Evolution doesn't "force"...
J. Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
Tue, 3 Oct 95 15:41:00 -0500
Cl> At this point you have a modern chimpanzee which has survived to the
Cl> current day, what more changed to force the proto-hominid to go beyond
Cl> the chimpanzee mode of existence?
Cl> Tom Clarke
You seem to be making a common but incorrect assumption. I would
guess you don't realize that the question you ask here is a
non-evolutionary one: "what forced them to change?" Change happens
during evolution, and nothing need "force" it. It the change
isn't excessively harmful, it can endure and even spread. You are
also getting into some fuzzy ground when you use a phrase like
"beyond the chimpanzee mode of existence". Chimpanzees, in an
appropriate environment, have been a pretty successful species.
Only recent habitat destruction has caused them major troubles.
By way of more explanation of this point (from a previous post of
mine):
It could be said to be luck that our earliest ancestors more
often used a method of locomotion that chanced to allow later
innovations and adaptation to far wider environments. Both
locomotor biases, if undertaken in an appropriate environment,
are quite effective. Yet our bias toward more bipedalism later,
by chance, allowed the ever increasing use of many different
environments, while the bias toward more quadrupedalism ended up
restricting the other descendants of the ape stem population to
smaller and unfortunately now fast dwindling areas.
Jim Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
* Q-Blue 2.0 *
|