Re: Fossils and Pseudoscience
Pat Dooley (patdooley@aol.com)
17 Jan 1995 23:08:50 -0500
>"I wanted to jump in here to emphasize that children *don't* have to be
>taught to walk. Most parents do encourage them a lot, sure, but even if
>they don't, the kids will teach themselves to walk anyway. As anyone
>who has been around little kids will attest, they show a really
>powerful drive to pull themselves up onto their legs and stagger around,
>like it's the most fun thing in the world that they could ever dream of.
>And pretty soon they get good at it, all by themselves.
>Surely you're not arguing that humans aren't naturally bipedal? (I
>suspect you drifted into this point accidentally, in the process of
>trying to make an analogy with early tendencies toward swimming.)
>
You're right. I was trying to make a point about parents encouraging
children to walk. There is sometime intense competition between
parents as to whose baby started walking first. If they take a similar
approach to swimming, lo and behold, the kids swim, and sooner
than they can walk.
I don't know how much credence to place in them, but I have read reports
of children raised by wild animals who were fully quadrupedal. Not
exactly an appropriate laboratory experiment is it? To see if human
badies who are never exposed to bipedalism take it up naturally.
Pat Dooley
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