rationalskepticism.org

Spearthrower wrote:
But go on then, tell me why I would be wrong (actually, it's not me, but the original publishing scientists) in describing it [the Australopithecus composite pictured on the right below] as a female given the small mastoid process, the biconvex prognathism of the maxilliary subnasal surface, the small mediolateral diameter of the manidbular condyle, the occipital condyle's articular surface, the narrow interorbital block, the very narrow canine breadth, the narrow extramolar sulcus, the steep inclination of posteroinferior facing nuchal plane, the proximity of the temporal lines to the superior nuchal lines, the low frontal squama saggital convexity, and the apparent scaling of occipital squama. I am sure someone who specializes in afarensis would be able to list a dozen more characteristics they could use to sex (and identify the species of, and the temporal distribution of) those fossils, and they'd almost certainly be able to point out examples of other afarensis fossils which still clearly fall within the type that don't exhibit some of those characteristics, which I am very nearly as ignorant of as you.

But anyway, you're still right because you say so, even when you don't know your arse from your elbow. You've taken Creationism to a narcissistic level of self-dogma, and you have the utterly nonsensical delusion that it's everyone else operating from within a blinkering ideology.

There’s pretty good and interesting evidence of this blinkering ideology, which I have been arguing recently, has skewed the human origin narrative away from natural selection towards sexual selection that is, away from explanations depending on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions, towards a struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex. That’s how Darwin distinguished them. Those “external conditions” form an open-ended system, arguably hierarchical, hugely creative and unpredictable by those within it; a creator.

Here’s some of that evidence. I have added more primate species to the earlier comparison of skulls. Males on the left, females on the right, the rows reflecting decreasing relatedness to human beings. I earlier typified the difference between male and female gorilla as that the male showed a greater capacity to take damage and dish it out whereas with Australopithecus that distinction was less. The added species of chimp and baboon support that difference.

I’m arguing that the males of our closest relatives are formidable biters. In so far as we are other organic beings, we had better (and do) take that as a significant feature in our relations with them. In the case of chimps, we have records of the kind of damage they inflict both on their own species and ours: they tend to aim to maim, rather than to kill (so as to eat). And to maim is the most economical form of defensive fighting.