>Why would this "population of humans" (ie. Australopithecines)
>remain "small" "for millions of years"? My understanding is that
>"small" populations invariably go extinct. The farming motto
>applies: "Get big or get out"!
Small populations can avoid extinction if they have more than 100 members.
Even a population of 3,000, living in a forest, where the bones decay within
a year of death would leave little evidence of their existence. The oldest
skeletal evidence of chimpanzees is about 400 years old. There is no fossil
record of chimps. There are lots of other animal populations which have
remain hidden from the paleontologist's eye for millions of years. I have
posted that information before. Fossil tarsiers are found in the Eocene but
then not again for several million years laters (about 25 million years).
>
>GM>in a tropical jungle and leave no trace of themselves.
>
>Why would they remain "for millions of years in a tropical jungle"?
Ask them. Motives are not my thing.
>
>Besides, my understanding is that Africa has not been "tropical
>jungle" for the whole 5.5 million years:
East Africa became dry, West Africa was still wet. Even today East Africa is
Dry and West Africa is wet. Go look at a rainfall map. East Africa, Nairobi
gets less than 20 inches of rain a year while the Cameroons get over 100.
>
>Note from the above that the latest thinking is that "the genus Homo
>emerged, between 2.5 and 2.0 mya".
>
>GM>This is because the acidic soils dissolve the skeleton in about 1
>>year.
>
>Could you cite references to this? Encyclopaedia Britannica has a
>lot on African soils but nowhere does it mention that the
>jungle soils were "acidic"
>
>Also, if the African "jungle" "soils" were "acidic", then there
>should be *no* fossils from that area for the last 5.5 my. Is that
>so?
It is not that there are NO fossils fromt those areas but that there are
very, very few. The acidity of tropical soils has long been known.
"In tropical rain forests insects and animals make
short work of bodies, and if they are buried or covered with earth, the
lateritic soil is so acid that bones may disintigrate in less than a year. In
1965, I excavated a cave in a diamond-mining concession in Sierra Leone and
found no bones at all, although the soil was full of stone implements and
chips. A schoolteacher stationed there told me that she had once buried a dead
dog to get its skeleton for use in her zoology class, and when she dug it up a
year later even the bones had rotted away."
Carleton S. Coon, The Hunting Peoples, (Boston: Little, Brown and
Co., 1971), p. 331-332
or this
"Our joint ancestors may have been adapted primarily to lush, tropical forest
environments in Africa, where bones do not always seem to survive well.
Tropical forests tend to be wet and humid with acidic soils that soon destroy
organic remains, including the bones of dead animals. Thus far, absolutely no
fossil record has been uncovered in Africa that would indicate the immediate
ancestors of our nearest lving relatives, the chimpanzees and the gorillas. In
fact, the oldest known examples are only a few hundred years old."~Kathy D.
Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making Silent Stones Speak, (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1993), p. 38.
and
"The fossil record of primates is unfortunately meager. As
stated above, most primates dwell in tropical forests, an
environment highly unfavorable for the preservation of the
remains of living creatures as fossils. Furthermore whatever
remains are found are usually fragments of bones and teeth. It
is a difficult matter to get from such fragments an idea of what
the whole animal might have been like."~Theodosius Dobzhansky,
Evolution, Genetics and Man, (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
Inc., 1955), p. 325
"And as a matter of fact no fossil remains of gorilla,
chimpanzee, or orang-utang have ever been unearthed." (Because he
says forests are bad places for fossils.~H. G. Wells, Julian P.
Huxley and G. P. Wells, Science of Life, (New York: The Literary
Guild, 1934), p. 796.
>
>Stanley attributes the lack of 8-4 mya Hominidae fossils to rare
>sedimentation and lack of study:
>
>"Early apes in Africa and Asia Although an extensive Plio-
>Pleistocene fossil record has been uncovered for the Hominidae, very
>few known fossil remains of any age represent the Pongidae.
>Furthermore, the fossil record of the superfamily Hominoidea in
>latest Miocene and earliest Pliocene time (8 to 4 million years ago)
>is almost entirely barren. Sediments representing this interval in
>Africa, where apes and humans may have evolved, are rare and poorly
>studied." (Stanley S.M., "Earth and Life Through Time", 1989, p575)
>
That is also a problem.
>In any event, the differences here is that "Chimpanzees" and
>"Gorillas" don't use tools. If "a small population of humans" did
>"survive for" 5.5 "millions of years in a tropical jungle" they
>would "leave" some "trace of themselves" in the form of stone tools.
Only if they made them. In Asia, apparently Homo erectus never made hand
axes like the rest of mankind did. The line separating the hand-axe making
region to the west from the non-hand-axe region to the east is known as the
Movius line.
"3. use of bamboo as a raw material: During prehistoric times, much of eastern
Asia had bamboo woodlands and forests. Bamboo is unusual in that when split it
produces incredibly sharp edges that can be used for a wide range of cutting,
hacking, and scraping activities, as some societies in the world still do
today. For this reason, stone technology may have taken on a reduced or even
secondary role for these hominid groups, giving them less incentive to develop
or maintain elaborate and more sophisticated stone tool types."~Kathy D. Schick
and Nicholas Toth, Making Silent Stones Speak, (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1993), p.278
If man were able to get what he needed from plants, there would be no need
to use stone.
>Assume a constant population of 100 adults, with a generation length
>of 55 years. That is 100,000 generations. Assume further an
>average of 5 stone tools per adult per lifetime. These are
>deliberately conservative estimates. There would probably be
>thousands of adults if the species had survived for 5.5 million
>years. You claimed the Tasmanian aborigines had 24 tools, but I am
>assuming only 5. The generational length might have been shorter or
>longer. Multiplying this out makes 100 x 100,000 x 5 = 50,000,000
>stone tools!
But if they were using plant material, either extinct or still extant, they
might not have needed stone tools. Thus your mathematical calculation,
while good, may be based upon the wrong assumption.
>GM>The fact that Homo erectus was quite widespread when they first
>>appear, says that they lived a long time before this.
>
>How did "Homo erectus" get into the act? This "small population of
>humans' started of as Australopithecines. Are you claiming that
>they evolved into "Homo erectus" while in this "tropical jungle'?
Stephen, do you really listen to what I say or do you merely react to the
caricature of my views you hold in your mind? I have over and over said
that I don't know quite where to put the australopithecines. But you
insiste upon continuing to act as if I never said that. Please have the
common courtesy to acknowledge what I say and believe now not what you want
me to beleive.
With Homo erectus, I said exactly what I meant. The fact that they were the
first beings to really spread across the earth, and were so widespread 1.6
million years ago, implies strongly that they have a long history prior to
1.6 million years ago. It takes time for a primitive population to spread
over the earth. Thus, I would feel that it is quite reasonable for H.
erectus to be on earth quite some time prior to when he first appears. How
long? I don't know. And where should we look? I don't know.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm