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AAT, Round 2
Andrew Francis Grichting (agrichti@lawson.its.utas.edu.au)
Wed, 27 Apr 94 04:24:28 GMT
Let the Debate Continue!
It's time for a follow-up from the person who began this whole ruckus. From
reading on talk.origins, and here, this is my opinions from the confusion so
far.
It is little good talking about morphological changes as evidence for one
theory or the other. From talk.origins (all credit to the posters, but I lost
the articles before noting the names), two theories were proposed which also
give reasons for bipedality (?), that seem to hold as much water as the AAH.
#1) The Rock-Climbing Ape : If forest were to fade out as they did in Africa,
during the time when bipedal nature was developed, perhaps instead of losing
the entire arboreality of their ancestors, Hominids moved to Cliff-faces and
such. This would require an upright posture, for climbing steep surfaces,
from which bipedal nature could quickly evolve from. Also : safer from
predators, weather, etc. Plenty of rocks for tools, plenty of reasons can
be developed.
#2) The Subterranean Ape : Living in caves and underground, this ape would not
need hair, would develop an even distibution of body fat, etc.
Note that I am >NOT< supporting either of these theories, I just put them
forward to show the difficulty of proposing ancient life-styles and the
evolutionary causes for physical traits. It seems to me that there is more
evidence for the savvanah theory than any other, in that primitive Hominid
bones are found in localities which were definitely not marine, and
probably plains.
This is not an absolute statement, I am more than interested to hear any
evidence for the AAT which does not depend on circumstantial material or
hypotheses.
Andrew Grichting
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