Re: Savannah strawman
Karen (karen@uab.edu)
Fri, 28 Jun 1996 19:38:18 GMT
James Shreeve <jshreeve@ids2.idsonline.com> wrote:
>:I'm not sure what all the hoopla is about but a savanna is merely an
>:area of grassland with scattered trees. It seems to me that much
>:has
>:been made of nothing regarding the issue of a savanna environment.
>:Our ancestors left an arboreal environment and became bipedal.
>:Surely
>:people aren't saying that the idea that leaving an arboreal
>:environment is somehow invalidated because the area in which these
>:new
>:bipeds moved into wasn't just like the savanna that exists in Africa
>:today!!
>:If by "these people" you mean proponents of the AAH, I don't know
>:what they are saying. If however you mean scientists who are
>:questioning the validity of the savannah "hypothesis" (or mentality,
>:or whatever), what they are suggesting is that it may be a mistake
>:to link the origin of bipedalism with a move out of an arboreal
>:environment in the first place. If ramidus proves to be bipedal,
>:for instance, then at least one hominid may have developed
>:bipedalism while still adapted to a substantially wooded environment
>:-- not a grassland, not a mosaic, not anything that could be
>:categorized under the vague term "savannah."
Thanks. Have you seen the information regarding the ramidus fossil?
It is hard for me to imagine how that much information can be garnered
from the specimen but what the heck do I know?
I don't think that it is even all that far fetched to imagine however
that certain arboreal apes might have become bipedal it just means
there are more questions and this is, after all, how science evolves.
I can't imagine why such a thing would lead AAH propoenents to think
that it helps their cause. If anything, it just shows that unlike
some of them seem to think, anthropology does not blackball new ideas
because of narrowmindedness.
--
Karen
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