Re: AAT Theory
Lisbeth Andersson (etxlmka@tn.ericsson.se)
2 Oct 1995 16:20:25 GMT
In article <812146194snz@crowleyp.demon.co.uk>, Paul Crowley
>The problem has a hundred aspects; for example, consider the babies.
>Baby apes can hang on to mother while she forages. Soon they can safely
>clamber around the trees. Early hominid infants, with only two weak
>grasping limbs, couldn't hold on; so the mothers had to use an arm to
>carry them (or put them down) while foraging. And then the infants had
>to learn to walk upright (with their short legs, wrong musculature,
>weak spines, ill-adapted feet, etc.) Get the scene?
>
A few years ago I saw an article in Scientific American (in their
"science 100 years ago" column), where they referred to an experiment
about how well newborn human babies could hold on to things. The
result was that they are surprisingly good at it. The scientist(s) 100
years ago noticed that babies, if given something to grasp, would
hold on hard enough that it was possible to lift them with no other
support.
This was with babies who had to lift a lot more weight from their
heads than any early hominid.
Yes they had only two arms, as opposed to four limbs, to grasp with.
But why do you assume that the arms were weak?
Lisbeth.
--
(The SIG works OK, now I have to think of something funny,
intelligent and characteristic to put here .....sigh.)
Lisbeth Andersson, Sweden
etxlmka@tn.etx.ericsson.se
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