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Re: Hair loss (was Re: underwater space aliens)
Kevyn Loren Winkless (umwinkl0@cc.umanitoba.ca)
22 Oct 95 17:07:55 GMT
In <95294.193811NDR102@psuvm.psu.edu> ndr102@psuvm.psu.edu (Nicholas Rosen) writes:
>On similar grounds, it seems most reasonable to suggest that humans
>have hairy bodies. (Many of us don't live in environments similar to
>the ones chimps live in, but in colder climates, there is, if anything
>more reason to be hairy.) However, we know that we are not nearly as
>hairy as chimpanzees, so our ancestors must have lost most of their
>hair at some stage, for some reason. For what reason? And if you think
>that it was at some post-austalopithecine stage in human evolution,
>why?
>Nicholas Rosen
>Standard disclaimers apply.
Why do you assume that an ancestor lost its hair, and we have regained
(some of)it? If one supposes, on the grounds of superficial observation at
least, that we are less hairy than chimps, and also supposes that
australopithecenes (since they seem to have lived in a chimp-like
environment) were roughly as hairy as chimps, we could easily be getting
less hairy, not more so.
IOW if we assume a chimp-like hairy ancestor and a gradual, constant
"un-hairy-ing" we could just as easily come up with a species as unhairy
as we are. Why is it necessary to postulate the existence of a short,
very unhairy ancestor?
Kevyn Winkless umwinkl0@cc.umanitoba.ca
"Woe be unto those who rise up early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
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