HI Glen,
I have recently been reading stuff from Johanson(Lucy's discoverer) who
holds that Homo Erectus, our supposed ancester who lived a million years
ago, was not very humanlike(no speech, questionable about using fire, a
scavenger not a hunter). I also have read Richard Leakey, who thinks that
Homo Erectus had rudimentary speech and a simple hunter-gatherer lifestyle,
but who would be skeptical (I think ) about Homo Erectus having tents and
clothing. You say that Homo Erectus was much more advanced than even Leakey
would allow. What do other paleoanthropologists think?
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of Glenn Morton
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 12:05 AM
To: John W Burgeson; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: Glenn's comments
Hi Burgy,
>-----Original Message-----
>From: John W Burgeson [mailto:burgytwo@juno.com]
>Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 11:41 AM
>To: asa@calvin.edu; glenn.morton@btinternet.com
>Subject: Glenn's comments
>
>
>Glenn wrote, in part: "The record low temperatures in Beijing which is
>near the Majuangou site is 1 degree Fahrenheit with average low
>temperatures below freezing from November until March!"
>
>The implicit assumptions you make here, and it may well be justified, is
>that weather temperatures 2MY ago were comparable to today and also that
>the hominids then were comparable in skin protection (I.e. were not much
>hairier) to humans today. Can these assumptions be supported?
Yes. As to the first one, according to Elsievier'sGeological Time table, 2
million years ago was the time of the Biber glaciation in Alpine
terminology. So most likely the weather was colder than today in Beijing.
If not --
>particularly the second one, we know that animals with hair survive very
>well w/o tents and clothing today in the Arctic; if the hominids of 2MY
>ago had similar body hair, they might well have done so too, and this
>would weaken your argument somewhat.
I would point you to http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/sweat.htm for
the reasons most anthropologists believe that humans lost their hair
somewhere before the advent of Homo erectus. That site has all the
requisite documentation to let someone follow up on this if they want. One
other thing, fur had less survival value for humans when carrying infants
after our feet evolved to bipedal locomotion. A baby chimp can hang on to
its mother's fur at four points of attachement--both hands and both feet.
But bipedal feet don't let the baby hang on. Thus from Australopithecus on,
mothers had to carry the infant as the infant probably could not dangle by
hands alone. This fact would make hair lose its beneficial effect for
infant carrying, thus making it more likely that as the brain got larger,
the hair had less use. See
http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/birth.htm for more details.
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