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Re: New Topic of Discussion
Jonathan E. Feinstein (jfeinstein@umassd.edu)
Wed, 1 Feb 1995 02:54:18 GMT
In article <ang42D35p4t.1xH@netcom.com>, ang42@netcom.com (Skiman) writes:
<snip>
>>There was no indication that anyone disagreed with his interpretations.
>
> Of course not! It seems like once any of these guys disagree, all
>mention of the other is stopped. What about agreeing to disagree and
>at least giving some people credit where credit is due. I am glad Johanson
>found Lucy and all of that. I just get sick of all of the egos and ass
>kissibg that goes on in physical anthro and, in particular, paleo-anthro.
>Not to mention the sexism!
>>
Well, you got a few good points there. One thing you got to
remember is that as a group, physical anthropologists are a bunch
of hot-heads. And once there's a split between any two the split
just seems to grow and grow. There are very few reconciliations.
When I knew Don, lo these many years, he was best buddies with
Richard Leakey (Don's one real weakness as a lecturer was that he
tend to mention his colleagues by their first names only, so by the
end of my first semester with him, I had to be on a wierd sort of
first-name basis with Louis, Mary, Richard, Clark and a host of
others I've never actually met or even corresponded with). However,
then Lucy was found and the implications of A. afarensis flew
directly in the faces of Mary and Richard Leakey, who among other
things wanted to claim that the Laetoli footprints were undeniably
made by a member of the genus Homo. I lost direct track of Johanson
a year after the initial find of Lucy (He moved out of Cleveland,
and I moved on to grad school), but from that initial split a
wholesale feud seems to have developed between him and the Leakeys.
BTW, I won't defend Don's self-promotion, but it's always
seemed to me that Richard Leakey (who I tend to agree with more
these days when I have any data at all to base an oppinion on)
is just as bad in that way. But, hey! Let's sit back and see if
success goes similarly to the head of Tim White now that he has
an australopithecine all _his_ own! <g>
Jon.
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JFeinstein@umassd.edu
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Immortality is something you need to grow into.
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