Re: Alex's point... was Re: First Family and AAT
Thomas Clarke (clarke@acme.ucf.edu)
21 Oct 1995 13:41:35 GMT
In article <60.3326.7295.0N1F8D61@canrem.com> j#d#.moore@canrem.com (J. Moore) writes:
>Cl> > Well, it seems you got the point of my argument. AATer's are always
Cl - is me again
>Cl> This is silly. Different stock results in different adaptions, although
>Cl> there are broad similarities.
>It IS silly, which is exactly Alex's point.
So can we limit arguments about parallel eveolution to similar stocks
in the future? I am willing to do so.
>Cl> By the way how does eveolution work in your view?
>Cl> My view is that change occurs in the direction of increasing fitness.
>Cl> If there is not difference in fitness with respect to some trait, then
>Cl> it can vary or drift randomly. Are you saying that bipedalism has no
>Cl> fitness value?
>That being predominately bipedal is useful does not mean that all
>organisms will take it up. Chimpanzee locomotion worked quite
>well in their neck of the woods for millions of years, and it
>works well still. Unfortunately, unlike our locomotor adaptation,
>it has confined them to a rapidly dwindling neck of the woods.
So since Chimps are out nearest neighbors and they lived very close
to our neck of the woods, I still would like to know why they
evolved one method of locomotion and we evolved another.
I could see something like us having black hair and them having brown,
or us being taller and them being shorter as the result of some
random, selectively neutral, evolution. But the differences between
chimp and human are pretty big, and I think, demand explanation in
terms of differential environmental factors, isolated environments, and
similar factors that are invoked in modern evolutionary theory.
P.S. Don'f forget my question about calories from the water in
early hominids.
Tom Clarke
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