Re: AAT Blast from the pa
J. Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
Thu, 22 Jun 95 10:20:00 -0500
El> Re AAT he began with "Why go with yet another just-so-story?" Oh Really!
El> Are you still trotting out that old cliche? The
El> savannah just-so-story is looking a bit sick since the
El> paleo-ecologists pulled out the rug from under it, so what
El> paradigm are you advocating?
The "Savannah Theory" you continually espose as a strawman for your
"Aquatic Theory" is your own invention.
El> He says says my theory "insists that wading upright would
El> somehow leave us with hair on top while walking on dry land would not" .
El> WHO "insisted" this? When? Where? I never heard such rubbish in my life.
You state that this is evidence that we evolved this trait as an aquatic
trait; if you're saying we could've evolved this trait on dry land, it
isn't evidence for aquaticness. You can't have it both ways.
El> He says AAT (which he repeatedly calls my theory as if I had invented
El> it) "also runs counter to Caroline Pond's findings on fat, which Morgan
El> tried to use as support for her theory anyway".
El> I used this quotation from Caroline Pond in one of my
El> books:"However we compare them, Homo is clearly the odd one out, In
El> proportion to body mass, we have at least ten times as many adipocytes
El> as expected from this comparison with wild and captive animals." I used
El> it as an excellent summary of the anomaly that needs to be explained.
El> No-one has ever
El> challenged its authenticity. Lest anyone think she was a
El> supporter of AAT, she explicitly dissociated herself from the idea as
El> she has every right to do if she doesn't believe it.
El> However there is nothing in any of the discoveries she has made (they
El> are numerous and brilliant) which is incompatible with AAT.
Caroline Pond disagrees with you on that statement, as you should be
aware.
El> The nose - yes, I did once make the mistaken assumption that the nasal
El> spine was in evidence prior to H. erectus. That was about twenty years
El> ago and was never repeated. You really are scraping the barrel.
You repeated it in *The Aquatic Ape* (1982), so your above statement is,
we might say politely, "in error".
El> Body hair growth on humans. No. Pater Wheeler was wrong about that. I
El> let him have the last word on it because the subject is a very grey area
El> and it had become obvious nobody was
El> going to prove anything of any value.
Doesn't sound like you're "giving him the last word" here; sounds like
you're claiming he's wrong but not backing up your claim in any way.
And that you're saying that this subject, one of the main original
claims regarding the AAH, is now "of no value".
El> On the matter of crocodiles .. Instead of all these
El> hypothetical crocodiles, <snip>
El> Elaine Morgan
Crocodiles are not "hypothetical"; they are real creatures who have
lived in large numbers in all the various habitats that have been
proposed for the putative aquatic hominid. They are not nice creatures,
nor are they easy to deal with, as you suggest. As previously
mentioned, I will be posting on this subject shortly.
Jim Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
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