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Re: Jeffrey H. Schwartz'
J. Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
Tue, 11 Jul 95 12:04:00 -0500
Ad> As contradictory as this may sound, I'm a Schwartz fan, and don't agree
Ad> with most of his stuff.
Ad> Schwartz has done us all a favor by calling into question the
Ad> polarity states that we assign to characters when doing phylogenetic
Ad> analysis. I think he's right about some, and wrong about others. It's
Ad> Most of the evidence supporting the African ape/human clade is
Ad> molecular. I don't think Schwartz's criticisms of this data are valid.
Ad> Alex Duncan
My take on Schwartz's "orang=closer than African apes" is that he's
barking up the wrong tree (ie. using the wrong method for the job of
determining relatedness). I'll grant him that some, indeed many, of
the molecular guys involved in human evolutionary studies are arrogant
beyond what they should be; not that this is particularly different from
a lot of bone diggers-describers, however. But the fact is that for the
study of relatedness of living species, blood, genes, etc. are the right
tools.
Now the molecular guys do take things too far when they suggest that
theirs are also the *only* tools to be used for questions of timing, but
they are certainly one of the real good tools there as well. But for
nail of relatedness they certainly have the proper hammer.
Tanner has, in *The Evolution of Human Behavior: Primate Models* (1987,
Kinzey, ed.) a chart with as many of the various relatedness studies
listed with conclusions (when conclusions were made), starting with
Nuttall's blood studies early in the century and carrying on through,
well, 1987. These are blood, genes stuff, sperm karotypes, and so on,
and it's still a pretty good summation of what's gone on on that subject.
Jim Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
* Q-Blue 2.0 *
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