Re: A Specification for a

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Pa> I hope to post my personal "newly revised" version of the AAT in a week
Pa> or so. First I'd like to be clear about the matters that need
Pa> explaining which should be in any theory of human evolution.

Pa> Anyway here are my present crude ideas. It has not quite worked out as
Pa> well as I had hoped, so please post additions, corrections, improvements
Pa> in terminology, criticisms, revisions.

Here are a few pertinent points:

Pa> e2 The speciating event and its circumstances should be clearly
Pa> described. Preferably this should not involve any kind of natural
Pa> catastrophe, but should be the sort of event that would probably
Pa> have happened sooner or later, given the environment.

"Would probably happen" lends a non-evolutionary air to the
proceedings. "Could" is the correct word. Leave out the sense of
the inevitable, which is a pre-evolutionary holdover.

Pa> e3 The XXT should specify the type of diet and the sources it was
Pa> obtained from. It should state how much water would be needed in
Pa> the environment and indicate how the water would be obtained.

And how they eliminated waste, if that is greatly different from
their near relatives (as in the AAT). Specifically, why do we
have no sign of adaptation for eliminating the massive amounts of
excess salt inherent in living and foraging in a marine
environment (tears and sweat are far less salt than plasma, and
to use them as these mechanisms requires not just one but two
incredibly massive changes in physiology in a relatively short
period of time). All marine mammals, on the other hand, have
evolved extremely large, heavily lobulated kidneys, which makes
sense, since the renal system is the essential regulated excretion
and water-balance mechanism used by all mammals.

Pa> other resources. The consistent pressure towards better bipedalism
Pa> over some 50,000 to 100,000 generations and the selective advantages
Pa> of this progression in *each* generation must be explicitly stated.

The extreme gradualist position you take here is at odds with
evolutionary theory (even in Darwin's *On the Origin of Species*).
Holding to such a notion requires overturning 150 years of
evolutionary thought, so you'd better be backing this point up
with one hell of a lot of research. ;-)

Pa> The XXT should provide an explanation for as many of these as possible.

Pa> o1. Nakedness
Pa> o2. Greater amounts of hair on males
Pa> o3. Distribution of hair on the body - male/females

And the variablity of amounts of hair through the human
population, i.e. many humans, usually males, have a great deal of
body hair. And I mean a great deal -- lots and lots. Since this
characteristic varies regionally, it would appear to be of
comparatively recent origin. If hair was "lost" during the
transition from CA, as the AAT insists, it must have returned, in
some people, with a vengeance. If it comes and goes that quickly
(a few 10s of thousands of years or less), any theory postulating
its "loss" during the transition can only be an untestable, and
unwarranted, assumption.

Pa> o6. No Estrous

That's "No visible signs of estrous".

Pa> I'm sure I've left out a lot.
Pa> Paul.

Well, yes. Such as why humans are "odd man out" in many features
compared to marine mammals. These are in regard to features that
have evolved time and time again, due to convergent evolution, in
aquatic and marine mammals.

Among these features are: shorter legs, smaller or non-existent
ears, young born in an advanced state and/or very quick maturing
young, and very large, heavily lobulated kidneys to excrete excess
salt. Compared to marine mammals, humans are "odd man out" in all
these features.

The AAT so far ignores these features and makes no attempt
to explain why these ubiquitous aquatic marine mammalian features
were somehow exempt from the power of convergent evolution in one
singular case -- humans.

These are features that have to be explained: if humans, as the
AAT claims, underwent massive change and developed many of their
distinguishing features due to a process of convergent evolution
with marine animals, why did they not also develop these other
features, which are common or universal amongst marine mammals?

I'm looking forward to your detailed, referenced posting, and
hoping it doesn't make the sorts of unsupported, inaccurate
assumptions your recent "becoming altricial" posts did.

Jim Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)

* Q-Blue 2.0 *

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