The funny thing about West Africa is that Colin Hendrie,
amongst others, seem to believe that it's the origin
point for Homo or the LCA or something...

A RINGS SPECIES

Have you heard the concept of a Ring Species?

Not to oversimplify things, though I am, think of a
circle. Place a dot at any random point along the
edge of that circle. Then place another immediately
to the right of that.. and other to the right of that
one, again & again, so on & so one. Now image each
of those dots is a population. And as the populations
proceed further & further from the point of origin the
become more & more distinct, until finally they wrap
all the way around back to the starting point, by which
time they are two distinct species unable to interbreed.

Ring Species.

Obviously this is a conceptual model and we don't
need an actual ring.

A line will do just fine.

And that line begins way over in East Africa where
the Aquatic Ape (or littoral/waterside) population
meets Africa.

Effectively they hug the coast everywhere from
Africa to Australia, or close enough.

"Sundaland," at least.

Occasionally groups broke off from this waterside
population, pushed inland and adapted. And one
of the ways they adapted was by interbreeding with
previous groups to have broken off, pushed inland
and adapted. But once adapted they spread. They
were quite successful and they spread. Of course
the further they spread the further removed they
were from the mother population... the less
susceptible they were to interbreeding...

There. That's our "Ring Species" model in a nutshell.

And THAT'S why West Africa looks the way it does
today.

And we kind of sort of know this to be fact because
Chimps are far removed from the LCA.

The LCA appears long AFTER bipedalism emerged,
so Chimps started out as bipedal, not knuckle walkers.

The human hand is the less derived, so the LCA had
a hand that looked more human than Chimp.

"Chimps ain't it," people.

The good Doctor's model is a good one... the good
Doctor's is good... good is good.. the Doctor.. good.

The good Doctor has a good model. You can argue
over timelines and specific species, if that gives you
the warm & fuzzies, but the model is quite good.

Australopithecus was quite successful. It spread. So
it is a candidate for a so called "Ring Species," even
if it's not a species but a genus.. "Ring Genus."

"You're not arguing, you're merely being anal retentive."

Maybe it wasn't Australopithecus but something else,
but the model works. And it fits the facts.

pretending that west Africa is the origins, these Chimps
the heirs to LCA's kingdom, is claiming that the exact
same selective pressures -- evolutionary forces -- that
spawned bipedalism is what destroyed it.

Not a good model.

The good Doctor's model? Good. Good Doctor good.
Mud walking spawning bipedalism which is also did
away with? Not so much.




-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/722829763403743232

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)