Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote:But you were proposing a defensive-weapon-dominated development hypothesis.

The word ”hypothesis” implies originality and going beyond current information But my point is(a) that the lack of fangs in Australopithecus should have immediately created the inference that they instead used hand held weapons that made them dangerous to attack.

If so, the same would hold for their small-fanged ancestors.
Seemingly, Orrorin had reduced canines compared to other contemporary apes

Jayjay4547 wrote:What actually happened instead, (amongst those who accepted Australopithecus as significant in human evolution) was that they (Dart and Broom in South Africa) immediately leaped over the obvious inference, to hypothesise about Australopithecus using weapons to hunt. So they immediately built a story line about our ancestors imposing their will on the world as opposed to reacting to the will of outside species.

Yet your obsessive story is equally one of ancestors imposing their will on the world and shaping their evolution.
Getting lunch and dissuading predators are both forms of interaction with the wider world.
Lunch, whether hunted, scavenged, harvested or otherwise processed is always some other organism.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote: That's why you had to fantasise about distant ancestors imbuing their tools. with symbolic importance hand drilling with weapons in order to be competent enough to use them for predator defence.

“Drilling” is something soldiers do on a parade ground, you carelessly misrepresent my argument.

Please don't lie, especially not so hopelessly. I don't misrepresent you in the least.

Jayjay4547 wrote: It would logically have been necessary for foraging hominins to have carried defensive weapons around with them and not as sleepwalkers but in wide awake understanding of their use- which they doubtless practiced endlessly. So they were attached to those objects, they were emblematic of a capacity to save the individual and offspring from ravening presences in the environment.

You were the one who invented a fantasy of ancestors knowingly practising with weapons [solely or predominantly] in order to be less-than-fatally-incompetent at predator defence, because it was the only way you could try and pretend, however incompetently, that predator defence was in the driving seat of tool development.

You clearly don't want to accept that predator-defence-use, such as it was, could have been one of a number of important tool development drivers, let alone accept that it may have been a secondary one.

Jayjay4547 wrote:OK now visualise the patrolling chimps carrying hand weapons with them. How comfortable is that image for you? It’s profoundly jarring.

It's not at all jarring, apart from the fact that chimps don't seem to be habitual weapon carriers.

When it comes to our ancestors doing something similar, it seems highly plausible that to the extent they habitually carried tools, that would be because they were habitual tool carriers for common everyday tasks, and that to the extent they were skilled tool users, that would be because they were habitual tool users who could develop their skills at tasks more frequent and less risky than predator defence.

That that simply won't do for you is really only your problem.

tolman wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

tolman wrote: That's why you had to fantasise about distant ancestors imbuing their tools. with symbolic importance hand drilling with weapons in order to be competent enough to use them for predator defence.

“Drilling” is something soldiers do on a parade ground, you carelessly misrepresent my argument.

Please don't lie, especially not so hopelessly. I don't misrepresent you in the least.

Google presents the following meaning for the word “drill”:

[As a noun:] instruction or training in military exercises.
“parade-ground
synonyms: training, instruction, coaching, teaching

[As a verb:] drill”
subject (someone) to military training exercises.
“a sergeant was drilling new recruits”
synonyms: train, instruct, coach, teach, discipline;


So I was correct about the common meaning of your word “Drill”.

Here is how I have actually described the intimacy of the necessary relation between Australopithecus and the objects they used to make them as dangerous to attack as are other primates equipped with fangs:

Jayjay4547 wrote: It would logically have been necessary for foraging hominins to have carried defensive weapons around with them and not as sleepwalkers but in wide awake understanding of their use- which they doubtless practiced endlessly. So they were attached to those objects, they were emblematic of a capacity to save the individual and offspring from ravening presences in the environment.

Jayjay4547 wrote:If you visualise australopithecus as embedded in the food chain and therefore stressed to gain most access to food while minimising their forfeit to their predators then there would actually be an obvious need for practice to optimise skill and to optimise the effectiveness of the weapons.

Jayjay4547 wrote:. other primates with sharp canines seem as infants to practice with their teeth more than do human infants:



Human beings that age would tend more to be fooling around with barrels in alleys.

So by you did misrepresent my position I can’t prove that you did so carelessly but you certainly have now carelessly as well as wrongly accused me of lying.


…………………………………………………………………………………………

Calilasseia wrote:

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

Bollocks. First of all, there are plenty of organisms that don't possess big canines, and which don't use tools. Second, Sahelanthropus had small canines, but never once during its 3 million year history left behind evidence of tool use. Oh dear, there goes your fantasy once again, destroyed by DATA.

It’s nonetheless true that the long sharp canines of other higher primates do make them dangerous attack. They are ferocious biters. The other day I asked a local expert on primates “Do primates bite?” and she said yes, and that her body is full of scars as evidence of that. When I looked tremendously interested she thought it was her body that excited my interest and became a bit stiffly cold.

Lack of data isn’t the same as DATA. The short blunt canines of Australopithecus create the strong inference that they had already adapted fully into defensive hand weapon use. Here is a pic of Sahelanthropus showing that it had longer canines than Australopithecus , suggesting that the adaptation was in progress roughly around that time.



It would be interesting to find objects that Sahelantropus used together with their biting, to make them dangerous to attack but present lack of such data doesn’t demolish the inference that you misrepresent as a fantasy.

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: A reasonable observer would infer that defensive hand weapon use was the key that unlocked coevolution between our ancestors and tools.

No, a genuinely reasonable observer would take account of the DATA, telling him that NO weapons dating back more than 100,000 years have ever been found. Which on its own destroys your fantasy assertions.

You repeated that point a number of times but without giving a reference or a reasoned analysis of what would describable as a weapon. Wikipedia has an entry on “Hand Axe”, tracing their appearance back to the Oldowan culture 2.5ma (now pushed further back). Nowhere does it use the word “weapon”. That could mean that you are right or it could mean that you share a cultural blindness with other English speakers.

Here is a pic from that site:


Would a primate holding a hand axe like that, be dangerous to attack? My sense is yes but with a major reservation; something is missing; a means to keep a predator at arms length. That primate would need a stopper tool either in its other hand or held in two hands by another member of the troop. Think of a dog attacking you- you would need something to stop it with and something to punish it with. But of course, sticks unlike stones are highly perishable and relatively unlikely to be found as fossils. According to the Wiki entry, hand axes were the first stone tools to be recognised as such {“thunder stones”) and have been prolifically found.

Jayjay, you're not fooling anyone here. Your incessant lies, dodging and other assortments of disingenuous behaviour only serve to demonstrate your position is based on nothing but dishonest dogmatism.

There is a lovely tool for keeping things at arms reach in the image of the stone axe. Its called a hand by some people.

No need for a stick to stop a dog if what you have is a hand and a stone. You use the hand to hold the dog in some manner and you smack it with the rock. Amazing. Not to mention using two tools in two hands tends to be hard for humans. But this can all be ignored so we can keep on going down the path that Jayjay feels makes more sense to him.

The hand at work...

Jayjay4547 wrote:
So I was correct about the common meaning of your word “Drill”.

And you were incorrect and misrepresenting Tolman, by deliberately choosing a meaning that was clearly other than that which Tolman intended.

I suppose you can be forgiven this obtuseness if English is not your first language.

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

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

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

Bollocks. First of all, there are plenty of organisms that don't possess big canines, and which don't use tools. Second, Sahelanthropus had small canines, but never once during its 3 million year history left behind evidence of tool use. Oh dear, there goes your fantasy once again, destroyed by DATA.

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

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

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

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

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

3: Sahelanthropus, which existed for 3 million years before Australopithecus, exhibited NO propensity for tool use for 3 million years, despite having small canines.

I notice you're avoiding addressing that DATA the way Kent Hovind avoided paying taxes.

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

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

Jayjay4547 wrote:Lack of data isn’t the same as DATA.

Oh look, predictable apologetic fabrication time, to try and hand-wave away the DATA, by trying to suggest that either [1] the scientists responsible engaged in the same blatant cherry-picking and confirmation biasing that you're doing, [2] the missing evidence will somehow magically turn up some day, despite diligent searches increasingly ruling this out with each new expedition, or [3] that the tiresome supernaturalist trope much loved by creationists, about absence of evidence purportedly not constituing evidence of absence, is something other than a duplicitous apologetic elision. You're so fucking transparent here, JayJay.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The short blunt canines of Australopithecus create the strong inference that they had already adapted fully into defensive hand weapon use.

No they don't. This is a fucking fantasy you've decided to masturbate to ideologically, one that is destroyed by the DATA I and others here keep providing. Oh wait, here's key parts of that DATA once more ...

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

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

3: Sahelanthropus, which existed for 3 million years before Australopithecus, exhibited NO propensity for tool use for 3 million years, despite having small canines.

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

Oh wait, what does the VERY SAME WIKIPEDIA PAGE YOU PULLED THAT PHOTO FROM actually SAY about this organism, when one reads the text? Here's the relevant quote in full:

The teeth, brow ridges, and facial structure differ markedly from those found in Homo sapiens. Cranial features show a flatter face, u-shaped dental arcade, small canines, an anterior foramen magnum, and heavy brow ridges. No postcranial remains have been recovered. The only known skull suffered a large amount of distortion during the time of fossilisation and discovery, as the cranium is dorsoventrally flattened, and the right side is depressed.

The same page then goes on to say:

Its canine wear is similar to other Miocene apes.

and annotates that sentence with a reference to the Nature paper announcing the discovery of the species. Namely this paper:

A New Hominid From The Upper Miocene Of Chad, Central Africa by Michel Brunet, Franck Guy, David Pilbeam, Hassane Taisso Mackaye, Andossa Likius, Djimdoumalbaye Ahounta, Alain Beauvilain, Cécile Blondel, Hervé Bocherens, Jean-Renaud Boisserie, Louis De Bonis, Yves Coppens, Jean Dejax, Christiane Denys, Philippe Duringer, Véra Eisenmann, Gongdibé Fanone, Pierre Fronty, Denis Geraads, Thomas Lehmann, Fabrice Lihoreau, Antoine Louchart, Adoum Mahamat, Gildas Merceron, Guy Mouchelin, Olga Otero, Pablo Pelaez Campomanes, Marcia Ponce De Leon, Jean-Claude Rage, Michel Sapanet, Mathieu Schuster, Jean Sudre, Pascal Tassy, Xavier Valentin, Patrick Vignaud, Laurent Viriot, Antoine Zazzo & Christoph Zollikofer, Nature, 418: 145-151 (112th July 2002) [Full paper downloadable from here]

The authors open with this:

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:The search for the earliest fossil evidence of the human lineage has been concentrated in East Africa. Here we report the discovery of six hominid specimens from Chad, central Africa, 2,500 km from the East African Rift Valley. The fossils include a nearly complete cranium and fragmentary lower jaws. The associated fauna suggest the fossils are between 6 and 7 million years old. The fossils display a unique mosaic of primitive and derived characters, and constitute a new genus and species of hominid. The distance from the Rift Valley, and the great antiquity of the fossils, suggest that the earliest members of the hominid clade were more widely distributed than has been thought, and that the divergence between the human and chimpanzee lineages was earlier than indicated by most molecular studies.

A little later into the paper, with respect to the matter of differential diagnosis from other primates, we have this:

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

As an example of the extent to which the authors made comparisons, we have this immediately following therefrom:

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:Sahelanthropus is distinguished as a hominid from large living and known fossil hominoid genera in the following respects: from Pongo by a non-concave lateral facial profile, a wider interorbital pillar, superoinferiorly short subnasal height, an anteroposteriorly short face, robust supraorbital morphology, and many dental characters (described below); from Gorilla by smaller size, a narrower and less prognathic lower face, no supratoral sulcus, and smaller canines and lower-cusped cheek teeth; from Pan by an anteroposteriorly shorter face, a thicker and more continuous supraorbital torus with no supratoral sulcus, a relatively longer braincase and narrower basicranium with a flat nuchal plane and a large external occipital crest, and cheek teeth with thicker enamel; from Samburupithecus14 by a more anteriorly and higher-placed zygomatic process of the maxilla, smaller cheek teeth with lower cusps and without lingual cingula, and smaller upper premolars and M3; from Ouranopithecus15 by smaller size, a superoinferiorly, anteroposteriorly and mediolaterally shorter face, relatively thicker continuous supraorbital torus, markedly smaller but mesiodistally longer canines, apical wear and large distal tubercle in lower canines, and thinner postcanine enamel; from Sivapithecus16 by a superoinferiorly and anteroposteriorly shorter face with non-concave lateral profile, a wider interorbital pillar, smaller canines with apical wear, and thinner cheek-teeth enamel; from Dryopithecus17 by a less prognathic lower face with a wider interorbital pillar, larger supraorbital torus, and thicker postcanine enamel.

Sahelanthropus is also distinct from all known hominid genera in the following respects: from Homo by a small endocranial capacity (preliminary estimated range 320–380 cm3) associated with a long flat nuchal plane, a longer truncated triangle-shaped basioccipital, a flat frontal squama behind a robust continuous and undivided supraorbital torus, a large central upper incisor, and non-incisiform canines; from Paranthropus18 by a convex facial profile that is less mediolaterally wide with a much smaller malar region, no frontal trigone, the frontal squama with no hollow posterior to glabella, a smaller, longer and narrower braincase, the zygomatic process of the maxilla positioned more posterior relative to the tooth row, and markedly smaller cheek teeth; from Australopithecus19–21 by a less prognathic lower face (nasospinale–prosthion length shorter at least in presumed males) with a smaller malar (infraorbital) region and a larger, more continuous supraorbital torus, a relatively more elongate braincase, a relatively long, flat nuchal plane with a large external occipital crest, non-incisiform and mesiodistally long canines, and thinner cheek-teeth enamel; from Kenyanthropus4 by a narrower, more convex face, and a narrower braincase with more marked postorbital constriction and a larger nuchal crest; from Ardipithecus]6,7 by upper I1 with distinctive lingual topography characterized by extensive development of the crests and cingulum; less incisiform upper canines not diamond shaped with a low distal shoulder and a mesiodistal long axis, bucco-lingually narrower lower canines with stronger distal tubercle, and P4 with two roots; from Orrorin8 by upper I1 with multiple tubercles on the lingual fossa, and non-chimp-like upper canines with extensive apical wear.

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

Further on, the paper, after providing some nice details photographs of the holotype skull, gives us this:

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:Although the Sahelanthropus cranium is considerably smaller than that of a modern male Gorilla, its supraorbital torus is relatively and absolutely thicker. This is probably a sexually dimorphic character (see Fig. 3), presumably reflecting strong sexual selection. If this is a male, then the combination of a massive brow ridge with small canines suggests that canine size was probably not strongly sexually dimorphic.

Oh, by the way, elongation in the mesiodistal axis is from front to back, which means that the canines of Sahelanthropus were longer in that horizontal direction compared to the canines of other Miocene primate taxa. The buccolingual axis, likewise, is the horizontal axis from cheek to tongue, measuring the width of a tooth. There is NO mention of elongation in the vertical axis, or, more correctly from a dental standpoint, the apicocoronal axis. A little piece of information I provide to prevent more apologetic fabrications on your part.

Which means that your assertion of Sahelanthropus possessing longer canines than Australopithecus is another of your bare faced lies.

Moving on ...

Jayjay4547 wrote:It would be interesting to find objects that Sahelantropus used together with their biting, to make them dangerous to attack but present lack of such data doesn’t demolish the inference that you misrepresent as a fantasy.

Except of course, that the morphometric DATA provided in that paper DOES destroy your fantasy. Sahelanthropus did NOT have longer canines than Australopithecus. Indeed, on page 149 nof the paper, the right lower canine is displayed, with a scale bar of JUST 1 CM in the apicocoronal axis. This tooth is further described as being 11 mm long in the mesiodistal axis, and 8.5 mm in the buccolingual axis. Further on in the paper, the authors state this:

Brunet et al, 2002 wrote:The upper and lower canines are small (Tables 1, 2). Given the absolutely and relatively massive supraorbital torus of the cranium (Figs 1a and 3), possibly reflecting strong sexual selection, and the thick corpus of the mandible (Fig. 2b, c), which probably indicate male status, we infer that Sahelanthropus canines were probably weakly sexually dimorphic. The upper canine (Fig. 1d) has both distal and apical wear facets whereas M3 is unworn. The lower canine (Fig. 2d, e) has a strong distal tubercle that is separated from a distolingual crest by a fovea-like groove; the large apical wear zone at a level above this distal tubercle implies a non-honing C–P3 complex (the P3 is still unknown). The upper canine, judging from the steep, narrow distal wear strip reaching basally, we believe had a somewhat lower distal shoulder than Ardipithecus6,7, suggesting an earlier evolutionary stage. Moreover, a small, elliptical contact facet for P3 on the distobuccal face of the distal tubercle indicates the absence of a lower c–P3 diastema. Sahelanthropus thus probably represents an early stage in the evolution of the non-honing C–P3 complex characteristic of the later hominids7.

So Sahelanthropus had canines that in the apicocoronal axis, were somewhere between 8 and 11 mm in length. Looks like your fantasy has been destroyed by more DATA. Which means it's time to update that DATA I keep destroying your fantasy with:

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

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

3: Sahelanthropus, a proto-hominid species existing for 3 million years prior to Australopithecus, had small canines that were no longer than 11 mm in the apicocoronal axis;

4: Sahelanthropus, which existed for 3 million years before Australopithecus, exhibited NO propensity for tool use for 3 million years, despite having small canines.

Game. Fucking. Over.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: A reasonable observer would infer that defensive hand weapon use was the key that unlocked coevolution between our ancestors and tools.

No, a genuinely reasonable observer would take account of the DATA, telling him that NO weapons dating back more than 100,000 years have ever been found. Which on its own destroys your fantasy assertions.

You repeated that point a number of times but without giving a reference or a reasoned analysis of what would describable as a weapon.

Oh, you mean a "reasoned analysis" such as that presented in the scientific paper I provided documenting those 100,000 year old weapons? The paper I presented in this earlier post??

So once again, you're reduced to lying about my statements on the subject. Which all adds to the destruction of your fantasy.

Let's take a look at that paper in more detail shall we, since you couldn't be bothered even acknowledging the existence of my reference to it, let alone reading it ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jayjay4547 wrote:Wikipedia has an entry on “Hand Axe”, tracing their appearance back to the Oldowan culture 2.5ma (now pushed further back). Nowhere does it use the word “weapon”.

Oh wait, that same Wikpedia page has an entire section labelled Evidence From Wear Analysis. Indeed, a part of that section contains the following:

Analysis carried out by the Spaniard Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo and co-workers on the primitive Acheulean site in Peninj (Tanzania) on a series of tools dated as 1.5 m years old shows clear microwear produced by plant phytoliths, suggesting that the hand axes were used to work wood.

The paper cited as supporting this statement is this one:

Woodworking Activities By Early Humans: A Plant Residue Analysis An Acheulian Stone Tools From Peninj (Tanzania) by M. Dominguez- Rodrigo, J. Serrallonga, J. Juan-Tresserras, L. Alcala & L. Luque, Journal of Human Evolution, 40(4): 289-299 (April 2001)

Dominguez-Rodrigo et al, 2001 wrote:Abstract

The emergence of the Acheulian stone tool industry, between 1·7 and 1·5 m.y.a., constitutes one of the earliest evidences of complex behavior in the process of human evolution. The major technological breakthrough with the Acheulian industry was the beginning of the manufacture of bifacially shaped heavy-duty tools. Handaxes made with a predetermined form and a high degree of symmetry are the main characteristic of the Acheulian tradition. The tools are shaped through a long knapping sequence with a remarkable increase in the technical skills of the makers, compared with the older Oldowan tradition, implying a high degree of planning and foresight. Until recently, the function of these early bifacial tools remained unknown. A large number of these artefacts were found at Peninj in Tanzania, and phytolith analyses on handaxes have yielded for the first time unambiguous evidence of their function as woodworking tools.

Meanwhile, that Wikpedia article continues with this interesting paragraph:

Contemporary experiments in knapping have demonstrated the relative ease with which a hand axe can be made,[34] which could go some way in explaining their success. In addition, as tools they are not very demanding in terms of maintenance nor in the choice of raw materials, any rock will suffice so long as it supports a conchoidal fracture. It is easy to improvise during their manufacture or correct mistakes without requiring detailed planning and above all there is no requirement for a long, demanding apprenticeship to learn the necessary techniques. All these factors combined have meant that these objects remained in use throughout pre-history. In addition, their adaptability makes them effective in an enormous variety of tasks, from the most heavy duty such as digging in soil, felling trees or breaking bones to the most delicate such as cutting ligaments, slicing meat or perforating a variety of materials.

Oh look, that article cites that hand axes have a multiplicity of uses. One of which I've just covered by reference to a peer reviewed scientific pape above.

Jayjay4547 wrote:That could mean that you are right

Oh, you mean along with all the scientific papers covering lithic wear analysis on the requisite tools, to determine their ACTUAL usage?

Jayjay4547 wrote:or it could mean that you share a cultural blindness with other English speakers.

Bollocks. Oh wait, what about YOUR MANIFEST IDEOLOGICAL BLINDNESS IN THE FACE OF CONTRARY DATA? Including DATA THAT I PRESENTED EARLIER IN THE THREAD, WHICH YOU IGNORED AND NEVER EVEN ACKNOWLEDGED THE EXISTENCE OF? A piece of indolence that you then compounded further, by PEDDLING MANIFEST LIES, TO THE EFFECT THAT I PURPORTEDLY NEVER PRESENTED THAT DATA TO SUPPORT MY STATEMENTS?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is a pic from that site:

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

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

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

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

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

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

Plus, what did that paper above I presented by Dominguez-Rodrigo et al tell us? Oh wait, it told us we now have unambiguous evidence of stone tools being used to work and shape wood 1.5 million years ago. Courtesy of the fact that many plants, wood producing trees included, produce phytoliths, which are persistent microscopic structures made of silica. Furthermore, many of these phytoliths, which end up being included in the tool wear marks of wood-working stone tools, have specific morphologies related to taxonomy, which means that the plant species in question can be deduced from those phytoliths.

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

Jayjay4547 wrote:According to the Wiki entry, hand axes were the first stone tools to be recognised as such {“thunder stones”) and have been prolifically found.

Oh, didn't you read past that introduction, to the parts covering tool geometry and lithic wear analysis?

Alan B wrote:The hand at work...

DarthHelmet86 wrote:There is a lovely tool for keeping things at arms reach in the image of the stone axe. Its called a hand by some people.

No need for a stick to stop a dog if what you have is a hand and a stone. You use the hand to hold the dog in some manner and you smack it with the rock. Amazing.

You will have to show me some time. Do you use your own hand to hold the dog in some manner or someone else’s hand? What’s the going rate for hand hire to hold the dog? I don’t know, it sounds exploitative.

Here’s a well-known pic of a police dog attacking an unarmed man, back in 1963. Quite a disturbing image, the man isn’t screaming at the dog, he seems to be more like concentrating on something else. He isn’t using his hands to protect his stomach against those dog teeth, let alone to grab the dog in some manner. Is he like, sacrificing himself for the good of the civil rights cause? How noble. But someone pointed out, look at the man’s left leg. It’s lifted right off the ground and it’s against the dog’s sternum. He is kneeing the dog and that’s what he is concentrating on.

Anyway; when attacked by a dog I’d personally rather have a stick and a stone- or two sticks- than a stick and a hand. Here’s a pic of men with sticks; a good bunch to either join of stay away from. I doubt whether the whole of the internet has a pic of police actively engaging a group armed like that, using police dogs. Oh come on, there has to be a few, so easy to prove my hunch wrong, that police and public all know that the sight of a fierce dog creates in the minds of men armed with sticks, a strong compulsion to moker that dog.

DarthHelmet86 wrote: Not to mention using two tools in two hands tends to be hard for humans. But this can all be ignored so we can keep on going down the path that Jayjay feels makes more sense to him.

Um, is that an example of this “DATA” stuff that Calli keeps banging on about? Well OK then. Is using two tools in two hands something humans find hard to do, but compared to what- an armadillo? Or a finch? Or a dog? Here’s a video of two men engaging each other with two tools, one in each hand, and it looks to my untrained eye, they do that better than say an armadillo would..

The Wikipedia entry on Nguni stick fighting (which is what those guys are doing) says they use two sticks, one for defense and the other for offence. Or a shield can be used for defense. The entry doesn’t say so, but the defense tool is held in the left hand. It’s at least plausible that the human left hand motor control is specifically adapted to defense and the right for striking. That would make a hypothesis that could be tested by comparative tests with humans and apes.

Those so called traditional weapons- the short blunt canines of australopithecus tells us that the tradition goes back millions of years.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Those so called traditional weapons- the short blunt canines of australopithecus tells us that the tradition goes back millions of years.

No they don't. That's just your assumption.

Jayjay, you can stack as many anecdotal assumptions and assertions as you want, it won't magically transform into credible hypothesis.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The Wikipedia entry on Nguni stick fighting (which is what those guys are doing) says they use two sticks, one for defense and the other for offence. Or a shield can be used for defense. The entry doesn’t say so, but the defense tool is held in the left hand. It’s at least plausible that the human left hand motor control is specifically adapted to defense and the right for striking.

It doesn't seem at all plausible for anything that specific to be a hardwired adaptation in a system where plasticity seems incredibly valuable.
And, of course, your example involves people training for 'symmetric warfare' against other people armed with the same weapons, not people training to fight predators.

Jayjay4547 wrote:That would make a hypothesis that could be tested by comparative tests with humans and apes.

No, it wouldn't, for any number of strikingly obvious reasons.
Including, of course, the fact that almost all humans develop the great majority of their motor skills by doing things other than fighting.
As, it would seem, do most [other] apes.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Those so called traditional weapons- the short blunt canines of australopithecus tells us that the tradition goes back millions of years.

No it doesn't, courtesy of the large quantities of DATA refuting your assertion. Here we go again, with the DATA you keep ignoring and pretending doesn't exist destroying your fantasy:

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

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

3: Sahelanthropus, a proto-hominid species existing for 3 million years prior to Australopithecus, had small canines that were no longer than 11 mm in the apicocoronal axis;

4: Sahelanthropus, which existed for 3 million years before Australopithecus, exhibited NO propensity for tool use for 3 million years, despite having small canines.

Point [1] above enjoys evidential support from the 1988 Shea paper I first presented in this post, and elaborated upon in my previous post, point [2] enjoys support from this paper by McPherron et al in Nature, point 3 enjoys evidential support from the Brunet et al paper in Nature published in 2002, and point 4 is supported by the existence of no positively identifiable tools dating back more than 3.3 million years.

So, we have peer reviewed scientific papers supporting three of the four points above, and as for point 4, well two of the papers I provided in support of the other points tell us that scientists know enough about prehistoric tools to know what to look for. Furthermore, the extensive coverage I provided in past posts on lithic wear analysis, provide evidence in addition that when scientists find actual prehistoric tools, they can determine on a substantive basis what usages those tools were put to. Which means that the absence of stone tools accompanying Sahelanthropus can, for the time being, safely be regarded as indicative of absence of tool use by that species.

But of course, courtesy of all the above, the rest of us, not blinded by obsessive pursuit of creationist ideology, the REAL ideology that's fucking up the human origins story in the arena of discourse, know what DATA would support the assertion that Australopithecus wielded weapons, in accordance with JayJay's fantasy. Namely:

[1] Tools dating back 3.3 million years, accompanying Australopithecus fossils;

[2] DATA returned from lithic wear analysis of those tools, unambiguously pointing to their usage as weapons.

Until we have this, JayJay's assertion remains a fantasy. More troubling for JayJay's fantasy, is the repeatedly observed instances of him not bothering to read sources in depth, ignoring text from those sources containing citations from the scientific literature refuting his subsidiary apologetic assertions along the way, repeatedly observed instances of him peddling manifest falsehoods about the post content of others exercising the diligent effort to appraise sources in full, wild jumping to unwarranted conclusions, for no other reason than the manner in which said unwarranted conclusions tickle his ideological erogenous zones, and his routinely observed blatant misrepresentation of the post content of others for duplicitous apologetic purposes. The mere fact that he has to resort to discoursive mendacity on a routine basis to prop up his fantasy, on its own marks said fantasy as a suitable subject for deep suspicion.

It's also indicative of the corroding influence of ideological righteous certainty, of the sort that is endemic to creationism, that he hasn't once retracted any of the falsehoods he's peddled upon having them exposed as such, but instead, has engaged in fabricating yet more falsehoods, in a desperate and doomed attempt to try and rescue the earlier exposed falsehoods from their new-found falsehood status. In short, his exercise here consists of making shit up, pretending that his made up shit purportedly constitutes established fact, then making up more shit to try and stop the original made up shit collapsing under the weight of its own exposed mendacity.

Thank you Cali, for once again demonstrating how a rigorous approach to data gathering, and a critical appraisal thereof, does indeed mess up the origin stories of mythologically smitten wet-dreamers.

I'm left handed.

Does that mean i have an offensive defense?

Or a defensive offense?

:shrug:

Calilasseia wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Those so called traditional weapons- the short blunt canines of australopithecus tells us that the tradition goes back millions of years.

No it doesn't, courtesy of the large quantities of DATA refuting your assertion. Here we go again, with the DATA you keep ignoring and pretending doesn't exist destroying your fantasy:

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

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

3: Sahelanthropus, a proto-hominid species existing for 3 million years prior to Australopithecus, had small canines that were no longer than 11 mm in the apicocoronal axis;

4: Sahelanthropus, which existed for 3 million years before Australopithecus, exhibited NO propensity for tool use for 3 million years, despite having small canines.

Oh, Cali such shortsightedness on your and jayjay's part.
Neither of you have even considered that the reason Australopithecus and Sahelanthropus had short canines is that it was a fashion statement and there existed an industry of teeth filers who ground down those unsightly canines to look cool. There was also a sunglass industry but those advancements died with their respective cultures.

Don''t give him ideas - next up he'll be claiming that Australopithecines wore sunglasses because they lacked brow ridges. Which is only marginally more stupid than his current obsession.

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

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

FIFY.
But I agree, this thread title needs to change or the OP needs to get back on track.

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

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

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

In short, JayJay thinks science has made a mistake and is wrong. If science is wrong, therefore god.