-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
To: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1999 10:32 PM
Subject: Re: [AAT] Hairlessness


>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>
>>>>We and the orangs are still a minority of the lca's decendants. It seems
>perverse to assume that we rather than the majority derive our hair
>distribution from the lca.
>
>>>1) we & the orangs are the majority of the great apes:
>
>>How do you work that out? Homo+orang=2.   Gorilla +chimp+bonobo=3
>
>Great apes = 1.
>Great apes = hominids + pongids.
>IOW, hominids=1/2 & pongids=1/2.

I don't accept these IOW's . Extant Homo and extant orange-utan
are two species however you slice it. You are fiddling the accounts
  here Marc.

>Hominids=Gorilla+(Homo-Pan)=1/2.
>IOW, Gorilla=1/4, Homo-Pan=1/4.
>Homo=1/8, Pan=1/8, paniscus=1/16.
>Homo+Pongo=5/8.
>
>
>
>>2) "perverse to assume"? I don't assume that, I just said it's possible -
>
>
>>We've agreed it's possible. I withdraw "perverse" (I only used it in the
>sense of "capricious"). Rephrasing: I would think that, other things being
>equal, it seems likely that the lca resembled a majority rather than a
>minority of its descendants.
>
>OK
>
>>>3) not only humans & orangs have resembling hair distributions, but also
>chimps: baldness (apart from humans & chimps only uakaris?); prenatal
chimps
>have brows & head hairs as in humans
>
>>The bearded saki has a bouffant hair-do; the crested macaque had prominent
>brows and erect head-hair.
>
>
>Yes, we see all sorts of hairs & colours in primate heads (they're "eye"
>animals, just as birds are - birds too have all sorts of plumes & colours,
>esp. around the head), but they don't resemble the human as much as the
male
>orang does IMO. (The crested macaque's brows & erect head-hairs are very
>different from the human-chimp.)
>
>>There is a very clear picture of an orang in Napier's book of primates.
The
>"moustache" consists of two quite separate patches of hair with a wide
space
>between. The hair in each is directed horizontally out to the sides, not
>downward as in Homo.
>
>(Do you have Napier&Napier's "handbook of living primates" (AP 1967)? A
very
>valuable book, which they used to have in the library in Antwerp, but now I
>can't find it any more.)
No, I have "The natural history of the primates".
>
>Yes, the moustache is more widely separated than in humans (but see the
>moustaches of some Mongolian people). But there's not only the moustache,
>but also the beard and the scalp hairs.


The scaalp hairs of the bonobo reseble ours morew closely I would say
I have seen some with a very smart centre parting. In some pictures (eg, in
Rijksen
>"Orang oetans") the resemblance orang/man is very striking. Of course,
>they're not identical (both lineages are apart for ca.12my). If we use the
>hair distributions in the living great hominoids & try to reconstruct the
>head hair distribution in the great hominoid LCA, this LCA (in one or both
>sexes) might have had: baldness (chimps & humans: only later: Homo-Pan
>LCA?), beard (orangs & humans), long "scalp" hairs (humans & orangs & +-
>bonobos), horizontal-linear brows (humans & prenatal chimps: only Homo-Pan
>LCA?), naked face & perhaps forehead. It probably did not have: long hairs
>on the cheeks ("moustached monkey"), long hairs near the ears (dusky titi),
>double moustaches (emperor tamarin), tufted head hairs... Just to say that
>there are some head hair resemblances between the great hominoids which are
>not seen in other primates.

If that is your contention I'd agree with it.

Elaine
>
>
>-----

Hugh, yesterday I sent to Richard & Margreet Koch;
Mario.Vaneechoutte@...; Daniel Dennett; Derek Ellis; johnny weyand;
Juergen Hinrichs; m.roede; Marcel Williams; achiel.gautier@...;
Gertrudis.VandeVijver@...; 055pvts@...;
LANGDON@...; s.cunnane; Nicole Oser; zoof-esc;
Armand.Christophe@...     this invitation:

Dear friends FYI
Community email addresses:
   Post message: AAT@onelist.com
   Subscribe:    AAT-subscribe@onelist.com
   Unsubscribe:  AAT-unsubscribe@onelist.com
   List owner:   AAT-owner@onelist.com

Shortcut URL to this page:
   http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT

Marc

++++++++++

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: harries@... <harries@...>
Aan: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Datum: maandag 20 september 1999 23:53
Onderwerp: [AAT] Inviting new members


>From: harries@...
>
>If you send me the email addresses of people you think might be interested
>in joining AAT onelist I can send them an invitation.
>
>At the moment the invitation merely says "AAT is for anyone who has an
>opinion about the Aquatic Ape Theory or wants to know more about it".
>
>If you think we need a more detailed invitation, please write one and
>circulate it so that we can all agree.
>
>Hugh

>>>We and the orangs are still a minority of the lca's decendants. It seems
perverse to assume that we rather than the majority derive our hair
distribution from the lca.

>>1) we & the orangs are the majority of the great apes:

>How do you work that out? Homo+orang=2.   Gorilla +chimp+bonobo=3

Great apes = 1.
Great apes = hominids + pongids.
IOW, hominids=1/2 & pongids=1/2.
Hominids=Gorilla+(Homo-Pan)=1/2.
IOW, Gorilla=1/4, Homo-Pan=1/4.
Homo=1/8, Pan=1/8, paniscus=1/16.
Homo+Pongo=5/8.



>2) "perverse to assume"? I don't assume that, I just said it's possible -


>We've agreed it's possible. I withdraw "perverse" (I only used it in the
sense of "capricious"). Rephrasing: I would think that, other things being
equal, it seems likely that the lca resembled a majority rather than a
minority of its descendants.

OK

>>3) not only humans & orangs have resembling hair distributions, but also
chimps: baldness (apart from humans & chimps only uakaris?); prenatal chimps
have brows & head hairs as in humans

>The bearded saki has a bouffant hair-do; the crested macaque had prominent
brows and erect head-hair.


Yes, we see all sorts of hairs & colours in primate heads (they're "eye"
animals, just as birds are - birds too have all sorts of plumes & colours,
esp. around the head), but they don't resemble the human as much as the male
orang does IMO. (The crested macaque's brows & erect head-hairs are very
different from the human-chimp.)

>There is a very clear picture of an orang in Napier's book of primates. The
"moustache" consists of two quite separate patches of hair with a wide space
between. The hair in each is directed horizontally out to the sides, not
downward as in Homo.

(Do you have Napier&Napier's "handbook of living primates" (AP 1967)? A very
valuable book, which they used to have in the library in Antwerp, but now I
can't find it any more.)

Yes, the moustache is more widely separated than in humans (but see the
moustaches of some Mongolian people). But there's not only the moustache,
but also the beard and the scalp hairs. In some pictures (eg, in Rijksen
"Orang oetans") the resemblance orang/man is very striking. Of course,
they're not identical (both lineages are apart for ca.12my). If we use the
hair distributions in the living great hominoids & try to reconstruct the
head hair distribution in the great hominoid LCA, this LCA (in one or both
sexes) might have had: baldness (chimps & humans: only later: Homo-Pan
LCA?), beard (orangs & humans), long "scalp" hairs (humans & orangs & +-
bonobos), horizontal-linear brows (humans & prenatal chimps: only Homo-Pan
LCA?), naked face & perhaps forehead. It probably did not have: long hairs
on the cheeks ("moustached monkey"), long hairs near the ears (dusky titi),
double moustaches (emperor tamarin), tufted head hairs... Just to say that
there are some head hair resemblances between the great hominoids which are
not seen in other primates.

Marc

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
To: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Date: Monday, September 20, 1999 9:18 PM
Subject: Re: [AAT] Hairlessness


>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>
>
>>We and the orangs are still a minority of the lca's decendants. It seems
>perverse to assume that we rather than the majority derive our hair
>distribution from the lca.
>
>
>1) we & the orangs are the majority of the great apes:

How do you work that out? Homo+orang=2.   Gorilla +chimp+bonobo=3



2) "perverse to assume"? I don't assume that, I just said it's possible -


We've agreed it's possible. I withdraw "perverse"  (I only used it in the
sense of
"capricious")  Rephrasing: I would think that, other things being equal,
it seems likely that the lca resembled a majority rather than a minority of
its
descendants.

>3) not only humans & orangs have resembling hair distributions, but also
>chimps: baldness (apart from humans & chimps only uakaris?); prenatal
chimps
>have brows & head hairs as in humans

The bearded saki has a bouffant hair-do; the crested macaque had prominent
brows and erect head-hair.

There is a very clear picture of an orang in Napier's book of primates.
The "moustache" consists of two quite separate patches of hair with a wide
space between. The hair in each is directed horizontally out to the sides,
not downward as in Homo.
>
>I don't have pictures of DeBrazza's monkey here, but the beard (& the rest
>of the head hairs) of the diana monkey is completely different from that of
>male orangs & humans.

To my mind the orangs is quite different from homo's too.
>
Elaine>
>
>

If you send me the email addresses of people you think might be interested
in joining AAT onelist I can send them an invitation.

At the moment the invitation merely says "AAT is for anyone who has an
opinion about the Aquatic Ape Theory or wants to know more about it".

If you think we need a more detailed invitation, please write one and
circulate it so that we can all agree.

Hugh

>>A bit similar perhaps (parallelism) but not so similar as in orangs. (AAT
is based on parallelisms. But orangs are so near to us & their hair
distribution is so much like ours that it might be a common adaptation of
great hominoids.)

>We and the orangs are still a minority of the lca's decendants. It seems
perverse to assume that we rather than the majority derive our hair
distribution from the lca.


1) we & the orangs are the majority of the great apes: all the pongids & 1/4
of the hominids (1/2 of Homo-Pan), ie, 5/8
2) "perverse to assume"? I don't assume that, I just said it's possible -
since when are hypotheses perverse?
3) not only humans & orangs have resembling hair distributions, but also
chimps: baldness (apart from humans & chimps only uakaris?); prenatal chimps
have brows & head hairs as in humans



>>>>See a photo of a male orang & the remarkable resemblance in head hairs &
moustache & beard with humans.

>>>See a photo of a De Brazza's monkey - much more like a human beard that
that great leathery mask on an orang. In the same way you quote a gorilla's
naked chest as sharing the origin of our own hairlessness.  It is no nakeder
than a baboon's. Of all the apes, most do not have beards. Why conclude that
the ones who do (Homo and orang) got it from their ancestors and it was all
the others that changed?

>>(Elaine, what's the scientific name of DeBrazza's monkey?)

>Cercopithecus neglectus. The diana monkey has a similar white beard.

I don't have pictures of DeBrazza's monkey here, but the beard (& the rest
of the head hairs) of the diana monkey is completely different from that of
male orangs & humans.

Marc

To mlbob@....

Thanks for joining the AAT onelist. This is a new list and Elaine Morgan,
Marc Verhagen and I are just trying it to see how useful it might be. So
you are the fourth member but the first spontaneous joiner. You can look at
the messages we have exchanged so far by going to
http://www.onelist.com/messages/AAT.

At the moment I am moderating the list but there is a limit to what I can
do because I am using the office computer and my job, as an agricultural
scientist, does not include AAT!

The usefulness, or otherwise, of the AAT onelist depends entirely on
participation. Just write to AAT@onelist.com.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Hugh Harries
=====
At 02:17 AM 20/09/99 -0000, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>This is an automatic notification message sent to tell you that
>
>   mlbob@...
>
>has subscribed to your community AAT.
>
>
>ONElist
>http://www.onelist.com
>
>

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
To: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Date: Saturday, September 18, 1999 10:54 AM
Subject: Re: [AAT] Hairlessness


>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>

>>
>A bit similar perhaps (parallelism) but not so similar as in orangs. (AAT
is
>based on parallelisms. But orangs are so near to us & their hair
>distribution is so much like ours that it might be a common adaptation of
of
>great hominoids.)

We and the orangs are still a minority of the lca's decendants. It seems
perverse to assume that we rather than the majority derive our hair
distribution from the lca.
>
>>>See a photo of a male orang & the remarkable resemblance in head hairs &
>moustache & beard with humans.
>
>>See a photo of a De Brazza's monkey - much more like a human beard that
>that great leathery mask on an orang. In the same way you quote a gorilla's
>naked chest as sharing the origin of our own hairlessness.  It is no
nakeder
>than a baboon's. Of all the apes, most do not have beards. Why conclude
that
>the ones who do (Homo and orang) got it from their ancestors and it was all
>the others that changed?
>
>(Elaine, what's the scientific name of DeBrazza's monkey?)

Cercopithecus neglectus/  The diana monkey has a similar white beard.

Elaine>
>
>--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------
>

>>>>MV: I'm not saying the LCA was furless, but it's certainly a
possibility:

>>>EM: All things are possible but a hairless lca seems highly unlikely.

Why?

>>>>MV: great apes have curious hair distributions, eg, baldness in female
chimps, beards & moustaches in orangs, naked chests in lowland gorillas.

>>>EM: Non-great apes have curious hair distribuitions too. Baldness in the
douroucouli, beards on goat, manes on lions.

>>:-)   Yes, but douroucoulis, lions & goats are not directly related to us.

>That was my point. Similar kinds of arrangement of hair (or feathers)
doesn't prove a shared ancestry.


A bit similar perhaps (parallelism) but not so similar as in orangs. (AAT is
based on parallelisms. But orangs are so near to us & their hair
distribution is so much like ours that it might be a common adaptation of of
great hominoids.)

>>See a photo of a male orang & the remarkable resemblance in head hairs &
moustache & beard with humans.

>See a photo of a De Brazza's monkey - much more like a human beard that
that great leathery mask on an orang. In the same way you quote a gorilla's
naked chest as sharing the origin of our own hairlessness.  It is no nakeder
than a baboon's. Of all the apes, most do not have beards. Why conclude that
the ones who do (Homo and orang) got it from their ancestors and it was all
the others that changed?

(Elaine, what's the scientific name of DeBrazza's monkey?)
The orang's leathery mask is of course unique to (male) orangs. We're
talking here of the resemblance in hair distribution between humans & orangs
(scalp hair, beard & moustache).

......


Marc (I'll be off for a few days)

>Thanks for the extract from your paper, Marc. I have no problems with
mangroves as part of the AAT scenario but the need to drink fresh water
could be a problem if that was the only habitat. I suspect that after "a
hard day at work", chipping shellfish off of mangrove stems, the gang would
be only be too glad to stop at "The Coconut Grove" for a drink on the way
home. Things haven't changed much, you see.

:-)

>Another thing about palm trees in general is that even the highest can be
easily climbed by lightly built hominids of any age (you and I would need a
little practice). And once in among the leaves - in the crown - it is a very
secure place even for babies, gently swaying in the breeze. Baboons "roost"
in Borassus palms, for example. In contrast, predatory quadrapeds like lions
or scavengers like hyenas etc cannot get far up the slender, branchless
stem.

Are you sure the crown is a very secure place?
What kind of fruits do palm trees have? coconut-like?
Chimps eat palm hearts, I read somewhere.
Sorry I'm a complete layman on palm trees.

>The other thing that I want to say is that evolutionary theories always
seem to be "either or". Either savanah or forest or lacustrine or riverine
or coastal. Either hairy or not hairy. Either bipedal or not bipedal. I
don't want it to become either "coconut or not coconut; either palms or not
palms". If we know one thing about Homo it is adaptability. I almost added
"except for palaeoanthropologists".


You're completely right (except for savanna: that's pure nonsense, totally
impossible physiologically).

Marc

>>Elaine, what do you think of the coconut? Did you hear about it earlier? I
vaguely remember to have read something on AAT & coconuts years ago -
perhaps you sent it me?

>Yes, I did send it to you.

>> - but at that time I believe I found it far-fetched AFAIR.

>I don't know about far-fetched. It is highly speculative and I don't know
how it could be tested but I am in no position to rule out anything on those
grounds since they both apply to AAT.in general.        Diet and dentition
is one aspect that I have never gone into. The more recent stuff pertaining
to diet is that coming from Crawford/Cunnane/Broadhurst which supports the
importance of fish rather than any vegetable sources of food.  I imagine
they were opportunist and omnivorous feeders and if coconuts were around
they would most certainly have been exploited. But I wouldn't know whether
that applied to a high or low percentage of the proliferating species,
whether it was a part of their diet or a staple, and if it was a staple for
how much of their prehistory that was true - e.g. if cocnuts are not around
in Africa now I agree they might have been there in the past but I wonder
when they disappeared and why.


I fully agree, except for the geography. Orangs live in SE Asia. The oldest
Homo fossils (sensu stricto,  see Wood - without "habilis": is now often
regarded as an a'pith) possibly come from Java. The first dryopith great ape
seems to come from Arabia. IOW it's very well possible that our Mio-Piocene
ancestors did not live in Africa, but somewhere along the Tethys or around
Arabia or along the Indian Ocean.

Marc

To Marc

By all means invite Stephen Munro, Marcel Williams, the people you met in
Ghent and especially someone who has the time and interest to take over as
list moderator.

Can you find time to put your paper in the AAT shared file directory? I
would do it for you but for the fact that the person who puts something in
is presumed to "own" it. Just go to <http://www.onelist.com/files/aat> and
upload it (and any others).

To Elaine

If AAT depended on coconut then I would accept your criticism that the idea
might seem "far-fetched". But other palms could have been involved.

With that in mind, in 1993, I presented a poster at the first Monocotyledon
symposium at Kew Gardens and I also gave a paper at an anthropological
conference honouring Mary Leakey in Arusha, Tanzania. Neither of these got
published because I left palms to work on cashews. Now I am back with
palms.  The abstracts are as follows:

THE COCONUT AS AN EXAMPLE OF PALM DOMESTICATION: AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR
PALAEOANTHROPOLOGY
(Kew Monocotyledon Symposium)

The coconut palm is cultivated species, domesticated at a very early
period. The likely centre for coconut domestication is the area of
continental coast and islands of southeast Asia and the western Pacific.
Domestic sorts did not displace the wild coconuts but introgressed with
them to generate diversity. The proto-Polynesians probably took domestic
coconuts to Madagascar in the west and to the Marquesas in the east even
though they expected to find coconuts growing wild on the coasts that they
reached.

Other palm species also underwent domestication. Likely domesticates are
the doum palm, the African fan palm, the date palm and the palm-like
pandanus. For the purposes of this presentation, other palm species used in
Asia, the Pacific and America are not considered. Without excluding the
coastal coconut, it is no coincidence that the prime candidates are African
palms. It is suggested here that these plants contributed to the success of
early human evolution and the migration of humankind out of Africa

Amongst the various palm species there is sufficient diversity that
different forms are found from sea level to mountain slopes; in perpetual
rain forests or seasonal savannahs; in dry valleys liable to fire, beside
lakes and rivers liable to flood; at desert oases; along estuaries and
seashores. Palms are instantly recognisable at a distance, a vertical stem
for bipeds to out-climb four-footed predators, the spiral arrangement of
the fronds in the crown making a refuge for young, non-prehensiles. These
factors were important at a very early, perhaps co-evolutionary, stage.
=====

BOTANICAL ASPECTS OF HOMINID EVOLUTION
(Four million years of Hominid evolution in Africa: an international
congress in honour of Dr. Mary Douglas Leakey's outstanding contribution in
palaeoanthropology. Arusha, Tanzania)

When hominids evolved, certain plants provided food security. The plants in
question grow naturally in Africa. Food-gatherers hardly need search; the
silhouettes are recognisable in dense forest or across a savannah. These
plants provide a refuge from quadruped predators and also a secure sleeping
position that leaves the hands and feet - or a tail - free. These seemingly
remarkable plants are large trees. But not just any trees. Palm trees.

The leading candidates are the doum palm, the African fan palm and the wild
date palm. Other palms, and another palm-like species the pandanus, have
similar uses for hominids or humans. Between them, they have sufficient
ecological adaptability that different species are found from sea level to
mountain slopes; in tropical rain forests, savannahs and dry valleys liable
to fire, lake- and river-sides liable to flood, deserts oases, estuaries
and seashores.

Wherever palaeoanthropologists decide that hominids evolved, they will find
that palms can grow there. When hominids travelled they found different
palms wherever they went. Different species, but with the basic
similarities of all palms. Able to provide food and refuge and eventually
many other uses. We came to depend on palms at a very early stage.

======

To Marc

As I said in my previous email, mangroves are acceptable but your
hypothesis does not take into account drinking water, climbing methods or
volcanic activity (as a source of new, safe  habitats (and even fossils)).

Why suggest flooded forests which are a temporary condition - either the
flood recedes or the forest dies - when  many palm species grow close to
water - from coconuts by the sea, dates by oases, sago by swamps (pandanus
is palm like and in the same situations). Also palms can be found in
savannah habitats (borassus and hyphaenae) as well as forest (oil palm,
raffia palm etc) or on isolated islands (coco de mer and coconut again).
And the technique needed to climb one palm is good enough for any other
palm (or pine tree) whereas other trees eg baobab have thick trunks and
cannot be climbed when lower branches are lost (with age). Palms, not just
coconut, can almost always be climbed at any age (only a few have a very
large girth and some have spines) and the technique of arm wrapping and leg
straightening suits a bipedalist very well (there has been some literature
on this type of climbing).

Hugh

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
To: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: [AAT] Hairlessness


>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>

>
>>>MV: I'm not saying the LCA was furless, but it's certainly a possibility:
>
>>EM: All things are possible but a hairless lca seems highly unlikely.
>
>>>MV: great apes have curious hair distributions, eg, baldness in female
>chimps, beards & moustaches in orangs, naked chests in lowland gorillas.
>
>>EM: Non-great apes have curious hair distribuitions too. Baldness in the
>douroucouli, beards on goat, manes on lions.
>
>:-)   Yes, but douroucoulis, lions & goats are not directly related to us.

That was my point.  Similar kinds of arrangenebt of hair (or feathers)
doesn't
prove a shared ancestry.

>See a photo of a male orang & the remarkable resemblance in head hairs &
>moustache & beard with humans.

See a photo of a De Brazza's monkey - much more like a human beard that
that great leathery mask on an orang. In the same way you quote a gorilla's
naked chest as sharing the origin of our own hairlessness.  It is no
nakeder than a baboon's. Of all the apes, most do not have beards. Why
conclude that the ones who do (Homo and orang) got it from their ancestors
and it was all the others that changed?
>Elaine, you have to place the evolution of bipedality between 4.7 & 4.4!?
>

>short time. And nobody says the LCA was not already frequently bipedal.

Nobody can say that because nobody knows. Nobody can say it was either.


>>A pre-adaptation presumably means a potential for becoming more upright
>which in most strains is never realised because circumstances have not
>arisen which would render it adaptive. In Oreopithecus and in our own
>ancestor, those circumstances did arise. I don't see any evidence that they
>arose for the gorilla.
>
>Why not?? Lowland gorillas still wade a lot in forest swamps & eat what
>researchers call "aquatic herbaceous vegetation". What makes you think that
>their ancestors could not have waded? What made that impossible?

Please read what I said. I didn't say I had evidence or proof of "why not".
I didn't
say I think their ancestors "could not"  have waded. I didn't say it was
"impossible."  I said and repeat that you have not convinced me that it is
likely.

Crab eating macaques wade a lot and eat aquatic food.
>. Do you deduce that they got it from an aquatic monket=y that was
ancestral to
  all monkeys, but all the other monkeys lost the knack?
>(about hair loss_)
>>
>That, Elaine, you have to ask the man in s.a.p.

I knew it wasn't you but it was not easy to work out where it came from

  (Of course I agree with you,
>but I also agree with that man that hides or fire or so could be the reason
>why we didn't redevelop fur.

Possible contributory factor, yes
>Marc
>
>I invited Stephen Munro to join AAT Oneline. Elaine & Hugh, will we ask
>others? eg, Marcel Williams? the people we met in Ghent?
>
>As you like. Anyone who's interested, why not?
>---------------------------
Elaine

>>Hugh: FYI: a discussion in s.a.p:


>>MV: I'm not saying the LCA was furless, but it's certainly a possibility:

>EM: All things are possible but a hairless lca seems highly unlikely.

>>MV: great apes have curious hair distributions, eg, baldness in female
chimps, beards & moustaches in orangs, naked chests in lowland gorillas.

>EM: Non-great apes have curious hair distribuitions too. Baldness in the
douroucouli, beards on goat, manes on lions.

:-)   Yes, but douroucoulis, lions & goats are not directly related to us.
See a photo of a male orang & the remarkable resemblance in head hairs &
moustache & beard with humans. It might be possible that the LCA of orangs &
humans already has some sort of scalp-beard-moustache.


>>>| MV:Why do you place the beginning of bipedalism between the Homo-Pan
LCA 5-4mya & Ardipith.4.4 mya?

>EM: And why do you place the LCA at 5-4 rather than 6-5?

The most recent estimations are 4.7: Gagneux etc.1999 PNAS 98:5077:

hominid/pongid   12.5 (8-15)
HP/G                     7.7 (6.6-10)
H/P                        4.7 (4.2-5.2)
common/pygmy   2.5 (2-3)
E/W gorilla         >2.5
Sum./Born.orang 1.7 (0.6-3.4)
W/E chimp            1.6

Elaine, you have to place the evolution of bipedality between 4.7 & 4.4!?

......

>>>MV: Gagneux etc.1999 Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA 98:5077 say the LCA could
have lived 4.7mya (4.2-5.2). The fossils of Ardipith. led some people to
suggest that this creature was bipedal. But it is claimed that Oreopith.7mya
also was bipedal, so even if Ardipith was bipedal (not unlikely IMO), it
doesn't say everything. Evolution is gradual: no need to suppose a sudden
origin of bipedality between the LCA & Ardipith. In fact, a very derived
locomotion as human bipedality is unlikely to be able to evolve in such a
short time. And nobody says the LCA was not already frequently bipedal.

>>>somebody in s.a.p (I forgot): That's why I made reference to "possible
preadaptations", which is pretty vague, I admit, but since we don't have the
lca (and may never have it) to examine, it's hard to say for sure.
Oreopithecus could be (and probably is) a parallelism, but it could indicate
a preadaptation extending quite far back in the ancestry.
.......

>A pre-adaptation presumably means a potential for becoming more upright
which in most strains is never realised because circumstances have not
arisen which would render it adaptive. In Oreopithecus and in our own
ancestor, those circumstances did arise. I don't see any evidence that they
arose for the gorilla.

Why not?? Lowland gorillas still wade a lot in forest swamps & eat what
researchers call "aquatic herbaceous vegetation". What makes you think that
their ancestors could not have waded? What made that impossible?



>>>MV: | I agree we have no direct evidence as to when furlessness evolved.

>>>s.a.p:  Right now, I'd suspect that of all the ideas I've heard
concerning hairlessness, the most reasonable of the bunch is that once
humans began using fire and could provide other protection as needed (fur
coats, whatever) there was no longer any selective pressure to maintain a
natural fur coat

>As a protection against heat in the daytime? As a protection against cold
in the night time? (A fire only warms one side of you at a time) As a
protection against insect bites against thorns and abrasions? As a
protection against ultraviolet rays and melanomas? To save the bother of
cutting off a hide and making it pliable and sewing it up and making it fit
and having your bare legs sticking out of it when you've previously had one
that comes free, ready-made, a perfect fit, one you never grow out of, and
repairs itself if it ever gets a hole in? How can you say all this adds up
to no selective pressure?


That, Elaine, you have to ask the man in s.a.p. (Of course I agree with you,
but I also agree with that man that hides or fire or so could be the reason
why we didn't redevelop fur. But hides or fire are certainly not the reason
why we lost fur.)

Marc

I invited Stephen Munro to join AAT Oneline. Elaine & Hugh, will we ask
others? eg, Marcel Williams? the people we met in Ghent?

Thanks for the extract from your paper, Marc. I have no problems with
mangroves as part of the AAT scenario but the need to drink fresh water
could be a problem if that was the only habitat. I suspect that after "a
hard day at work", chipping shellfish off of mangrove stems, the gang would
be only be too glad to stop at "The Coconut Grove" for a drink on the way
home. Thing's haven't changed much, you see.

Another thing about palm trees in general is that even the highest can be
easily climbed by lightly built hominids of any age (you and I would need a
little practice). And once in among the leaves - in the crown - it is a
very secure place even for babies, gently swaying in the breeze. Baboons
"roost" in Borassus palms, for example. In contrast, predatory quadrapeds
like lions or scavengers like hyenas etc cannot get far up the slender,
branchless stem.

The other thing that I want to say is that evolutionary theories always
seem to be "either or". Either savanah or forest or lacustrine or riverine
or coastal. Either hairy or not hairy. Either bipedal or not bipedal. I
don't want it to become either "coconut or not coconut; either palms or not
palms". If we know one thing about Homo it is adaptability. I almost added
"except for palaeoanthropologists".

Hugh

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
To: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 12:35 AM
Subject: Re: [AAT] Hairlessness


>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>>
>Elaine, what do you think of the coconut? Did you hear about it earlier? I
>vaguely remember to have read something on AAT & coconuts years ago -
>perhaps you sent it me?

Yes, I did send it to you.

- but at that time I believe I found it far-fetched

>AFAIR.

I don't know about far-fetched. It is highly speculative and I don't know
how it
could be tested but I am in no position to rule out anything on those
grounds
since they both apply to AAT.in general.

Diet and dentition is one aspect that I have never gone into. The more
recent
stuff pertaining to diet is that coming from Crawford/Cunnane/Broadhurst
which supports the importance of fish rather than any vegetable sources
of food.  I imagine they were opportunist and omnivorous feeders and if
  coconuts were around
  they would most certainly have been exploited. But I wouldn't know whether
that applied to a high or low percentage of the proliferating species,
whether
it was a part of their diet or a staple, and if it was a staple for
how much of their prehistory that was true -e.g. if cocnuts are not around
in Africa now I agree they might have been there in the past but I wonder
when they disappeared and why.

Elaine
>
>

>>>I don't intend that we should start an AAT onelist to compete with s.a.p.
but I don't know how to access s.a.p. Does all the correspondence relate to
AAT subjects?

>>No, probably not more than say 20%, don't you think, Elaine?

>Yes, about that.


Elaine, what do you think of the coconut? Did you hear about it earlier? I
vaguely remember to have read something on AAT & coconuts years ago -
perhaps you sent it me? - but at that time I believe I found it far-fetched
AFAIR. When I was writing my paper together with P-F Puech (who studied
electron-microscopically the tooth enamel of afarensis, boisei, habilis & a
lot of other mammals) he stressed a few times the possible importance of
nut-eating in human evolution (where I was thinking of reed or bamboo-eating
a'piths). See the thick enamel in capuchins, orangs & humans among living
primates & the superthick enamel of the a'piths.

Marc

>>>>Rats can and do chew their way into the young, water filled, nuts.

>>OK. Not the mature nuts?

>The mature nuts are well protected externally by a thick fibrous husk and
internally by a hard dense shell. Rats attack young nuts while the fibres
and shell are under-developed.

So mature nuts can only be opened by hominoids?

>>Some orangs live in mangrove areas. Have (some) orangs been seen eating
coconuts?

>I don't know. But baboons in North Africa love the borassus palm fruit and
given the right set of circumstances any primate could probably work out
what to do.

>>... please read http://jurix.rechten.rug.nl/rth/ess/ess50.htm    The
argument is very simple: Hominids resemble mangrove primates in food
procession (mangrove capuchins have thick enamel & are the best tool-using
non-human primates) & locomotion (proboscis monkeys wade bipedally between
mangrove trees).

>My problem is the time it takes to get internet access during the working
day where I am in Mexico.


I'll reproduce here the latest version (please send all your comments):

AQARBOREALISM: ORIGIN OF HOMINID BIPEDALISM?

by Marc Verhaegen & Stephen Munro - 5 Sept 1999
__________

Biomolecular data suggest Asian pongids (orangutans) and African hominids
(gorillas, chimpanzees and humans) split 14-10 million years ago. Whether
this happened in the Middle East, or elsewhere in Eurasia, where the great
ape fossils of 12-8 million years ago display pongid and/or hominid
features, it is likely that 8-6 million years ago the ancestors of the
African apes, australopithecines and humans lived on the Arabian-African
continent, where they split into gorillas and humans-chimpanzees. We argue
they had a climbing-wading or ‘aquarboreal’ lifestyle in flooded forests.
They could have frequently waded bipedally, as mangrove proboscis monkeys
do, in the mangrove forests between Eurasia and Africa, and partly fed on
hard-shelled fruits and oysters like mangrove capuchin monkeys: thick enamel
plus stone tool use is typically seen in capuchins, hominids and sea otters.
The australopithecines might have entered the African inland along rivers
and lakes. Their dentition suggests they ate mostly fruits and nuts, hard
parts of grass-like plants, and aquatic herbaceous vegetation (AHV).
According to the fossil data the early australopithecines of 4-3 million
years ago might have lived in waterside forests or woodlands; and their
larger, robust relatives of 2-1 million years ago in generally more open
milieus near marshes and reedbeds, where they could have waded bipedally.
Some anthropologists believe the present-day African apes evolved from
australopithecine-like ancestors, which would imply that knuckle-walking
gorillas and chimpanzees evolved in parallel from ‘aquarborealists’.
After the human-chimp split about 6-4 million years ago, our ancestors could
have stayed at, or returned to, the Indian Ocean shores, where they
elaborated their shellfish-eating, tool-using, beach-combing and
wading-diving skills. From here, the different Homo species could have
colonized Africa and Eurasia by following the rivers as bipedal omnivores.
Homo erectus crossed Wallace’s Line and reached Flores before 0.8 million
years ago, and the earliest erectus fossils are found in beaches and swamps
from Java to Georgia and Kenya 1.8-1.6 million years ago. Voluntary
breath-holding, an essential requirement for diving, probably facilitated
the evolution of human speech.
__________

Key words: dryopithecines, Australopithecus, Homo erectus, bipedalism,
aquatic herbaceous vegetation, enamel microwear, stone tools, speech origins
__________

GROUNDS FOR DOUBT
There is a strong belief within certain sections of the anthropological
community that australopithecines were ancestral to humans, and that the
ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas are not represented in the African
fossil record. Evidence suggesting that australopithecines were bipedal,
such as fossilized footprints and skeletal remains, is often used to support
this hypothesis.
Of course, this hypothesis is based partly on the assumption that
chimpanzees and humans descended from ancestors that were not yet bipedal,
and that bipedalism only emerged after the ancestral lines leading to
chimpanzees and humans had separated. A popular theory once held that
bipedalism emerged when human ancestors moved out of the forests into a more
open and arid environment.
We believe, however, that an alternative hypothesis may be more accurate,
namely that the australopithecines were no closer to the ancestors of humans
than they were to those of the African apes. Further, we believe the common
ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and gorillas was already at least partly
bipedal, regularly wading in flooded forests such as coastal mangrove
forests. Gorillas and chimpanzees, according to this hypothesis, evolved
knuckle-walking features independently, in parallel, after moving from the
coast to the African interior via rivers and gallery forests.
  Humans, on the other hand, descended from a hominid population that
remained nearer the coast and which gave rise to efficient waders and
divers, and eventually to the various species of the Homo genus, some of
which later returned to a more terrestrial lifestyle. This hypothesis, in
our opinion, helps explain many unique human adaptations including the
development of human tool manufacturing skills and the origins of speech.

HOMINID FOSSILS AND SCENARIOS
The evolutionary history of all animals, including our ancestors, has been
influenced by a number of environmental factors. Thus, we believe many
evolutionary insights can be gained by comparing the parallel and convergent
adaptations of different animals in similar environments. In fact, we
believe evidence gained from comparative anatomy and physiology of living
species is as important to evolutionary studies as fossil evidence.
  The fossil record displays well-known shortcomings. It is biased and
incomplete. For instance, it could be possible that hominids living in
certain environments were less likely to leave fossilized remains than
hominids living in other milieus. More specifically, geologists note that
fossilization is extremely difficult in mangrove areas because tidal water
movements spread the bones over a vast area, and the high acidity of the
water dissolves the bony remains. Moreover, in mangrove areas the sea floor
is flat, so there is almost no chance that a landslide would ever cover
remains.
  Because of the scantiness of the fossil record, paleontologists now
generally accept the late Colin Patterson’s view that the direct ancestors
of living species are unlikely to be found within it.1 As a result, it is
probable that most, if not all, fossil hominid species found to date are
simply extinct side-branches of the lines leading to the present living
hominids. In part, it was this likelihood that led us to be extremely
cautious about using the fossil record as the sole basis for attempting to
develop a viable hominid ‘family tree’. Instead, we adopted the practice of
assembling and considering all the credible available evidence. While the
totality of the evidence remains incomplete, the multiple cross-checking
process does produce a cautious confidence in the tentative scenarios
suggested.

PRIMATE LOCOMOTION
Most primates are four-legged tree-dwellers with very mobile spine and limb
joints, enabling them to reach, climb and leap through trees. Because of
this locomotor flexibility they can easily adopt a bipedal stance and gait
when necessary.
Many primates adopt this bipedal gait when they wade through water. For
example, the western lowland gorilla has been observed wading on its hind
limbs through forest swamps in search of edible sedges and aquatic herbs.2,3
The mangrove-dwelling proboscis monkeys also cross stretches of water to
move from one mangrove tree to another, and they always walk on two legs
when making these treks; in fact, they are even sometimes seen using bipedal
locomotion on dry ground.4
This erect bipedal wading gait is very different to the more common hopping
bipedalism that other primates and mammals such as indris, tarsiers, jerboas
and kangaroos use when moving on the ground. This latter gait incorporates
bent knees and hips rather than the more linear stature preferred for
wading. One advantage of the erect wading posture is that it allows primates
to hold their body and head as far as possible above the water surface,
allowing them to cross deeper stretches of water. Moreover, it frees the
hands so that they can be used to search for food.
Most anthropologists still base their estimates of when human bipedalism
emerged on the available fossil evidence. Up until a few years ago many were
convinced that bipedalism arose some four million years ago in a savannah
environment. Recent studies, however, as well as fossil finds such as
Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus anamensis, have forced a
reconsideration of this traditional view. Today, most anthropologists accept
that bipedalism probably emerged earlier, in a wooded or forested habitat.5
We believe the common ancestors of chimpanzees, gorillas and humans formed a
population which waded and climbed in mangrove forests somewhere between
what is now the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. There is presently no
evidence to discount the idea that hominid bipedalism evolved in a milieu
where both trees and water were present. Most, if not all, early hominid
fossils have been discovered in what were then forested areas close to
water,5-7 and much the same can be said of the great apes at the time of the
pongid-hominid split (see below). However, it is important to note that
although in our opinion the last common hominid ancestor was probably a
regular wader, it almost certainly continued to use the trees for refuge,
sleep and food gathering.

AFRICAN APE EVOLUTION
  Humans belong to the hominoid biological group, which consists of the
lesser apes (hylobatids) and the great apes (pongids and hominids). Today,
hylobatids (gibbons and siamangs) and pongids (orangutans) live in Asia,
whereas hominids (humans, chimpanzees and gorillas) live in Africa. Between
13 and 9 million years ago, however, nearly all great apes, such as
Dryopithecus, Graecopithecus, Ankarapithecus and Sivapithecus, lived in
Europe, Anatolia and India.8-10 This suggests Asian pongids and African
hominids may have split somewhere near the Middle East.11
In 1974, the partial maxilla and teeth of the 17 million year old
Heliopithecus were collected at Ad-Dabtiyah, eastern Saudi Arabia, between
continental sandstones-clays and marine limestones-marls.12 ‘They appear to
be the earliest occurrence of dryopithecines found at any distance from the
East African early Miocene sites and their habitat seems to have been near
to the tropical shore of the Tethys epi-continental sea’.12 This Saudi ape
may have been the first recognizable member of the great-ape branch.13 The
oldest European dryopithecine-like fossils, Austriacopithecus from Dęvinská
Nová Ves and Kleinhadersdorf near the Slovakian-Austrian border, about 14
million years old, also lay in marine nearshore sands, and Dryopithecus
fossils 13-10 million years ago derive from swampy forests.14,15
We believe a basic great-ape population may have clustered in flooded
forests somewhere around what is now the Arabian peninsula, which once
formed part of the African continent. This cluster may have given rise to
different offshoots, such as the dryopithecine-like apes that moved into
Europe, Anatolia and India, and later to the hominids that entered the
African inland by following the rivers upstream. These African migrations,
in our opinion, led to the australopithecines and to the chimpanzees and
gorillas. Meanwhile, part of the population may have remained at, or
returned to, the coast, where they became efficient waders and divers, and
this population could have given rise to species which eventually returned
to the land, becoming predominantly terrestrial bipeds.
  According to molecular evidence, the great apes split into pongids and
hominids some 14 to 10 million years ago. The ancestral line leading to the
gorillas separated from the line leading to humans and chimpanzees about 9
to 6 million years ago, and the ancestors of chimpanzees and humans
separated about 6 to 4 million years ago.16,17
We propose that the ancestral line leading to the gorilla branched off from
the stem hominid group when it moved from the coastal mangrove forests into
the African interior, perhaps by following the rivers and gallery forests of
the African Rift Valley. It is not impossible that this ancestral line might
have given rise to the very large australopithecine species such as
Australopithecus boisei.18
The ancestral chimpanzee population probably moved from the coast to the
African interior a few million years after the gorilla, also by following
rivers and gallery forests. It seems probable that different hominid
branches would have evolved in parallel as they moved inland. Shellfish and
other marine resources would have become rarer as they followed the rivers
upstream, so other plant and animal food would have been needed to replace
these foods in the diet. The inland populations would have re-adapted to a
more traditional primate diet, become more herbivorous, and spent less and
less time in the water. The ancestors of chimpanzees, according to this
hypothesis, stayed longer at the coast than the ancestors of gorillas, and
we would therefore expect them to have remained more omnivorous than
gorillas, because the opportunity for harvesting shellfish, for example,
would have been greater on the coast than in more inland milieus. In
addition, their ancestors would have had less opportunity to re-adapt to a
more traditional primate lifestyle.

AUSTRALOPITHECINE LIFESTYLE
It has become increasingly clear that most, if not all, hominids dwelt in
‘wet’ rather than ‘dry’ habitats, and there is little doubt that the early
australopithecines of between four and three million years ago dwelt in
well-wooded and even forested milieus such as swampy woodlands or streamside
forests. For example, Radosevich and co-workers, in a paper on
Australopithecus afarensis from Hadar, East Africa, said: ‘The bones were
found in swale-like features ... it is very likely that they died and
partially rotted at or very near this site ... this group of hominids was
buried in streamside gallery woodland’.6 In addition, Rayner and co-workers
wrote that the A. africanus fossils of Makapansgat, South Africa, were found
in ‘very different conditions from those prevailing today. Higher rainfall,
fertile, alkaline soils and moderate relief supported significant patches of
sub-tropical forest and thick bush, rather than savannah ... sub-tropical
forest was the hominins’ preferred habitat rather than grassland or
bushveld, and the adaptation of these animals was therefore fitted to a
forest habitat’.7 Moreover, Tobias, on the same species, recently wrote:
‘From Sterkfontein, suggestions of greater woodland cover at the time when
Australopithecus was deposited in Member 4, had emerged from studies on
fossil pollen, but these were not compelling. Then Wits team member Marian
Bamford identified fossil vines or lianas of Dichapetalum in the same Member
4: such vines hang from forest trees and would not be expected in open
savannah. The team at Makapansgat found floral and faunal evidence that the
layers containing Australopithecus reflected forest or forest margin
conditions. From Hadar, in Ethiopia, where ‘Lucy’ was found, and from Aramis
in Ethiopia, where Tim White’s team found Ardipithecus ramidus, possibly the
oldest hominid ever discovered, well-wooded and even forested conditions
were inferred from the fauna accompanying the hominid fossils. All the
fossil evidence adds up to the small-brained, bipedal hominids of four to
2.5 million years ago having lived in a woodland or forest niche, not
savannah’.5
The later robust australopithecines, of two to one million years ago,
clearly lived in more open environments, apparently near riverbanks, lake
margins and reedbeds. For example, Kromdraai A. robustus was found near
grassveld and streamside or marsh vegetation, in the vicinity of quail, pipi
ts, starlings and swallows, as well as parrots, lovebirds and similar
psittacine birds.19 Turkana A. aethiopicus was discovered in ‘overbank
deposits of a large perennial river’, amid water- and reedbucks.20
Chesowanja A. boisei lay in a lagoon amid exclusively aquatic species.21
‘Abundant root casts … suggest that the embayment was flanked by reeds and
the presence of calcareous algae indicates that the lagoon was warm and
shallow. Bellamya and catfish are animals tolerant of relatively stagnant
water …’.21
This impression of marsh vegetation – the early australopithecines in more
wooded and the robusts in more open milieus – is compatible with all other
information we have on australopithecines: postcranial skeleton, masticatory
and dentitional data, enamel microwear, strontium/calcium ratios, and
isotopic evidence.
Fossilized footprints and skeletal remains suggest that australopithecines
were bipedal, though their short-legged style of bipedalism is believed to
have been quite different from that seen in humans,22 and seems to have
included a somewhat forward-leaning trunk posture.23 Early
australopithecines also show clear indications of tree climbing features
such as upward directed shoulder joints (glenoid fossae) and curved finger
and toe phalanges, whereas such features are less obvious in the later
robusts.
Dental studies suggest that whereas gracile australopithecines preferred
softer fruits and vegetables, the robusts’ diet included harder food
items.24-28 Estimates of robust australopithecine bite force suggest
‘low-energy food that had to be processed in great quantities’ and food
objects that were ‘hard and round in shape’.29 DuBrul noticed striking
dental parallelisms between the robust australopithecines and the
bamboo-eating giant panda (broad, high and heavy cheekbones, reduced
prognathism and front teeth, very broad molar teeth, premolar molarization),
particularly when compared to gracile australopithecines and non-panda bears
respectively.25
Students of fossil hominid teeth agree that such broad molars with thick
enamel and rounded cusps, while unsuitable for the regular processing of
tough foods like leaves or meat, are suitable for the processing of hard
food items. Papyrus and reed were abundant in the paleo-environment of the
later australopithecines (e.g. Olduvai, Chesowanja, Kromdraai), and
Cyperaceae and Gramineae are part of the diet of living African hominoids.
Gorillas eat sedges and bamboo shoots and stalks, all African hominids eat
cane, chimpanzees and humans eat water lilies, and rice and other cereals
are staple food for humans. Supplementing their diet with hard parts of
grass-like plants might have enabled the robusts to bridge the dry season,
when fruits and soft vegetables may have been less available.
Studies of dental enamel microwear provide further details. In the early A.
afarensis (Garusi-Laetoli and Hadar), the cheekteeth enamel has a typical
glossy polished surface and the microwear has resemblances to that of
capybaras and mountain beavers.30 These animals are semi-aquatic rodents
that feed mainly on succulent marsh and riverside herbs, grasses and the
bark of young trees. It has recently become clear that Western lowland
gorillas spend some time eating what researchers call AHV (aquatic
herbaceous vegetation) such as Hydrocharitaceae herbs and Cyperaceae
sedges.3
Comparisons of molar enamel in South African fossils show that A. robustus
ate substantially more hard food items than the earlier A. africanus.31
Incisal microwear suggest that A. robustus may have ingested foods that
required less extensive incisal preparation than the foods consumed by A.
africanus,32 and incisal reduction in A. robustus also suggests a less
frugivorous diet, since ‘incisors need not be employed in the manipulation
of hard objects’.33
The enamel of the East African robusts (A. boisei of Olduvai and Peninj)
displays more pits, wide parallel striations and deep recessed dentine.27
This microwear pattern has some resemblances with that of beavers, which
feed on riverine and riverside herbs, the roots of water lilies, bark and
woody plants (Pierre-François Puech, personal communication). It thus seems
probable that an early australopithecine diet of fruits (larger front teeth)
and aquatic herbs (polishing) was supplemented with woody plants in the
robusts (more wear). The suggestion of Walker that A. boisei KNM-ER 406 and
729 were bulk-eaters of whole fruits, ‘small, hard fruits with casings,
pulp, seeds and all’,26 could explain the deep recessed occlusal dentine,
but not the glossy appearance of the heavily polished enamel, which is more
typical of marsh plant feeders.27,30 In terrestrial grazers, tooth wear is
very different.34 In sheep, for instance, it is faster, has a different
gradient and produces fabric-like grooves (Pierre-François Puech, personal
communication).
These microwear data are consistent with the strontium/calcium ratios,35 as
well as with the isotopic data of South African australopithecines.34 Apart
from partial carnivory, Sillen provides two possible explanations for the
low Sr/Ca ratios of A. robustus: eating leaves and shoots of forbs and woody
plants, and eating food derived from a wet microhabitat, for instance, from
well-drained streamside soils.35 Sillen as well as Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp,
perhaps influenced by earlier ‘hunting hypotheses’, prefer the regular
consumption of animal food as an explanation for the Sr/Ca ratios and the
isotopic data in A. robustus,35,34 rather than considering, what in our
opinion is the more logical explanation, that they might have eaten
cyperaceous sedges and other marshland plants. Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp say
that A. africanus ‘ate not only fruits and leaves but also large quantities
of carbon-13-enriched foods such as grasses and sedges or animals that ate
these plants, or both’.34 Since terrestrial grasses are incompatible with
the polished microwear,30,34 and predominant meat-eating is incompatible
with the small front teeth and the huge and broad cheekteeth,25,26,36 their
diet more probably included marshland plants such as Cyperaceae, as is
indicated by several very different studies.27,30,34,35
In conclusion, the coincidence of several independent lines of evidence –
paleo-milieu, postcranial skeleton, dental morphology, enamel microwear,
Sr/Ca ratios, isotopic data – suggests that some or all australopithecines
regularly waded bipedally in search of plants growing in and near shallow
waters. They might have waded in much the same way as living hominid species
such as bonobos and Western gorillas do today, only much more frequently.2,3
This does not exclude the possibility, however, that early hominids,
including some australopithecine species, might have processed and consumed
animal food when available,37,38 particularly considering they may have
evolved from mangrove-dwelling, tool-using onmivores.

THE EMERGENCE OF HOMO
In our view, a population of hominids remained in, or returned to, forests
near the coast, where they became more and more adept at exploiting the
available aquatic resources. We believe this population gave rise to the
various Homo species. Initially, they might have fed partly on foods such as
the oysters fixed to mangrove trunks exposed at low tide. This high-caloric
and highly nutritious diet could have been important for building and
fuelling a large brain. Note that the long-chain polyunsaturated lipid
ratios of tropical fish and shellfish are more similar to the ratios in the
human brain than any other food source known.39
Presumably these hominids had rather thick tooth enamel,40 like earlier
great apes such as Graeco-, Ankara- and Sivapithecus, and later
Australopithecus and Homo. In fact, Graeco-, Ankara- and Australopithecus
actually had superthick enamel, though some hominoids like the Miocene
Dryopithecus and the Pliocene Ardipithecus, had thinner enamel, and recent
studies suggest the earliest apes had average enamel thickness.41 Enamel is
extremely hard, and thick enamel is typical of species like orangutans,
capuchin monkeys and sea otters that consume foods such as hard-shelled
fruits, nuts and molluscs. Walker even wrote: ‘If, for example, a
mammalogist who knows nothing about hominids were asked which mammalian
molar most resembled those of Australopithecus, the answer would probably be
the molars of the sea otter (Enhydra lutris). This species possesses small
anterior teeth, and large, flat molars with thick enamel’.40
(Walker believes the thick enamel in sea otters may not be for cracking
shells, but for the occasional hard inclusions inside the shells which would
otherwise damage the dentition.40 It should be noted that seaweed consumers
might also need thick enamel because seaweed often houses small molluscs.
Some seaweeds contain high levels of vitamin C, a necessary element in the
diet of hominoids, who mostly find this vitamin in fruits. Seaweeds, like
other seafoods, also contain a high content of iodine, the absence of which
causes endemic goiter, cretinism and myxedema in areas away from the
seacoast. However, seaweeds are often difficult to digest.)
  Tool use is seen in many animals, but perhaps the most obvious mammalian
examples, excluding humans, are capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees and sea
otters. They all try to open hard-shelled foods by hammering them with hard
objects. Sea otters, for instance, crack open shellfish with stones while
floating on their backs. Capuchins crack open nuts and shellfish with
stones, and Fernandes reports that mangrove capuchins even use oyster shells
where stones are not available.42 Chimpanzees also crack open nuts with
stones.43 It seems likely, therefore, that tool use in hominids may have
begun with shellfish or nut eating.
We propose that our ancestors began using hard objects as tools to remove or
crack open the shellfish that grew on the trunks of the mangrove trees in
the forests in which they lived. For the hominids that moved inland to areas
where molluscs were less common, tool use may have become confined to
nut-cracking and other activities seen in chimpanzee populations today.43
For the hominids that stayed near the coast, tool use would have remained an
essential behavioral adaptation, and perhaps the extraordinary stone tool
industries we associate with the various Homo species is a reflection of
their long association with shellfish.
  All diving mammals have the ability to take a deep breath at will whenever
they intend to dive. Many of them, like dolphins and seals, also have larger
brains than land mammals of equal size.44 Today, breath-hold diving is
practiced by some subsistence human cultures that gather shellfish or
seaweed. Voluntary breath control in humans is most probably an adaptation
for diving, and this is clearly illustrated when one compares the human
respiratory system with that of non-human primates and freshwater or marine
mammals.45
  Many primates, like gibbons, and other arboreal animals have an aptitude
for vocal and musical expression. They share this capacity for making and
interpreting a wide range of sounds with many marine mammals. Vocalization
was probably an important communicative device in an aquatic environment,
where more traditional devices such as smell and body language would have
been less effective. This, combined with an inherent talent for complex
vocal exchange, as well as voluntary breath control and a large brain, may
have been the prerequisites for human language.
  The available evidence leads us to propose that the Homo genus evolved from
part-time bipedal waders and beach-combers who evolved longer legs, and who
gradually became also more suited to swimming and diving, and who, as a
result, developed a more streamlined and linear body with a larger brain.
Eventually, these long-legged Homo species colonized coastal areas and river
valleys in Asia, Africa and Europe, where they probably used their
tool-using skills to exploit other available resources such as the scavenged
carcasses of hippos and other mammals (they may have even hunted these
animals). The Javanese Mojokerto fossil, discovered in a river delta amid
barnacles, corals and molluscs,46,47 which is probably 1.8 million years
old, might well be the oldest Homo erectus fossil ever discovered. There is
even archeological evidence that Homo erectus reached the island of Flores,
also in Southeast Asia, some 800,000 years ago, well before any evidence of
boat building appears in the archeological record.48,5 We propose that Homo
erectus’s superior swimming skills enabled them to cross the great natural
water barrier known as Wallace’s Line.
  Eventually, at least some of these long-legged hominid species returned to
a more terrestrial existence. But just as no Homo species may ever have
ceased being at least partly terrestrial, it is possible that no Homo
species ever ceased being at least partly aquatic either. When members of
the Homo genus did become more terrestrial, they were unable to revert to
knuckle-walking quadrupedalism, like gorillas and chimpanzees, because,
whereas gorillas and chimpanzees evolved directly from short-legged
climbing-wading ‘aquarborealists’, Homo was already a part-time wader and
diver with long legs and a more linear build.
  Terrestrial bipedalism is a slower form of locomotion than quadrupedalism,
is more conspicuous, less energy efficient and leads to many ailments such
as backaches, hip and knee problems. However, it also has many advantages,
mainly associated with the freeing up of the hands so that they can be used
more effectively for communication, and to carry food, water, babies and
tools.
  We believe the semi-aquatic phase helps explain human features such as
furlessness, subcutaneous fat and voluntary breath control, features unique
among primates, but common within various water mammals such as seacows,
hippopotamuses, walruses, dolphins and whales.4 It may also help explain why
we are much more efficient swimmers and divers than other primates.45,49
  In our opinion, it should not be a question of whether members of the Homo
genus were ever aquatic, but rather how aquatic were they. For example, the
fossilized remains of Neandertals, traditionally viewed as fully
terrestrial, have been discovered exclusively next to coastlines and rivers.
Moreover, the presence of ear exostoses (bony outgrowths of the ear canal, a
condition only seen after life-long diving in modern humans) is evidence
that at least some Neandertal individuals practiced frequent diving, and
traces of cattails on some stone tools suggest wading activities.50 We
believe Neandertals evolved from even more water-based Homo erectus
populations that moved up the rivers from the coasts into the Eurasian
interior. Like some modern human populations, such as the Korean Ama, they
probably maintained elements of a wading or diving lifestyle.

CONCLUSIONS
  Our hypothesis proposes that the last common ancestors of the African
hominids lived in coastal mangrove forests, where they waded bipedally and
were omnivorous, supplementing their mainly herbi-frugivorous diet with
shellfish and perhaps seaweed. The ancestors of the gorillas and
chimpanzees, as well as the australopithecines, in our opinion, migrated
inland along rivers and gallery forests.
  The population that remained near the coast, due to geological factors,
left fewer fossilized remains. This coastal population gave rise to the
various species of the Homo genus: big-brained, long-legged waders and
breath-hold divers, able to take full advantage of the available resources
naturally associated with a coastal milieu. These hominids populated the
coastal regions of the Indian Ocean and they followed the rivers into the
interiors of Asia, Africa and Europe. Many unique human features including
long legs, big brains, voluntary breath control, fur loss, the adoption of
subcutaneous fat and infant tolerance to immersion can be explained by this
evolutionary scenario. In addition, this wading-and-diving phase may help
explain the development of our unique tool manufacturing skills and language
use.
  This hypothesis, in our opinion, is detailed enough that it can be tested
against new evidence, as it becomes available, and can also be used as a
predictive tool. As such, its success or failure will either confirm or
negate its value as the basis for a potentially definitive theory of human
evolution.
__________

POSSIBLE FIGURES
? Figure 1: Map of Miocene hominoid fossils: Africa-Arabia c.20-14 mya
Proconsul, Moroto-, Helio-, Kenyapithecus …; Europe-Anatolia c.14-8 mya:
Austriaco-, Dryo-, Graeco-, Ankarapithecus…; India c.12-8 mya: Sivapithecus…
? Figure 2: Lowland gorilla wading bipedally in search for sedges.
Illustration of possible lifestyle of robust australopithecines (photo by
Michael Nichols 2).
? Figure 3: Evolutionary tree of hominids: hypothetical schematic
reconstruction of African ape and human evolution, based on comparative
anatomy and behaviour, geographical distribution and biomolecular data of
living hominids. Fossil species Ardi-, Australopithecus and Homo are
sidebranches of the lines leading to the living hominids.

  REFERENCES

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31 Grine FE, Kay RF (1988) Early hominid diets from quantitative image
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32 Ungar PS, Grine FE (1991) Incisor size and wear in Australopithecus
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38 de Heinzelin J, Clark J. D, White T, Hart W, Renne P. WoldeGabriel G,
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39 Broadhurst CL, Cunnane SC, Crawford MA (1998) Rift Valley fish and
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40 Martin LB (1985) Significance of enamel thickness in hominoid evolution.
Nature 314:260-263.
41 Shellis RP, Beynon AD, Reid DJ, Hiiemae KM (1998) Variation in molar
enamel thickness among primates. J Hum Evol 35:907-522
42 Fernandes M. E. B (1991) Tool use and predation of oysters by the tufted
capuchin in brackish water mangrove swamp. Primates 32:529-531.
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CEG, Wrangham RW, Boesch C (1999) Cultures in chimpanzees. Nature
399:682-685.
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Diederichs.
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hominid-bearing bed in Eastern Java. Nature 275:306-308.
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stone tools and fossils on the east Indonesian island of Flores. Nature
392:173-6.
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Schwimmens, Tauchens und Watens. Bern, Switserland: University of Bern.
50 Shreeve J (1995) The Neandertal Enigma: solving the mystery of modern
human origins. New York: Morrow.

++++++++++++++++

>>. . . What's the difference between wild & domesticated coconuts?

>To be brief, one can survive without human intervention, the other cannot.
But both are grown commercially and many if not most modern coconut
populations have arisen by introgression between the two contrasting types.


What makes the domesticated different so that they can't survive without
humans? (a with apes? a few million years ago?)

>>. . . Co-evolution of predator & prey is ubiquitous. The coconuts that
escape predation are the ones that reproduce. But you think that our
ancestors took coconuts with them & planted new trees, isn't it? But isn't
such behaviour too recent to explain (part of) our semiaquatic evolution?

>My argument is that the wild coconut evolved on islands in oceanic
archipelagos where it was not predated. The plant was not browsed or grazed
by large animals or shaded out by large forest trees, nor was the fruit
attacked by small animals. When it floated to continental coasts it was
predated and it didn't survive where there were grazing and browsing
animals, or where there was competition from forest trees that could
overshade it, or where the climate was too dry or the groundwater table was
too deep. But at the critical time for AAT the coconut arrived at a location
where there was an animal with the intelligence to drink some of the fruit
without destroying the palm. That animal certainly co-evolved with the
coconut - not competitively but sympathetically. It learned to protect the
palm from other animals. To begin with there would have been no need to
plant coconuts which grow spontaneously at beach locations. All this took
place over over a very long time span and the palms that were preferred were
the ones that had more water. The decision to plant coconuts away from the
beach or to carry them to new locations came very much later, for example,
when proto-Polynesians took domesticated coconuts with them into the
Pacific. They didn't know that they would find wild coconuts already on some
uninhabited Pacific islands.


Very interesting.  Hugh, do you think it might be possible that the
evolution from mangrove-living aquarborealist (hominid or Homo-Pan LCA) to a
beach-combing Homo could have been "catalysed" by the coconut?

>>. . . Please describe this relative.

>The forest coconut in Madagascar is a different genus, as is the
coco-de-mer in the Seychelles. The similarities and differences between
these and the coconut lend support to a theory that the original location
for coconuts is either on a continental land mass submerged under the Indian
Ocean or in the Himalayas - when these were the sea bed and islands of the
primordial Tethys Sea. Neither location has yet yielded any coconut fossils
but coral has been located in the Himalayas!

Ah? Tethys Sea? Have you read my paper above? The early hominoids (ca.17-8
mya) seem to have lived all along the ancient Tethys from Spain, Italy,
Austria to Greece, Turkey, Arabia, Pakistan.

Thanks a lot. Perhaps the coconut has been more important than I ever
imagined.

Marc

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
To: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 11:18 PM
Subject: [AAT] Hairlessness


>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>
>Hugh: FYI: a discussion in s.a.p:
>
>Dave Timpe heeft geschreven in bericht <7rjr45$1r1o$1@...>...



>I'm not saying the LCA was furless, but it's certainly a possibility:

All things are possible  but a hairless lca seems highly unlikely.

>great apes have curious hair distributions, eg, baldness in female chimps,
>beards & moustaches in orangs, naked chests in lowland gorillas.

Non-great apes have curious hair distribuitions too. Baldness in the
douroucouli,
beards on goat, manes on lions.
>
>>| Why do you place the beginning of bipedalism between the Homo-Pan LCA
5-4
>mya & Ardipith.4.4 mya?

And why do you place the LCA at 5-4 rather than 6-5?
>
>>I don't, necessarily, but if Ardipithecus was bipedal it indicates it had
>developed by then, at least.  Let's hope Asfaw, White & Co. can get their
>postcranial materials prepared and published soon to verify that (I gather
>they have the necessary evidence, and they hint it's bipedal, but possibly
>unique among apith-like creatures).
>
>No reason to believe that the Homo-Pan LCA was not bipedal (a'pith-like).

Any reason to believe that it was?
>
>
>>Gagneux etc.1999 Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA 98:5077 say the LCA could have
>lived 4.7mya (4.2-5.2). The fossils of Ardipith. led some people to suggest
>that this creature was bipedal. But it is claimed that Oreopith.7mya also
>was bipedal, so even if Ardipith was bipedal (not unlikely IMO), it doesn't
>say everything. Evolution is gradual: no need to suppose a sudden origin of
>bipedality between the LCA & Ardipith. In fact, a very derived locomotion
as
>human bipedality is unlikely to be able to evolve in such a short time.
And
>nobody says the LCA was not already frequently bipedal.
>
>>That's why I made reference to "possible preadaptations", which is pretty
>vague, I admit, but since we don't have the lca (and may never have it) to
>examine, it's hard to say for sure.  Oreopithecus could be (and probably
is)
>a parallelism, but it could indicate a preadaptation extending quite far
>back in the ancestry.

A pre-adaprtation presumably means a potential for becoming more upright
which
in most strains is never realised because circumstances have not arisen
which would render it adaptive. In Oreopithecus and in our own ancestor,
  those circumstances did arise.
  I don't see any evidence that they arose for the gorilla.
>>| I agree we have no direct evidence as to when furlessness evolved.
>
.  Right now, I'd suspect
>that of all the ideas I've heard concerning hairlessness, the most
>reasonable of the bunch is that once humans began using fire and could
>provide other protection as needed (fur coats, whatever) there was no
longer
>any selective pressure to maintain a natural fur coat

As a protection against heat in the daytime? As a protection against cold in
the night time? (A fire only warms one side of you at a time) As a
protection
against insect bites against thorns and abrasions? As a protection against
ultraviolet rays and melanomas? To save the bother of cutting off a hide and
making it pliable and sewing it up and making it fit and having your bare
legs
sticking out of it  when you've previously had one that comes free,
ready-made,
a perfect fit, one you never grow out of, and repairs itself if it ever gets
a hole in?
How can you say all this adds up to no selective pressure?

Elaine
>
>
>
>
>

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
To: AAT@onelist.com <AAT@onelist.com>
Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 9:06 PM
Subject: Re: [AAT] Hairlessness


>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>
>
>>I don't intend that we should start an AAT onelist to compete with s.a.p.
>but I don't know how to access s.a.p. Does all the correspondence relate to
>AAT subjects?
>
>No, probably not more than say 20%, don't you think, Elaine?

Yes, about that.

Elaine

Marc

I hope Elaine is getting our exchanges, so that she can see how an AAT
onelist might work. I am cutting out parts of the previous Q & A text to
keep things clear:

====
>>Rats can and do chew their way into the young, water filled, nuts.
>OK. Not the mature nuts?

The mature nuts are well protected externally by a thick fibrous husk and
internally by a hard dense shell. Rats attack young nuts while the fibres
and shell are under-developed.

>Some orangs live in mangrove areas. Have (some) orangs been seen eating
>coconuts?

I don't know. But baboons in North Africa love the borassus palm fruit and
given the right set of circumstances any primate could probably work out
what to do.

>... please read http://jurix.rechten.rug.nl/rth/ess/ess50.htm
>The argument is very simple: Hominids resemble mangrove primates in food
>procession (mangrove capuchins have thick enamel & are the best tool-using
>non-human primates) & locomotion (proboscis monkeys wade bipedally between
>mangrove trees).

My problem is the time it takes to get internet access during the working
day where I am in Mexico.

>
>. . . What's the difference between wild & domesticated coconuts?

To be brief, one can survive without human intervention, the other cannot.
But both are grown commercially and many if not most modern coconut
populations have arisen by introgression between the two contrasting types.
>
>. . . Co-evolution of predator & prey is ubiquitous. The
>coconuts that escape predation are the ones that reproduce. But you think
>that our ancestors took coconuts with them & planted new trees, isn't it?
>But isn't such behaviour too recent to explain (part of) our semiaquatic
>evolution?
>
My argument is that the wild coconut evolved on islands in oceanic
archipelagos where it was not predated. The plant was not browsed or grazed
by large animals or shaded out by large forest trees, nor was the fruit
attacked by small animals. When it floated to continental coasts it was
predated and it didn't survive where there were grazing and browsing
animals, or where there was competition from forest trees that could
overshade it, or where the climate was too dry or the groundwater table was
too deep. But at the critical time for AAT the coconut arrived at a
location where there was an animal with the intelligence to drink some of
the fruit without destroying the palm. That animal certainly co-evolved
with the coconut - not competitively but sympathetically. It learned to
protect the palm from other animals. To begin with there would have been no
need to plant coconuts which grow spontaneously at beach locations. All
this took place over over a very long time span and the palms that were
preferred were the ones that had more water. The decision to plant coconuts
away from the beach or to carry them to new locations came very much later,
for example, when proto-Polynesians took domesticated coconuts with them
into the Pacific. They didn't know that they would find wild coconuts
already on some uninhabited Pacific islands.

>. . . Please describe this relative.
The forest coconut in Madagascar is a different genus, as is the
coco-de-mer in the Seychelles. The similarities and differences between
these and the coconut lend support to a theory that the original location
for coconuts is either on a continental land mass submerged under the
Indian Ocean or in the Himalyas - when these were the sea bed and islands
of the primordial Tethys Sea. Neither location has yet yielded any coconut
fossils but coral has been located in the Himalayas!

Hugh

>I don't intend that we should start an AAT onelist to compete with s.a.p.
but I don't know how to access s.a.p. Does all the correspondence relate to
AAT subjects?

No, probably not more than say 20%, don't you think, Elaine? (I forwarded
this to you to give an impression of AAT-related discussions in s.a.p.)

>What (or who) is the "lca" that is referred to.

the LCA or last common ancestor (usu. said of the Homo-Pan LCA)

>If the correspondents had been brought up before central heating they would
know that if hairlessness resulted from the use of fire we would have hairy
knees to prevent scorching and hairy backs because of draughts. Perhaps Homo
sapiens spp air-con is evolving?

:-)


Hugh, what's your opinion as to when bipedalism evolved? and furlessness?


++++++++++

>>>| >Bipedalism happened pretty early (at least 4.4 ma, not too long after
>>the lca and could be traceable to predispostions of that species).  If
>>hairlessness preceded it, we might have to explain how it re-evolved in
>>chimps.  Unless we find any indications otherwise, it would seem it's a
>>derived hominine character and probably either occurred at about the same
>>time as, or later than, bipedalism, and possibly much later.  It's
>>interesting to speculate, but not very likely we can resolve the reason at
>>this time, if ever.
>>
>>>BTW, when I say "how 'it' re-evolved in chimps" above, I'm referring to
>>fur, which isn't clear.  I'm assuming the lca wasn't hairless, even if it
>>did have some incipient bipedal tendencies.  There's no connection between
>>the two, as far as I can tell.
>>
>>That's true (a fur has to do mostly with thermo-regulation & bipedality
with
>>locomotion), but there's no reason why the LCA could not have been naked.
A
>>(weak) argument is that prenatal chimps have humanlike brows & head hairs.
>>I'm not saying the LCA was furless, but it's certainly a possibility: all
>>great apes have curious hair distributions, eg, baldness in female chimps,
>>beards & moustaches in orangs, naked chests in lowland gorillas.
>>
>>>| Why do you place the beginning of bipedalism between the Homo-Pan LCA
5-4
>>mya & Ardipith.4.4 mya?
>>
>>>I don't, necessarily, but if Ardipithecus was bipedal it indicates it had
>>developed by then, at least.  Let's hope Asfaw, White & Co. can get their
>>postcranial materials prepared and published soon to verify that (I gather
>>they have the necessary evidence, and they hint it's bipedal, but possibly
>>unique among apith-like creatures).
>>
>>No reason to believe that the Homo-Pan LCA was not bipedal (a'pith-like).
>>
>>
>>>Gagneux etc.1999 Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA 98:5077 say the LCA could have
>>lived 4.7mya (4.2-5.2). The fossils of Ardipith. led some people to
suggest
>>that this creature was bipedal. But it is claimed that Oreopith.7mya also
>>was bipedal, so even if Ardipith was bipedal (not unlikely IMO), it
doesn't
>>say everything. Evolution is gradual: no need to suppose a sudden origin
of
>>bipedality between the LCA & Ardipith. In fact, a very derived locomotion
as
>>human bipedality is unlikely to be able to evolve in such a short time.
And
>>nobody says the LCA was not already frequently bipedal.
>>
>>>That's why I made reference to "possible preadaptations", which is pretty
>>vague, I admit, but since we don't have the lca (and may never have it) to
>>examine, it's hard to say for sure.  Oreopithecus could be (and probably
is)
>>a parallelism, but it could indicate a preadaptation extending quite far
>>back in the ancestry.
>>
>>OK
>>
>>>> In fact, chimps (esp. bonobos) and gorillas frequently stand and walk
and
>>wade erect. Our ancestor's early bipedality was no doubt different from
our
>>kind of bipedality: Fossilized footprints and skeletal remains suggest
that
>>australopithecines were bipedal, though their short-legged style of
>>bipedalism was probably quite different from that seen in humans
>>(Macchiarelli R., Bondioli L., Galichon V. & Tobias P. V. 1999.
>>
>>>Except when they try to simulate its gait the only way they can make it
>>work is with a very human-like (albeit short-legged) stride.  Hunched over
>>or bent-kneed takes too much exertion and wants to fall over.
>>
>>
>>>| Hip bone trabecular architecture shows uniquely distinctive locomotor
>>behaviour in South African australopithecines. Journal of Human Evolution
>>36, 211-232), and the a'pith bipedality seems to have included a somewhat
>>forward-leaning trunk posture (Hunt J. H. 1999. A postural model to
explain
>>reduced hip extension in Hadar hominid AL 288-1. AAPA Abstracts 28, 157).
>>
>>>Wish I had a good library nearby, but I don't.
>>
>>>| I agree we have no direct evidence as to when furlessness evolved.
>>
>>>Which is basically what I wanted to say, anyway.  Right now, I'd suspect
>>that of all the ideas I've heard concerning hairlessness, the most
>>reasonable of the bunch is that once humans began using fire and could
>>provide other protection as needed (fur coats, whatever) there was no
longer
>>any selective pressure to maintain a natural fur coat, and possibly some
of
>>the other suggestions for why we might be better off without it could come
>>into play as selective pressures to do away with it.  If that early fire
use
>>looks good, it could have happened quite early in Homo, but probably not
in
>>Australopithecines (assuming they're our ancestors and not the apes, of
>>course).
>>
>>I agree that we didn't redevelop fur because we used hides (and fire). But
>>if were furred there was no reason to use hides (or fire for warming).
IOW,
>>we must lost our fur for another reason. Probably (one of) the same
>>reason(s) why other mammals lost their fur.

>>Hugh, I found your idea on coconuts in hominoid evolution very
interesting. It's clear that these heavy nuts can't be opened by all
frugivorous mammals.

>Rats can and do chew their way into the young, water filled, nuts.


OK. Not the mature nuts?

>>They seem ideal for apes: apes are tool-using, handy, arboreal. Perhaps
coconuts were important in some early (aquarboreal?) stage in our
semiaquatic evolution.

>That is the point I was making. You can pick a young coconut, hold it in
one hand, bang it against a rock and you've got a drink. No tools needed but
the grasp and the concept of banging against something immovable are the
first two steps in tool using.

>>Perhaps they played a role in the evolution of the hominoids in SE-Asia
(orangs).

>Everyone assumes that coconuts are southeast Asian. But they probably
floated there from somewhere else. That somewhere else could have been the
islands off the coast of east Africa when Gondwanaland split up.

Some orangs live in mangrove areas. Have (some) orangs been seen eating
coconuts?

>>Do coconuts grow in mangrove areas?

>Yes but not very well. But they grow very well behind or to one side of
mangrove areas. I haven't found the time to read your mangrove arguments

Hugh, you should. Please read http://jurix.rechten.rug.nl/rth/ess/ess50.htm
The argument is very simple: Hominids resemble mangrove primates in food
procession (mangrove capuchins have thick enamel & are the best tool-using
non-human primates) & locomotion (proboscis monkeys wade bipedally between
mangrove trees).

>but  I think that a coastal-coconut-mangrove region would provide
everything we need - from food, to structural materials - and
uncontaminated, sweet, drinking water.

>>Coconuts don't need hominoids as vectors, do they?

>No. Wild coconuts evolved to what we can see today without human
interference. But they were then domesticated and it's my argument that this
happened at the same time as AAT.

Interesting. What's the difference between wild & domesticated coconuts?


>>If they don't need hominoids for dispersal, the hominoids are predators:
in that case you have an arms race: the coconuts became harder, the
hominoids became more specialized to open coconuts. Or are the hominoids
benefiting the coconuts in some way or another?

>You are making it too complicated.

I don't think so. Co-evolution of predator & prey is ubiquitous. The
coconuts that escape predation are the ones that reproduce. But you think
that our ancestors took coconuts with them & planted new trees, isn't it?
But isn't such behaviour too recent to explain (part of) our semiaquatic
evolution?

>The coconut is the same now as it always was. The palm produces a new bunch
of nuts every month and takes 12 months to bring each nunch to maturity. So
there is almost always one bunch just big enough and still young enough to
provide 500ml or more of sweet, uncontaminated water per nut. If you have to
you can peel the husk from a coconut with your teeth (and hands).

>>From what region do the early coconuts come?

>That is the 64 dollar question. The general consensus is SE Asia but there
are increasingly good arguments for coastal Africa - the nearest botanical
relative is a forest coconut in Madagascar.


Ah, interesting. Please describe this relative.

>>Where the coconuts in Mio-Pliocene times smaller that today?

>Fossil evidence is not clear on this point. Coconut has the same problem as
AAT when it comes to finding fossils.

:-)

>>Do other primates eat coconuts, eg, macaques in SE-Asia, capuchins in
S-America??

>Maybe if they had no other source of food. The coconut never got to south
America till 500 years ago so the capuchins may not have found out about it
yet. Macaques are trained to harvest coconuts (in Thailand). I would argue
that one very successful primate (guess who) took control of coastal
coconuts and didn't let the others get a look in.

Thanks a lot for your answers.

Marc

Marc

Marc

I don't intend that we should start an AAT onelist to compete with s.a.p.
but I don't know how to access s.a.p. Does all the correspondence relate to
AAT subjects?

What (or who) is the "lca" that is referred to. If the correspondents had
been brought up before central heating they would know that if hairlessness
resulted from the use of fire we would have hairy knees to prevent
scorching and hairy backs because of draughts. Perhaps Homo sapiens spp
air-con is evolving?

Hugh
=====
At 11:00 PM 14/09/99 +0200, you wrote:
>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>
>Hugh: FYI: a discussion in s.a.p:
>
>Dave Timpe heeft geschreven in bericht <7rjr45$1r1o$1@...>...
>
>>| >Bipedalism happened pretty early (at least 4.4 ma, not too long after
>the lca and could be traceable to predispostions of that species).  If
>hairlessness preceded it, we might have to explain how it re-evolved in
>chimps.  Unless we find any indications otherwise, it would seem it's a
>derived hominine character and probably either occurred at about the same
>time as, or later than, bipedalism, and possibly much later.  It's
>interesting to speculate, but not very likely we can resolve the reason at
>this time, if ever.
>
>>BTW, when I say "how 'it' re-evolved in chimps" above, I'm referring to
>fur, which isn't clear.  I'm assuming the lca wasn't hairless, even if it
>did have some incipient bipedal tendencies.  There's no connection between
>the two, as far as I can tell.
>
>That's true (a fur has to do mostly with thermo-regulation & bipedality with
>locomotion), but there's no reason why the LCA could not have been naked. A
>(weak) argument is that prenatal chimps have humanlike brows & head hairs.
>I'm not saying the LCA was furless, but it's certainly a possibility: all
>great apes have curious hair distributions, eg, baldness in female chimps,
>beards & moustaches in orangs, naked chests in lowland gorillas.
>
>>| Why do you place the beginning of bipedalism between the Homo-Pan LCA 5-4
>mya & Ardipith.4.4 mya?
>
>>I don't, necessarily, but if Ardipithecus was bipedal it indicates it had
>developed by then, at least.  Let's hope Asfaw, White & Co. can get their
>postcranial materials prepared and published soon to verify that (I gather
>they have the necessary evidence, and they hint it's bipedal, but possibly
>unique among apith-like creatures).
>
>No reason to believe that the Homo-Pan LCA was not bipedal (a'pith-like).
>
>
>>Gagneux etc.1999 Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA 98:5077 say the LCA could have
>lived 4.7mya (4.2-5.2). The fossils of Ardipith. led some people to suggest
>that this creature was bipedal. But it is claimed that Oreopith.7mya also
>was bipedal, so even if Ardipith was bipedal (not unlikely IMO), it doesn't
>say everything. Evolution is gradual: no need to suppose a sudden origin of
>bipedality between the LCA & Ardipith. In fact, a very derived locomotion as
>human bipedality is unlikely to be able to evolve in such a short time.  And
>nobody says the LCA was not already frequently bipedal.
>
>>That's why I made reference to "possible preadaptations", which is pretty
>vague, I admit, but since we don't have the lca (and may never have it) to
>examine, it's hard to say for sure.  Oreopithecus could be (and probably is)
>a parallelism, but it could indicate a preadaptation extending quite far
>back in the ancestry.
>
>OK
>
>>> In fact, chimps (esp. bonobos) and gorillas frequently stand and walk and
>wade erect. Our ancestor's early bipedality was no doubt different from our
>kind of bipedality: Fossilized footprints and skeletal remains suggest that
>australopithecines were bipedal, though their short-legged style of
>bipedalism was probably quite different from that seen in humans
>(Macchiarelli R., Bondioli L., Galichon V. & Tobias P. V. 1999.
>
>>Except when they try to simulate its gait the only way they can make it
>work is with a very human-like (albeit short-legged) stride.  Hunched over
>or bent-kneed takes too much exertion and wants to fall over.
>
>
>>| Hip bone trabecular architecture shows uniquely distinctive locomotor
>behaviour in South African australopithecines. Journal of Human Evolution
>36, 211-232), and the a'pith bipedality seems to have included a somewhat
>forward-leaning trunk posture (Hunt J. H. 1999. A postural model to explain
>reduced hip extension in Hadar hominid AL 288-1. AAPA Abstracts 28, 157).
>
>>Wish I had a good library nearby, but I don't.
>
>>| I agree we have no direct evidence as to when furlessness evolved.
>
>>Which is basically what I wanted to say, anyway.  Right now, I'd suspect
>that of all the ideas I've heard concerning hairlessness, the most
>reasonable of the bunch is that once humans began using fire and could
>provide other protection as needed (fur coats, whatever) there was no longer
>any selective pressure to maintain a natural fur coat, and possibly some of
>the other suggestions for why we might be better off without it could come
>into play as selective pressures to do away with it.  If that early fire use
>looks good, it could have happened quite early in Homo, but probably not in
>Australopithecines (assuming they're our ancestors and not the apes, of
>course).
>
>I agree that we didn't redevelop fur because we used hides (and fire). But
>if were furred there was no reason to use hides (or fire for warming). IOW,
>we must lost our fur for another reason. Probably (one of) the same
>reason(s) why other mammals lost their fur.
>
>Marc - http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
>http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Hugh: FYI: a discussion in s.a.p:

Dave Timpe heeft geschreven in bericht <7rjr45$1r1o$1@...>...

>| >Bipedalism happened pretty early (at least 4.4 ma, not too long after
the lca and could be traceable to predispostions of that species).  If
hairlessness preceded it, we might have to explain how it re-evolved in
chimps.  Unless we find any indications otherwise, it would seem it's a
derived hominine character and probably either occurred at about the same
time as, or later than, bipedalism, and possibly much later.  It's
interesting to speculate, but not very likely we can resolve the reason at
this time, if ever.

>BTW, when I say "how 'it' re-evolved in chimps" above, I'm referring to
fur, which isn't clear.  I'm assuming the lca wasn't hairless, even if it
did have some incipient bipedal tendencies.  There's no connection between
the two, as far as I can tell.

That's true (a fur has to do mostly with thermo-regulation & bipedality with
locomotion), but there's no reason why the LCA could not have been naked. A
(weak) argument is that prenatal chimps have humanlike brows & head hairs.
I'm not saying the LCA was furless, but it's certainly a possibility: all
great apes have curious hair distributions, eg, baldness in female chimps,
beards & moustaches in orangs, naked chests in lowland gorillas.

>| Why do you place the beginning of bipedalism between the Homo-Pan LCA 5-4
mya & Ardipith.4.4 mya?

>I don't, necessarily, but if Ardipithecus was bipedal it indicates it had
developed by then, at least.  Let's hope Asfaw, White & Co. can get their
postcranial materials prepared and published soon to verify that (I gather
they have the necessary evidence, and they hint it's bipedal, but possibly
unique among apith-like creatures).

No reason to believe that the Homo-Pan LCA was not bipedal (a'pith-like).


>Gagneux etc.1999 Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA 98:5077 say the LCA could have
lived 4.7mya (4.2-5.2). The fossils of Ardipith. led some people to suggest
that this creature was bipedal. But it is claimed that Oreopith.7mya also
was bipedal, so even if Ardipith was bipedal (not unlikely IMO), it doesn't
say everything. Evolution is gradual: no need to suppose a sudden origin of
bipedality between the LCA & Ardipith. In fact, a very derived locomotion as
human bipedality is unlikely to be able to evolve in such a short time.  And
nobody says the LCA was not already frequently bipedal.

>That's why I made reference to "possible preadaptations", which is pretty
vague, I admit, but since we don't have the lca (and may never have it) to
examine, it's hard to say for sure.  Oreopithecus could be (and probably is)
a parallelism, but it could indicate a preadaptation extending quite far
back in the ancestry.

OK

>> In fact, chimps (esp. bonobos) and gorillas frequently stand and walk and
wade erect. Our ancestor's early bipedality was no doubt different from our
kind of bipedality: Fossilized footprints and skeletal remains suggest that
australopithecines were bipedal, though their short-legged style of
bipedalism was probably quite different from that seen in humans
(Macchiarelli R., Bondioli L., Galichon V. & Tobias P. V. 1999.

>Except when they try to simulate its gait the only way they can make it
work is with a very human-like (albeit short-legged) stride.  Hunched over
or bent-kneed takes too much exertion and wants to fall over.


>| Hip bone trabecular architecture shows uniquely distinctive locomotor
behaviour in South African australopithecines. Journal of Human Evolution
36, 211-232), and the a'pith bipedality seems to have included a somewhat
forward-leaning trunk posture (Hunt J. H. 1999. A postural model to explain
reduced hip extension in Hadar hominid AL 288-1. AAPA Abstracts 28, 157).

>Wish I had a good library nearby, but I don't.

>| I agree we have no direct evidence as to when furlessness evolved.

>Which is basically what I wanted to say, anyway.  Right now, I'd suspect
that of all the ideas I've heard concerning hairlessness, the most
reasonable of the bunch is that once humans began using fire and could
provide other protection as needed (fur coats, whatever) there was no longer
any selective pressure to maintain a natural fur coat, and possibly some of
the other suggestions for why we might be better off without it could come
into play as selective pressures to do away with it.  If that early fire use
looks good, it could have happened quite early in Homo, but probably not in
Australopithecines (assuming they're our ancestors and not the apes, of
course).

I agree that we didn't redevelop fur because we used hides (and fire). But
if were furred there was no reason to use hides (or fire for warming). IOW,
we must lost our fur for another reason. Probably (one of) the same
reason(s) why other mammals lost their fur.

Marc - http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html

Marc

Some remarks on coconuts from the points you raised:

At 09:43 PM 13/09/99 +0200, you wrote:
>From: "Marc Verhaegen" <Marc.Verhaegen@...>
>
>Hugh, I found your idea on coconuts in hominoid evolution very interesting.
>It's clear that these heavy nuts can't be opened by all frugivorous mammals.

Rats can and do chew their way into the young, water filled, nuts.

>They seem ideal for apes: apes are tool-using, handy, arboreal. Perhaps
>coconuts were important in some early (aquarboreal?) stage in our
>semiaquatic evolution.

That is the point I was making. You can pick a young coconut, hold it in
one hand, bang it against a rock and you've got a drink. No tools needed
but the grasp and the concept of banging against something immovable are
the first two steps in tool using.

>Perhaps they played a role in the evolution of the
>hominoids in SE-Asia (orangs).

Everyone assumes that coconuts are southeast Asian. But they probably
floated there from somewhere else. That somewhere else could have been the
islands off the coast of east Africa when Gondwanaland split up.

>Do coconuts grow in mangrove areas?

Yes but not very well. But they grow very well behind or to one side of
mangrove areas. I haven't found the time to read your mangrove arguments
but  I think that a coastal-coconut-mangrove region would provide
everything we need - from food, to structural materials - and
uncontaminated, sweet, drinking water.

>Coconuts don't need hominoids as vectors, do they?

No. Wild coconuts evolved to what we can see today without human
interference. But they were then domesticated and it's my argument that
this happened at the same time as AAT.

>If they don't need hominoids for dispersal, the hominoids are predators:
in that case you have an arms race:
>the coconuts became harder, the hominoids became more specialized to open
>coconuts. Or are the hominoids benefiting the coconuts in some way or
>another?

You are making it too complicated. The coconut is the same now as it always
was. The palm produces a new bunch of nuts every month and takes 12 months
to bring each nunch to maturity. So there is almost always one bunch just
big enough and still young enough to provide 500ml or more of sweet,
uncontaminated water per nut. If you have to you can peel the husk from a
coconut with your teeth (and hands).

>From what region do the early coconuts come?

That is the 64 dollar question. The general consensus is SE Asia but there
are increasingly good arguments for coastal Africa - the nearest botanical
relative is a forest coconut in Madagascar.

>Where the coconuts in Mio-Pliocene times smaller that today?

Fossil evidence is not clear on this point. Coconut has the same problem as
AAT when it comes to finding fossils.

>Do other primates eat coconuts, eg, macaques in SE-Asia, capuchins in
S-America??

Maybe if they had no other source of food. The coconut never got to south
America till 500 years ago so the capuchins may not have found out about it
yet. Macaques are trained to harvest coconuts (in Thailand). I would argue
that one very successful primate (guess who) took control of coastal
coconuts and didn't let the others get a look in.

Hugh

Marc
I think the reply that got bounced back to you may just have been a hiccup
- perhaps because the database hadn't registered the fact you had joined.
Your two other messages have arrived OK since. Elaine had a problem
starting too and will have missed your messages. One thing about the AAT
onelist is that it is possible to read messages in the archives if you do
miss them.

There is no reason why we shouldn't do this through sci.anthropology.paleo
or any other system that is in operation. I suggested this route because I
didn't know about "sci.anthropology.paleo". I assume that in s.a.p, or any
other system, you get messages that don't necessarilly relate to AAT? When
you see [AAT] in the subject line you can have some hope that it will be
relevant to our common interest.

The other advantage, as far as I am concerned, is that most of what we do
is done by email rather than on the internet. The internet server here in
Mexico is very slow and it takes ages to search out want you want. If there
is an interesting web site the URL can simply be circulated in an AAT email
and readers who want to can log onto it directly.

I'll discuss some of your points about coconuts tomorrow, when I know that
Elaine is also receiving messages.

All for now

Hugh

>Thanks for joining. My idea was that three of us would swap emails this way
and if it seemed OK then go on to invite extra people. At that point I would
like to hand over "ownership" of the list because I can't run it from my
work address.

Hugh, what is the problem? What has the owner have to do? Don't go
themessages automatically to the other members?

>To acknowledge this message you just have to hit the reply button, add any
comments you want, and then send. It will automatically go to all (3)
members of the list so you actually get a copy of your own message.
If you want to generate a new message you simply address it to
<AAT@onelist.com> and we all get it.        A word of caution. If you want
to reply to an individual and you do not wan't everyone to know be careful
not to use the reply button. In other lists this has led to some amusement
and embarassement.        Let's give this a trial for a few days. There is
no harm in inviting other people to join, in a small way, because the only
address they will need to know is <AAT@onelist.com> and that doesn't change
when I hand over the list to another "manager".        Perhaps for a start,
you simply contact people you know will be sympathetic and suggest they join
in. You can tell them to use <http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/aat>.
If we do decide to expand there are a number of web sites that advertise new
lists.

Hugh, I sent a message to the AAT onelist, but I got a MAILER-DAEMON (see
the message forwarded to you). I don't know what went wrong. I'll send it
again to our onelist.

Best wishes - Marc

Hugh, I found your idea on coconuts in hominoid evolution very interesting.
It's clear that these heavy nuts can't be opened by all frugivorous mammals.
They seem ideal for apes: apes are tool-using, handy, arboreal. Perhaps
coconuts were important in some early (aquarboreal?) stage in our
semiaquatic evolution. Perhaps they played a role in the evolution of the
hominoids in SE-Asia (orangs). Do coconuts grow in mangrove areas? Coconuts
don't need hominoids as vectors, do they? If they don't need hominoids for
dispersal, the hominoids are predators: in that case you have an arms race:
the coconuts became harder, the hominoids became more specialized to open
coconuts. Or are the hominoids benefiting the coconuts in some way or
another? From what region do the early coconuts come? Where the coconuts in
Mio-Pliocene times smaller that today? Do other primates eat coconuts, eg,
macaques in SE-Asia, capuchins in S-America??

Marc

Hugh & Elaine, can't we discuss these things (also) in
sci.anthropology.paleo?

Thanks for joining. My idea was that three of us would swap emails this way
and if it seemed OK then go on to invite extra people. At that point I
would like to hand over "ownership" of the list because I can't run it from
my work address.

To acknowledge this message you just have to hit the reply button, add any
comments you want, and then send. It will automatically go to all (3)
members of the list so you actually get a copy of your own message.

If you want to generate a new message you simply address it to
<AAT@onelist.com> and we all get it.

A word of caution. If you want to reply to an individual and you do not
wan't everyone to know be careful not to use the reply button. In other
lists this has led to some amusement and embarassement.

Let's give this a trial for a few days. There is no harm in inviting other
people to join, in a small way, because the only address they will need to
know is <AAT@onelist.com> and that doesn't change when I hand over the list
to another "manager".

Perhaps for a start, you simply contact people you know will be sympathetic
and suggest they join in. You can tell them to use
<http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/aat>.

If we do decide to expand there are a number of web sites that advertise
new lists.

Regards

Hugh