>How about if we say that it's a unique hominid activity? Since we're the
>only lineage left among the hominids, it's impossible to tell whether a
>given activity is uniquely human or shared by all hominids.
>
>This is not an uncommon situation in evolution--where some ancestral
>shared character is presently extant in a single surviving species. We
>can use the character now to identify the species, but not necessarily so
>before other sibling species had gone extinct.
>
I smell a semantic trap! :-) All humans are hominids but not all
hominids are human. All I can judge this by is the present data. The
only beings I know who make such objects are human and are susceptible to
lust. I have no basis for knowing whether Australopithecus made such
objects because there are none found in the fossil record associated with
them. They might or might not have made such objects out of wood, but we
will never know. Thus you can not claim that this is a hominid trait.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm