Re: naked bipeds

David L Burkhead (r3dlb1@dax.cc.uakron.edu)
22 Oct 1995 02:55:50 GMT

In article <814282343snz@crowleyp.demon.co.uk> Paul@crowleyp.demon.co.uk writes:
>In article <466u69$p6d@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>
> aduncan@mail.utexas.edu "Alex Duncan" writes:
>
>> As far as naked bipedalism goes: you seem fixated on the idea that
>> functional hairlessness and bipedalism must have evolved at the same
>> time. This is not a fixation shared by paleoanthropologists.
>>
>> Australopithecines were probably not functionally hairless, because:
> <snips>
>
>When you see a species with two striking and unique adaptions,
>either one of which is enough to mark it off from all its
>relatives and which (a) have no obvious link, and (b) developed
>in a short time period, then it is parsimonious seek an
>explanation which covers both.
>
>The resistance by paleoanthropologists to any such program
>would appear to be irrational and require an explanation of
>a sociological nature.

First, assuming that two traits that each developed sometime in
the past five million years does _not_ mean they developed at the same
time. Other traits that set humans off from great apes (our nearest
relatives) exist too. Yet we know that _they_ did not devlop at the
same time as at least one of the two traits ("flat faces"--the lack of
a protruding snout--developed _long_ after bipedalism, as did large
brains, and long legs relative to body mass).

It is _not_ "parsimonious" to assume that, in that overall
picture, two traits, one of which we happen not to know the time of
development, just _had_ to develop at the same time from the same
cause.

BTW, anthropologists are _not_ resistant to "any such program."
They just happen to be resistant to _your_ program, for reasons that
we've been over numerous time in this group. That you make this claim
puts you perilously close to the crackpot position of "establishment
science suppressing new ideas."

David L. Burkhead
r3dlb1@dax.cc.uakron.edu

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