Aquatic ape hypothesis

[CEngelbrecht]

23 hours ago, iNow said:

I’m not impressed by the self-evidently false subtly camouflaged racism on display here

What fucking racism??? We're all subjected to endemic cretinism!!! For forty thousand fucking years!!! It's right there on the god damned skulls!!!

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Taphonomic bias is the real problem with attempted analysis of hominin diets.

Most hominin fossils occur in lake-side environments, and the presence of fish remains is therefore not proof of fish consumption.

Really, the deeper problem with AAH is that it's an umbrella hypothesis that can't really be proved or disproved.  You could form real hypotheses from pieces of the AAH, and really weigh them on evidence.  Fish remains, for example, if one can get past taphonomic bias, could tell us something like they did catch fish and eat them.  But that does not warrant a leap to an aquatic ape that's spending huge amounts of time immersed.  Or a shore ape that must have ocean-derived iodine and omega-3.  In its present form, AAH is a house of cards.  

Aaand there goes the theory of evolution. That sure as hell is an umbrella hypothesis in equal measure.

Well done. You just gave creationists their best weapon ever. AAH must be wrong 'cause it's umbrella hypothesis trying to explain way too many seemingly unrelated phenomena. Then a buck load of other umbrella hypotheses must be wrong too.

Quote

"One of the reasons, I think, for an early hostility to it [AAH], was purely a feeling that, 'Well, why didn’t one of us come up with that? If it was true, one of us would have come up with it first.' It was a kind of incredulity almost, that this outsider [Elaine Morgan] could produce this theory which seemed to pull so many threads together. But there was also a feeling that they were all glancing around the room, feeling, 'Well, I can’t personally think of the knock down argument, but surely one of you can.' And there was the thing that, 'Which one of us is it that has got the knock down argument?' And it gradually became apparent that none of them had the knock down argument! And so they resorted to this kind of rhetoric about, 'Oh, she’s cobbled together a kind of collage of different facts and figures...' Which is exactly what scientific theory’s supposed to do. Why was Newton’s theory of gravity so important? Because it integrated everything from why the moon went round the earth to why apples fall. That is the key thing of a good scientific theory, that it does this linking job on a lot of phenomena, that were hitherto thought to be totally unrelated. And whatever the long term merits of the theory are judged to be, it certainly did that."

- Graham Richards

The theory of the heliocentric near-universe. The theory of gravity. The theories of relativity. Of plate tectonics. Of evolution by natural selection. How much are you willing to sacrifice to finally shut that Welsh grandma up?

Quote

The Savannah hypotheses: origin, reception and impact on paleoanthropology

"The reconstruction of the human past is a complex task characterized by a high level of interdisciplinarity. How do scientists from different fields reach consensus on crucial aspects of paleoanthropological research? The present paper explores this question through an historical analysis of the origin, development, and reception of the savannah hypotheses (SHs). We show that this model neglected to investigate crucial biological aspects which appeared to be irrelevant in scenarios depicting early hominins evolving in arid or semi-arid open plains. For instance, the exploitation of aquatic food resources and other aspects of hominin interaction with water were largely ignored in classical paleoanthropology. These topics became central to alternative ideas on human evolution known as aquatic hypotheses. Since the aquatic model is commonly regarded as highly controversial, its rejection led to a stigmatization of the whole spectrum of topics around water use in non-human hominoids and hominins. We argue that this bias represents a serious hindrance to a comprehensive reconstruction of the human past. Progress in this field depends on clear differentiation between hypotheses proposed to contextualize early hominin evolution in specific environmental settings and research topics which demand the investigation of all relevant facets of early hominins' interaction with complex landscapes."

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by CEngelbrecht

[exchemist]

On 1/31/2023 at 4:53 PM, CEngelbrecht said:

You're missing 100cc of brain because of it, sapiens. And today we're draining the world oceans of the brain food. Endemic cretinism will only increase, if we even survive the next century, what with climate change, fission war and whatnot.

This is all based on the already known fossil archive along with comparative analysis straight out of Darwinian tradition and sound biochemical observation.

Uhuh.

 

Do you even know what this idea is actually suggesting? Do you even give a fuck?

That's nice.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07w4y98

No one ever succeeded in proving it false. As little as the cardinals proved Galileo wrong.

So why add it to your kitchen salt?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency

A quarter of the world's sapienses don't get enough iodine. Are you gonna believe the WHO?

There is only one general food source plentiful in iodine, as well as the other brain selective micronutrients. And that is seafood.

You're denying irrefutable evidence for no other reason than that of Elaine Morgan being an irritating armchair scientist that is not supposed to have a point. You're all acting out of sociological bullshit, not scientic enquiry. And it needs to stop, 'cause her studies have over time revealed why we have been losing our brain for 40 millenia, and why it will only continue for any foreseeable future. Without Morgan, we would simply not know this. Stop pissing on your own giant already!!!

Bingo! The Galileo gambit. Well, it was only a matter of time.😄

[CEngelbrecht]

5 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Bingo! The Galileo gambit. Well, it was only a matter of time.😄

And Alister Hardy is Copernicus in this bitch.

[TheVat]

46 minutes ago, CEngelbrecht said:

Aaand there goes the theory of evolution. That sure as hell is an umbrella hypothesis in equal measure.

Not really, no.  Natural selection turned out to be eminently testable.  

 

47 minutes ago, CEngelbrecht said:

Well done. You just gave creationists their best weapon ever. AAH must be wrong 'cause it's umbrella hypothesis trying to explain way too many seemingly unrelated phenomena. Then a buck load of other umbrella hypotheses must be wrong too.

Nope.  Last sentence doesn't logically follow.  First, it assumes other hypotheses (which were provable) are equivalent in their overbroad structure and unsupported assumptions, which is not at all the case.  Second, it's a logic error of the form:

My tile roof leaks.

Therefore, other tile roofs must leak, too. 

However, it can be reasonably argued that the savannah hypothesis is ALSO a weak umbrella, on its own particular lack of merits,  The fact that the SH remains problematic in no way automatically lends support to the AAH, because there is a universe of other hypothetical choices - it's not a binary thing, where one being wrong means the other must then be correct.  You really need to stop shouting and swearing and take time to think through these issues, calmly.  

[exchemist]

10 minutes ago, CEngelbrecht said:

And Alister Hardy is Copernicus in this bitch.

You've been on this kick for almost a decade now. 

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, CEngelbrecht said:

What fucking racism??? We're all subjected to endemic cretinism!!!

You probably shouldn't extrapolate from the single data point of yourself.  

[CEngelbrecht]

14 minutes ago, exchemist said:

You've been on this kick for almost a decade now. 

Two and a half. I have been looking for the kill argument since day one. No one have been able to supply one yet. All I get every time is the same snorting arrogance based on not even bothering to read up on the increasing amount of relevant litterature. How can I possibly see the error of my ways, when you keep pretending that it's an obvious pile of drivel, that just ain't that obvious?

Edited February 1, 2023 by CEngelbrecht

[swansont]

13 minutes ago, TheVat said:

However, it can be reasonably argued that the savannah hypothesis is ALSO a weak umbrella, on its own particular lack of merits,  The fact that the SH remains problematic in no way automatically lends support to the AAH, because there is a universe of other hypothetical choices - it's not a binary thing, where one being wrong means the other must then be correct.  You really need to stop shouting and swearing and take time to think through these issues, calmly.  

It reminds me of the UFO=aliens crowd. Improper extrapolation from the data, cherry-picking, and of course the “it must be aliens” conclusion when the phenomena are unidentified.

[CEngelbrecht]

19 minutes ago, TheVat said:

You probably shouldn't extrapolate from the single data point of yourself.  

Fuck you too.

4 minutes ago, swansont said:

It reminds me of the UFO=aliens crowd. Improper extrapolation from the data, cherry-picking, and of course the “it must be aliens” conclusion when the phenomena are unidentified.

And fuck you too.

Edited February 1, 2023 by CEngelbrecht

[Phi for All]

13 minutes ago, CEngelbrecht said:

Fuck you too.

And fuck you too.

!

Moderator Note

If you listened to anyone, it would signal that you can reason. If you didn't soapbox every argument while failing to support them, it would tell us you can discuss a subject meaningfully. We can even handle your attempts to drive home weak points with shocking language, but we won't put up with this kind of uncivil comments. You ran out of intelligent things to say quite some time ago, but now your abuse is personal. Good luck elsewhere.