Oldskeptic wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:Sendraks wrote:Well we know the defence systems of the termites worked, because they're still here, all over the world. Not only that, but they were here quite some time before the australopiths. So Termite defence systems are pretty solid in so far as standing the test of time.
Not so for the australopith.
Australopiths existed between 3.9mya-1.7mya, longer than any other known hominoid genus ancestral to man. If you try to model their relation with other species that is to take a snapshot. Time only comes in by one having to assume fully developed familiarity between species. If a leopard came around a corner and saw a troop of hominids foraging,
See, this would be very difficult since there were no leopards at the time. There were leopard ancestors that were also the ancestors of lions, tigers, and Jaguars, but there is little that is known about their behavior and abilities. Could they climb trees? We don't know. Could they run very fast? We don't know. Did they hunt big slow herbivores like saber-toothed cats did? There were plenty of them around. Or did they hunt small fast omnivores that might have been, and probably were, few and far between? As frustrating as it might be for you we simply don't know.
In C.K. Brain’s The Hunter or the Hunted? An introduction to African cave taphonomy”
he gives leopard, a false sabretooth and four species of hyena as contemporary with Australopithecus. Also the Swartkrans paranthropus skull has tooth marks that match those of a leopard skull found at the same site.
By the way I was wrong about Australopiths being the longest surviving genus: Homo has lived a bit longer (Homo habilis 2.5mya)
Oldskeptic wrote: then assume she knew where they slept, where they were going, how they would react if they saw her. On the other side one can assume that a typical troop often had a habituated predator that had successfully lived off the troop for some time, and it had set reaction tactics that worked somewhat. Evidence for that comes e.g. from the shikari tales of Jim Corbett.
One can assume anything, and you do it a lot. The problem is that assumptions, unless backed up by evidence, are not worth much. Here you have assumed that there were leopards and that they behaved just like modern leopards that only began to evolve in Africa around 800,000 years ago. You've assumed that there was a predator that evolved to have australopithecus as its main prey.
Corbett’s accounts of the habits of man-eating tigers and leopard are actually useful and relevant about habituated predators, as is Patterson’s “Man eaters of Tsavo”. The root assumption one needs to make about the australopiths-predator relations is that both knew as much about the other as they were capable of knowing and transmitting to the next generation. it was adaptive for that to be so. I emphasise that to counter an implicit assumption that predators and australopiths were basically strangers to each other: stand together, throw a few stones and scream and the hyena will slink off. Underlying this whole issue is a vast contempt for African wildlife, in particular their shared knowledge.
Oldskeptic wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:OK, if the whole troop got involved, the more effective their choice and use of sticks, the more trauma to the predators and the less damage to themselves.
This makes all kinds of assumptions that australopiths were able to select suitably weighty and durable sticks for beating leopards with, given leopards are pretty durable creatures. So your expectation is that australopiths are able to select sticks that make suitable weapons, rather than pointlessly flail away with sticks that break upon contact with the Leopard and do it no significant harm.
This is a fairly sophisticated level of tool selection and use you're talking about here.
Trust natural selection to trend stick users towards sticks that don’t break. Assuming they used knobkerrie sticks. I don’t see any sophistication there.
Oldskeptic wrote: Well what exactly do you do then if you try to model the australopith-leopard relation?
How about admit that you don't have enough information to build a model. Never mind that there were no leopards at the time, and what saber-toothed cats there were preyed on large slow herbivores, and the ancestors of modern hyenas at the time had jaws suitable for bone crushing and scavenged what the saber-toothed cats left behind.
There were leopards, and you are taking a simplistic view of hyena. In this study of predation on livestock in Tanzania Kissui(2008) “A total of 396 attack events were reported on cattle, goats/sheep, donkeys and dogs during the 19-month study period: 58% (n= 231) were by hyenas, 25% (n= 99) by lions and 17% (n= 66) by leopards.
[url]http://www.cbs.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/Kissui-Tarangire_paper_online_version.pdf][/url]
The hidden contrary assumption you are making is the australopiths didn’t have any significant predators. Uniquely in their biome, they paid no forfeit in biomass to the top of the trophic pyramid, they could go anywhere at any time of their choice in any array as suited them without fear of predation. None of that is reasonable.
Oldskeptic wrote: Throw up your hands at the implausibility of their selecting suitable defensive weapons?
No, you admit that you simply don't know if they even used weapons. But for you that doesn't work because you want your "hypothesis" to be true, so you build your model on baseless assumptions that you think supports your "hypothesis". It's standard creationist operating procedure; make your conclusion then try to find any flimsy piece of evidence that fits, while ignoring any evidence that doesn't.
I certainly don’t admit that. It’s a strong inference that the australopiths used hand-held weapons against predation, maybe as strong as the inference originally made of T. rex, that it was a meat eater.
From the inference one can
predict that these weapons will be found, taphonomy permitting.
The inference is drawn (again) from the australopiths eye teeth being unsuitable for tearing in conjunction with the use of the arms, from general primate use of biting, from lack of branch-grasping by their hind feet, their apparent lack of sprinting ability and from their descendant’s known use of hand weapons against predation.
It’s standard atheist operating procedure to reserve weapon use to a creature with “smarts”, as part of their origin myth of man-the-atheist. In doing that, atheists have managed to fuck up the history of human evolution, inverted it from the truth that our ancestors were led by the nose through the logical implications of creative relations between African species.
As evidence that one doesn’t need “smarts” to use foreign objects as defensive weapons, let me remind you of
Lybia edmondsoni http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lybia_edmondsoniThe common name "pom-pom crab" comes from its symbiotic practice of brandishing a stingingsea anemone (usually Triactis producta) in each claw to defend against predators and possibly to stun prey.
Oldskeptic wrote: Seeing that their descendants to this day, can defend themselves using simple hand-held weapons? Let’s turn the argument around: suppose a primate were optimized to defend itself using simple hand-held weapons- can you imagine a better body plan than Australopithecus? Chimps have been observed to use sticks to demonstrate against leopard – banging on its hiding place. But their use is conspicuously not optimized. They don’t really have a clue.
And with a brain the same size a a chimp you think that australopithecus had any more of a clue than chimps do today? You're projecting human like traits on a primate with a brain 1/3 the size of the human brain, a brain only 2/3 the size of homo habilis; the first rudimentary tool maker.
According to Wikipedia the first rudimentary tools found, of the Oldowan culture, are often associated with Australopithecus garhi. What is the brain size of the pom-pom crab, normalised however you wish, compared with that of australopithicus?
There is a characteristic mean-spiritedness or selfishness behind this intent to pull every animal ability towards the present exalted humanity. Animals as simple as caddis worms use materials in well-chosen sophisticated ways, Its absolutely endemic throughout nature, up to crows winkling food out of bottles using wires.
Come, take up my challenge to visualize a better body plan than Australopithcus, for applying simple hand-held weapons against predators.
Oldskeptic wrote: Chimps on patrol groups don’t carry sticks and stones. What would happen if a hominoid species needed to do so while foraging? The great doors of logic would shift around them into a new of co-evolution with those sticks.
You are attributing logical thought to what basically amounts to an upright chimp.
[/quote][/quote]
Absolutely not, no “logical thought” as driver of innovative behaviour. In fact I’m not interested in innovation, The innovation behind that is inaccessible to us at present, as is the innovation behind the caddis worm’s stick house. I’m interested in modeling the established behaviour of our distant ancestors in intimate and knowing relation with their biome.
edit: major section at beginning left out inadvertantly
by 
