Posted: Jun 14, 2014 8:34 am
Jayjay4547 wrote:
The Wiki entry on Australopithecus gives its dates as 3.9-1.7 mya, and for Oldowan culture 2.6-1.7 mya. And it cites Australopithecus garhi as a probable maker of these tools.
Actually it cites early species of Homo such as H. habilis and H. ergaster as those attributed with the flourishing of Oldowan culture.
Jayjay4547 wrote: So at any rate Australopithecines were not ancestors of the tool makers at Oldowan. It’s true that Wiki doesn’t describe any Oldowan stone tools as a weapon. The entry on Hand Axe puts its Oldowan date at 2.6mya If hand axes s were used at all as defensive weapons they could have been smashed down on a predators skull, after it had been halted and distracted by a “stopper” stick held in the left hand. Or maybe stones weren’t used at all.
And here you go into assumption territory again. There's no evidence that Australopithecus used any weapons of any kind.
Jayjay4547 wrote:This “stopper” function, useful only for defense is the one innovation I want to add, based on my experience as a land surveyor. In many encounters I found that hostile dogs could be distracted by a rod presented to them. If I had such a stick in my left hand, a kierie in my right and no regard for my clients I could have left a trail of dead dogs. That is Surveyor’s Theory.
No that's blind assumption stacking.
Jayjay4547 wrote:Oldskeptic wrote:So to say there is ”no evidence” the australopithecines used hand weapons defensively is like saying there is no evidence T. Rex ate meat, because no brontosaurus bones have been found stuck between their teeth.
No, It's not like that at all. You may like the idea that australopithecines used sticks and stones as weapons, but that does not make it true or even likely. I say there is no evidence because there is no evidence. And for you to base your whole convoluted "hypothesis" on so many assumptions is absurd.
It’s not rightly a hypothesis, I’m simply trying to model Australopithecine ecology
Modeling is not done with superfluous assumptions.
Jayjay4547 wrote:how energy flowed though the savannah
What energy?
Jayjay4547 wrote:specifically through the australopithecines. Assuming they were adapted to minimise their forfeiture to predators
Createas are not adapted by any concious force. They adapt through a process of natural selection and random mutation.
Jayjay4547 wrote:at minimum energy cost to themselves, while maximising their ability to forage in optimal troop density.
Again, evolution isn't a guided process. It has no concious goal and it doesn't work optimally to achieve the best outcome.
Jayjay4547 wrote:Always bearing in mind extreme circumstances; a troop marginally small, in a drought, alternative prey scarce and predators particularly cunning. It’s a model.
Nope, still a stack of assumptions.
Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s more an insolent claim than a convoluted one. I’m claiming that, nearly 90 years after the discovery of Australopithecus, no-one understands the first thing about them.
And yet at the same time you make a string of unevidenced claims about them.
Jayjay4547 wrote:They understand the second and third things, but not the supremely significant thing that distinguished Australopithecus from other African animals, which was their weird but portentous defensive use of foreign objects.
Citations?
How is this anything but a blind assertion on your part?
Jayjay4547 wrote: That is to claim also that no one understands the first thing about human evolution either.
Complete non-sequitur.
Jayjay4547 wrote: The study of human evolution has instead been used as a canvas for exploring and depicting the atheist vision
Jayjay, this discussion will go nowhere if you keep regurgitating the same apologist rethoric.
There is no such thing as an atheist vision, ideology, whatever.
All atheism is, is the absence of belief in gods.
Jayjay4547 wrote: where humanity is the actor as if on a stage, the rest of the world is merely his cornucopia, he is not embedded and not created by something greater than himself. That is the opposite of the truth.
Yet another blind assertion.
What's this gibberish supposed to mean?