Re: Is this all there is?

Erin Miller (ermiller@tezcat.com)
16 May 1995 20:46:49 -0500

In article <3pbco4$f4d@rebecca.albany.edu>,
Phil Nicholls <pn8886@thor.albany.edu> wrote:
>In article <3paehe$ov6@xochi.tezcat.com>,

>I agree. So what do you think? Early Homo, pre-habilis (sensu lato)?
>
>Yes, I know we can't KNOW, but what does you gut tell you?

Damned if I know. Aliens maybe? 8-) It's not my area really, I'm a
Neandertal person in disguise, but I have seen the data, not just the
article, but the data/charts/prints etc (Russell Tuttle is my advisor so I
should state that up front) and there is just NO WAY the anatomy of the A.
australopithecus foot made those prints. Now, saying that "X didn't make
them" doesn't mean that Y did.
I think a lot of people try to solve the jigsaw puzzle with the pieces
they have, and very few people are willing to allow for pieces that just
haven't been found, yet or maybe never. You have to try to do the best
with what you've got, but you also have to be willing to take a step back
and say, "what we've got isn't enough to answer this or that question."
We also have to be willing to accept finds for what they may be, not what
we WANT them to be. Finding the ancestor to humans are great, and
unfortunately the most lucritive, so people don't want to
look/admit/suspect that what they find is anything else. Would A. ramidus
(or whatever the new name is) be any less of a great find if it was
actually the ancestral chimp than the ancestral human? IMHO the answer is
no, but that is not really an issue because new finds have to be labelled
human (or human ancestor) first, and then later reconciled to something
else (that is no a dig against A. ramidus, BTW, I was just using it as an
example, I actually know nothing about it).
Boy long answer huh? Nope, I'll hazard no guess to that riddle, just
that my answer is simply "I don't know." (and PLEASE don't ask me my
opinion on the out-of-africa vs. candelabra theory either 8-).

-erin

--

  "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog ...

  but damn if everyone won't know what your cat looks like."      -fatz



  Erin Miller                 http://www.tezcat.com/~ermiller/erin.html

  University of Chicago / Anthropology Department / ermiller@tezcat.com