• H.erectus hunting nonsense

    From littoral.homo@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Mon Dec 27 15:07:17 2021
    This is how myths are made. This myth has basically been in the scientific & general unconscious since Raymond Dart came up with Man the killer ape idea! I really would like to challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to sit down with a dead cow carcass on
    their dining table, and consume it in its raw state: muscle, organs, guts, brains, eyeballs... using only a stone tool. Or even just a single piece of muscle meat... you'll chew, chew, chew but won't be able to break it down with your teeth - we
    completely lack the morphology of carnivores in every part of our body. My dogs OTOH can devour a sheep's head in under 15 minutes, gulp down half a kilo of muscle meat in 2-3 bites, drool at the bloody dripping internal organs I give them as a
    special treat... they are carnivores - we are not.

    Here's a contrasting paper which of course doesn't get the same publicity
    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/abs/uncertain-case-for-humandriven-extinctions-prior-to-homo-sapiens/F91F1125CC0A988E322DA9AD9564F0C5

    Humans can't eat meat in its raw & natural state (other than steak tartare, cut up into tiny swallow-sized pieces). We can't chew it, we can't digest it, and even cooked, it causes more detriment than good (higher risk of cardio-vascular diseases, bowel
    cancers, calcium & Vit.D deficiencies, type 2 diabetes, gout, kidney stones, haemorroids, hypertension etc). Uncooked meat without fire is a waste of time for humans. It doesn't provide energy (carbohydrates do), animal protein is toxic to us in
    large quantities, even causing death in extreme cases, >250g of meat a day can lead to weakness, lethargy, foetal congenital disorders & perinatal morbidity. (The so-called Paleolithic diet has been shown to be bad for health). We don't need >10% protein,
    the best proteins come from plant foods & seafoods (alkaline instead of acidic) and can be better utilised for building & repairing muscle (google vegan bodybuilders / see gorillas). Meat consumption increases the metabolic rate to the point where you
    need more calories to digest it than you gain from it. It heats you up and makes you thinner & weaker. You need extra water to digest it. Women & children are unlikely to have benefitted from it (read Grandmothering and the Evolution of Homo erectus) -
    the majority of calories in hunter-gatherer societies are provided by female gatherers collecting USOs, there's no evidence that meat increases brain growth, stone tools are pretty useless at butchering animals (in one experiment it took 300 strikes to
    crush a bone open with an Acheulean hand axe), any evidence of animal butchery marks on bones before 1 Ma is highly dubious, and any suggestion that it was by the actions of hominins has generally been refuted and was more likely caused by other animals..
    . primates never scavenge. H.erectus couldn't have run across the savannah without breaking his bones and sweating to death, and with what? A hand axe? Hunting large prey is highly dangerous & unreliable & often unsuccessful, often stolen by dangerous
    predators, even in modern groups, and is a waste of energy when plant proteins are far more available, African ungulates lack fat, etc. If mother & children are waiting for Mr Big to bring home with the bacon, they're likely to starve so they're
    better off digging for tubers. Whereas plant & aquatic foods are far more safe, stable & collectable, and provided far more nutrition, useable protein, DHA, carbs, and shellfish can be opened with stone tools, etc.
    All this would have changed when 1) Homo discovered fire, 2) Homo was somewhere with a lack of edible plant or aquatic foods (i.e. during glacials in Europe / N-Asia, in the mountains, inland populations), 3) Homo invented throwing & thrusting
    weapons, and possibly teamed up with wolves. In those cases, cooked fatty meat would have provided calories where there weren't better or easier ones available. That's when Man became the killer ape, not earlier than 800 ka.
    I could go on, but there are too many reasons, so I've attached the relevant section concerning anatomy, encephalisation & diet from my chapter on H.erectus, with all the references (Verhaegen, Munro cs are quoted) - if anyone wants to read it! :)


    Francesca

    ______

    Can you imagine "scientific" journals still publish such nonsense??
    (I left out the authors' names... :-D)

    Prey Size Decline as a Unifying Ecological Selecting Agent in Pleistocene Human Evolution
    Quaternary 2021 https://doi.org/10.3390/quat4010007

    We hypothesize: mega-fauna extinctions throughout the Pleistocene, that led to a progressive decline in large prey availability, were a primary selecting agent in key evolutionary & cultural changes in human prehistory.
    The Pleistocene human past is characterized by a series of transformations: the evolution of new physiological traits & the adoption, assimilation & replacement of cultural & behavioral patterns.
    Some changes (e.g. brain expansion, use of fire, developments in stone-tool technologies, or the scale of resource intensification) were uncharacteristically progressive.
    We previously hypothesized that humans specialized in acquiring large prey because of their
    - higher foraging efficiency,
    - high biomass density,
    - higher fat content &
    - the use of less complex tools for their acquisition.
    Here we argue that the need to mitigate the additional energetic cost of acquiring progressively smaller prey may have been an ecological selecting agent in fundamental adaptive modes demonstrated in the Paleolithic archaeological record.
    We describe several potential associations between prey size decline & specific evolutionary & cultural changes that might have been driven by the need to adapt to increased energetic demands while hunting & processing smaller & smaller game.

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  • From littoral.homo@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Mon Dec 27 15:17:14 2021
    The uncertain case for human-driven extinctions prior to Homo sapiens
    J Tyler Faith cs 2020

    A growing body of literature proposes that our ancestors contributed to large mammal extinctions in Africa long before the appearance of H.sapiens:
    some argue that premodern hominins (e.g. H.erectus) triggered the demise of Africa's largest herbivores & the loss of carnivoran diversity.
    Such arguments have been around for decades, but they are now increasingly accepted by those concerned with bio-diversity decline in the present-day, despite the near complete absence of critical discussion or debate.

    Here we review ancient anthropogenic extinction hypotheses,
    we critically examine the data underpinning them:
    arguments made in favor of ancient anthropogenic extinctions are
    - based on problematic data & and interpretation,
    - substantially weakened when extinctions are considered in the context of long-term evolutionary, ecological & environmental changes:
    at present, there is no compelling empirical evidence supporting a deep history of hominin impacts on Africa's faunal diversity.

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/abs/uncertain-case-for-humandriven-extinctions-prior-to-homo-sapiens/F91F1125CC0A988E322DA9AD9564F0C5

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  • From DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_l@21:1/5 to littor...@gmail.com on Mon Dec 27 23:36:45 2021
    On Monday, December 27, 2021 at 6:17:15 PM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:
    The uncertain case for human-driven extinctions prior to Homo sapiens
    J Tyler Faith cs 2020

    A growing body of literature proposes that our ancestors contributed to large mammal extinctions in Africa long before the appearance of H.sapiens:
    some argue that premodern hominins (e.g. H.erectus) triggered the demise of Africa's largest herbivores & the loss of carnivoran diversity.
    Such arguments have been around for decades, but they are now increasingly accepted by those concerned with bio-diversity decline in the present-day, despite the near complete absence of critical discussion or debate.

    Here we review ancient anthropogenic extinction hypotheses,
    we critically examine the data underpinning them:
    arguments made in favor of ancient anthropogenic extinctions are
    - based on problematic data & and interpretation,
    - substantially weakened when extinctions are considered in the context of long-term evolutionary, ecological & environmental changes:
    at present, there is no compelling empirical evidence supporting a deep history of hominin impacts on Africa's faunal diversity.

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/abs/uncertain-case-for-humandriven-extinctions-prior-to-homo-sapiens/F91F1125CC0A988E322DA9AD9564F0C5

    Inland trout (mountain streams) have higher omega 3 oils than coastal oysters or mussels.

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  • From littoral.homo@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jan 1 02:30:59 2022
    Op dinsdag 28 december 2021 om 08:36:46 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:

    ...

    Inland trout (mountain streams) have higher omega 3 oils than coastal oysters or mussels.

    :-) Yes yes, my little boy, this confirms what we've been saying for ages:
    Hn seasonally followed the rivers inland.
    Google "coastal dispersal Pleistocene Homo PPT".

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  • From DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_l@21:1/5 to littor...@gmail.com on Sat Jan 1 02:50:43 2022
    On Saturday, January 1, 2022 at 5:31:00 AM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:
    Op dinsdag 28 december 2021 om 08:36:46 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:

    ...
    Inland trout (mountain streams) have higher omega 3 oils than coastal oysters or mussels.
    :-) Yes yes, my little boy, this confirms what we've been saying for ages:
    Hn seasonally followed the rivers inland.
    Google "coastal dispersal Pleistocene Homo PPT".
    :D No neanderthals in Atlas mtns where dades trout lived.

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  • From Primum Sapienti@21:1/5 to littor...@gmail.com on Thu Jan 13 13:46:54 2022
    littor...@gmail.com wrote:
    The uncertain case for human-driven extinctions prior to Homo sapiens
    J Tyler Faith cs 2020

    A growing body of literature proposes that our ancestors contributed to large mammal extinctions in Africa long before the appearance of H.sapiens:
    some argue that premodern hominins (e.g. H.erectus) triggered the demise of Africa's largest herbivores & the loss of carnivoran diversity.
    Such arguments have been around for decades, but they are now increasingly accepted by those concerned with bio-diversity decline in the present-day, despite the near complete absence of critical discussion or debate.

    Here we review ancient anthropogenic extinction hypotheses,
    we critically examine the data underpinning them:
    arguments made in favor of ancient anthropogenic extinctions are
    - based on problematic data & and interpretation,
    - substantially weakened when extinctions are considered in the context of long-term evolutionary, ecological & environmental changes:
    at present, there is no compelling empirical evidence supporting a deep history of hominin impacts on Africa's faunal diversity.

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/abs/uncertain-case-for-humandriven-extinctions-prior-to-homo-sapiens/F91F1125CC0A988E322DA9AD9564F0C5


    Here is the real text:

    Abstract
    A growing body of literature proposes that our ancestors contributed to
    large mammal extinctions in Africa long before the appearance of Homo
    sapiens, with some arguing that premodern hominins (e.g., Homo erectus) triggered the demise of Africa's largest herbivores and the loss of
    carnivoran
    diversity. Though such arguments have been around for decades, they are
    now increasingly accepted by those concerned with biodiversity decline in
    the present-day, despite the near complete absence of critical discussion or debate. To facilitate that process, here we review ancient anthropogenic extinction hypotheses and critically examine the data underpinning them. Broadly speaking, we show that arguments made in favor of ancient
    anthropogenic extinctions are based on problematic data analysis and interpretation, and are substantially weakened when extinctions are
    considered in the context of long-term evolutionary, ecological, and environmental changes. Thus, at present, there is no compelling empirical evidence supporting a deep history of hominin impacts on Africa's faunal diversity.

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  • From littoral.homo@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 18 01:42:47 2022
    J Tyler Faith cs 2020
    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/abs/uncertain-case-for-humandriven-extinctions-prior-to-homo-sapiens/F91F1125CC0A988E322DA9AD9564F0C5
    ... Thus, at present, there is no compelling empirical > evidence supporting a deep history of hominin impacts on Africa's faunal > diversity.

    Yes, only compete imbeciles believe H.erectus ran after antelopes.

    https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/12/04/4140529.htm

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  • From DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_l@21:1/5 to littor...@gmail.com on Wed Jan 19 17:38:06 2022
    On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 4:42:48 AM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:
    J Tyler Faith cs 2020 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/abs/uncertain-case-for-humandriven-extinctions-prior-to-homo-sapiens/F91F1125CC0A988E322DA9AD9564F0C5
    ... Thus, at present, there is no compelling empirical > evidence supporting a deep history of hominin impacts on Africa's faunal > diversity.

    Yes, only compete imbeciles believe H.erectus ran after antelopes.

    https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/12/04/4140529.htm
    Snorkeled saiga antelope live far inland, were hunted by snorkeled H erectus...

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  • From littoral.homo@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jan 20 14:02:26 2022
    Op donderdag 20 januari 2022 om 02:38:07 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:


    Yes, only complete imbeciles believe H.erectus ran after antelopes. https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/12/04/4140529.htm

    Snorkeled saiga antelope live far inland, were hunted by snorkeled H erectus...

    OI, BIG NOSE !
    New Scientist 2782 p 69 Lastword 16 October 2010

    Why do humans evolve external noses that don’t seem to serve any useful purpose – our smelling sensors are inside the head. Our nose is vulnerable to damage, and the majority of primates and other mammals manage with relatively flat faces.
    Traditional explanations are that the nose protects against dry air, hot air, cold air, dusty air, whatever air, but most savannah mammals have no external noses, and polar animals such as arctic foxes or hares tend to evolve shorter extremities
    including flatter noses (Allen’s Rule), not larger as the Neanderthal protruding nose.

    The answer isn’t so difficult if we simply consider humans like other mammals.

    An external nose is seen in elephant seals, hooded seals, tapirs, elephants, swine and, among primates, in the mangrove-dwelling proboscis monkeys. Various, often mutually compatible functions, have been proposed, such as sexual display (in male hooded
    and elephant seals or proboscis monkeys), manipulation of food (in elephants, tapirs and swine), a snorkel (elephants, proboscis monkeys) and as a nose-closing aid during diving (in most of these animals). These mammals spend a lot of time at the margins
    of land and water. Possible functions of an external nose in creatures evolving into aquatic ones are obvious and match those listed above in many cases. They can initially act as a nose closure, a snorkel, to keep water out, to dig in wet soil for food,
    and so on. Afterwards, these external noses can also become co-opted for other functions, such as sexual display (visual as well as auditory) in hooded and elephant seals and proboscis monkeys.

    But what does this have to do with human evolution?

    The earliest known Homo fossils outside Africa – such as those at Mojokerto in Java and Dmanisi in Georgia – are about 1.8 million years old. The easiest way for them to have spread to other continents, and to islands such as Java, is along the
    coasts, and from there inland along rivers. During the glacial periods of the Pleistocene – the ice age cycles that ran from about 1.8 million to 12,000 years ago – most coasts were about 100 metres below the present-day sea level, so we don’t know
    whether or when Homo populations lived there. But coasts and riversides are full of shellfish and other foods that are easily collected and digested by smart, handy and tool-using “apes”, and are rich in potential brain-boosting nutrients such as
    docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

    If Pleistocene Homo spread along the coasts, beachcombing, wading and diving for seafoods as Polynesian islanders still do, this could explain why Homo erectus evolved larger brains (aided by DHA) and larger noses (because of their part-time diving).
    This littoral intermezzo could help to explain not only why we like to have our holidays at tropical beaches, eating shrimps and coconuts, but also why we became fat and furless bipeds with long legs, large brains and big noses.

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  • From DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_l@21:1/5 to littor...@gmail.com on Mon Jan 31 23:55:52 2022
    On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 5:02:28 PM UTC-5, littor...@gmail.com wrote:
    Op donderdag 20 januari 2022 om 02:38:07 UTC+1 schreef DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves:


    Yes, only complete imbeciles believe H.erectus ran after antelopes. https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/12/04/4140529.htm

    Snorkeled saiga antelope live far inland, were hunted by snorkeled H erectus...
    OI, BIG NOSE !
    New Scientist 2782 p 69 Lastword 16 October 2010

    Why do humans evolve external noses that don’t seem to serve any useful purpose – our smelling sensors are inside the head. Our nose is vulnerable to damage, and the majority of primates and other mammals manage with relatively flat faces.
    Traditional explanations are that the nose protects against dry air, hot air, cold air, dusty air, whatever air, but most savannah mammals have no external noses, and polar animals such as arctic foxes or hares tend to evolve shorter extremities
    including flatter noses (Allen’s Rule), not larger as the Neanderthal protruding nose.

    The answer isn’t so difficult if we simply consider humans like other mammals.

    An external nose is seen in elephant seals, hooded seals, tapirs, elephants, swine and, among primates, in the mangrove-dwelling proboscis monkeys. Various, often mutually compatible functions, have been proposed, such as sexual display (in male hooded
    and elephant seals or proboscis monkeys), manipulation of food (in elephants, tapirs and swine), a snorkel (elephants, proboscis monkeys) and as a nose-closing aid during diving (in most of these animals). These mammals spend a lot of time at the margins
    of land and water. Possible functions of an external nose in creatures evolving into aquatic ones are obvious and match those listed above in many cases. They can initially act as a nose closure, a snorkel, to keep water out, to dig in wet soil for food,
    and so on. Afterwards, these external noses can also become co-opted for other functions, such as sexual display (visual as well as auditory) in hooded and elephant seals and proboscis monkeys.

    But what does this have to do with human evolution?

    The earliest known Homo fossils outside Africa – such as those at Mojokerto in Java and Dmanisi in Georgia – are about 1.8 million years old. The easiest way for them to have spread to other continents, and to islands such as Java, is along the
    coasts, and from there inland along rivers. During the glacial periods of the Pleistocene – the ice age cycles that ran from about 1.8 million to 12,000 years ago – most coasts were about 100 metres below the present-day sea level, so we don’t know
    whether or when Homo populations lived there. But coasts and riversides are full of shellfish and other foods that are easily collected and digested by smart, handy and tool-using “apes”, and are rich in potential brain-boosting nutrients such as
    docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

    If Pleistocene Homo spread along the coasts, beachcombing, wading and diving for seafoods as Polynesian islanders still do, this could explain why Homo erectus evolved larger brains (aided by DHA) and larger noses (because of their part-time diving).
    This littoral intermezzo could help to explain not only why we like to have our holidays at tropical beaches, eating shrimps and coconuts, but also why we became fat and furless bipeds with long legs, large brains and big noses.
    -

    Skipping the mermaid fallacy...

    Pygmies slit the stems of large broad-leaves and clothespin them to the wicker frame of their dome huts. Ancient Homo did the same with their domeshield, and used the same slit & pin method to hang and cure ultra-thin meat slices at streamside (sunnier
    there than under the forest canopy) before fire was domesticated. Killing a boar or sow required a strong sharp spear, the hunters stood behind shields next to trees, if charged they climbed 2' up the tree, safe since the boar couldn't raise it's head,
    unlike a bull or stag. (Russians do this, they cling to tree trunks just above the ground, no need to climb higher.)

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