was the Karoo Ice Age from 360–260 million years ago (excluding the Drakensberg, see Wikipedia). Of the 11 predator Miocene-Pliocene species identified by Treves and Palmqvist, four are still found on the savanna and the only major modern savanna predator not represented there is the lion.

You do realise that there are organisms other than mammals worth considering, in any properly complete ecological inventory? And that even if one restricts attention to mammal taxa, there's a whole lot more to consider than the Felidae (the fun part being of course that the first recognisable Felid, Proailurus, originated in Asia)? Or did you not bother with my dissertation on bacteria, which are actually the most numerous organisms on the planet, and without which, there wouldn't be any multicellular organisms at all?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Likewise, Dart's statement toward the end of his paper, that Pliocene Africa was characterised by the same stretches of open countryside, is also shaky in the light of modern DATA, a paper of relevance being this one:

Early Hominid Evolution And Ecological Change Through The African Plio-Pleistocene by Kaye E. Reed, Journal of Human Evolution, 32: 289-322 (1997) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Dart’s actual words were “Southern Africa, by providing a vast open country with occasional wooded belts and a relative scarcity of water, together with a fierce and bitter mammalian competition, furnished a laboratory such as was essential to this penultimate phase of human evolution.”

My bolding.

From the abstract of that paper alone:

Research presented here compares east and south African Plio-Pleistocene mammalian fossil assemblages with 31 extant mammalian communities from eight different habitat types.

In more detail, according to the graph in that paper labelled Figure 7, the following Plio-Pleistocene fossil assemblages are indicative of the following habitats:

[1] Sterkfontein 4: open woodland;
[2] Swartkrans 1: open woodland;
[3] Swartrkans 2: open woodland;
[4] Swartkrans 3: open woodland adjacent to grassland;
[5] Kromdraai A: open woodland;
[6] Kromdraai B: open woodland;
[7] Sterkfontein 5: open woodland adjacent to grassland.

In more detail, I also provided this from the paper in my previous post:

Southern African hominid localities

Limeworks Cave, Makapan Valley. The Limeworks Cave is located in the northeastern part of the Transvaal in South Africa. The older deposits (Members 3 and 4) are suggested to be in the range of 3·2–2·7 Ma and are capped by a Pleistocene aged deposit (Partridge, 1979; MacFadden, 1980; Delson, 1984; Vrba, 1995).

Member 3. This deposit contains an extremely large number of mammalian specimens (greater than 30,000), of which 24 are Australopithecus africanus. The deposit was accumulated in the cave by fossil hyaenid and porcupine species (Maguire, 1985; Reed, 1996). There are relatively high percentages of frugivorous species (14·95%) and some arboreal animals (5·45%). Thus the habitat is positioned with bushland and medium density woodlands. Fresh grass grazers (3·44%) and aquatic mammals (1·84%) indicate the presence of a river and some edaphic grasslands (Figures 7 and 8). Previous reconstructions have ranged from woodland (Vrba, 1980) to forest (Cadman & Rayner, 1989) to open savanna with nearby bushland (Dart, 1952; Wells & Cooke, 1956). However, the mammalian community suggests that this region was a habitat mosaic that contained riparian woodland, bushland, and edaphic grassland. Member 4. A. africanus is represented by only three specimens out of a total of 257 mammalian specimens. Cercopithecine monkeys make up 80% of the collection; and the likely accumulators were birds of prey and leopards (Reed, 1996).

Member 4 deposits contain even greater percentages of arboreal (7%) and frugivorous (20%) species than Member 3, which suggests a more wooded habitat. However, this is probably a function of sample size and predation bias rather than a change of habitat. Because this member may have been accumulated by birds of prey, there may be an exclusion of many bovid species. This would skew the results to the more wooded habitat than the ecovariables suggest. Thus, because Member 3 and Member 4 are roughly contemporaneous in time, both assemblages probably represent a woodland–bushland habitat.

Member 5. There have been no hominids or other primates recovered from this member. Member 5 is a Pleistocene deposit with very few species (13), and is included here for comparative purposes. The accumulating agent is not known, although as it is a cave deposit it is likely that either carnivores or hominids made the collection. There are aquatic animals (15·4%) and fresh grass grazers (15·4%) which indicate edaphic grasslands and a water source, but there are no frugivorous or arboreal mammals, indicating that the region might have been more open and xeric in the Pleistocene.

Sterkfontein, Sterkfontein Valley. The Sterkfontein cave has been continuously excavated for the last 27 years. Over 850 hominid remains have been recovered (L. Berger, pers. comm.). Extensive analyses of faunal remains of this locality were done by Brain (1981) and Vrba (1976) and the analysis here is based on these original studies.

Member 4. A. africanus has been recovered from this member, which has been faunally dated to between 2·4 and 2·6 m.y.a. (Delson, 1984), and the deposit may be the result of carnivore activity (Brain, 1981). The mammalian community consists of few arboreal animals (3·33%), but a high percentage of frugivorous mammals (16·67%). There is also a fairly high percentage of terrestrial/arboreal animals (23·33%). There are no aquatic animals from this locality, and only 3·33% fresh grass grazers (Figures 7 and 8).

The fauna suggests a habitat reconstruction for Member 4 of an open woodland, with bushland and thicket areas. Other habitat reconstructions of this member at Sterkfontein have indicated a medium density woodland (Vrba, 1975), a moderately open savanna (Vrba, 1985), an open woodland to a forest (McKee, 1991), and an open savanna (Benefit & McCrossin, 1990). Thus, the mammalian community reconstruction is close to Vrba’s 1975 interpretation. However, while there are few arboreal animals, the high percentage of frugivorous mammals falls within the range of bushland and medium density woodland, and this locality is likely similar to the more closed Makapansgat Member 3 deposit.

Member 1. P. robustus and Homo sp. are represented by this member. Although there are no arboreal species found in this Swartkrans deposit, there are 13·89% fruit and leaf eaters, as well as 5·56% aquatic animals (Figures 7 and 8). There is a small proportion of fresh grass grazers (2·78%). This gives the picture of an open habitat, with a river present as evidenced by aquatic animals. This river or stream probably supported a woodland or forest as suggested by the percentage of frugivorous mammals that fall in the range of medium density woodland and bushland. In addition, there would have been patches of edaphic grasslands to support the fresh grass grazers. Previous reconstructions of this member include a moderately open savanna (Vrba, 1975); a mesic, closed woodland (Benefit & McCrossin, 1990); and a savanna woodland with riparian woodland and reed beds (Watson, 1993). The reconstructed habitat here agrees with that of Watson (1993).

Member 2. P. robustus and Homo sp. are recovered from this member. Despite the assertion that these deposits are roughly the same age (Brain, 1993), there appears to be a decline in fruit and leaf eaters from Member 1 (13·89%) to Member 2 (8·82%). There are no fresh grass grazers from this member, although there are still aquatic carnivores (5·88%). There is a very large percentage of meat–bone eaters (8·82%). There is also an increase to 32·35% grazing animals and 100% total terrestriality. Thus, this indicates a drier habitat than the previous member, perhaps a wooded grassland with wetlands. Vrba (1975) reconstructed the habitat of Member 2 as a moderately open savanna which agrees with the interpretation here.

Member 3. Only P. robustus has been found in these deposits (Watson, 1993). There is a further drop in fruit and leaf eaters in this member to 6·25%. However, there is also a decrease in grazing animals to 25%, which is accompanied by an increase in fresh grass grazing animals (4·17%). There are similar proportions of aquatic animals (6·25%) and fossorial animals (8·33%) to those in Member 2. Thus, the habitat of this member is reconstructed as an open grassland with a river or stream nearby supporting edaphic grasslands.

So, we have:

Makapan Valley, Transvaal: mixture of riparian woodland, bushland and edaphic grasslands adjacent to a river;
Sterkfontein: open woodland, with bushland and thicket areas;
Swartkrans: open grassland with edaphic grasslands adjacent to a river for the older strata, riparian woodland and reed beds in an adjacent river for the younger strata.

Again, the DATA says Dart's assertion was wrong.

Jayjay4547 wrote:In that passage Dart also foregrounded “mammalian competition” thus implying antagonistic relations between species

Well ecology has come a long way since the primitive notion of combat relations, in case you hadn't noticed. And since his assertions on climate and habitat have been demonstrated to be wrong, we can take that other assertion of his with a large bucket of salt too.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Reed, 1997 wrote:… Reconstructed habitats show that Australopithecus species existed in fairly wooded, well-watered regions. Paranthropus species lived in similar environs and also in more open regions, but always in habitats that include wetlands. Homo is the first hominid to exist in areas of fairly open, arid grassland. This change from closed to open habitats occurs gradually from about 4 m.y.a. until about 2 m.y.a. when there is a major increase in arid and grazing adapted mammals. Therefore, the appearance of open savannas do not appear to have influenced the origination or adaptations of the earliest hominids, but could have contributed to their demise. As Stanley (1992) hypothesized, Homo species appear the first to be adapted to open, arid environments.

Oops, bang goes another of Dart's concluding statements, courtesy of modern DATA. Looks like your treatment of him as some sort of demi-god on the subject of human evolution is looking shakier by the minute.

I’d say, Raymond Dart was certainly driven by the Muse of Science, during the few months between being given the Taung Child skull, and publishing his findings in Nature. His performance was all the more remarkable in comparison with the blind obfuscation of contemporary metropolitan gatekeeper scientists.

Bullshit. The only "blind obfuscation" on display here is in your posts. A part of this being your yet again tiresomely repeated insinuation that modern scientists are purportedly "upholding a doctrine" creationist style, instead of paying attention to the huge swathes of DATA that have become available since 1925, and which is lethal to your fantasies.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I believe that in later years Dart lost that connection, although his hunting hypothesis is increasingly embedded in modern origin stories that emphasise meat eating as necessary for a large brain. See for example this blurb:

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/rele ... 1999a.html

"Modern" as in 17 years old? Plus, that article doesn't specify how meat was added to the diet of hominids. It doesn't cite either hunting or scavenging, the latter being the mode supported by the most recent DATA.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Dart didn’t appreciate that the use of hand weapons “for offence and defence” weren’t just two sides of the same coin. He was also bedeviled into making highly coloured statements and even sneering at the public as when he wrote that “of course” white people hadn’t evolved, only black people.

From the International Journal of African Historical Studies, 42(2): 257-282, courtesy of the article The Enigma of Raymond Dart,we learn this:

Dart's career and work presents the intriguing circumstance of a scientist and writer who challenged science with a daring proposal which was considered false and was later fully accepted as scientifcally valid, and used his reputation to forward numerous arguments which could not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

The author of the above article, Robin Derricourt, is also responsible for Raymond Dart and the Danger of Mentors, in Antiquity, 84(3): 230-235 (journal link here):

Archaeology, like all scientific and scholarly disciplines, requires the transmission of knowledge and ideas. This commonly involves the influence of mentors and role models: figures who can at times take on the role of gurus. But adherence to mentors has its dangers. That is shown in the career of Raymond Dart, whose professional work was deeply flawed by the adherence he paid to his mentor Grafton Elliot Smith. His status has been maintained by his dedicated disciple, the great physical anthropologist Phillip Tobias, but critical assessment of the corpus of Dart’s work (Dubow 1996; Derricourt 2009) contrasts with his selective reputation.

In the first part of 1925, Dart — then a youthful professor of anatomy in Johannesburg — published in quick succession two papers in the pre-eminent British science journal Nature.One (on the discovery of Australopithecus with the announcement and interpretation of the Taung fossil cranium) would become a landmark document in the history of palaeoanthropology and prehistory (Dart 1925a). The other is a classic example of the approaches which would later be seen as belonging in the lunatic fringe of archaeology. Dart would continue publishing on both themes throughout his long and productive life (from his birth in Australia in 1893 to death in Johannesburg in 1988).

So a proper critical analysis of Dart, tells us that he had some brilliantly right ideas (Australopithecus as a human ancecstor) and some hilariously wrong ones. Life has a habit of being complicated like this.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I illustrated the branch Dart later chose away from external agency in this graph, to which your response was to deface it:

We've seen your tiresome amateur Paint graphic once already, which was fatuous when you first posted it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:[snipped pages of paste from Reed’s reconstruction]

In short, "let's not bother dealing with the DATA I presented".

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:So, a rigorous reconstruction of the likely habitat of Australopithecines, utilising as complete an inventory of organism diversity as possible, involving tests of correlation of trophic variables with habitat, test of death assemblages to determine if those variable correlations are replicated, and application of this methodology to fossil hominid sites, with, I note, cross-checks where possible with pollen analyses to determine the vegetation spectrum, yields a stunning conclusion: namely that Australopithecines were not savannah dwellers at all, but inhabitants of fairly closed woodlands.

All that paste doesn’t help at all to compromise the range of predators that Australopithecus was associated with

It deals a death blow to your assertions about Australopithecines purportedly being exposed and vulnerable on the savannahs. Which they wouldn't have been if they weren't there in the first place.

Jayjay4547 wrote:at least one of which, the leopard, it would have been suicide to try to escape from by climbing a tree, judging by the video clips we have seen of how expert climbers leopard are.

But apparently it's not "suicide" for baboons to do the same? Hmm, why does your reply bear the aura of shit made up on the hoof, without bothering to consider the elementary matter of consistency with previous made up shit?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Would you try to escape from a leopard by climbing a tree?

I'd probably try to avoid such encounters at source. As I suspect our ancestors would.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Nope, undoubtedly those ancestors fought leopard on the ground using hand weapons.

Bullshit. We're back to the first six points of that list of mine again ...

[1] NO DATA exists pointing to Australopithecines having developed weapons - ALL THE DATA on tool use and manufacture by Australopithecines points to them making and using tools for food preparation;

[2] Antecedent hominids with the same dentition, and which never once exhibited any propensity to manufacture or use tools of any sort, let alone weapons, persisted for three million years, and did so in an environment containing predators, some of which were even more powerful and dangerous than the predators extant today;

[3] The specious assertion you erected, to the effect that the ecology of those antecedent hominids is purportedly "not known" to a sufficient extent to be applicable to your fantasy, is refuted wholesale by the contents of the scientific papers on those organisms presented here;

[4] There is NO DATA suggesting that the predators of the Pliocene systematically attacked Australopithecines, in preference to any of a wide range of other prey animals, and isotope data from the fossils tells scientists that these predators primarily fed on those other animals];

[5] In addition, observed predators today rarely, if ever, prey upon organisms that scavenge their left overs, not least because by the time those scavengers turn up, the predators have already eaten, and DATA exists in quantity pointing to Australopithecines being amongst those scavengers;

[6] As you have already been schooled upon repeatedly, a multiplicity of strategies exist for organisms to avoid predation, which are used by those organisms with sufficient success to allow their populations to be maintained, and the idea that Australopithecines never once used any of those alternative strategies is biologically untenable.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And they often lost, fuelling the creative engine built from intimate antagonistic relations, rather like Dart pictured back in 1925.

Except your fantasy never happened. Oh, and Dart was responsible for a number of ideas that have since been characterised as "belonging in the lunatic fringe of archaeology".