Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution (Part 7)

[AlgisKuliukas]

What are you on about? "Head-out immersion"? Of course it's a major argument in favour of wading why on earth would Elaine, or any proponent, object to anyone pointing it out? What point were you making? The usual anthrosciguy obfuscation technique, me thinks.

Why on earth indeed? But in fact she was incensed about it back in the mid 1990s.

Ok, show us the quote, the WHOLE quote, mind, in the full context not just the usual anthrosciguy quotelet.

I predict that this will turn out to be yet another instance of anthrosciguy's distort to discredit tactic.

Algis Kuliukas

[eversbane]

The whole point is that the longer apes spend in water the more bipedal they would become.

Your experiments refute this claim.

That's the whole idea, our ancestors spent longer in water

Unproven, but irrelevant as your experiments demonstrate that wading =/= selection for the intermediate gait.

- enough to push them over a rubicon and become bipedal on land too.

Presumably there is an insurmountable efficiency cost on land selecting against the intermediate gait. How does wading (which does not select for the intermediate gait) overcome that cost on land?

[AlgisKuliukas]

The whole point is that the longer apes spend in water the more bipedal they would become.

Your experiments refute this claim.

Yeah, right. The master's thesis reportd 90% bipedality in water, 3% bipedality on land.

That's the whole idea, our ancestors spent longer in water

Unproven, but irrelevant as your experiments demonstrate that wading =/= selection for the intermediate gait.

Trolling. The findings show that the cost differential between non-optimal and optimal bipedalism is reduced in water. A perfect Darwinian solution to the question - how was bipedalism practiced before our anatomy evolved to make it optimal.

- enough to push them over a rubicon and become bipedal on land too.

Presumably there is an insurmountable efficiency cost on land selecting against the intermediate gait. How does wading (which does not select for the intermediate gait) overcome that cost on land?

Water comes in a continuum of depths. In waist deep water they'd have had no choice but to move bipedally, in shallower water they'd have ever more choice but ever more cost. It's the perfect Darwinian solution to the problem.

Algis Kuliukas

[anthrosciguy]

They are not limited to only bipedalism and wading; they included bipedalism and wading in a broad overall study; you say that this means their info is bad or not apropos because they didn't limit their study to only one small segment of behavior. That really doesn't make any sense, Algis. And they weren't "anecdotal" any more than your observations were anecdotal. So they did study that, they did go through peer review, and you know these papers exist yet claimed they didn't. You insist everyone ignore all the non-Algis studies and accept that your extreme outlier percentages be accepted as applying to all bonobos when they clearly are extreme outliers. That also doesn't make sense. Is it any wonder that a paper by you on bonobo wading would have a difficult time getting through peer review, since reviewers would naturally expect you -- at the very least -- to follow scientific standards and mention these other studies.

You claimed that I was wrong to suggest that "no other ape studies have been done which look at wading, at bipedalism, and how much time is spent bipedal in different contexts other than your master's thesis". You used your usual journalist "shock horror" technique and jumped straight in and accused me of lying when I denied that there were any such studies.

You then reported some quotes from the literature I gave myself as proof of this "lying".

But let's just look at the papers you claim are studies on wading, bipedalism and how much time is spent being bipedal in different contexts.

Uehara, S. (1988). Grouping patterns of wild pygmy chimpanzees(Pan paniscus), observed at a marsh grassland amidst the tropical rain forest of Yalosidi, Republic of Zaïre.Primates 29: 41–52.

Note "grouping patterns" - the paper is not about bipedalism. It is not about wading.

Kano, T. (1992). The Last Ape: Pygmy Chimpanzee Behavior and Ecology, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.

Note "behaviour and ecology" - the study is not about bipedalism. It is not about wading.

Myers Thompson, J. (2002). Bonobos of the Lukuru Wildlife Research Project. In: Boesch, C., Hohman, G., Marchant, L. (eds.), (2002). Behavioural Diversity in Chimpanzees and Bonobos. Cambridge (Cambridge)

A study of bonobo behaviour, not about bipedalism, not about wading.

Hohman, Gottfried (2003). Culture in Bonobos? Between-Species and Within-Species Variation in Behavior. Current Anthropology Vol: Pages:563-609

not about wading, not about bipedalism.

... so who, exactly, is lying here?

Just because a paper reports an observation that an ape moved through water it does not mean that the paper is about wading and bipedalism, anthrosciguy, no matter how much you'd like to pretend it is.

You are still claiming that a paper or a study has to be restricted to the one subject to have any relevance to that subject even when it is about that subject and more. That is really foolish of you Algis.

[anthrosciguy]

See that? "our work for us". Who are "we" and who are "they"? It's this "us and them" demonising tactic which anthrosciguy relies on in his project of discreditng the idea. When was that mantra of anthropology written down declaring that studying the effects of moving through water was off limits? Where is it defined that paleoanthropology only looks at terrestrial and arboreal aspects of human evolution? Is the field not interested in solving the question of human uniqueness? Odd. I thought that was what their job was supposed to be all about.

The "us" in question would be anyone interested in a form of the AAT/H, like you. Others have their own research interests. Mentioning this fact is certainly not "demonising". You insist that someone -- not Hardy, not Morgan, not you, not Verhaegen -- should've ignored their own research interests and researched what you think is interesting. That's foolish.

In 50 years I would have expected some anthropologist to have done the slightest bit of science to investigate the idea, yes. That it took a playwrite, a doctor, a computer programmer and a whole set of others from outside the field (not indoctrinated by their sneering mantra) to actually take the idea seriously (something you still have never done) is an apalling indictment on the field.

The fact that many ape studies have looked at wading shows that your claim that "paleoanthropology only looks at terrestrial and arboreal aspects" is not accurate, and in fact since you know this statement of yours is inaccurate you are deliberately lying when you write it. It also means the rest of that paragraph is a staged hissy fit rather than any sort of serious question.

Mentioning the word does not constitute a study. That you have to scrape the barrel to pretend it does is merely a further indication of how poor the response has been.

Carey & Crompton did exactly the same thing on a treadmill to suggest that fully upright walking was what the early hominins did. That was ok, though, because it didn't mention the dreaded 'a' factor. It flew through peer review and got into the hallowed pages of JHE. When I simply point out that, hold on a minute, in water the difference in energy efficiency is reduced, all of a sudden, it's a "no no". You can't say that! As usual the double standards are nauseating.

I'd say their study is flawed in the same way for the same reason. I have no idea how quickly or easily it went through peer review, but then I don't have your paranormal powers. Please give me some of the details about how fast and easily it went through, sicne you claim to know them.

Well 8 months is about as quick a turnaround you'd expect from JHE. Received at the end of Jan 2004, accepted at the start of October. The point is, it wasn't rejected. They rejected my paper without even going to peer review with the astonishing claim that it had nothing to do with human evolution. My paper was the same as their's but with the dreaded "a" factor added.

And how many revisions did they do, what were the reviewers' comments for them? You know, the things you'd have to know to make the claim you did about their supposedly clear sailing. Or is this just more of your argumentum ad misericordiam?

Where do you get "he seems to assume it based on knuckle-walking apes"? Admit it, you just made that up, right? Typical anthrosciguy then. Making things up to try to discredit good ideas.

I do provide evidence that wading was a plausible component in early hominins so, to use your vernacular, you're lying again.

The last bit... "If, however, it is the gait our ancestors used.." just shows your ignorance. It is the very biomechanics of a BHBK gait that makes it inefficient comapred to the striding gait which our anatomy is so clearly optimised for.

I don't know of anyone who thinks that early hominins could not have waded at times. What is you evidence that they did, since you claim to have some? Why have you never provided this evidence?

You are claiming that an animal optimised to walk bipedally with a bent knee gait would not be better at it than an animal which is not? That seems unlikely to me, but please provide the evidence you use to reach that conclusion.

I noticed that you dodged the bit where I asked you to justify the bit you made up.

I gave evidence from the paleohabitats. I do not have video footage of Pleistocene hominins wading but it would be rather incredible if living in such places they never went in the water.

So your evidence is that you assume they did.

Actually there is pretty solid evidence that some hominins actually did wade.

Behrensmeyer, Anna K; Laporte, Leo F (1981). Footprints of a Pleistocene hominid in Kenya. Nature Vol:289 Pages:167-169

People often cite the Laetoli footprints as some kind of proof that they didn't so I think I should be able to use this evidence as proof that they did. Don't tell me... this isn't evidence either, right? The double standards are nauseating.

But bipedalism occurs far more often on land than in water, not only in current ape studies in the wild but in your own short masters' thesis observations (about 5 times more in your observations). Since carrying is by far the most common time one sees bipedalism, it is not true that wading "compells bipedalism like no other factor".

How convenient that you simply ignore the percentages and chose to only consider the totals. The whole point is that the longer apes spend in water the more bipedal they would become. That's the whole idea, our ancestors spent longer in water - enough to push them over a rubicon and become bipedal on land too.

That you have to distort the findings of a simple study in order to deny it's findings speaks volumes of your commitment to science - it's non-existant.

Okay, let's look at a percentage from your study: 22.9%. This percentage appears nowhere in your study or any discussion of it by you, AFAIK. That's the percentage of bipedalism in water as opposed to on land in your 5 hours of observation which you insist everyone use in place of many hours of observations by other researchers even though your numbers were extreme outliers comared to other studies.

You demonstrated bouyancy. I'm not impressed. Now if I'd been around in the 200BC era and heard about Archimedes and bouyancy, I would've been impressed, but you're a couple of millennia too late for your independent discovery to be very noteworthy.

Buoyancy in humans in the context of our bipedal origins. No-one has done that before. Or maybe you can dredge up some paper that mentions buoyancy and wading and bipedalism somewhere in the same article and claim that that was about the same thing?

Algis Kuliukas

You showed buoyancy for modern humans and how it helps modern humans squat a tiny bit with less energy use.

[AlgisKuliukas]

You are still claiming that a paper or a study has to be restricted to the one subject to have any relevance to that subject even when it is about that subject and more. That is really foolish of you Algis.

Dodged.

Algis Kuliukas

[AlgisKuliukas]

EDIT double post sorry

[anthrosciguy]

You are still claiming that a paper or a study has to be restricted to the one subject to have any relevance to that subject even when it is about that subject and more. That is really foolish of you Algis.

Dodged.

Algis Kuliukas

Yes, you did dodge it and it was pretty visible to everyone here.

And on to this one:

What are you on about? "Head-out immersion"? Of course it's a major argument in favour of wading why on earth would Elaine, or any proponent, object to anyone pointing it out? What point were you making? The usual anthrosciguy obfuscation technique, me thinks.

Why on earth indeed? But in fact she was incensed about it back in the mid 1990s.

Ok, show us the quote, the WHOLE quote, mind, in the full context not just the usual anthrosciguy quotelet.

I predict that this will turn out to be yet another instance of anthrosciguy's distort to discredit tactic.

Algis Kuliukas

Another patented hissy fit for effect. I forget now; was it you who posted Elaine's complaints about my site, the complaints which were taken offline after I replied to them? That was one place:

"I never said neck deep. Alister never said neck deep. Marc never said neck deep. Could we have a reference please? With page-numbers?"
Elaine Morgan

and she claimed that she'd only made such claims in the context of the aldosterone claims she made (which have their own problems as I've outlined on my site):

The only time I ever referred to head-out immersion was in a quotation
from research about the effects of immersion on hypertension in
experiments on modern Homo sap."
Elaine Morgan

and again:

"By the way I have never said these creatures walked up yo
thir nacks in water. That would be stupid. What you refer to
as my repeated use of the term "head-out immersion" had
nothing to do with hominids. It was in a very speialised
context, a standard term used by researchers in therapeutic
experiments with modern humans."
Elaine Morgan

She also said:

"I would like to reply to some serious misrepresentations.
"Jim Moore says that "all" (sic) supporters of AAT claim that a major reason for the evolution of bipedalism was that wading in water helped to support the body weight. I do not know of anybody that says this."
Elaine Morgan

But of course she was not being truthful when she said those things:

"Erect posture imposes no strain on the spine under conditions of
head-out immersion in water." (Morgan, The Scars of Evolution,
1990:47).

Morgan has claimed (and Algis has regurgitated the claim) that this was just one sentence, and it is. One sentence out of a chapter and a half that went on about how bipedalism couldn't have evolved on land because of these supposedly too great strains. But then Algis knows all this, so he's not really looking for information, instead he's staging a hissy fit for the benefit of his audience and to distract from his failures to provide support for his ideas.

[anthrosciguy]

The whole point is that the longer apes spend in water the more bipedal they would become.

Your experiments refute this claim.

Yeah, right. The master's thesis reportd 90% bipedality in water, 3% bipedality on land.

That's the whole idea, our ancestors spent longer in water

Unproven, but irrelevant as your experiments demonstrate that wading =/= selection for the intermediate gait.

Trolling. The findings show that the cost differential between non-optimal and optimal bipedalism is reduced in water. A perfect Darwinian solution to the question - how was bipedalism practiced before our anatomy evolved to make it optimal.

- enough to push them over a rubicon and become bipedal on land too.

Presumably there is an insurmountable efficiency cost on land selecting against the intermediate gait. How does wading (which does not select for the intermediate gait) overcome that cost on land?

Water comes in a continuum of depths. In waist deep water they'd have had no choice but to move bipedally, in shallower water they'd have ever more choice but ever more cost. It's the perfect Darwinian solution to the problem.

Algis Kuliukas

In waist deep or deeper water they have another excellent choice, one that precludes the possibility of drowning and therefore increases their chances of survival immensely, providing enormously great selection pressure. They simply turn around and wade in shallows or get out of the water entirely.

[AlgisKuliukas]

And how many revisions did they do, what were the reviewers' comments for them? You know, the things you'd have to know to make the claim you did about their supposedly clear sailing. Or is this just more of your argumentum ad misericordiam?

Clearly I don't know the answer to that but, as I said, 8 months is pretty quick. Their paper was accepted. It passed peer review just like Langdon's paper even though it wasn't scholarly enough to draw upon Roede et al. (Just like your "scientific critique" then).

So your evidence is that you assume they did.

I noticed you ignored the uniquivocal evidence of wading I provided and choose to believe that hominins living in close to wetland habitats for 3 million years never went in the water.

Behrensmeyer, Anna K; Laporte, Leo F (1981). Footprints of a Pleistocene hominid in Kenya. Nature Vol:289 Pages:167-169

Okay, let's look at a percentage from your study: 22.9%. This percentage appears nowhere in your study or any discussion of it by you, AFAIK. That's the percentage of bipedalism in water as opposed to on land in your 5 hours of observation which you insist everyone use in place of many hours of observations by other researchers even though your numbers were extreme outliers comared to other studies.

The figure was over 90% - that's the degree of bipedality they exhibited in water. Where do you get 22.9% from?

No other study has ever specifically audited the type of locomotion exhibited by extant apes when moving in water compared to moving on land. As the worlds self-appointed authority on the mislabelled aquatic ape theory I thought you'd know.

You showed buoyancy for modern humans and how it helps modern humans squat a tiny bit with less energy use.

Distort to discredit... as usual.

Algis Kuliukas

[AlgisKuliukas]

Dodged.

Yes, you did dodge it and it was pretty visible to everyone here.

Evaded.

Another patented hissy fit for effect. I forget now; was it you who posted Elaine's complaints about my site, the complaints which were taken offline after I replied to them? That was one place:

"I never said neck deep. Alister never said neck deep. Marc never said neck deep. Could we have a reference please? With page-numbers?"
Elaine Morgan

Same old anthrosciguy then. Distorting to discredit. Nothing ever chnages with you. Did you reply? What was her reply to that?

and she claimed that she'd only made such claims in the context of the aldosterone claims she made (which have their own problems as I've outlined on my site):

The only time I ever referred to head-out immersion was in a quotation
from research about the effects of immersion on hypertension in
experiments on modern Homo sap."
Elaine Morgan

and again:

"By the way I have never said these creatures walked up yo
thir nacks in water. That would be stupid. What you refer to
as my repeated use of the term "head-out immersion" had
nothing to do with hominids. It was in a very speialised
context, a standard term used by researchers in therapeutic
experiments with modern humans."
Elaine Morgan

Gosh, there's a surprise. Anthrosciguy misquoting Elaine Morgan. As she said, the example anthrosciguy is leading up to here was in a specialised context where weight on the spine is eliminated to make a point about how wading could remove one of the problems with our bipedalism (a 'scar' of evolution.)

She also said:

"I would like to reply to some serious misrepresentations.
"Jim Moore says that "all" (sic) supporters of AAT claim that a major reason for the evolution of bipedalism was that wading in water helped to support the body weight. I do not know of anybody that says this."
Elaine Morgan

Gosh, there's a surprise. Anthrosciguy misquoting Elaine Morgan. I'd like to see the next sentence here. Looks like a classic bit of anthrosciguy quote butchery to me.

But of course she was not being truthful when she said those things:

Well of course. Elaine Morgan has such a long track record of lying. You, on the other hand, never distort, lie, misrepresent, butcher quotes or quote people out of context. Just read anthrosciguy's "shock horror" revelations about her...

http://www.aquaticape.org/quotes.html

Please DO read all of it. I promise you'll be underwhelmed. As you do, remember this is the very worst anthrosciguy has been able to scrape together from desperately searching for all the dirt he can rake out of forty years of work. [EDIT: reworded for clarity]

Then, maybe, have a look at my critique of it.

http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/ ... Quotes.htm

Welll actually, thinking about you don't even need to, he does enough of it right here.

"Erect posture imposes no strain on the spine under conditions of
head-out immersion in water." (Morgan, The Scars of Evolution,
1990:47).

Morgan has claimed (and Algis has regurgitated the claim) that this was just one sentence, and it is. One sentence out of a chapter and a half that went on about how bipedalism couldn't have evolved on land because of these supposedly too great strains. But then Algis knows all this, so he's not really looking for information, instead he's staging a hissy fit for the benefit of his audience and to distract from his failures to provide support for his ideas.

Yes. One sentence out of context, presented in a way designed to try to distort to discredit, as usual.

That book has two chapters on bipedalism and the way that wading helps answer the problems we've had explaining it. Anthrosciguy, as usual, find the sentence he thinks he can best report to discredit the idea.

In the first, chapter 3, "The cost of walking erect" Elaine describes several problems with human bipedalism. "Scars" of our evolution indeed - like back pains and varicose veins.

In the next, chapter 4, "Explaining Bipedalism" she describes how beautifully the wading model helps to solve these problems and many more besides.

Here's the full context of the quote anthrosciguy dissected out...

In all the savannah scenarios the disadvantages of bipedalism - unstable equilibrium, disruption to skeletal, muscular, circulatory systems - would be incurred in their most extreme form immediately, and would only ease off in successive generations as the bones gradually changed their shape and the new muscles developed. On the other hand, the supposed advantages would be non-existent or minimal in the first generation while the ape was still an ape. They would only accue to its distant posterity.
In other words, terrestrial bipedalism would only become advantageous provided it had been diligently practiced for thousands of years while it was still awkward and laborious and the behavioural rewards were infinitesimal or nil.
In the aquatic scenario the position is reversed. Walking erect in flooded terrain was less an option than a necessity. The behavioural reward - being able to walk and breathe at the same time - was instantly available. And most of the disadvantages of bipedalism were cancelled out.
Erect posture imposes no strain on the spine under conditions of head-out immersion in water. There is no added weight on the lumbar vertebrae. The discs are not vertically compressed. (An astronaut in zero gravity gains an inch in height in the first days in space, and immersion in water is the nearest thing to zero gravity on planet Earth.)
In water, walking on two legs incurs no more danger of tripping over and crashing to the ground than walking on four. There is no distention of the veins because immersion prevents the blood from pooling in the lower limbs.

(My bold.. the bit anthrosciguy quotes)

Notice that the "head-out emmersion" point wasn't being proposed as a regular model of locomotion for "aquatic apes" as anthrosciguy is trying to pretend. It was a specific point to show how weight bearing problems on the spine might be eliminated immeditaly.

Actually, Elaine Morgan's work on bipedalism is really excellent. She should be cited far more often on this subject. Rarely has so much common sense been written about bipedal origins. Scars of Evolution is a great book. It should be recommended reading for any ceationist because it shows, better than anything else I've read, how were're clearly not designed.

But all of this, of course, is ignored by the self-appointed authority on the so-called "aquatic ape hypothesis". Rather than give a fair account of this work, all anthrosciguy can do is find a sentence that appears to make it look that Elaine's entire argument is based on the idea that human ancestors always walked up to their necks. Then, armed with this, he digs and provokes on the internet to get her to write something that contradicts this distortion so that he can then add insult to injury and accuse her of being a liar too.

Wonderful, isn't it?

PZ Myers must be so proud to have his name associated with this kind of stuff.

Algis Kuliukas

[anthrosciguy]

Yes, Algis, we know you think Elaine Morgan is the foremost theorist in human evolution (just like we know that you rank Richard Leakey last on a 5 person list of who is a good source of info on human evolution, placing 3 creationists and one nutty professor higher). BTW Algis, it's been 3 weeks and despite several requests you still haven't informed us how one goes about "shaving a bit of body hair off an already glabrous man".

[hotshoe]

Water comes in a continuum of depths. In waist deep water they'd have had no choice but to move bipedally, in shallower water they'd have ever more choice but ever more cost. It's the perfect Darwinian solution to the problem.

In waist deep or deeper water they have another excellent choice, one that precludes the possibility of drowning and therefore increases their chances of survival immensely, providing enormously great selection pressure. They simply turn around and wade in shallows or get out of the water entirely.

How about another choice: dogpaddle or swim, which is what most terrestrial animals do, when they really need to get across water deeper than their legs.

Funny, the WHHE supposedly explains both why we are bipedal and why we are swimmers, with exposure to waist-deep water being the selection stimulus for both. But they are two contradictory strategies for dealing with the water -- one to get more erect and insist on continuing to walk on the substrate, river bed or lake bed; and the other to work "with" the water by floating and moving on top of it, with lesser or greater facility. The same encounter with water cannot drive evolution in both directions simultaneously (if at all).

[ericv00]

The whole point is that the longer apes spend in water the more bipedal they would become.

Your experiments refute this claim.

Yeah, right. The master's thesis reportd 90% bipedality in water, 3% bipedality on land.

But reduced selection.

Also, how much TOTAL TIME was spent in the water vs land?

Always cherry-picking numbers...

That's the whole idea, our ancestors spent longer in water

Unproven, but irrelevant as your experiments demonstrate that wading =/= selection for the intermediate gait.

Trolling. The findings show that the cost differential between non-optimal and optimal bipedalism is reduced in water. A perfect Darwinian solution to the question - how was bipedalism practiced before our anatomy evolved to make it optimal.

No its not a perfect solution. "Practiced" means nothing without selection. Your findings reduce selection pressure, eventually down to zero.

- enough to push them over a rubicon and become bipedal on land too.

Presumably there is an insurmountable efficiency cost on land selecting against the intermediate gait. How does wading (which does not select for the intermediate gait) overcome that cost on land?

Water comes in a continuum of depths. In waist deep water they'd have had no choice but to move bipedally, in shallower water they'd have ever more choice but ever more cost. It's the perfect Darwinian solution to the problem

No it is not. Not when the capability for bipedalism is already there and usable on land WITH selection pressure, something that wanes for every additional inch of water.

[AlgisKuliukas]

Yes, Algis, we know you think Elaine Morgan is the foremost theorist in human evolution (just like we know that you rank Richard Leakey last on a 5 person list of who is a good source of info on human evolution, placing 3 creationists and one nutty professor higher). BTW Algis, it's been 3 weeks and despite several requests you still haven't informed us how one goes about "shaving a bit of body hair off an already glabrous man".

She's made a bigger contribution to understanding human evolution than any anthropologist I can think of.

Your list was a typical snare to trap me. You never answered my question if on those grounds you'd expect universities to stop making appointments on the basis of academic qualifications.

Sorry, I must have missed that question. Clearly the term 'glabrous' is relative. People who can only think in black and white and spend their lives looking for tiny inconsistencies in words to throw back at their authors as "lies" probably find the concept hard to understand. Humans are, compared to apes, relatively glabrous, not absolutely glabrous. Therefore we still have vestigial body hairs that can be removed.

Remarkably, even doing that can reduce drag by over 9%. Another fact anthrosciguy would rather try to distort out of existance than face honestly on his "scientific critique". [EDIT: Typo]

Algis Kuliukas

[AlgisKuliukas]

Water comes in a continuum of depths. In waist deep water they'd have had no choice but to move bipedally, in shallower water they'd have ever more choice but ever more cost. It's the perfect Darwinian solution to the problem.

In waist deep or deeper water they have another excellent choice, one that precludes the possibility of drowning and therefore increases their chances of survival immensely, providing enormously great selection pressure. They simply turn around and wade in shallows or get out of the water entirely.

How about another choice: dogpaddle or swim, which is what most terrestrial animals do, when they really need to get across water deeper than their legs.

Funny, the WHHE supposedly explains both why we are bipedal and why we are swimmers, with exposure to waist-deep water being the selection stimulus for both. But they are two contradictory strategies for dealing with the water -- one to get more erect and insist on continuing to walk on the substrate, river bed or lake bed; and the other to work "with" the water by floating and moving on top of it, with lesser or greater facility. The same encounter with water cannot drive evolution in both directions simultaneously (if at all).

Yes, as usual the best arguemnt that can be conceived is denial. Oh no, of course they'd never wade bipedally. They'd run away to the hills rather than do that. They'd stay up in the trees and starve to death.... or they'd SWIM!

Even humans, who can swim, would wade in shallow water because a) it's easier b) it's safer c) (if it's in very shallow water) less likely to get abrasions.

I must have spelt this out a dozen times but let me do so again.

Bipedalism came early. The fossil evidence makes that clear. The fossil evidence for early hominins is also, predominently away from the coasts in wetland habitats. Hence River Apes and and the wading hypothesis. They might have become better swimmers at this stage too but as we have no evidence either way I tend to go with parsimony and assume that as humans are the best swimmers/divers of the ape clade that is is a derived characteristic in our lineage that came later... at the coasts, hence Coastal People.

Now I know some of you can't tell the difference in plausibility between this idea and aliens coming down from outer space so may I suggest you try a little harder.

Algis Kuliukas

[gib]

C'mon Algis, that was a fair question from hotshoe. Why wouldn't they do what nearly all terrestrial mammals do in that situation and dogggy-paddle?

Before the recent Ardi papers you could have argued that knuckle-walkers aren't built for doggy-paddling.

Post Ardi, how does that look?

[AlgisKuliukas]

The whole point is that the longer apes spend in water the more bipedal they would become.

Your experiments refute this claim.

Yeah, right. The master's thesis reportd 90% bipedality in water, 3% bipedality on land.

But reduced selection.

Also, how much TOTAL TIME was spent in the water vs land?

Always cherry-picking numbers...

"Reduced selection?' You're blindly repeating eversbane's trolling because you can't think of anything better. Wading up to the chest, although it eliminates the energetic cost differential of a BHBK gait, adds other potential modes of selection like having longer legs (duh!). At intermediate depths this morphs smoothly into walking on land. Perfect.

As for how much time... of course that's the point. The River Apes part of my model is proposing that our ancestors spent MORE time in water than those of the extant great apes. The population genetics stuff shows us that the amount of extra selection need not be great. I propose that even being exposed to regular seasonal flooding would be enough, especially when one considers Potts' VS hypothesis evidence that shows that there would be periods in the Pleistocene (of thousands of years duration) where the habitats would have become considerably wetter, as well as drier.

It's odd that you consider reporting the findings of a study designed specifically to look the degree of extant ape bipedality in water compared to on land as "cherry picking."

Q: When can the main findings of specific studies designed to find new empiricle data be deemed "cherry picking"?
A: When it supports the damned "aquatic ape hypothesis", of course!

That's the whole idea, our ancestors spent longer in water

Unproven, but irrelevant as your experiments demonstrate that wading =/= selection for the intermediate gait.

Trolling. The findings show that the cost differential between non-optimal and optimal bipedalism is reduced in water. A perfect Darwinian solution to the question - how was bipedalism practiced before our anatomy evolved to make it optimal.

No its not a perfect solution. "Practiced" means nothing without selection. Your findings reduce selection pressure, eventually down to zero.

Just to remind you Eric, the wading hypothesis is the ONLY model of bipedalism that can say...

Place a group of apes in condition x and they WILL move (not just pose for a few seconds) bipedally, without support of their upper limbs, for as long as the condition prevails.

It's the only one that can add...

...And if they moved quadrupedally, they'd die.

That you pretend this away and delude yourself into thinking there'd be "zero" selection for traits leading to bipedalism in chest deep water just shows the depths you are prepared to sink to in your 3D mantra of "distort to discredit and deny".

The wading model offers more selection, more clear cut selection than any other model of bipedal origins. It provides the perfect Darwinian intermediary between whatever the LCA was doing and both striding obligate bipedalism in humans and knuckle-walking in chimps/gorillas. It is more consistent with the evidence than any other model of bipedal origins and yet it is pretty much compatible with all of them. It's only difficulty is it's damning assocation with the so-called "aquatic ape hypothesis" which, as all anthropologists know, just has to be wrong. The AAH must be wrong, therefore the wading hypothesis must be wrong. How do they know this? Because Le Gros Clark apparently thought the idea was crazy. (He never published that, it's just gossip - but gossip is ok as long as the idea can be put in a box labelled 'pseudoscience'). Has the tiniest bit of sciencce been done to investigate the idea? No. Anthrosciguy's masquerading web site is all we need.

- enough to push them over a rubicon and become bipedal on land too.

Presumably there is an insurmountable efficiency cost on land selecting against the intermediate gait. How does wading (which does not select for the intermediate gait) overcome that cost on land?

Water comes in a continuum of depths. In waist deep water they'd have had no choice but to move bipedally, in shallower water they'd have ever more choice but ever more cost. It's the perfect Darwinian solution to the problem

No it is not. Not when the capability for bipedalism is already there and usable on land WITH selection pressure, something that wanes for every additional inch of water.

Please stop repeating eversbane's trolling of my wading studies. I've corrected it a dozen times. I'm going to report you for doing so if you don't stop it.

Algis Kuliukas

[gib]

...And if they moved quadrupedally, they'd die

What if they were Cephus-grade staid apes and they just backed out of the water?

Failing that,and should you actually come up with a selective pressure that gets these chaps are in the water in the first place (big ask, i know) then what if they weren't knuckle walkers and they swam when any other terrestrial quadrupedal mammal would swim?

[anthrosciguy]

Yes, Algis, we know you think Elaine Morgan is the foremost theorist in human evolution (just like we know that you rank Richard Leakey last on a 5 person list of who is a good source of info on human evolution, placing 3 creationists and one nutty professor higher). BTW Algis, it's been 3 weeks and despite several requests you still haven't informed us how one goes about "shaving a bit of body hair off an already glabrous man".

She's made a bigger contribution to understanding human evolution than any anthropologist I can think of.

Your list was a typical snare to trap me. You never answered my question if on those grounds you'd expect universities to stop making appointments on the basis of academic qualifications.

Sorry, I must have missed that question. Clearly the term 'glabrous' is relative. People who can only think in black and white and spend their lives looking for tiny inconsistencies in words to throw back at their authors as "lies" probably find the concept hard to understand. Humans are, compared to apes, relatively glabrous, not absolutely glabrous. Therefore we still have vestigial body hairs that can be removed.

Remarkably, even doing that can reduce drag by over 9%. Another fact anthrosciguy would rather try to distort out of existance than face honestly on his "scientific critique". [EDIT: Typo]

Algis Kuliukas

You see Algis, all this is interconnected (yes, it's the Great Anthro Conspiracy), along with your recent, repeated rant against Le Gros Clark and then me. Here's the thing: you don't know the meaning of words which you proceed to use anyway. Glabrous is one of them; it's not relative, it is, in fact, black and white, yes or no, binary -- it means hairless. Period, full stop, sorry, road closed. You cannot shave any hair off a glabrous man, assuming you find one such. You've been using this word without knowing what it meant, probably because you thought it sounded scientific and would you sound smarter; but of course since you used it in a way that showed you hadn't the foggiest notion what it meant it didn't make you sound smart... rather the reverse.

You're using words and concepts without understanding them, using them as talismans, which waved about are believed by the user to provide protection or strength or some greater ability. And you use credentials the same way: any sensible person faced with my list would try to see who these people were and admit that formal credentials are not at all what's important. You did not, and were trapped -- trapped not by me but by your own prejudices -- into claiming that creationists are better sources of info about human evolution than Richard Leakey.

In the same way you use the names of Dawkins and Dennett and Tobias and Reynolds, not caring what they actually said and whether that supports your position -- the name itself is your end, waving that name as a magic talisman. You imagine yourself galloping forth waving these talismans to do battle with what you see as giants, but those with clearer eyes see you running toward a windmill.

You imagine all others do the same, that they take orders from people like Le Gros Clark, or me, or the associate professor from Ball State who Elaine seems to have elected as the one who now hands down "diktats" to anthropologists the world over. When people point out what Reynolds actually said, or how vehemently Tobias rejected the AAT, or the context of Dennett's mentions of the AAT, you rail against them because you see this as damaging your talismans.

[AlgisKuliukas]

...And if they moved quadrupedally, they'd die

What if they were Cephus-grade staid apes and they just backed out of the water?

Failing that,and should you actually come up with a selective pressure that gets these chaps are in the water in the first place (big ask, i know) then what if they weren't knuckle walkers and they swam when any other terrestrial quadrupedal mammal would swim?

What if their habitat was flooded for miles? Maybe they'd just beam up to the aliens from outer space waiting for them above - just as plausible as the crazy idea that they might have (gosh... dare I even mention the word?.... no, no... ok, go on then... ) waded.

Potts 1998 showed that the Pliocene in E Africa had major shifts in climate. Gallery forests are a fact of life. They flood seasonally. I know all this sounds crazy to you but, honestly, it's not that difficult.

David Attenborough thinks it's a pretty good idea... (fast forward to 1m 45s)



... and so do I. You, on the other hand can't bring yourself to agree. What a pity.

Algis Kuliukas

[ericv00]

Please stop repeating eversbane's trolling of my wading studies. I've corrected it a dozen times. I'm going to report you for doing so if you don't stop it.

Please explain exactly how saying reduced selection on gait in water is wrong when you have shown that energy cost between gaits is reduced in water.

Go ahead and report your bogus report. I am tired of your whining over observations. If mods think I deserve a warning for observing the implications of your work (as others have), then I will take my warning. Otherwise, stop your whining. This is a critique of your ideas, and this issue is a valid concern. You call it trolling because you don't like what you hear. But you have no right to censor legitimate criticism. Attempts to do this are a plague on society and worthy of no respect. So you will have to excuse me if I afford no respect to those who try such a thing.

[AlgisKuliukas]

You see Algis, all this is interconnected (yes, it's the Great Anthro Conspiracy), along with your recent, repeated rant against Le Gros Clark and then me. Here's the thing: you don't know the meaning of words which you proceed to use anyway. Glabrous is one of them; it's not relative, it is, in fact, black and white, yes or no, binary -- it means hairless. Period, full stop, sorry, road closed. You cannot shave any hair off a glabrous man, assuming you find one such. You've been using this word without knowing what it meant, probably because you thought it sounded scientific and would you sound smarter; but of course since you used it in a way that showed you hadn't the foggiest notion what it meant it didn't make you sound smart... rather the reverse.

You're using words and concepts without understanding them, using them as talismans, which waved about are believed by the user to provide protection or strength or some greater ability. And you use credentials the same way: any sensible person faced with my list would try to see who these people were and admit that formal credentials are not at all what's important. You did not, and were trapped -- trapped not by me but by your own prejudices -- into claiming that creationists are better sources of info about human evolution than Richard Leakey.

In the same way you use the names of Dawkins and Dennett and Tobias and Reynolds, not caring what they actually said and whether that supports your position -- the name itself is your end, waving that name as a magic talisman. You imagine yourself galloping forth waving these talismans to do battle with what you see as giants, but those with clearer eyes see you running toward a windmill.

You imagine all others do the same, that they take orders from people like Le Gros Clark, or me, or the associate professor from Ball State who Elaine seems to have elected as the one who now hands down "diktats" to anthropologists the world over. When people point out what Reynolds actually said, or how vehemently Tobias rejected the AAT, or the context of Dennett's mentions of the AAT, you rail against them because you see this as damaging your talismans.

Thankyou for the correction but, really... (as usual) BFD!

How clever you must think you are to keep finding all these little errors and distorting and exaggerating them into big shock horror revelations in order to discredit people. I admit I make mistakes, you prefer to pretend you don't.

What about your goof ups? When are we going to hear some admission of culpability there?

Found the "drift parameter" yet?

Found out what a scientific critique is yet?

Understand the meaning of "taking an idea seriously" yet?

Are you ever going to tell me what you think the difference is between "advanced life" and "life" is?

Are you going say whether you think universities should ignore academic qualifications when making appointments?

Are you going to cite Dennett's quote in full or continue to butcher it almost out of existance?

Are you going to cite Tobias' published work rather than an alleged reply to an alleged sleazy letter to him?

It's just the usual one-sided blige from anthrosciguy... distort to discredit.

Meanwhile, behind this latest smoke screen of attempted discreditology (I understand that know what that word means) the material and interesting point remains - the one you tried to distort out of existance - that shaving even the slight body hair off an already largely (but not absolutely - we all knew that much) naked (thanks again for the correction) human has been reported to reduce drag in water by over 9% at even slow speeds.

Algis Kuliukas

[AlgisKuliukas]

Please stop repeating eversbane's trolling of my wading studies. I've corrected it a dozen times. I'm going to report you for doing so if you don't stop it.

Please explain exactly how saying reduced selection on gait in water is wrong when you have shown that energy cost between gaits is reduced in water.

Go ahead and report your bogus report. I am tired of your whining over observations. If mods think I deserve a warning for observing the implications of your work (as others have), then I will take my warning. Otherwise, stop your whining. This is a critique of your ideas, and this issue is a valid concern. You call it trolling because you don't like what you hear. But you have no right to censor legitimate criticism. Attempts to do this are a plague on society and worthy of no respect. So you will have to excuse me if I afford no respect to those who try such a thing.

I've done this many times before but I'll do so again (one last time, then I'll use this to back up my complaint of trolling in future if you and/or eversbane repeat the same thing yet again.)

I notice there how you now deftly introduce the words "on gait" in your question. Clearly the penny has finally dropped.

I agree that in chest deep water there would be no effective selection on gait due to energy efficiency. I agree that the results of my study that show no differential between the energy consumption between BHBK gaits and FU gaits at that depth @ 0.3m/s support that. Unfortunately for you, there still was a differential at shallower depths. In waist deep water the differential was cut from 55% to about 18%.
Therefore it is simply untrue to say that my "experiments demonstrate that hominids in water experience no selection on gait phenotype" (as Eversbane repeatedly claims and you repeatedly parrot.) viewtopic.php?f=4&t=95152&start=600#p2420246

When someone repeatedly writes something that is untrue anthrosciguy calls it a lie (but only when a pesky supporter of the so-called "aquatic ape hypothesis" does it, when opponents do so, it's fine) I call it trolling. Eversbane, and I now believe you too, are simply doing this to try to provoke the name-calling response it really deserves.

Of course, this all completely ignores selection for anything else other than "on gait". What about selection "on not drowning"? When wading around depths up to chest deep in uncertain substrates, having longer legs, a more vertically orientated spine, more plantigrade feet etc are just a few of many potential sources of selection that would make a hominin a better wader. Almost all of them would be expected to also, (amazing coincience) help terrestrial bipedalism too and push an early hominin towards, and then beyond, the rubicon where it would be more likely to choose bipedalism on land too. Ooops, just forgot about all that, didn't you?

I repeat my reminder, from earlier posts, that no-one else, none of the co-authors of the paper, none of the lecturers at UWA who read the paper, none of the biologists elsewhere I asked to proof read the paper, none of the editors of the six journals I sumbmitted it to, none of the referees who rejected the paper or the ones that thought it should be published, voiced this concern.

So stop trolling. Last warning.

Algis Kuliukas

[protoart]

...And if they moved quadrupedally, they'd die

What if they were Cephus-grade staid apes and they just backed out of the water?

Failing that,and should you actually come up with a selective pressure that gets these chaps are in the water in the first place (big ask, i know) then what if they weren't knuckle walkers and they swam when any other terrestrial quadrupedal mammal would swim?

What if their habitat was flooded for miles? Maybe they'd just beam up to the aliens from outer space waiting for them above - just as plausible as the crazy idea that they might have (gosh... dare I even mention the word?.... no, no... ok, go on then... ) waded.

Potts 1998 showed that the Pliocene in E Africa had major shifts in climate. Gallery forests are a fact of life. They flood seasonally. I know all this sounds crazy to you but, honestly, it's not that difficult.

David Attenborough thinks it's a pretty good idea... (fast forward to 1m 45s)



... and so do I. You, on the other hand can't bring yourself to agree. What a pity.

It's a pity you believe this. Your scenario is backwards.
Chimps waddle because they cannot bring their knees forward without swiveling their hips (pelvis). This is what bipedalism is NOT! Chimps (pan) have nothing to with bipedalism, they are arboreal and can move tree to tree in the canopy, (see some Jane Goodall videos).
Ardi is bipedal because it moves tree to tree over ground. What Pan does after the split is irrelevant.