Re: An alternative to ST and AAT
Gerrit Hanenburg (G.Hanenburg@inter.nl.net)
Sat, 07 Dec 1996 08:24:48 GMT
Paul@crowleyp.demon.co.uk (Paul Crowley) wrote:
>However, your implicitly negative answer to my question shows
>that it's really the profession that deserves the criticism.
>It has not properly considered a fundamental issue. Why?
Your personal obsession with the mother-infant dyad in bipedal
hominids had nothing to do with the discussion about a suggested lack
of theories concerning the origin of bipedalism. Criticizing the field
for a lack of theories concerning that subject is not justified.
The reason that infant carrying in early hominids is not a major point
of discussion is because it is not a major problem.
You have made it a major problem only for yourself, and a particular
mindset now forces you to generate biologically absurd solutions for
it.
A bipedal hominid can support its child better during terrestrial
locomotion than a chimpanzee mother. Bipedal carrying is a more secure
form of carrying than quadrupedalism, where the mother needs all four
limbs in locomotion. Read the section "Support and Transport" in
Goodall's paper "Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees in the Gombe
Stream Reserve" (Animal Behaviour Monographs 1:163-311 (1968)) and
find out how "secure" carrying of young infants in chimpanzees really
is.
Gerrit
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