"Marc Verhaegen" wrote in message
news:C4340A8C.1193F%%m_verhaegen@skynet.be...
>>> "Here's a point to consider when evaluating AAT. I did not learn this
>>> point from some academic overlord with an anti-AAT agenda; I learned
>>> it while trying to avoid becoming crocodile food in Africa. When I
>>> spent several months with a team at Lake Turkana, Kenya, investigating
>>> some of the most important early hominid sites in the world, one of
>>> our overriding concerns -- while swimming, bathing, or catching fish
>>> with a net -- was to watch out for crocodiles in the shallows. A croc
>>> can be on you, crush your legs in its jaws, and drag you under to
>>> drown before you have time to screech for help.
>>> The fact that crocodiles co-existed in time and space with early
>>> hominids is a colossal blow to AAT, which does not explain what
>>> advantages early humans would have gained by spending time in
>>> crocodile-populated waters; an environment where they could not make
>>> fires, throw stones or sticks, use other tools, or have any hope
>>> whatever of escaping the most common predator. A troop of early
>>> hominids wading in a lakeshore or swampy forest would best be
>>> described as a crocodile banquet. The cute, feel-good images of babies
>>> swimming freely in a pool, shown in the AAT video, have nothing to do
>>> with the real situation of predator avoidance in Africa.
>>> Ask the
>>> Dasenich or Turkana people who live around Lake Turkana: only visiting
>>> maniacs swim in that lake." Cameron M. Smith
>
> Mr.Smith apparently doesn't know what AAT means: his blabla is irrelevant.
>
> AAT is about ancestral (Plio)Pleistocene Homo populations (after the H/P
> split c.5 Ma) dispersing along the coasts (incl.Java & Flores) & from
> there
> along the waterways inland.
>
>> As usual, this characterization ignores the widely varied adaptability
>> of hominids.
>> There is the point where the waterhole water is only inches deep, and
>> then its the turn of the hominids to stab the crocks with their
>> digging sticks for dinner. I never suggested that a mother would want
>> to throw a baby into the water, but if by doing so she feeds a crock
>> rather than a lion, she'd do better to deny the lion the reward for
>> hominid predation. the big cats have been much better at it than
>> crocks.
>> I fail to see why aquatic adaptations required hominids to *only* rely
>> on that ecosystem, It makes more sense that the hominids which could
>> exploit BOTH savannah and water courses would do better. And this is
>> egzactly what we find associated with the oldest hominid skull yet
>> found, at Chad, which at the time was a varied seasonal riverine
>> floodplain like the Okavango.
>
> Waterside (both land & water) ok, but not savanna: in that case we had had
> a
> keen olfaction, a bigger mouth (Г la Olson) with sharper teeth, higher
> running speed, higher body temperature, higher daily temp.fluctuations,
> less
> sweating, less dependence on sodium, water, iodine, a short sun-reflecting
> fur, no SC fat, no plantigrady, etc., but we see the opposite in humans.
>
> There's not the slightest indication for any savanna adaptation in human
> ancestors. Of course, some Homo populations could have lived next to
> rivers
> in savannas or elsewhere, but that doesn't mean they were savanna
> dwellers:
> they were waterside omnivores.
>
> R.Wrangham 2005
> "The delta hypothesis: hominoid ecology and hominin origins"
> in D.Lieberman, R.Smith & J.Kelley eds
> "Interpreting the Past:
> Essays on Human, Primate and Mammal Evolution in Honor of David Pilbeam"
> Brill Ac.Publ.Inc, Boston MA, pp.231-242
> = example of people who want to keep the old savanna nonsense in
> combination
> with waterside ideas (BTW, it's about apiths, not about Homo, IOW,
> irrelevant to AAT).
>
> --Marc Verhaegen
>
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/outthere.htm
>
http://users.ugent.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT
>
>
>> Depending on what time of year, it was either dry grassland with
>> stagnant bayous, or wet season lushness with raging torrents dividing
>> up the resource bases. The hominids that could swim got to eat the
>> fruit on the other side, while those that couldnt are no longer in the
>> gene pool.
>> Crocks in the channel would be a concern, but herd animals are locked
>> into habit, and will try to cross the water at the same point every
>> year. That's where the crocks will be. The hominids are smart enuf to
>> figure this out, and dont go there.
>
Marc:
Since you only have one idiosyncratic thing to say why do you have to repeat
it endlessly?
