Small correction. It wasn’t picking up a stick that was capable of creating a new genus it was habitually carrying around a stick (and maybe a stone)and using those habitually in defense against predation by African predators who had as alternative prey, African antelope and baboons. It’s completely reasonable to look into the case that that would have been a game changer for the wielders body, brain, social organization and interest in objects.

Good gods, are you still running with this idea? Even after all the schooling you had before?

Homo legolas and Homo gimli?

Can't you at least get your own thread, rather than pollute others with this, JJ? You'll inevitably continue on for thousands of pages, so it seems only fair such a special idea has its own special place.

And the atheist ideology isn’t a fantasy.

Not a fantasy; a delusion which just so happens to jerk off your agenda.

Welcome back Spearthrower!

Calilasseia wrote: JayJay, your "atheist ideology" bollocks is not only bollocks, bollocks that has been flushed down the toilet again and again, not only boring bollocks to boot, but because you've been schooled again and again why it's bollocks, it's now dishonest and duplicitous bollocks as well.

According to you and your friends. But I hear you Cali, you don’t like my posts and you don’t want to see any more of them. Your abusive way of putting that disinclines me to consent. It might occur to you that a creationist who posts on an atheist site might be actually courting abuse. I must say though, I really dislike it.

Calilasseia wrote: Once again, what part of "NOT treating unsupported assertions as fact is NOT a fucking ideology" do you either not understand, or wilfully refuse to understand for duplicitous apologetic purposes?

You have posted that sentence so many times, with different styles of emphasis but without any response acceptable to you, that it should have occurred to you that the sentence is question begging. I’m confident that an ideology arises wherever some people share an important idea (e.g. “There is no God”)and others oppose that idea. Soon that ideology takes on a life of its own and it parasitizes its adherent’s brains.

Calilasseia wrote: The only two possible reasons for you continuing to post this bollocks, are discoursive incompetence or discoursive duplicity, and many here are doubtless suspecting the latter, given how many times you've been schooled on this.

Another more likely explanation is that I’m on to a fascinating and important topic and loath to discard it when screeched at.

Calilasseia wrote: Now, are you going to cease and desist from posting this bollocks? Because the rest of us are bored shitless with your endless resurrection of this bollocks. Bollocks that is not only plain, flat wrong, but is so fulminatingly discoursively diseased bollocks, that it should have died from the ideological syphilis it was infected with long ago.

Sorry Cali, while I’m allowed I'm likely to continue until people stop posting things that seem to me to be wrong. There are a few posts with real content I'm anxious to respond to ASAP.

edit: typo

People sharing an idea doesn't not make the idea an ideology—which implies a formalised system of ideals, especially ones which form the basis of economic, political and/or social theory—and neither does people sharing disagreement with an idea.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: JayJay, your "atheist ideology" bollocks is not only bollocks, bollocks that has been flushed down the toilet again and again, not only boring bollocks to boot, but because you've been schooled again and again why it's bollocks, it's now dishonest and duplicitous bollocks as well.

According to you and your friends.

Nope according to the definition of the word.

Jayjay4547 wrote:But I hear you Cali, you don’t like my posts and you don’t want to see any more of them. Your abusive way of putting that disinclines me to consent.

Where has Cali been abusive to you?
Or are you simply looking to play the persecution card?

Jayjay4547 wrote: It might occur to you that a creationist who posts on an atheist site might be actually courting abuse.

This isn't a SM site and Cali hasn't abused you.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I must say though, I really dislike it.

Then maybe you should stop fantasizing about it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Once again, what part of "NOT treating unsupported assertions as fact is NOT a fucking ideology" do you either not understand, or wilfully refuse to understand for duplicitous apologetic purposes?

You have posted that sentence so many times, with different styles of emphasis but without any response acceptable to you, that it should have occurred to you that the sentence is question begging.?

Except that it isn't.
Trying to dismiss it out of hand this way only demonstrates that you're either unwilling or unable to deal with it.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m confident that an ideology arises wherever some people share an important idea (e.g. “There is no God”)and others oppose that idea.

You could be confident that the earth is flat. That doesn't mean it is.
And atheism isn't an idea, it's the absence of one.
Because atheism = a- meaning without, theism, the believe in (the existence) of god(s).
That's all it is the absence of a belief in god(s).
Not believing gods let alone any particular one, doesn't exist.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Soon that ideology takes on a life of its own and it parasitizes its adherent’s brains.

You mean like religion?
Except atheism is neither an ideology nor a religion.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: The only two possible reasons for you continuing to post this bollocks, are discoursive incompetence or discoursive duplicity, and many here are doubtless suspecting the latter, given how many times you've been schooled on this.

Another more likely explanation is that I’m on to a fascinating and important topic and loath to discard it when screeched at.

Except that it isn't likely at all, since you've failed to even adress, much less refute the multiple instances where someone explained to you that atheism isn't an ideology.
Therefore the most likely and logical explanation is that you cannot and therefore will not admit you're wrong and will just continue to disengenuously parrot the same mantra over and over.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Now, are you going to cease and desist from posting this bollocks? Because the rest of us are bored shitless with your endless resurrection of this bollocks. Bollocks that is not only plain, flat wrong, but is so fulminatingly discoursively diseased bollocks, that it should have died from the ideological syphilis it was infected with long ago.

Sorry Cali, while I’m allowed I'm likely to continue until people stop posting things that seem to me to be wrong.

Since you've failed to rebut virtually anything you've disagreed with in this thread, this seems like a rather irrational position to maintain.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: JayJay, your "atheist ideology" bollocks is not only bollocks, bollocks that has been flushed down the toilet again and again, not only boring bollocks to boot, but because you've been schooled again and again why it's bollocks, it's now dishonest and duplicitous bollocks as well.

According to you and your friends.

No, according to the verifiable facts. Which several of us here have exerted effort to impart to you. Once again, NOT treating unsupported assertions as fact ISN'T an "ideology", it's the very antithesis thereof, because ideologies are based upon unsupported assertions treated as purportedly constitutng "axioms" which the world is purportedly required to conform to. Every genuine ideology that has ever existed exhibits this feature. Indeed, I've exerted considerable effort pointing out the unsupported assertions lying at the heart of various ideologies in past posts, usually in order to demonstrate to assorted individuals with misconceptions about this, why I don't subscribe thereto. But of course, you're not going to let inconvenient facts such as this get in the way of your manifest apologetic fabrications, are you JayJay?

Jayjay4547 wrote:But I hear you Cali

That's the whole problem, JayJay, you'e not listening when the facts that I bring to the table happen not to genuflect before your own ideological presuppositions. Instead, you're continuing to peddle a blatant fabrication, one that has been exposed as a blatant fabrication by reference to those facts. Namely:

Fact No 1: Atheism, in its rigorous formulation, consists of a refusal to accept uncritically unsupported supernaturalist assertions. That is IT. IN short, it consists of "YOU assert that your magic man exists, YOU support your assertions". Asking someone else to support their assertions with proper evidence, as opposed to the collapsed discoursive soufflés of fabrication, isn't an "ideology", it's the proper conduct of discourse.

Fact No. 2 : Every genuine ideology that has ever existed, is based upon one or more unsupported assertions, treated as purportedly constituting "axioms" about the world, which the world purportedly must conform to.

Fact No 3: Since atheism doesn't erect any assertions of its own, but consists of suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions, and a demand that said assertions be tested to determine whether or not they're more substantial than the products of the television inside someone's head, then as a corollary of [1] and [2] above, atheism is NOT an "ideology, but the very antithesis thereof.

Now you've had these elementary facts presented to you time and again, JayJay, yet despite this, you persist in peddling this blatant fabrication of yours, and a s a corollary, that fabrication is now regarded here as dishonest.

Plus, the people who are responsible for what you refer to, in typically mendacious fashion, as an "origin narrative", in a deliberate and manifest attempt to erect a fake "symmetry" between evidence-based science and assertion-laden doctrine, in order to hand-wave away the former, are not "atheists", but scientists. Who present the relevant account NOT because they're in the business of propping up doctrinal assertions, but because they're in the business of testing assertions to destruction, and discarding those assertions failing said test. The account that scientists present for our origins is based upon data, JayJay, NOT ideological presuppositions, and this is another of those elementary facts you've been presented with time and again. Scientists have the fossils, in large quantity, and they have the DNA evidence, again in large quantity, and your attempt to suggest that they are operating on an "ideological" basis when they present the hypotheses that are in accord with that data, is not merely a wrong fabrication on your part, but a duplicitous one. It's nothing more than the continued resurrection of that zombie canard known as the "assumptions" canard creationists love so much, because they have no evidence to support their own doctrinal assertions, and in order to prop up said assertions, have to misrepresent the valid science that destroys those assertions. It's mendacity writ large, JayJay, and has NO place in proper discourse.

Jayjay4547 wrote:you don’t like my posts and you don’t want to see any more of them.

Not even competent enough to be wrong.

What I want to see an end to, JayJay, is not your posts full stop, but instances of manifest and blatant discoursive duplicity, such as the one I've exposed above. In short, I and others here want to see an end to made up shit presented as purportedly constituting fact.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Your abusive way of putting that disinclines me to consent.

Once again, JayJay, I'll remind you of an operating principle at work here. Namely, the entirely proper scientific principle that ideas are disposable entities. The procedure for determining when to dispose of an idea, and treat that idea as a bad idea, simply consists of asking the question "is this idea in accord with previously established facts or relevant data?", and discarding ideas failing to be thus in accord. As a corollary of this, another maxim applicable here, is the maxim, bad ideas exist to be destroyed. If you don't like the subjection of bad ideas to invective, JayJay, the simple solution is stop presenting them.

In case you hadn't worked out this elementary principle, no one is required to "respect" your ideas, simply because you assert them. Ideas earn respect when they survive appropriate critical test, and not before. The reason I heap invective upon your manifest fabrication, is because said fabrication has manifestly FAILED critical test time and time again. Your continued clinging to this fabrication, and the treatment thereof as fact, despite said fabrication manifestly being a fabrication even upon elementary examination of its correlation with the facts, apart from being absurd in the light of those facts, and dishonest upon repeat instances thereof after those facts have been presented, is, if anything, a classic example itself of genuine ideological presupposition at work.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It might occur to you that a creationist who posts on an atheist site might be actually courting abuse.

Not if his discoursive conduct is honest. Funnily enough, we have someone fitting that bill right now posting here. Though he'll soon be robustly informed the moment he strays into duplicitous discoursive territory.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I must say though, I really dislike it.

Quite simply, tough shit. This isn't an apologetics forum, existing to pander to wishful thinking. The entire rationale of this forum consists of feeding bad ideas into the shredder where they belong. The simple solution, once again, consists of not presenting bad ideas.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Once again, what part of "NOT treating unsupported assertions as fact is NOT a fucking ideology" do you either not understand, or wilfully refuse to understand for duplicitous apologetic purposes?

You have posted that sentence so many times, with different styles of emphasis but without any response acceptable to you, that it should have occurred to you that the sentence is question begging.

No it isn't, courtesy of the facts I've just presented above. Learn them,. and why they apply here.

Jayjay4547 wrote: I’m confident that an ideology arises wherever some people share an important idea

Poppycock. An ideology arises when people treat unsupported assertions as fact, and base an entire dialectic upon this. If the assertions in question are supported by evidence, then one ceases to have an ideology, and instead one has an evidence based theory. Learn the distinction.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(e.g. “There is no God”)and others oppose that idea.

Except that, oh wait, I'm on public record here as saying that I don't assert this. Instead, I'm on record as stating that I regard particular instances of the class of god-type entities as having been falsified, on the basis that they are constructed using assertions suffering from inconsistency, paradox and absurdity. On the other hand, the universal question, that NO entity belonging to the class exists, is one I regard as unanswered. Moreover, I'm on public record as having stated what I think is likely to happen, if any genuine member of that class turns up and provides evidence of its existence. You'll find that a good number of people here regard my public declarations on this matter as eminently sound. But of course, you've never bothered to go and find the data on this matter, have you? Instead, you've simply assumed (supernaturalists all too frequently demonstrate that they love their assumptions) that my opposition to your manifest canards, instead of being motivated by proper discoursive concerns, is purportedly the product of "ideological" biases of the very sort you're manifesting. It isn't.

Indeed, the idea that any genuine god type entity somehow necessarily conforms to the narrow, parochial and limited parameters erected by superstitious, pre-scientific authors of mythologies, is not only an ideology writ large itself, but an absurd one. Indeed, I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's words on this subject, which are apposite here:

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way."

Indeed, by insisting that their gods conform to mythological assertions, adherents of those mythologies are belittling their gods. Quite simply, if a god-type entity does actually exist, mythologies and their assertions are nothing more than failed attempts by limited humans, humans even more limited by no fault of their own than ourselves, to try and make the cosmos comprehensible. Unfortunately, that's the entire problem with prescriptive assertions, of the sort contained in mythologies: they are in the most mortal danger of all of being falsified, the moment the subjects of those assertions actually put in an appearance, and show what they're really like. See, for example, a certain Mr B. Franklin, and his rather dangerous kite flying activities, and how they falsified assertions about the necessity of supernatural entities for lightning. Worse still, prescriptive assertions have a habit of encouraging ruthless enforcement of conformity to doctrine, and the preservation of bad ideas via the destruction of good humans, simply because those good humans don't drink the Kool-Aid.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Soon that ideology

Except that the "ideology" in this case is a manifest fabrication on your part.

Jayjay4547 wrote:takes on a life of its own and it parasitizes its adherent’s brains.

Oh, suddenly becoming a supporter of Dawkins' "meme" idea, are you?

I'll also note how embarrassing your above statement should be for you, with respect to your own ideology and its effects.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: The only two possible reasons for you continuing to post this bollocks, are discoursive incompetence or discoursive duplicity, and many here are doubtless suspecting the latter, given how many times you've been schooled on this.

Another more likely explanation is that I’m on to a fascinating and important topic and loath to discard it when screeched at.

The facts say otherwise. See above.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote: Now, are you going to cease and desist from posting this bollocks? Because the rest of us are bored shitless with your endless resurrection of this bollocks. Bollocks that is not only plain, flat wrong, but is so fulminatingly discoursively diseased bollocks, that it should have died from the ideological syphilis it was infected with long ago.

Sorry Cali, while I’m allowed I'm likely to continue until people stop posting things that seem to me to be wrong.

But you don't think it's apposite for others to apply the same principle to your posts? Nice double standard there.

Jayjay4547 wrote:There are a few posts with real content I'm anxious to respond to ASAP.

Here's another one. Let's see what you have in response to this, shall we?

Nothing changes, does it?

Come back after many moons, and there's yet another JJ vanity thread where he spends the majority of it telling us all about our atheistic agenda without so much as a nod in the general direction of the original topic, and all responses are processed as exemplifying the absurd claims he makes. Nothing like a good old chain yanking, is there JJ?

demolish dawkins? why dawkins?

ETA: lol. Nevermind. I just saw this thread is a million pages long. I'm not that committed.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:The issue under discussion here is the australopith’s responses to their predators. I cited the poor human sprinting ability as a proxy for australopith ability. You countered with “persistence hunting” of humans. When I pointed out the irrelevance of such a habit to predator avoidance, you now make your point doubly irrelevant by disclaiming any relevance to the australopith ecology.

Clearly the rise of homo sapiens as a persistence hunter in Africa, rather than a weapon using hunter is lost on you. That you fail to understand how and why this demolishes your argument about sophisticated weapon use by australopiths, only serves to demonstrate how wedded you are to an ideology.

I’m not to be drawn on this “persistence hunter” notion. It has no relevance to the antipredation strategy of the australopiths, that isn’t about “sophisticated weapon use” as you put it. It’s about the use of unworked stones and sharpened sticks, much less sophisticated than a sunbird’s use of lichen and cobweb to build her nest.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:...you needed to respond to my experience that a dog’s attack can be stopped, the initiative taken from it and it rendered vulnerable, by a “stopper”, which can be a survey rod. Come, let’s carry the discussion forward a bit.

That depends on the dog. Which only serves to demonstrate your ignorance about dogs.
On average, leopards tend to be a fair bit bigger than dogs.

I know a lot about dogs. I found that a variety of hostile dogs can be stopped by a proffered pointed stick. True that leopards are bigger than dogs but the logic of the circumstance that halts an attack, takes the initiative from it and makes it vulnerable – that stays the same. If a human wants to do anything about a leopard’s attack apart from simply submitting to the leopard’s will, it is to thrust a stick at it. Running away, biting or climbing a tree would all give the human even less chance. And the human features that make it so are inherited from the australopiths.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:There is a strong inference that they did [defend themselves using sticks and stones] , it’s written all over their bodies.

In your opinion. An opinion not backed up by evidence or logic.

It’s the same kind of inference that doesn’t need a bone stuck between T. rex’s teeth to establish that it ate meat. Again, the lack of protruding canines or of adaptation into climbing trees or into sprinting, having hands adapted for clubbing and throwing
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1571064/
– and descendants adept at weapon-using defense- these all support the inference. According to Wikipedia Australopithecus garhi is associated with the emergence of Oldowan pebble tools. This inference is strong enough to be taken seriously, it’s not to be sneered away.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Simply moving as a group with the potential to apply deadly force.

And this deadly force would be what?

Keeping the predator at bay using a sharpened stick and then skewering it with sticks or smashing in its skull with large pebbles.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:And there would be adaptive pressure towards reducing the size of group able to mount a credible threat, bearing in mind the foraging inefficiency implied n always moving around like a Roman army troop.

Again, more supposition on your part, not supported by any evidence of the group size or understanding of how predators hunt with regard to groups of creatures.

The direction of adaptive pressure is logically towards reducing the number of prey individuals who could mount a credible defense. Scenarios that envisage a large troop moving in close defensive array are unrealistic because that isn’t an efficient foraging pattern. There have been some excellent studies in the Moremi reserve of baboon response to predation, showing that they can swiftly gather to surround a leopard. But then they have to be able to apply deadly force. Which baboons are well equipped to do, I cited Fitzpatrick’s account of the technique of a dog-killing baboon. Primates generally are great biters, far as I know we are the only living exception

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I quite agree that stone throwing requires no tool making ability. It requires one to select suitable stones from the environment and carry them around at all times when a predator might appear.

And you’ve no evidence to support this claim. No evidence to support that australopiths had any greater mental faculty than chimps, which are not noted for carrying rocks around with them

Once again, I present the pom pom crab as evidence that no high mental faculty is needed for carrying around a foreign object for defense.

This genus of crab not only carries around two anemones for defense against predation, but its body is specifically adapted to do that most effectively. See the Wiki article. You are making a central mistake here, while you build the origin narrative of the “smart” human.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I presented the Laetoli footprints as evidence that their feet were not adapted to climbing trees. And earlier I presented this clip of a baboon unsuccessfully trying to escape from a leopard up a tree, while using its hands and feet to grasp small twigs.

Australopiths were very strong for their size and had much longer arms in proportion to their bodies. The evidence strongly supports that they would have been capable climbers, even if not adapted to a fully aboreal lifestyle.

A primate would need hind feet adapted to grasping branches, if it were to be able to avoid predation by climbing away from a tree-climbing felid.

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: Surely, a sensible strategy would be to turn the prey’s flank. And as I said, it would be relatively difficult to turn an australopith’s flank – in that respect it would be a bit like a giraffe; dangerous to approach from any side.

What bollocks is this? The flank of an australopith is no more dangerous than that of a homo sapiens.

It’s not between australopith and homo sapiens for goodness sake. You are getting impatient, don’t call a point “bollocks” just because you don’t expect it. It’s a fact that alternative prey to australopiths need to be taken in flank. A predator on a gemsbok doesn’t just power over the horns. And a biped is relatively difficult to take in flank. There is a gross physical reason for that, to do with moments of inertia. To demonstrate the principle, consider a the moments of inertia of a cylnder, say one of mass m=35kg, length h= 1m and radius r=0.1m . According to the Wiki entry Lists of moments of inertia, the moment of a vertical cylinder about the vertical (“biped”) is given by Iz=mr^2/2=0.175 kgm^2
The moment of a horizontal cylinder (“quadruped” ) is Iy=(m/12)*(3r^2+h^2)=3.0kgm^2 or about 17 times greater.
Play around with the dimensions as you like, constrained by the density of 1000kg/m^3. One could of course more accurately compare the resistance to facing in a new direction, of say a baboon and an australopith, by summing elements but the crude point is that a biped is relatively difficult to take in flank. In a skirmish say as imposed by hyena. even one australopith armed with a stick and a stone, would be a difficult prey sort

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: The only rational explanation for so many scientists to have looked so long at the australopiths without actually seeing them, is to invoke cross-talk from ideology.

The only rational explanation is that scientists look at the evidence and don’t try to create imagined “facts” to support shoehorning their findings into a mythology. Your argument is an inconsistent muddled morass, randomly taking survival concepts from other species and using that as a justification to support your own assertions.
Or as Cali put it, it’s bollocks.

You are relying a lot on bluster and Cali relies a lot on abuse.

And you talk a whole load of shite, so all's fair, eh?

I’m not to be drawn on this “persistence hunter” notion.

Don't forget Sendraks - regardless of the topic of expertise, JJ always knows better than everyone. Forget such trivialities as doing a degree in the field, reviewing the evidence first-hand, using the data to support contentions.... just do it the JJ way; sit back in your lofty arm-chair and issue decrees.

theropod wrote:Dogs (hereafter referencing domesticated canines) usually don't attack humans with the intent to eat the human, and I've seen dogs that a stick would be a useless defensive tool had they attacked, sharpened or not. I've seen a full grown male Rottweiler snap a hardened rock maple pool stick in two, which could just as easily be ones arm. Poke a dog like that with your rock-rubbed-sharpened stick and he'll rip you to bits. Large predatory canines, like wolves, often run in packs, and the wild African dog uses sustained chase tactics along with other pack strategies/tactics.

Speaking of fierce dogs, police dogs are fierce aren’t they? OK here's a picture of a crowd of miners, shortly before a police action in which a number of them were shot dead (Marikana massacre). The police have been criticized for not using better crowd control methods. Well in this pic, there are no police dogs used for crowd control. So far as I can recall, police dogs are not used to control a crowd armed with sticks, they are too much at risk. Sticks in the hands of a homin are significant.

theropod wrote:Dogs do not have paws with deadly scythe-like claws terminating each foot, and nor do they have the ambush fleetness of foot (sudden acceleration) often associated with large cats. If a large cat wants a hominid and the hominid has ONLY got a stick, a rock that hominid is leopard turds about 2 days later. Give a GROUP of hominids a few sticks and rocks with the courage to stand their ground, and eventually learn that flaked stone is horrible sharp, and these tools start to get serious, and the prey can then become the predator. I wouldn't want to go one on one with a full grown, wild and ravenous male leopard if I had a katana and body armor! Wanna talk about tigers? Sheese! Your survey stick would be a mere inconvenience to a big cat that wanted you for dinner. Cali has linked to the video of the lion not giving a shit about large bore rifles shooting the piss out of it and it STILL attacking with spreed and strength beyond belief. A single man would have probably ended up dead in that setting unless he made one hella well placed shot quickly enough. How the fuck can you still talk about fucking sticks and rocks after seeing something like that?

A sharpened stick would have been more effective in stopping that lion than a hunting rifle was. Maasai warriors hunt lions admittedly using iron spears- but against surrounded lions who know they have to break out. All this talking up of how overmastering felid predators are to the extent of citing tigers (none in Africa) it all ignores the fact that the australopiths did live in the larder of up to 8 possible predator species, like all animals their size they must have been preyed on and they must have had predator avoidance rule book that worked partially. And the state of play among African mammal species was about as high as it is today.

theropod wrote:Dogs are a very poor example to use in comparison with large cats as potential predators for many reasons, and defensive tactics and "tools" that works against one might not work against the other, if at all against either.

There is a shared general principle- that a proffered defense needs to be outflanked, it’s dangerous to power over it. There is a defensive function of some “stoipper” objects that isn’t just a flip side of hunting. For example the pom pom crab’s anemones. This function has the potential to affect physiology- for example of the pom pom crab.

theropod wrote:You have never really addressed the united front defensive strategy, which is seen over and over in nature. This includes all hominids except the orangutang, of which we are aware. Orangutang stay so high up in the rainforest canopy they effectively evolved the lack of need for a social setting that offers protection by numbers. While lush the rain forest is sometimes sparse in resources and a social group would be hard pressed to stay fed. Social groupings are common in primates, both in new and old world monkeys, and most lemurs. It seems to me that the selected trait of social dependence works for critters as threatening as Meir Cats, which don't have a single clue about sticks or rocks as weapons. It doesn't matter if one Meir Cat is taken as long as the group survives, since evolution is a population driven phenomena the death of an individual isn't an extinction event. It doesn't really matter if one hominid dies as the result of a large cat attack if the group gets away and makes more babies.

Numbers don’t count. Numbers of sticks and stones held by resolute and adept bipeds is what counts.

theropod wrote: If you've ever been shooting game birds with a shotgun and a group of birds rise together it becomes much harder to focus on a single bird and make a shot. Imagine a bunch of early hominids jumping and yelling and running adding to the clutter of a hunt, like quail crossing paths and doing aerobatics. This alone could have occasionally diffused large cat attacks IF the hominids had effective scouting and lookouts. A surprise attack from close range could still happen, and perhaps a strong group of early hominids stick-whacking at the beast would be driven off, but any single prey individual wouldn't stand a chance. It's the group, not the tools, that makes the difference.

Hominids jumping and yelling with sticks and stones, swiftly gathering, that’s the sort of critter we can realistically visualize them as being.

theropod wrote: JayJay, it's not that what you say couldn't have possibly been the way things were, but without some evidence you have no more than a hypothesis. There are sound arguments, and more importantly rebuttals supported by evidence, in opposition to your position. The likelihood that simple sticks and thrown rocks offered an effective defense against large cat attack is unsupported, and frankly silly. Robert Byers seems to think that jingling car keys would frighten away a hungry polar bear too. See the connection?

I wouldn’t agree with anyone that less than a credible threat of deadly force, repeatedly demonstrated thousands of times, between species that were perfectly familiar with each other, would model the australopith ecology.

What is frankly silly is all these nonsense videos about tigers, elephantrs and rhinos, in place of sensible discussion of the predicament of 1.4m bipedal arch-footed australopiths living in the African savannah.

theropod wrote: If defensive tool use emerged in hominids a little farther back in time than we now think how does this provide evidence for a god in any way?

If such a slight adjustment is all that is at stake, why all the hysterical abuse, why all the Siberian Tigers, canned hunts and elephant safaris? What is at stake is an established human origin narrative where nothing was done to our ancestors. They weren’t created by anything. Our ancestors made tools, the tools didn’t make our ancestors. In that case we were created by “a process” and that process is “evolution”. There is no attributal agency. That doesn’t prove there is no god, rather it denies a place where the greatness and the mystery associated with God could exist. That’s how I see atheist ideology working to mold the human origin narrative. The opposite narrative doesn’t provide evidence for a god, except if we see God as the generalization of our relationships with the world.

Another way of describing the atheist narrative is that it is relationship free. The only relationships that count in it, are those within the envisaged primate troop: all the rest is the unfamiliar foreign. The predators are terrifying, unmanageable things that might still be chased away by throwing stones and screaming at them.

Spearthrower wrote:

I’m not to be drawn on this “persistence hunter” notion.

Don't forget Sendraks - regardless of the topic of expertise, JJ always knows better than everyone. Forget such trivialities as doing a degree in the field, reviewing the evidence first-hand, using the data to support contentions.... just do it the JJ way; sit back in your lofty arm-chair and issue decrees.

Why don;t you climb down from your particular throne Spearthrower, and put in some data.

So, Jayjay, still no evidence I see...

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

I’m not to be drawn on this “persistence hunter” notion.

Don't forget Sendraks - regardless of the topic of expertise, JJ always knows better than everyone. Forget such trivialities as doing a degree in the field, reviewing the evidence first-hand, using the data to support contentions.... just do it the JJ way; sit back in your lofty arm-chair and issue decrees.

Why don;t you climb down from your particular throne Spearthrower, and put in some data.

You mean like you continue to fail to do?

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m not to be drawn on this “persistence hunter” notion.

You’re not one to let facts and evidence stand in the way of a good story.
I understand.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It has no relevance to the antipredation strategy of the australopiths, that isn’t about “sophisticated weapon use” as you put it.

It is relevant and if you had a clue about what you were talking about, you’d understand why.
And the act of “sharpening a stick” is sophisticated weapon use. Unless you’re suggesting that any random stick would do or that australopiths were capable of selecting, by some means, exactly the right sort of sharpened stick to use against a large predator.
Because, you know, trial and error in this scenario isn’t going to work so well.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I know a lot about dogs.

Apparently not.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I found that a variety of hostile dogs can be stopped by a proffered pointed stick.

You defend yourself against hostile dogs often then? Because I can think of a number of breeds that wouldn’t be deterred by anything less than high calibre firepower.

Jayjay4547 wrote:– and descendants adept at weapon-using defense- these all support the inference.

Which came so much later in hominid evolution, any link to australopiths is beyond tenuous at best.

Jayjay4547 wrote:According to Wikipedia Australopithecus garhi is associated with the emergence of Oldowan pebble tools. This inference is strong enough to be taken seriously, it’s not to be sneered away.

I certainly wouldn’t sneer it away. But I’d also point out that it is evidence which does not support your assertion of weapon use.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Keeping the predator at bay using a sharpened stick and then skewering it with sticks or smashing in its skull with large pebbles.

Do you have any idea of the resilience and relative strength of the kind of sharp stick required to skewer a large predator? These are not things that are just found randomly lying around. And as for “large pebbles” to stand a chance of crushing a the skull of leopard or tiger or equivalent, you’re talking rocks, sizeable rocks. And this is just big cats we’re talking about. Bears would be a different story altogether.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The direction of adaptive pressure is logically towards reducing the number of prey individuals who could mount a credible defense. Scenarios that envisage a large troop moving in close defensive array are unrealistic because that isn’t an efficient foraging pattern.

We’ll let chimpanzees know that they’re doing it wrong. Not to mention every other animal species that travels in a large group.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Primates generally are great biters, far as I know we are the only living exception

Yup, chimps have a pretty nasty bite and they’re closer to australopiths than we are.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Once again, I present the pom pom crab as evidence that no high mental faculty is needed for carrying around a foreign object for defense.

That a symbiotic relationship exists between anemones and crabs is in no way analogous to the thought processes required to fashion weapons to defend against a large land dwelling predator.

Jayjay4547 wrote:A primate would need hind feet adapted to grasping branches, if it were to be able to avoid predation by climbing away from a tree-climbing felid.

No it doesn’t. You’re specifying an adaption that isn’t necessary for climbing trees, only one that is required for a purely aboreal lifestyle. You are blatantly ignoring the physical attributes of the australopith that I’ve pointed out.

Jayjay4547 wrote: It’s not between australopith and homo sapiens for goodness sake.

There is nothing to suggest that australopiths were dangerous to predators from any angle. A homo sapiens is only dangerous to predators if not surprised and/or attacked from the front. A leopard piling into the sides or back of homo sapiens is going to have much the same effect on an australopith.

Jayjay4547 wrote:don’t call a point “bollocks” just because you don’t expect it.

I’m calling it bollocks because it is bollocks.

Jayjay4547 wrote: It’s a fact that alternative prey to australopiths need to be taken in flank.

Not exclusively they don’t.

Jayjay4547 wrote:A predator on a gemsbok doesn’t just power over the horns. And a biped is relatively difficult to take in flank.

Well no. Partly because the horns are dangerous, partly because the skull is very thick. But I’ve seen plenty of examples of predators going straight for the throat, rather than the flanks of the animal. Whereas if all they have for defence is pebbles and sharpened sticks and you are a predator the size of a leopard, you can take em from the flank, front, back, above, whatever.

Jayjay4547 wrote: You are relying a lot on bluster and Cali relies a lot on abuse.

Saying that scientists rely on evidence is not bluster.
The fact that you seem to think it is, speaks volumes of the quality of your argument, which is based on trying to shoehorn reality into a mythology which serves your own ends, rather expand our understanding of the natural world.

GenesForLife wrote:

crank wrote:I was thinking about all the wonderful vision capabilities of of many of the much 'lower' species. Thanks, cool info.

One thing, the blog says 23m/s peak speed is potentially equivalent to 22 cal bullet, but FYI, even a plinking round has got to be 100's of feet per second, 23m/s=75 ft/s. I decided to go look, the slowest round a quick looksee found was 700, typical is like 1100 ft/s.

That acceleration is like 10,000 g, wow, that is juicing for a human. [I mean that literally, I think you would be juiced as in the liquid separated from your body. I know it's very brief, but god, that's a lot of g. Very brief 100g shocks are sometimes survivable].

These stomatopods have another name, popular amongst those who've kept them as pets and haven't been careful - thumbsplitters

The quote about the 22 Cal is straight out of one of the papers I cited, IIRC.

This is how you take revenge on mantis prawns.



By the way, they're known as 'Lai Niiu Har' or 'Urinating Shrimp' in Cantonese.

I'd like to see JayJay try and deal with the dogs next door to me with a pointed stick. They're 14 stone Rottweilers. They're probably capable of biting his stick in two, before amputating his limbs. My recommended procedure for dealing with them if they go AWOL mentally, is an AK-47.