Traditional PA has made (at least) 2 preassumptions which are based on logical fallacies.

1) They assume human ancestors became bipedal when they left the forest for the open plain.

2) They assume that australopithcs were human ancestors to the exclusion of Pan & Gorilla.


1) Apes live in forests & are quadrupedal, humans lived on the ground & are bipedal, so human ancestors became bipedal when they went to the open plain.
This is, of course, illogical thinking: it confuses "after that " with "because of that". In logica, this sophism is called "post hoc, ergo propter hoc".

Baboon paradox:
Non-human animals that lave the forest for the plain, don't become bipedal (nor erect, nor naked, nor sweating, nor more tool-using, nor fat, nor brainier etc.), see e.g. forest vs savanna baboons.
-bipedal & erect? bipedal kangaroos & ostriches in open plains run with horizontal spines, penguins on land are bipedal & upright, tarsiers & gibbons are vertical in the branches, all apes hang vertically from branches, all great apes wade bipedally &
upright in forest swamps in search for papyrus, waterlilies etc.
-furless? shaved sheep easily overheat under the sun (Schmidt-Nielsen), -sweating? overheated furseals on the beach sweat abundantly from their naked flippers,
-fat? obesity is maladaptive in open sunny regions,
-tools? sea-otters, capuchin opening oysters or nuts, chimps opening nuts etc. -brain? savanna are poor in brain-specific nutrients, littoral & aquatic environments are richsts in such nutrients: DHA, iodine, taurine, oligo-elements etc.


2) PA textbooks describe
-100s of Miocene hominoid fossils in Eurasia (Helio-, Austriaco-, Dryo-, Oreo-, Ankara-etc.pithecus),
-100s of fossils of relatives & ancestors of orangutans (Siva-, Lufeng-, Giganto-etc.pithecus),
-1000s of fossils of human ancestors & relatives (so-called "hominins": Sahelanthrpus, Orrorin, Afropithecus, Paranthropus, Homo habilis etc.),
-0 or 1 fossil of fossil relatives or ancestors of chimps, bonobos or gorillas. This is statistically impossible. Some argue that African apes don't fossilize well on the forest floor, but we have plenty of fossils of other apes: why so many early hominoid ("ape") fossils, so many fossil pongids (relatives of orangutans), and esp.
fossils of so-called hman ancestors, but virtually none of the African apes?? This is clear anthropocentric bias: who wants to find a fossil chimp rather than a fossil human??


But if we reject these traditional axiomas (that we evolved in dry savanna, and that Lucy was our ancestor), are there alternative scenarios?
Yes: simply use the comparative evidence.

Google
"incredible logical mistakes in traditional paleo-anthropology 2019".

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