rationalskepticism.org

Jayjay4547 wrote:No you don’t understand. I’m not to be drawn into the “persistence hunter” notion unless you establish its relevance. I’ve been enticed into that delicious topic before but it’s irrelevant to australopith ecology.

It is quite simple for anyone who understands the evidence, rather than clings to ideological fairytales.
If Australopiths were capable of using weapons to defend against attacks from large predators, why then did its later ancestors not leave evidence of equal or more advanced tool use? Why did homo sapiens evolve as a persistence hunter before turning to spears and more complex hunting methods? If australopiths were as adapt at weapon use as you claim and it did confer an advantage, why didn’t their successor hominids make use of it?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Now you wish to classify a sharpened stick as sophisticated.

A sharpened stick capable of deterring a predator, especially a large predator, is a sophisticated tool. You seem to understand that clearly not just any sharpened stick will do, but you don’t seem to appreciate the mental faculties required to properly asses what constitutes the right sort of stick.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Seeing that a pom pom crab can be taught through the same mechanism

You have presented no evidence to demonstrate that the pomp om crab is “taught” to form a symbiotic relationship with the sea anemone. Your understanding of the natural world is shocking in its ignorance.

Jayjay4547 wrote:On the contrary, the high consequence of a slightly better defensive tool for breeding would create steep fitness gradient towards the best. As well as drawing individual and social attention to the weapon as a survival aid.

In a group dynamic, no one else’s tools are put to the test so there is no trial and error of those tools. And the individual who failed the test is not in any position to inform anyone of what they’ve learned.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I have had at least eleven dogs, ranging from terrier to Rhodesian ridgeback and as a surveyor I’ve come across a fairly wide variety of hostile dogs.

Your limited anecdotal experience is noted. Any further claims that you know much about dogs will be summarily ignored. You clearly know jack and shit, both of which left town.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Modern descendants of the australopiths inherit major body-plan features with them; bipedal stance, arch-footed, grip suitable for throwing and clubbing. These aren’t tenuous links.

You don’t seem to understand the point being made. If australopiths were as adept at weapon use as you claim, why doesn’t this sophisticated weapon use manifest in early homo sapiens?

Jayjay4547 wrote:If you ignore the inference then you need to find a plausible explanation for the existence of a non-fanged non-horned 1.4m tall biped in an environment shared with up to 8 plausible predators. The savannah was their larder, not a modern “game park”

Simple explanation vs predators.
1. Group size vs predators.
2. Australopiths were clearly not that successful given they are not around today.

Jayjay4547 wrote:There are no bears in Africa..

No shit Sherlock. Again you miss the point by a country mile.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The Oldowan culture is known as a ‘pebble culture” but the pebbles weren’t small.

As a rule, pebbles are small. Even large pebbles are still small. They’re not going to do much to deter a large predator.

Jayjay4547 wrote: A geologist friend of mine remarked to me how large an Oldowan hand axe is- and my friend has unusually large hands himself.

A large hand axe is not a pebble and is fuck all use for deterring a predator. There is no evidence to suggest that a hand held object of such size would deter, let alone stop, an ambush predator.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Goodness, you haven’t taken my very basic point starting point; that the australopiths, unlike chimps, didn’t have fangs. That’s one way that australopiths are closer to humans than they are to chimps. Apart from being much closer in terms of relatedness.

Chimps do not have “fangs” they have large canine teeth.
These canine teeth are great for fighting each other, but of limited use vs a large ambush predator.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The pom-pom crab shows that high mental faculties are irrelevant to acquiring a habit of Carrying around d a foreign object for defense.

Forming a symbiotic relationship with another creature =/= selecting and using a tool.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s instinctive to try to fend off a predator and to grab a stick would occur to any prey species capable of grabbing a stick.

Many animals are capable of grabbing sticks and yet so few actually do.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Picture a troop of baboons in a roosting tree in the Moreni reserve, being hunted by a leopard. Now imagine them having feet like an australopith and picture how well they would get along, walking on the branches.

I’ve explained to you repeatedly the features of the australopith that would make it an able climber. I’m not going to explain them again. Your fixation with feet to the ignorance of everything else demonstrates classic creationist cherry picking.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Any prey taken unawares is in a hopeless position. I demonstrated, using moments of inertia, how a biped can much more easily face a new direction than can a quadruped. I see you haven’t followed that up.

I’m not sure you understand how irrelevant this is.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Yes horns are dangerous because they are pointy and vigorously handled. Of course predators go for the throat of certain prey like impala. But they don’t reach through or between the horns to get there.

Well no, given the horns are usually on top of the head and the throat underneath. Going through the head to get to the throat would be a nonsense.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s you Sendraks who has been relying on bluster. You are arguing on the side of the established human origin narrative constructed by scientists but you Sendraks aren’t using science. Not here and not now.

I’m not using science?
One of us is explaining what the available evidence demonstrates.
The other one of us, this would be you JayJay, is just making shit up to fit with a creationist ideology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m particularly curious about the natural world and also about the story scientists build about the origin of our species.

What story? Scientists just inform of us of what the available evidence supports.
Story telling about creation is the provenance of the creationists, wooheads and sundry religious types who persist in pursuing intellectually redundant creation myths.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s curious that this story treats our ancestors as actors on the world rather than as creatures molded by other actors in the world..

If you understood anything about the ambundance of evidence that supports evolution, you’d understand that it is very much about how all the creatures in the world, and the environment, are molded by each other. Evolution does not treat any one creature as being the sole “actor” in the world.
That humans should be treated as the sole significant “actor” is very much the purview of religion.