http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2008/10/cosmography_of_the_blogosphere.php

Humans are very strange apes.

Although possessing 90+% identical genetic recipe, none of our closest
kin could ever produce the above link, where multiple levels of
symbolic mental thoughts and processes exist...

occasionally a hominoid sits at a desk (no food)
plucks and guides a mouse,
and pecks at a keyboard
composed of dead algae and dinosaurs (oil-plastic)
with small unnatural alphabetical symbols
to communicate imaginary thoughts
about what is happening billions of light years away
from this insignificant ball of H2O-covered dust
we call Earth.

There is such an incredible leap in mental social powers in this
hominoid.

Was sustained coastal/seashore living really the answer? Abundant
brain-power foods, complex environment but generally non-threatening
for infants, increased sociality... definitely an island effect, but
perhaps geographically periodically peninsular or archipelago?


Sessile food foraging at waterside: A major part, yes, I've no doubt
at all.

But,

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

Seriously.

No other life form has done anything comparable.


And why are today's super-intelligent hominoids
often so incredibly stupid,

physically primitive yet super-derived,

with so many individuals afraid to swim
yet some being better swimmers than some cetaceans

some afraid to climb trees, others climb as well as monkeys or apes

Our species got a software upgrade obviously

yet still susceptible to viruses


Hominoids obviously spent tine at marine coasts, before some moved
inland, adapting incompletely to arboreal or terre-arboreal lifestyles
and forgetting the past coastal habitat and behaviour.

Homo sapiens has more recently done the same, but trade, ritual and
communication carry enough importance so that no truly isolated
sapiens population has existed for very long periods,

and today all are linked to all. No man is an island. The other apes
were isolated, and now suffer for that, remnants remain.

The LCA Hominoid was a coastal social animal, with monkey-like calls,
a few symbols and gestures, at home in the shallows and the low
coastal canopy, eating brain-powered foods, which initially probably
didn't do much, but eventually mutations selected for better
harvesting and nutritional variety.

Homo simply increased that, in new ways, over time.

Sapiens increased it moreso, while becoming as distant from the source
as the other hominoids, but stayed linked through technology,
communication, trust, trade.

Technology = tinkering, usefulness + novelty
ore/core + tek/chip/sharp -> repeated patterns
reed weaving -> pattern recognition, nest -> net
long infant care -> mimicry, mirror neurons

Slow climbing, slow wading, slow diving, slow walking, slow running,
slow breathing, slow lifestyle -> slow growth, long life, slow
learning (yet comprehensive) -> play -> fast animals on earth or moon.


I joined AAT because I sought a better understanding of the process of
what happened.

Having learned much, including some new ideas, I grasp the major steps
that must have occurred, though many steps elude me, and some always
will, which is ok.

The fact that I'm far from warm tropical seashores devastates me, as
I've been unable to test what needed to be tested, to prove what now
appears obvious via circumstantial evidence.

I don't know what is next, but I think I've finished this chapter of
enquiry. The specifics of which group trekked this way or that is less
significant to me than that they kept a lifeline to the seashores,
unlike other hominoids and anthropoids, and that has made all the
difference.

My success in natural human research has paralleled my failure in
social equity (rituals, funds, status).

School of hard knocks, Doctorate in Digging, Diving and Discovering,
no diploma issued but requisite courses fulfilled.

I'm now trying to write a grant proposal to Save the Redwoods
foundation, based on a 20 yr timber stand improvement cycle and 2,000
year harvest rotation for the northern California Redwood forest, and
incorporating a unique triaxial weaving method of camp-hut
construction using thin long flexible planks of redwood woven in a 5
pointed star fashion, insulated with air-mattresses (soap-bubble
filled foam) lining the walls, central camp stove and smokehole, etc.

Happy Halloween to those celebrating it, may the great pumpkin be
generous.

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/081025/cx_peanuts_umedia/20082510;_ylt=AhTa0xxRfZhI\
C1QV2JX_TXMJ_b4F

peace & peanuts

DD