Re: Morgan and creationists

Richard Foy (rfoy@netcom.com)
Mon, 8 Jul 1996 00:19:37 GMT

In article <herwin-0707960823210001@news.gmu.edu>,
Harry Erwin <herwin@gmu.edu> wrote:
>In article <rfoyDu2rEw.C7H@netcom.com>, rfoy@netcom.com (Richard Foy) wrote:
>
>> In article <4re67n$b6p@portal.gmu.edu>,
>> HARRY R. ERWIN <herwin@mason2.gmu.edu> wrote:
>> >Paul Crowley (Paul@crowleyp.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>> >
>> >The following is a working hypothesis. The most obvious way bipedalism is
>> >advantageous (given the quantitative studies on locomotor efficiency) is
>> >sensory. You can see further in environments where you have to move on the
>> >ground if your eyes are far off the ground. That means you can move
>> >further away from a tree on the ground and safely get back. That means you
>> >have a selective advantage over knuckle-walkers in the _forested_-savannah
>> >biome. Knuckle-walkers can live there, and you can live in the forest
>> >biome, but the rule of relative advantage applies, and both species can
>> >survive.
>>
>> It seems to me that the most obvious way bepedalism is advantageous
>> is that it allows the fore limbs to be used for carrying tools and
>> weapons. How far back in the evolutionary process this advantage
>> became important is not so obvious.
>
>Quantify, quantify, quantify!
>
>Pan trog. uses tools, so this hypothesis is not testable as stated. What
>are some probably false, testable statements relevant to your idea? State
>and test them!

I did say tools and weapons. Perhaps I should have just said weapons.

>
>Eye height over ground is measureable and can be correlated to distance of
>vision and warning time for leopards (etc.) in East African biomes. We can
>put together a decent model of tree-to-tree movement in various biomes and
>see which ones reward high eye height. If the weighted list of biomes
>rewarding high eye height matches the biomes where there is evidence of
>hominids and if Pan trog. tends to occupy other biomes, we can then begin
>to sharpen the idea.

It seems to that the weapons carrying is just as testable as is the
seeing if not more so. One could get a few people to wear constumes
like the earliest hominids and carry stones or clubs and scent
themselves so they don't smell like h.s.s and then wander around on
foot in East Afarica and see the statisical advandvantage of those weapons
as contrsted with humans without weapons and just taking advantage of
hte greater visual distance.

Of course it might be difficult to get experimenters to test the
theory, so as an alternative one could build robots to simulate the
same thing.
with the c

-- 

"The form is the content in motion, and the content is the form at

rest."  --Northrup Frye



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