Re: chimps on the savanna? Nooooo.....

Alex Duncan (aduncan@mail.utexas.edu)
21 Oct 1995 03:55:49 GMT

In article <hubey.814156857@pegasus.montclair.edu> H. M. Hubey,
hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu writes:

>If the whole basis and force of your argument depends on the
>useage of specific words over which you can fight for
>decades, you should know that the opposition can also fight
>for decades over the same words or similar words. If you want
>to cut it out, then try numbers. It's easy. No fuss, no muss,
>no useless fighting...
>
>Do you want to solve a problem or want to convince yourself
>that you won. The last buggy whip maker made the best buggy
>whips. But they went the way of the dinosaurs, extinct!!
>
>Either face the issues squarely or just call it quits.

I'm not especially concerned w/ the AAH argument at this point. It's
abundantly clear that I could slap you in the face with a fully
non-aquatic A. afarensis, and you'd still find some way to claim that
it's aquatic.

I am concerned when apparently uneducated people make authoritative
statements such as

"chimps don't go onto the savannas"

or

"chimps don't carry things bipedally. period."

(I'm paraphrasing here as I have neither the time nor the desire to find
your exact quotes.)

So, the post regarding chimps in the savanna was mostly a means of
highlighting your ignorance. I think it's important that people know
that the current champion of vitriolic pro-AAH argument doesn't know his
hat from a hole in the ground.

I know you disagree on this point, but I can't help but think that
someone who's going to be spending a lot of time dealing with
evolutionary ideas should actually know a little about the subject. In
this particular case, I would suggest that a little basic knowledge about
chimps would be useful, as they are among our closest relatives, and must
play an important role in any current models we generate about the last
common ancestor of chimps and humans.

Alex Duncan
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1086
512-471-4206
aduncan@mail.utexas.edu