Found: remains of oldest human lineage
Sometimes I toy with the idea of dropping politics entirely from the blog or at least having some politics-free days more often.
I don’t really foresee doing the former, and I doubt I’ll be doing the latter either. I seem to be hooked on watching the sun slowly (or maybe quickly) setting on the republic and commenting about what a very fascinating sunset it is.
Which is all just an intro to the present post, which features an old interest of mine: the fossil record of the human lineage. I was an anthropology minor in college, and physical anthropology was hugely engaged in trying to sort all of this out. Well, they still have a lot of sorting to do, and part of it is this exciting find:
The new fossil, found at a site called Ledi-Geraru, has a handful of primitive features in common with an ancient forerunner of modern humans called Australopithecus afarensis. The most well-known specimen, the 3m-year-old Lucy, was unearthed in 1974 in Hadar, only 40 miles from the Ledi-Geraru site. But the latest fossil has more modern traits too. Some are seen only on the Homo lineage, such as a shallower chin bone.
The picture that emerges from the fossil record is that 3m years ago, the ape-like Australopithecus afarensis died out and was superseded by two very different human forms. One, called Paranthropus, had a small brain, large teeth and strong jaw muscles for chewing its food. The other was the Homo lineage, which found itself with much larger brains, a solution that turned out to be more successful.
“By finding this jaw bone we’ve figured out where that trajectory started,” said Villamoare [of the University of Nevada]. “This is the first Homo. It marks in all likelihood a major adaptive transition.”
It’s amazing, too, how much information can be gleaned from such a small item:
And what an exhilarating moment it must have been when the find was made:
The human jaw was discovered in January 2013 by Chalachew Seyoum, an Ethiopian national on the team, and a student at Arizona State University. He was part of a group that had set off from camp that morning to look for fossils on a hill that was later found to be brimming with ancient bones.
Villamoare, who was on the expedition, recalled the moment of discovery. “I heard people yelling Brian! Brian! And I went round the corner and there was Chalachew. He recognised it, and said: ”˜We’ve got a human.’ It had eroded out of the stratigraphy. It was in two pieces and was missing some of the teeth, but it was clearly of the genus Homo.”
Note this little piece of information, too:
What drove Australopithethus to extinction and led to the rise of Homo is a mystery, but researchers suspect a dramatic change in the environment transformed the landscape of eastern Africa. “It could be that there was some sort of ecological shift and humans had to evolve or go extinct,” said Villmoare.
I doubt it was their carbon footprint and all that coal they were burning.
“It’s amazing, too, how much information can be gleaned from such a small item:”
It’s not really. They just come across these fragments, dig them out, brush them off and then make stuff up about them.
As vanderleun above notes, I always find it a bit stunning that some fragment from a million years ago
just survived THAT journey.
I so hope to get to the promised after life so I can get so many questions finally cleared up !!! LOL
vanderleun:
Cynical much?
There is no vast anthropological conspiracy seeking to deceive the public about the origins of humans.
Now you’ve done it, Parker; now they’re gonna start start one up.
The odds are overwhelming that volcanoes were the driving factor:
MANY of the fossils come from a time of significant ash deposits. So the remains may well be a variation on those of Pompeii… in the preservation if not the death.
The very impulse to walk upright is almost certainly due to the desire to avoid harsh ground.
Harsh ground that was none the less incredibly fertile.
The slopes of any ashy volcano are bound to be fantastic for vegetation – especially in east Africa.
Yet, who could tolerate ash covered hands stuffing fruit down the mouth? Enema is the enemy.
So the FIRST impulse would be to hold one hand up — establishing that not getting it laden with ash was a dietary improvement.
This, combined with the desire to see over — from behind rocks — down the mountainside for threats, would cause a surge in verticality as a positive good.
This quasi-vertical stage is STILL seen in infancy. Infants learn to get vertical — by working with a prop — such as a sofa or coffee table.
This is necessary to build the back muscles — which are dramatically re-toned for the vertical primate.
I’d imagine all of this occurred in an amazingly tight troop or clan that lived on ONLY one volcano.
The breakout into a new style of:
distance vision as protection
vertically standing behind rock obstructions for same
and the constant desire to get ones feeding hands up out of the ash
led to at least bonobo levels of locomotion.
I’d further imagine that the successful were straddling the ecosystems of mountain ash fall and lower water courses.
Living upon a mountainside also provides the population with additional (cosmic ray) mutations — so that the DNA is always on the boil.
The best example of an existing volcano that fits the bill: Maui’s Haleakala. (House of the Sun)
It’s in the tropics. One can live naked — easily — and stay happy by moving up and down the mountainside. The soil and rainfall provide THREE crops per year — of which the size of onions and fruits is astounding.
Drought conditions merely trigger a retreat down the mountain into the jungle.
&&&&&&&
The fellows with the small cranium and big teeth were obviously working the lower strata — the jungle. LOTS to eat, but… the plants resist being eaten by growing tougher.
The plants way up on the slopes need light seeds, light everything, and don’t tax the jaw.
You can see this still, today, wherever mountains rise up out of the tropical jungles… high enough to get a transition in the climate.
The verticality impulse would’ve started with the males — and then the DNA would’ve brought both sexes along.
Who knew what peeking over a rock/ ledge would eventuate to?
BTW, the bigger brain was required to assess threats from such a large visual space. We may not be eagles, but we can see quite a ways.
BTW, most of the severe threats would’ve been in real trouble SPRINTING up an ashen mountainside.
Such a niche pretty much excludes all of the big cats.
Instead, small is beautiful.
This is indeed a fascinating topic, but I am with the group that things way too much is sometimes made out of these random finds. Which is not to say the search should not go on, nor should speculation be made; that’s what science is, and this is important science. I find way too often “science” journalists tend to go overboard for a headline that will grab eyeballs on subjects they know little about.
I have a lot of confidence that genetic testing will eventually fill in most of the gaps regarding our past and the path of life on Earth throughout the millennia. I also think that once the real history is better known; war and prejudice will have played a big part in how we came to be who we are and where we went.
So a bad idea (like a computer virus of the human mind), taken up as a good idea, has ended more lineages in the modern era than desease, famine, or fascist despotism… it will eventually overtake communisms murders…
given that life has to be an unbroken chain from the first living thing – its a long line of what amounts to desperate creatures to desperate humans overcoming their environment, other people, despotism, desease, famine, disasters, predation, and on and on…
with the most devestating being an idea given to women protected by their vanity, selfishness, and endless wanting…
humans are such funny creatures…
Blert
An adaptation does not come as a result of changed conditions. The adaptation just comes randomly. If it helps survival, those with the adaptation survive and multiply and those without it do not.
Teeth tell a lot about a critter. Im no expert but Ive read a lot about why this is so and I suspect that the dentition was distinctive enough for those who have spent a great deal of time studying the difference, identifying the stratography as this fragment being earlier than expected. Wear marks can tell you what the critters diet consisted of, how old it was when it shuffled off its mortal coil and depending upon circumstances tell you what killed it. Unlike global warming, this is actual science. This gets you stuff like forensic pathology, ultimately saving the freedom, if not the career of cops like Darren Wilson.
Not all science is to be sinister and suspicious.
Christ, I just type and submit…I obviously have no patience for preview…
blert
i subscribe to the idea that we did not go from tree to savanahh, but from trees to the ocean…
we are the only primate that can swim and bend its back the right way
we have the same reflex seals have that prevent a baby from drowning.
our body hair points in the right direction
we are avid swimmers, love the water, and love the easy food we can get from the water
predators will not chase us into the sea
standing in the ocean or water is easier than standing on land and being vulnerable. in fact, we can get a preadator to go into water too deep for them, but fins for us when standing.
we can open our eyes in fresh as well as sea water
we can see color like octopus, but not like most land animals
we dont need to hold our noses underwater
humans who practice can spend minutes underwater
the list of things is actuallyquite long and has less problems with it than the land theory…
the land theory does not say why we lost our fur
it does not let us know how we survived walking on two legs when four legs are faster
and a whole lot more…
do note that the area where the leakys do their work is near the ocean too…and water
Olduvai Gorge is between the ocean and another large body of water, and thats where they found the Laetoli footprints
and as to your volcanic concepts, most volcanic living areas are also islands and near oceans.. hawaii, indonesia, japans, greece, etc…
🙂
vanderleun: Cynical much?
Maybe Yes, Maybe No 🙂
None of us were around to know for sure so we fill in the blanks with our own personal preferences.
As for “Lucy” I found this exchange on Google interesting. Do I want to get into a discussion about Creationists or Evolutionists? About as much as I would want to get between the Hatfields and the McCoys . Each have strong and weak points, I’ll trust The Creator accomplished what He wanted to accomplish in any way He saw fit.
Cliff Notes Version: Two weeks before his funding was to run out, Lucy was found. This secured funding for another 20 yrs.
Given how the Global Warming Followers and government lackeys treat those that disagree, it makes one wonder if funding played a roll in Lucy’s discovery.
But I agree with you in that it is nice to wonder what was actually going on those long eons ago. Just like last week when they did a CT scan of a 1000 yr old Buddha statue, they found a whole skeleton inside. Apparently they gold-painted papier-mé¢ché the monk when he died. 🙂
PS: I also agree with your assessment of watching the sunset of the Republic, Unfortunately. I believe watching the sunrise some 200+ yrs ago would have been more interesting with Leaders having Principles and Values but that was not an option 🙂
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/23/mummified-monk-inside-buddha-statue/
Comments on Lucy:
+Let’s settle this, once and for all: “Lucy”, is a skeleton of un-determinable age, found 2 weeks before its discoverers (Don Johanson) money dried up.
IT’s (sex un-dertermined) hips were ALTERED, in order to make it capable of walking upright. Just as we would have to do with any ancient or modern simian.
“Lucy” was found with no feet or hands, but given ones resembling a humans. There were so few skeletal remains, that curators & artists were able to project loose interpretations, that were less than scientific.
Resources:
PBS NOVA series: In search of human origins 1994 transcripts (below) [these are my emphasis]
DON JOHANSON: “The ape that stood up, it was a revolutionary idea. We needed Owen Lovejoy’s expertise again, because (1) the evidence wasn’t quite adding up. The knee looked human, (2) but the shape of her hip didn’t. Superficially, (3) her hip resembled a chimpanzee’s, which meant that (4) Lucy couldn’t possibly have walked like a modern human.”
GET that? Four testimonials from the man who discovered it. Next:
JOHANSON: “After Lucy died, some of her bones lying in the mud, (1) must have been crushed or broken, perhaps by animals browsing at the lake shore.”
OWEN LOVEJOY: “This has caused the two bones, in fact, to (2) fit together so well that they’re in an anatomically impossible position.”
Get that? “Impossible for a human, that is. Next:
JOHANSON: “The (1) perfect fit was an allusion that made Lucy’s hip bones seems to (2) flair out like a chimps.But all was not lost. Lovejoy decided (3) he could restore the pelvis to its natural shape. He didn’t want to tamper with the original, so he made a copy in plaster. (4) He cut the damaged pieces out and put them back together the way they were before Lucy died. (5) It was a tricky job, but after taking the kink out of the pelvis, it all fit together perfectly, like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. As a result, the angle of the hip looks nothing like a chimps, but a lot like ours. Anatomically at least, Lucy could stand like a human.”
Get that? After using a Dremel tool to remove entire sections from the pelvis, Voila !!; it was bi-pedal. Next:
JOHANSON: “Had they begun to develop a human-size brain to go with their human walk? (1) Lucy couldn’t help us there. Her skull was almost entirely missing. So knowing the exact size of (2) Lucy’s brain was the crucial bit of missing evidence. But from the few skull fragments we had, (3) it looked surprisingly small. ”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts…
Get that? It mattered not, that everything pointed to “Lucy” being a monkey. They pressed forward.
This is a case no different than the Nebraska Man. Someone finds a tooth, they build an ENTIRE MAN around it, call it the Missing Link, it goes into the text-books, is found to be a fraud decades later, but still pushed as evidence. Archaeoraptor, is another fraud that manages to stay in circulation.
These people are desperate, cunning & greedy. And did I forget violent?
Two videos on youtube showing Owen Lovejoy altering Lucy’s hips:
1) Dr. David Menton: Lucy–She’s No Lady — Clip [9 mins]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6RfIEVO…
In search of human origins episode 1: The story of Lucy (PBS Nova, 1994) [1 min]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_U9SCyW.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080622204822AACLK7M
Everything we look at in the distant past is seen through dark glass. Everything we imagine about the not so distant future is imagined from a crystal ball of dark glass. Failure to admit we are limited in our abilities to see and imagine is a part of human frailty. All we can do is to muddle through the flotsam and jetsam that washes ashore seeking clues. Arrogance ain’t the way forward.
Mike II, Here’s the counter argument:
https://northstatescience.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/correcting-creationists-redux-was-lucy%E2%80%99s-pelvis-reconstruction-a-fraud/
They manufactured a mammoth fish from a single loose tooth. They recently lost a dinosaur to excessive acts of inference.
Inference creates knowledge and is therefore not a credible method of science, but rather of philosophy. The modern indulgence in liberal assumptions of uniformity and independence has served to set back the separation of the four logical domains: fantasy, faith, philosophy, and science, several hundred years. The pro-choice or selective religion (i.e. moral philosophy) has set human rights (and science) back several thousand years.
It’s ironic that ostensibly rational and reasonable people cannot even reach a consensus about the self-evident truth that human life, the process, if perhaps not the character, begins with conception of fertilization.
Were it I scratching around in some far-off desert for years, finding the seventh iteration of something Leakey discovered fifty years ago would be annoying. I might be tempted to “interpret” some ambiguities.
Since y’all are so determined to be so serious I feel it my duty to tell you about a really funny cartoon.
The caption was something like Dr. Leakey discovers Lucy and the picture showed a pith-helmeted man breaking open a rock to discover a picture of the Charles Schulz character.
I laughed so hard it hurt.
Nolanimrod:
Not a picture of Lucille Ball?
Piltdown man, Lucy, Homo floresiensis and most recently, this. Seems like this branch of anthropolgy is a bit like climatology when it comes to having a love for hyper-extrapolation (and I say that as an anthropology student as well). Still, I can’t help but get excited when these ‘missing link’ discoveries are announced. Even the recent ones that claim to have proof that we’re all part Neanderthal!
Sunset on the Republic: Wow piece!
’m glad that we can still laugh at the death of the American Republic.
The WSJ reports that everyone had a good chuckle at the Supreme Court this week during a discussion of the Affordable Care Act. The government lawyer derided Justice Alito’s suggestion that there would be no harm if the Court gutted the system of tax credits offered by the federal government.
“What about Congress?” asked Justice Scalia. “You really think Congress is just going to sit there while all these disastrous consequences ensue?”
“This Congress?” Mr. Verrilli replied. The audience erupted into laughter.
That’s right. No one, right or left, expects Congress to do anything.
This situation reminds me a bit of where the Roman Republic found itself in the first century BC.:
LAUGHING AT THE DEATH OF OUR REPUBLIC
I maintain that a larger brain was first stimulated by the need to survey — and pick out — threats across a (comparatively) large visual space.
This tick, this need is still very much with us.
It is so tiring for the BRAIN that men ‘on watch’ have to be retired every two-hours (intense risk) or four-hours routine risk.
It’s notable that such scanning is not tiring on the body — just the eyes and brain.
Many generations later, you end up with ever better (color) vision — ESPECIALLY at dawn and dusk — the critical threat hours. Rods detect black and white. Cones detect colors. Humanity has the seemingly weird ability to push color recognition right to the edge of darkness.
This trait has absolutely no utility for eagles, birds generally. No bird pushes flight — and hunting — right up to the edge day and night. It’s either one or the other. (Eagles vs owls)
We don’t like to hunt at dawn or dusk, either. The adaptation is hugely defensive.
[ You may notice that folks are either easy and early to rise — or prone to staying awake past dusk. A blend of both makes for perpetual time-coverage. The advantage of variability in a collective society.]
SOMETHING had to drive the advantage of a larger ( and food intensive) brain long before abstract thought.
Mentally organizing the ‘threat-space’ is exactly the driving force that would reward ever larger craniums.
If taken too far: raving paranoia.
&&&&&&&
Art, I’ll meet you half way: it may well have been that the critical clan was safe behind a moat — in the form of a fresh water lake.
I can’t buy us entering the world ocean. It’s been done by other mammals — and to good effect.
If the lake was heated by vulcanism — (Japan style) then you’d have proto-homids living the easy life.
The lake need not even be a bona fide hot tub. The tropics are pretty comfy anyway.
Losing body hair would be a positive trait — if the clan kept coming out of the water into somewhat chilly air.
I can imagine full body baldness taking off like crazy.
But, since heads had to remain above the pool, scalp hair is still with us.
It’s really starting to make sense.
It only had to happen once, in one spot.
That’s how a DNA choke point arises.
I guess I’m just too good at sounding serious…. I’ll try to attach smiley faces.
mf Says:
March 5th, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Blert
An adaptation does not come as a result of changed conditions. The adaptation just comes randomly.
&&&&&&&
It’s a recent discovery — and far from being established science — but it is contended that STRESS directly affects the testes and the ovaries — by INCREASING the variability of both gametes.
This is theoretically expected: gene competition at the second level of remove. Genes are competing within us right along with our own first level of competition.
Such ‘unlocked’ gametes would hugely explain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h42VCzT3xY
The ‘pressure’ felt by the family gametes may have been merely longer nights and darker sky. At this stage of our ignorance, we’re still taking bets.
&&&&&&&
There is no way that random variation suddenly has a primate — a very social animal — suddenly getting vertical — without prompt positive feed back — selection wise.
Chimps can get — somewhat — vertical — but it’s such a loser for them that no chimp in all of time is standing up to us.
The closest walkers are the bonobo — the lesser chimps.
They live across the impassible Congo river. Should the chimps ever meet the lesser chimps — the lessers would be exterminated — and in short order.
What’s curious is that the bonobo can walk — while holding a baby — or tool — for Q U I T E some distance.
I’d even rate them as more homid than chimp.
Their vertical adaptation has not taken them very far, though.
http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write?language=en
Those teeth are just a bad dental college bad molar models that they sprinkle with dirt and old gum wads and some pebbles and make stuff up about it all.
The depressions where they “say” the muscle attaches are made with small Dremel model tools.
Sometimes they make these fake fossils and then go out and bury them deep so they are “accidentally dug up” (Hello! Piltdown Man!) so that they bamboozle clueless students taking physical anthropology course.
Those students are the easiest to fool like this.
Blert:
Yeah, I used to believe as you do. It follows in a common sense sort of way.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_variation
I suppose things could cnange but at the moment there is no scientific basis for environment being a driver of genetic change.
Absolutely fascinating.
It reminds me that I need to contact my old college geology/astronomy professor.
_______________________________________
“What drove Australopithethus to extinction and led to the rise of Homo is a mystery…”
Correction:
No longer a mystery. It is strongly speculated that a primitive Persian potentate led a gang of primitive Islamists into Eastern Africa and routed out this genus. Even more fascinating is the speculation as to why.
Research has it that these primitive Persians, even at that time, preferred socializing with the Homos. Hence, they were allowed to survive and prosper…
g6loq: gallows humor. it’s preferable to going to DC and shooting the bums.
“humans had to evolve or go extinct” (said Villmoar) is a poor way of putting it. It resembles Lysenko’s thinking that environmental forces could push evolution, and rather quickly so. Lysenko was a favorite of Stalin. The perfectibility of man through forced Soviet evolution, Hah!
The coelacanth has not evolved much, if at all, and was thought to have become extinct some sixty million years ago, until a living specimen was caught from deep in the Indian ocean in the 1930s. The earliest hominid dates to 3 million years ago, I believe.
Neo,. ever read Robert Nathan’s “Among the Weans?”
“I seem to be hooked on watching the sun slowly (or maybe quickly) setting on the republic and commenting about what a very fascinating sunset it is.”
A fitting backdrop for pondering sunrise of our miraculous species. Personally, I liken myself less a spectator and more as one of the few alert frogs in the warming pot.
Parker-Here is Mart Twain on science:
“There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture
out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
That is, “Mark Twain” instead of “Mart Twin” of course.
My peeve with anthropologists is there seeming desire to proclaim every human like bone fragment to the missing link. As the vast majority of lineages die out, it is highly unlikely that any Lucy like bone fragment came from a direct human antecedent Rather maybe a cousin of one.
Yes there was a proto-human from which we all descended, but it seems unlikely that we will ever find his, or her bones. More over, even if we did find such a fossil, we would never know for sure.
From time to time, I ask an anthropologist what the conclusions would be if:
1. The remains of Peewee Herman and Hulk Hogan were discovered a million years from now in the same stratum and not far from one another.
2. They were discovered in strata say, half a million years apart and not far from one another.
Point is, when you have one individual, although the likelihood is the individual is within 1SD of the mean for the species, it’s not guaranteed.
The History Channel documented the travels of a couple of guys trying to chase down giants. Apparently there are hundreds and hundreds of references in US newspapers and other sources from the earliest times, including Native Americans, about these huge guys with double rows of teeth. The latter is not an unknown misfortune for non-giants. So, suppose one of those folks was found….
Far as I know, the guys didn’t find anything, but they did cover some pleasant countryside.
blert Says:
Art, I’ll meet you half way: it may well have been that the critical clan was safe behind a moat – in the form of a fresh water lake.
sorry… we are talking about the time before tools… moats require tools, planning, etc… also, fresh water lakes in africa have CROCODILES… the lack of waves is also a negative…
blert Says:
I can’t buy us entering the world ocean. It’s been done by other mammals – and to good effect.
why not? whales… porpoise.. dolphins.. ceteaceans… and we only needed to be shore dwellers… ie. live like a beach bum..
blert Says:
If the lake was heated by vulcanism – (Japan style) then you’d have proto-homids living the easy life.
being Crocodile food…
blert Says:
The lake need not even be a bona fide hot tub. The tropics are pretty comfy anyway.
and teaming with predators, deseases and molds..
molds dont like salt water. crocodiles cant take the salt (though there ARE salt water alligators, but those are tidal, and not open ocean usually)
on land you have snakes, hippos, lions, tigers, crocodiles, other primates of other species, and so on… NONE of them go into the ocean but tigers, and they dont go beyond their ability to walk… where a human standing in the water can go way deeper than that…
blert Says:
Losing body hair would be a positive trait – if the clan kept coming out of the water into somewhat chilly air.
no chilly air in southern africa… and losing body hair is a negative trait on land, a positive trait in te ocean. protection vs drag… hair gives protection from insects, and can cause blows from fighting to glance off rather than biting and tearing flesh. the fact we have long hair on our heads would give us shark confusing streamers… a common thing in sea creatures…
I can imagine full body baldness taking off like crazy.
But, since heads had to remain above the pool, scalp hair is still with us. [yep…and the streamers they cause in the water confuses water predators who go after the streamer… and blue eyes would match the water color, like brown matches the land… ]
blert Says:
It’s really starting to make sense.
It only had to happen once, in one spot.
That’s how a DNA choke point arises.
yep…
it helps us walk upright… without predatory weakness
gives us a place to run into when predators come
affords us a huge amount of food which is very easy to get (crabs, fish, clams, mullusks… even today, it would be hard for humans to starve near an ocean coast… but inland, food is very scarce…
we also lived in caves for a while… you can tell this because we filter out echoes… when the timing of the echo is too short, we filter it out and dont hear it… this is from when we lived in caves, as there is no reason to develop this in an open enviornment as there is no echo on a savannah…
it also protects us from lots of the creatures that nibble on us… many insects drown in the water… if not, they die when we dry off and they are coated in salt. our wounds get less infected in ocean water… that is, if you get cut, and your in the ocean water a lot, its hard for a lot of the critters to take hold and kill you…
another point is that inland creatures dont use tools much…
but ocean creatures sort of do… with seaguls picking up clams and such and dropping them on rocks… not too hard to start hitting clams with rocks…
its the best idea as to this that i have ever read
even more so when and if you compare it to the others.
standing helps… just ask the prarie dog..
but… standing does not develop running… prarie dogs dont run standing.
so humans that stood higher to see predators, did not need to run
but then that begs the question… why would a creature who can climb a tree and see for miles think it was better to stand in the open it does not like?
the point is that we know that we came from a certain place
and we know we are in a certain place
but the theries for the savannah stuff dont explain a lot
why would we lose our hair on land? we dont live underground like the moles and voles that lost theirs… africa is full of all kinds of critters that find no hair easier to do their stuff… the idea that lice was the reason does not bear out for other hairy creatures with lice..
so its the floor and running around (tiny mouslie mamals)… then to the trees as the trees give a lot of the same protections the ocean does, but not as good… then from trees to the oceans… from the oceans back to the land and caves…
again, caves give some of the same protections that trees and oceans do. predators that cant climb up rocks cant eat you, and those that can, can be knocked off easy…
we dont discuss this alternative hypothesis because most of everyone grew up under the savannah idea, and it dominates…
just as the blue print model for genetics is completely erroneous
i worked out the actual model… but no one cares…
even less so because in my model, our bodies and being is just a well developed shell for our fertiliity… our fertile cells still follow the same pattern of sexual reproduction… our bodies though are basically infertile cells that serve the fertile ones by protecting them, and improving their lot… just cause that set of infertile protectors became a very well developed thing doesnt mean thats not its purpose. in fact, its main purpose before it became so fancy, was to also extend the period of no sex… that is, the DNA remains closer to a positive developement longer if the periods between changes is extended. bacteria dont get far as their dna changes in under twenty minutes when they divide… but humans and other animals can move that fertility change to 14 years between events… for every human fertility exchange a less developed creature would have 14,716,800 such events… if DNA is copied exactly to preserve itself, then it cant evolve… if it changes too much then it cant build on a positive… i even worked out the math for beneficience sorting… and why genes move up and down their activation points… (move bad past death, move good farther down) and how they integrate… i was able to solve the french flag problem wiht it… and more… but i am a nothing… an evil white male who is destined for the trash pile, and not to be heard… so all that great work, it goes no where…. there is no Hardy to my Ramanujan… mostly cause for hardy, the work was important, and for researchers today, the free ride playing is more important, and real work is secondary
Crocs and such don’t exist high upon the mountainside — anywhere.
Bare skin is known to be decisively advantageous during persistence hunting.
Bare skin is also known to be very advantageous to hunters that wear the feces of lions, elephants and such as odor protection. A filthy practice, for sure, but it’s long been used by African natives to ward off lion attacks — and more. For it’s a fact that carnivores believe their noses long before they believe their eyes.
As for predation: the world ocean never ran out of world class carnivores.
BTW, due to geochemistry, many waters descending from volcanoes are laden with harsh chemicals that would prove too much for fish.
No fish, no fishing animal life.
Of course, the very chemicals that kill life would be an ideal bath for one afflicted by skin pests.
Our bare skin — way back when — had to evolve in a time and at a place that was not overrun with bloodsucking insects.
The only location that fits best is again — pretty high up on a volcano slope.
There’s a major troop of baboons in Africa that is ensconced high up on a cliff — not far from a water course, too. Nothing can really get at them without a total troop response. This particular baboon clan is figured to be the single largest concentration… as the layout is simply ideal for them.
And, yes, they spend an inordinate amount of time staring off into the distance — to discern any threat.
They just happen to not need to stand up to get a great view. It’s also of significance that this particular duty is overwhelmingly a male one. The female are very busy doing what females do.
The moment standing — even if supported by a rock face — became a success metric — the selection pressure upon the males would begin.
ALL of these ticks are STILL seen in humanity today.
To be a real man, one must stand tall.
Infants crawl — then build tone by using a linear prop such as a coffee table.
What happened was a circular virtuous circle: at first standing up, propped by a stone face to see over it, was merely an expedient — signifying no DNA shift.
Then the females began to favor their better protectors — and standing up is also a terrific way of displaying male virility… dominance.
Then, evolution was off and away.
The next thing you knew, males were facing off — vertically — to impress the babes and each other — for mating rights.
What started out as a social habit for basic needs morphed into ritualized face-offs.
This desire, by men, to be taller than the other guy really does go back a long, long, long, way.
It MUST link back to the desire to be vertical to impress the babes and save the clan from surprise attacks.
Rock throwing — from higher up on the mountainside had to begin even in the most ancient days.
And, ever since, humanity has been obsessed with gaining the higher ground. Only now, with drones and airmobile troops does the mountain advantage fade away. (Aircraft being portable mountains…)
Richard Saunders: Good Old Pound-Laundry?
SCOTTtheBADGER and Richard Saunders:
Yes, I read it long long ago.
I also read “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” long ago.
It’s important to keep perspective on a find like this.
It represents a small part of a much larger set of bones.
There are two extremes in interpreting these fossils. One group, ‘the splitters’, sees a new species with every fossilized hang nail they come across. And then there are ‘the lumpers’.
Is it more career enhancing to be a lumper or a splitter, to find just another jaw bone or a unique new species shedding important light on what happened in our family tree?
Also very few individuals ever get to be fossilized. In fact, many species (however defined) never even get to have one of their own end up a fossil. And of course once fossilized what are the chances it will ever be found? Not great.
Finding one of these pieces – actually collectively the many pieces found – is like looking through the keyhole of a very large palace. You get a view of the foyer but can only guess at what the other rooms might be like.
And the fact is that there was a lot going on across space and through time and the family tree is complex with most forever out of our reach.
The LATimes article on this find mentioned that it and the others fossils found in East Africa conclusively show that that’s where our ancestors diverged from the other primates. Actually I suspect it’s more like the man looking for his keys in the dark under a lamppost when he’s not sure where he lost them just that the other places have no light.
They’re finding fossils in East Africa because the conditions for both forming fossils back at the time of interest were pretty good. And now those strata are near the surface. I don’t see that as proof that there wasn’t much interesting evolution going on elsewhere in Africa and for that matter in other areas those many species had spread to. Primates were widespread both before and after.
The DNA analysis tends to point towards our immediate preceding ancestry as having derived from populations in East Africa but that doesn’t mean significant changes didn’t occur elsewhere. Given the time, millions of years, IMO it’s more likely than not that a great deal happened. And I doubt there was a straight line from 3 million years ago through that key H sapiens line in East Africa, but they can only look where the light from the lamppost shines.
If you gathered together in one room the top 20-25 Physical Anthropologists in the world and showed them that jaw bone and let’s assume they had plenty of time to study it etc, I guarantee you would be shocked at the degree to which they disagreed.
Many years before I was in a grad level course on primate morphology. The Prof was explaining his disagreements with, I believe the same Johanson quoted in the LATimes article, over the interpretation of some hand bones (from Lucy? or near Lucy finds?) in particular the degree to which they evidenced early human signs or not. The Prof was a bit peeved that Johanson would not let him see the bones, so he was working from published pictures. A grad student perked up, the Prof’s grad student, and announced that she had gone to visit Johanson and he let her look at the hand bones and she said Johanson’s position was the correct one. Our Prof went from peeved to angry for obvious reasons and told the grad student to go into the next room and bring in to the class the skull of a male chimp. In the next room were shelves lined with the skulls of male and female primates including humans. And they were not labeled. He was clearly angry and insisted she do it. She did. She came back with a female orangutan. The Prof told her no, try again. She came back with a female gorilla. She was near tears by this time. The Prof pointed out to the class without pulling punches that there are very few people in the world who can tell the difference between the hand bones of a chimp and a human or vs an orangutan. And even among the experts distinguishing between the hand bones of the species that led to todays apes vs the near relative that went on to become us has plenty of room for discussion.
Otiose:
Fascinating story.
I took a lot of anthro in college, and I well remember all the disagreement about practically everything.
neo. Body Ritual was a reading at Ft. Bragg in our courses on cultural understanding. Fortunately, we didn’t have the other fave of the undergrads, “Ritual Subincision among The Arunta”.
I believe it was Robert Ardrey’s work where I was reminded that the acid soil of forests militates against fossilization, thereby shutting off huge swaths of possibilities.
My mom taught from a pre-war Story of Nations which had Piltdown in it. The Story we had when I was in school didn’t. So there’s some progress for you. The story of Piltdown is hilarious, including the resistance to dumping the guy.
As has been said upstream, what bothers some about bones is the presumed shape of those parts which are missing. If you throw in an occipital bulge, you need something to fill it, which means that would be doing something–pick it; spatial orientation, language, music–all of which may be entirely imaginary.