Re: naked bipeds
H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
22 Oct 1995 15:46:11 -0400
pnich@globalone.net (Phil Nicholls) writes:
>of Homo sapiens you are being very selective. IF we have learned
>anything about human evolution it is that everything does not happen
>at once. We know, for example, that bipedalism occurs before
>expansion of brain size or tool use.
Unless this is a typo I assume that you are now generalizing
to a higher degree of abstraction. Maybe you are saying something
like "If we examine the fossils and living animals (on all planets
on which life has evolved)we'll find that bipedalism had occurred
before expansion of brain size." If this is so, then we'd have to
account for other animals which have large brains and which are
not bipedal (again I'm using brain_mass/body_mass). I don't have
the figures handy but how does Lucy compare in this aspect to
say a dolphin or whale?
>Hairlessness could have occurred
>only within the last 40,000 years for all we know.
It could have occurred at any time. But I've been led to
believe that the advantages of hairlessness in expelling
heat from the body was a major factor in what we are since
we are larger(!) and need this to expel heat whereas small
animals like chimps don't need to lose hair. Then it would
seem that the hair loss should have occurred together with
the hominids increasing in size, or could have occurred around
the time of Lucy is the world wide temperature was getting hotter.
--
Regards, Mark
http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey
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