Why you are fat and the chimp isn’t

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 5, 2015

Human evolution, News}

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As a genus, humans, from Homo sapiens (that’s us) to our extinct ancestors Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus, are wanderers. Over the vast majority of our history, which spans hundreds of thousands of years, we have roved from place to place, inhabiting a wide range of habitats. We moved with the seasons, we moved to find food, we moved — perhaps — just to move. Our adaptability was our key adaptation, an evolutionary leg-up on the competition. The ability to store fat was vital to this lifestyle. Body fat cushions internal organs, but it also serves as a repository of energy that can be readily broken down and used to power muscles. Humans might fatten up at one environment, then move on to another. When food was scarce, we could count on our fat to sustain us, at least temporarily.

Chimpanzees, on the other hand, are localized to specific environments where food is often plentiful, primarily the forests of West and Central Africa. Fatty stores of energy aren’t required, but strength to climb food-bearing trees is. Natural selection favored brawn, causing chimps to shed fat as unnecessary weight.

Clever idea. But thoughts from readers?

(Who would want to be a chimp just to be thin?)

See also: Why human evolution did not go the way analysts would have predicted

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Comments

Earliest ape fossil is clearly ape. Not monkey. Not human. Ape. White Line Ape. Flung poo probably. http://mobile.the-scientist.com/article/35555/oldest-fossil-of-ape-discovered I'm not familiar with the Dmanisi skull. But it's a member of a monkey tribe, an ape tribe, or a human tribe. Pick one. Doubt if it's human sapien. But I'm making s guess. Did not Google.ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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Hi ppolish,
It’s not an ape fossil Dave. Earliest ape fossils were clearly apes. Not monkeys mind you. Apes. White Line now, White Line then.
So I take it you believe the Dmanisi skull is human? Edit: By "human" I mean homo sapiens. I don't know if that's standard.daveS_{June 5, 2015
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It's not an ape fossil Dave. Earliest ape fossils were clearly apes. Not monkeys mind you. Apes. White Line now, White Line then.ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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cognitive dissonance in its full glory folks!
Eh? Not getting your meaning.daveS_{June 5, 2015
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I’m not interested in a debate over atheism or Darwinism. I am just curious about whether the skull is human. cognitive dissonance in its full glory folks!bornagain77_{June 5, 2015
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BA77,
so the experts themselves don’t even know for certain what the fossils are and you, from pictures on the internet, are saying it is awkward for me to refuse to speculate on them?
I think your reluctance to speculate is perfectly reasonable. You know more about this stuff than I do. But isn't it strange that this fossil is so hard to place? Are there modern primates whose skulls could be confused with human skulls?
Moreover, why don’t you accept the much more robust evidence I presented from extensive cranial and dental analysis that found no evidence for common descent?
Your evidence could be conclusive and common descent could be rubbish. But then the fact that you have such trouble deciding whether this particular skull is human would be even more mysterious.
Or is speculation okay with you when it supports your preferred atheistic worldview and robust evidence ignored when it does not support it? Real science could care less for what you may imagine to be true and only cares what you can demonstrate to be true. And in regards to empirical science, Darwinism is not even on first base as being a real science.
I'm not interested in a debate over atheism or Darwinism. I am just curious about whether the skull is human.daveS_{June 5, 2015
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WD400, show me some ape fossils. White Line that is evident now should also be evident in the fossil record. "But apes don't fossilize." "they're dainty like precambrians."ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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If there is a bright white line between man and ape then it should be easy to differentiate them? On the other hand, if the two are connected by an unbroken chain of inheritance...wd400_{June 5, 2015
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so the experts themselves don't even know for certain what the fossils are and you, from pictures on the internet, are saying it is awkward for me to refuse to speculate on them? If there is anything awkward at all in this whole deal it is in the fact that this one find completely blew apart the Darwinian narrative up to that point and you, apparently nonplussed in the least, still resolutely believe in the Darwinian narrative even though this one find blew apart the narrative up to that point:
Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray – OCT. 17, 2013 Excerpt: Over decades excavating sites in Africa, researchers have named half a dozen different species of early human ancestor, but most, if not all, are now on shaky ground.,,, If the scientists are right, it would trim the base of the human evolutionary tree and spell the end for names such as H rudolfensis, H gautengensis, H ergaster and possibly H habilis. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution
Moreover, why don't you accept the much more robust evidence I presented from extensive cranial and dental analysis that found no evidence for common descent? Or is speculation okay with you when it supports your preferred atheistic worldview and robust evidence ignored when it does not support it? Real science could care less for what you may imagine to be true and only cares what you can demonstrate to be true. And in regards to empirical science, Darwinism is not even on first base as being a real science.
"Grand Darwinian claims rest on undisciplined imagination" Dr. Michael Behe - 29:24 mark of following video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=s6XAXjiyRfM#t=1762s
bornagain77_{June 5, 2015
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BA77,
You want me to definitively say what the fossils are when the experts themselves are not even sure what they are or even if the fossils belong together as one species?
"I don't know" is always a respectable answer. But isn't it a bit awkward if you can't tell whether these fossils are human? Especially for someone who questions common descent.daveS_{June 5, 2015
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Modern Apes descended from human like ancestors is my guess. Heck, modern Apes have 99% human DNA. Shame there are no fossils to speak of for Apes.ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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In the following podcasts, Casey Luskin, speaking at the 2014 Science and Human Origins conference, discusses why the fossil evidence doesn’t support the claim that humans evolved from some ape-like precursor. 2014 - podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 1 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us/ podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 2 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us-pt-2/ podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 3 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us-pt-3/ podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 4 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us-pt-4/ as mentioned previously, neo-Darwinists do not even have a viable mechanism: Thou Shalt Not Put Evolutionary Theory to a Test - Douglas Axe - July 18, 2012 Excerpt: "For example, McBride criticizes me for not mentioning genetic drift in my discussion of human origins, apparently without realizing that the result of Durrett and Schmidt rules drift out. Each and every specific genetic change needed to produce humans from apes would have to have conferred a significant selective advantage in order for humans to have appeared in the available time (i.e. the mutations cannot be 'neutral'). Any aspect of the transition that requires two or more mutations to act in combination in order to increase fitness would take way too long (greater than 100 million years). My challenge to McBride, and everyone else who believes the evolutionary story of human origins, is not to provide the list of mutations that did the trick, but rather a list of mutations that can do it. Otherwise they're in the position of insisting that something is a scientific fact without having the faintest idea how it even could be." Doug Axe PhD. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/thou_shalt_not062351.htmlbornagain77_{June 5, 2015
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You want me to definitively say what the fossils are when the experts themselves are not even sure what they are or even if the fossils belong together as one species?
"The dimensions were so strange that one scientist at the site joked that they should leave it in the ground." http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution Skull "Rewrites" Story of Human Evolution -- Again - Casey Luskin - October 22, 2013 Excerpt: "There is a big gap in the fossil record," Zollikofer told NBC News. "I would put a question mark there. Of course it would be nice to say this was the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and us, but we simply don't know." - http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/skull_rewrites_078221.html
No thanks, I'll leave such unfounded speculations for such questionable fossils to the Darwinists. They are experts in proclaiming certainty where none is forthcoming. What I can say for certain is that Darwinists do not have the fossils (nor a viable mechanism for that matter) to make their case for a gradual transition:
Human/Ape Common Ancestry: Following the Evidence - Casey Luskin - June 2011 Excerpt: So the researchers constructed an evolutionary tree based on 129 skull and tooth measurements for living hominoids, including gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and humans, and did the same with 62 measurements recorded on Old World monkeys, including baboons, mangabeys and macaques. They also drew upon published molecular phylogenies. At the outset, Wood and Collard assumed the molecular evidence was correct. “There were so many different lines of genetic evidence pointing in one direction,” Collard explains. But no matter how the computer analysis was run, the molecular and morphological trees could not be made to match15 (see figure, below). Collard says this casts grave doubt on the reliability of using morphological evidence to determine the fine details of evolutionary trees for higher primates. “It is saying it is positively misleading,” he says. The abstract of the pair’s paper stated provocatively that “existing phylogenetic hypotheses about human evolution are unlikely to be reliable”.[10] http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/following_the_evidence_where_i047161.html#comment-9266481 Human Origins, and the Real Reasons for Evolutionary Skepticism - Jonathan M. - December 9, 2012 Excerpt: "Cladistic analysis of cranial and dental evidence has been widely used to generate phylogenetic hypotheses about humans and their fossil relatives. However, the reliability of these hypotheses has never been subjected to external validation. To rectify this, we applied internal methods to equivalent evidence from two groups of extant higher primates for whom reliable molecular phylogenies are available, the hominoids and paionins. We found that the phylogenetic hypotheses based on the craniodental data were incompatible with the molecular phylogenies for the groups. Given the robustness of the molecular phylogenies, these results indicate that little confidence can be placed in phylogenies generated solely from higher primate craniodental evidence. The corollary of this is that existing phylogenetic hypotheses about human evolution are unlikely to be reliable." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/human_origins_a1067181.html No Known Hominin Is Common Ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans, Study Suggests - Oct. 21, 2013 Excerpt: The article, "No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans," relies on fossils of approximately 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 species or types of hominins -- humans and human relatives and ancestors. Fossils from the well-known Atapuerca sites have a crucial role in this research, accounting for more than 15 percent of the complete studied fossil collection.,,, They conclude with high statistical confidence that none of the hominins usually proposed as a common ancestor, such as Homo heidelbergensis, H. erectus and H. antecessor, is a satisfactory match. "None of the species that have been previously suggested as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans has a dental morphology that is fully compatible with the expected morphology of this ancestor," Gómez-Robles said. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131021153202.htm "A number of hominid crania are known from sites in eastern and southern Africa in the 400- to 200-thousand-year range, but none of them looks like a close antecedent of the anatomically distinctive Homo sapiens…Even allowing for the poor record we have of our close extinct kin, Homo sapiens appears as distinctive and unprecedented…there is certainly no evidence to support the notion that we gradually became who we inherently are over an extended period, in either the physical or the intellectual sense." Dr. Ian Tattersall: - paleoanthropologist - emeritus curator of the American Museum of Natural History - (Masters of the Planet, 2012) Human Origins and the Fossil Record: What Does the Evidence Say? - Casey Luskin - July 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, far from supplying "a nice clean example" of "gradualistic evolutionary change," the record reveals a dramatic discontinuity between ape-like and human-like fossils. Human-like fossils appear abruptly in the record, without clear evolutionary precursors, making the case for human evolution based on fossils highly speculative. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/human_origins_a_1061771.html
bornagain77_{June 5, 2015
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Maybe this picture of the Dmanisi skull is a better example. Clearly not human, but also very different from chimpanzees etc. What/who is it?daveS_{June 5, 2015
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BA77,
Well, since the leading experts themselves can’t seem to agree on a ‘opinion’ about what homo erectus is, I certainly don’t think my opinion matters to resolving the issue.
AFAIK, the classification could be fictitious, and could be revised in the future. Do you think these skulls are humans? (Picture from your link to the Guardian) If they are not human, what are they?daveS_{June 5, 2015
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The ability to store fat was vital to this lifestyle. Think fat bacteria, who cover the earth. Talk about a bunch of wanderers! ok, wait. So now we need to add another epicycle. No problem!Mung_{June 5, 2015
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as to: "Serious question: What’s your opinion on Homo erectus? Were they human?" Well, since the leading experts themselves can't seem to agree on a 'opinion' about what homo erectus is, I certainly don't think my opinion matters to resolving the issue.
Human Evolution Excerpt: Tattersall thinks H. erectus was an evolutionary dead end. Uconn says he was our immediate ancestor. There are several other differences which we won’t take the time to point out. A recent issue of Science presents the six different explanations of hominid evolution at the right, which they refer to as “Figure 1.” Their caption says: Figure 1. Cladograms favored in recent early hominin parsimony analyses. (A) Most parsimonious cladogram recovered by Chamberlain and Wood (19) using Chamberlain’s (18) operational taxonomic units. Homo sp. = H. rudolfensis. (B) Most parsimonious cladogram obtained in Chamberlain (18). African H. erectus = H. ergaster. (C) Cladogram favored in Wood (9). Homo sp. nov. = H. rudolfensis and H. aff. erectus = H. ergaster. (D) Most parsimonious cladogram recovered by Wood (2). A. boisei includes A. aethiopicus. (E) Most parsimonious cladogram obtained by Lieberman et al. (20). 1470 group = H. rudolfensis; 1813 group = H. habilis. (F) Cladogram favored by Strait et al. (17). http://scienceagainstevolution.org/v4i4f.htm Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray - OCT. 17, 2013 Excerpt: Over decades excavating sites in Africa, researchers have named half a dozen different species of early human ancestor, but most, if not all, are now on shaky ground.,,, If the scientists are right, it would trim the base of the human evolutionary tree and spell the end for names such as H rudolfensis, H gautengensis, H ergaster and possibly H habilis. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution Skull "Rewrites" Story of Human Evolution -- Again - Casey Luskin - October 22, 2013 Excerpt: "I think it's probably premature to dump everything into Homo erectus," Johanson told NBC News. "This is what you're going to find the most opposition to.",,, "There is a big gap in the fossil record," Zollikofer told NBC News. "I would put a question mark there. Of course it would be nice to say this was the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and us, but we simply don't know." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/skull_rewrites_078221.html
But my 'opinion', for what its worth, (if you had a dollar and my opinion you could get a Coke), is that homo erectus is a fictitious classification, originally perpetrated by Ernst Mayr, that was pieced together from various unrelated fossils, around a certain time period, in order to fit the Darwinian narrative:
Hominids, Homonyms, and Homo sapiens - 05/27/2009: Excerpt: Homo erectus is particularly controversial, because it is such a broad classification. Tattersall and Schwartz find no clear connection between the Asian, European and African specimens lumped into this class. “In his 1950 review, Ernst Mayr placed all of these forms firmly within the species Homo erectus,” they explained. “Subsequently, Homo erectus became the standard-issue ‘hominid in the middle,’ expanding to include not only the fossils just mentioned, but others of the same general period....”. They discussed the arbitrariness of this classification: "Put together, all these fossils (which span almost 2 myr) make a very heterogeneous assortment indeed; and placing them all together in the same species only makes any conceivable sense in the context of the ecumenical view of Homo erectus as the middle stage of the single hypervariable hominid lineage envisioned by Mayr (on the basis of a much slenderer record). Viewed from the morphological angle, however, the practice of cramming all of this material into a single Old World-wide species is highly questionable. Indeed, the stuffing process has only been rendered possible by a sort of ratchet effect, in which fossils allocated to Homo erectus almost regardless of their morphology have subsequently been cited as proof of just how variable the species can be." By “ratchet effect,” they appear to mean something like a self-fulfilling prophecy: i.e., “Let’s put everything from this 2-million-year period into one class that we will call Homo erectus.” Someone complains, “But this fossil from Singapore is very different from the others.” The first responds, “That just shows how variable the species Homo erectus can be.” http://creationsafaris.com/crev200905.htm#20090527a
In my 'opinion', Darwinists simply 'want' human evolution to be true too much in order for them to be objective in their analysis of the fossils:
“What I saw about the fossil record again,, was that Gould and Eldridge were experts in the area where the animal fossil record is most complete. That is marine invertebrates.,, And the reason for this is that when,, a bird, or a human, or an ape, or a wolf, or whatever, dies,, normally it does not get fossilized. It decays in the open, or is eaten by scavengers. Things get fossilized when they get covered over quickly with sediments so that they are protected from this natural destructive process. So if you want to be a fossil, the way to go about it is to live in the shallow seas, where you get covered over by sediments when you die,,. Most of the animal fossils are of that kind and it is in that area where the fossil record is most complete. That there is a consistent pattern.,, I mean there is evolution in the sense of variation, just like the peppered moth example. Things do vary, but they vary within the type. The new types appear suddenly, fully formed, without an evolutionary history and then they stay fundamentally stable with (cyclical) variation after their sudden appearance, and stasis (according) to the empirical observations made by Gould and Eldridge. Well now you see, I was aware of a number of examples of where evolutionary intermediates were cited. This was brought up as soon as people began to make the connection and question the (Darwinian) profession about their theory in light of the controversy. But the examples of claimed evolutionary transitionals, oddly enough, come from the area of the fossil record where fossilization is rarest. Where it is least likely to happen.,,, One of things that amused me is that there are so many fossil candidates for human ancestorship, and so very few fossils that are candidates for the great apes.,, There should be just as many. But why not? Any economist can give you the answer to that. Human ancestors have a great American value and so they are produced at a much greater rate.,, These also were grounds to be suspicious of what was going on,,, ,,,if the problem is the greatest where the fossil record is most complete and if the confirming examples are found where fossils are rarest, that doesn’t sound like it could be the explanation." - Phillip Johnson - April 2012 - audio/video 15:05 minute mark to 19:15 minute mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJDlBvbPSMA&feature=player_detailpage#t=903s What Questions About Evolution Come Down to Is, "Who ARE We?" - Denyse O'Leary - August 18, 2014 Excerpt: ,,, "human evolution" is now so integral to our culture that demand outpaces authenticity. The disappointing history of Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and Ardi, all hailed in 2001 as human ancestors, attests to the frustrating search for "missing links." Sediba, another supposed ancestor, fared no better in 2013. A science writer at Wired, not known for intelligent-design sympathies, derides the ceaseless buzz as "ancestor worship.",,, "Flores Man" is an example. Supposedly, a new diminutive species of humans (discovered in 2004) arose, flourished, and died out from earlier than 18,000 years ago,,, The latest article I'm aware of charges that "Homo floresiensis" is an invalid species classification, and the principal skeleton may have been of a woman who suffered from a genetic disorder, Down syndrome. It hardly sounds like settled science to an observer.,,, ,,,Current humans have some Neanderthal genes and it is unclear that the group lived differently from the rest of ancient mankind. So any decisions about them are bound to be political or theological at this point. Commenting on a dispute over a supposed human ancestor, Smithsonian paleoanthropologist Richard Potts told the Wall Street Journal, "Evolution is wonderfully messy." Few would dispute it, but a multitude of conflicting speculations does not add up to progress. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/what_questions089051.html
bornagain77_{June 5, 2015
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Poop flinging studies; http://www.wired.com/2011/11/chimp-throwing/ . http://m.phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps-intelligence.htmlppolish_{June 5, 2015
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The 2 NorCal Professors are no doubt excited their skinny chimp study made it into "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science". But this is Cargo Cult Science at best, Cargo Cult Religion at worst. Better would be "Did chimp diet evolve to maximize poop flinging distance?" At least there would be some measurements, some aerodynamics, and some math for crying out loud. You could still work in the 99% DNA shtick . That is key lol.ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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BA77,
Perhaps it would help your and Zach’s credibility, and stop us from laughing at you, if you guys actually demonstrated that it is possible to change one creature into another creature?
Serious question: What's your opinion on Homo erectus? Were they human?daveS_{June 5, 2015
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"Colorful and high-caloric fruits evolved as a way to disseminate seeds." Zach, the fine tuning required on so many levels for that "evolution" to happen boggles the human mind. Colorful and high BS Evo studies have a better chance to be disseminated by blogs/mags. Eg "skinny chimp" Evo Theory. What utter BS. Colorful. Cmon, have an obese human and skinny chimp switch their diet & exercise regimen for a year. Skinnier human and fatter chimp. Wow, Evolution works fast sometimes.ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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wd400 states "No part of that hypothesis seems unreasonable to me.,,, So why the childish dismissal of this hypothesis?" Perhaps it would help your and Zach's credibility, and stop us from laughing at you, if you guys actually demonstrated that it is possible to change one creature into another creature? Especially, before you guys just assume that it happened and start making up all these outlandish, and yes humorous, fairy tale stories?
Response to John Wise - October 2010 Excerpt: A technique called "saturation mutagenesis"1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12 None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans--because none of the observed developmental mutations benefit the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html The Trouble with Darwin by Kas Thomas - February 16, 2014 Excerpt: Darwin's landmark work was called The Origin of Species, yet it doesn't actually explain in detail how speciation happens (and in fact, no one has seen it happen in the laboratory, unless you want to count plant hybridization or certain breeding anomalies in fruit flies). Almost everything in evolutionary theory is based on "survival of the fittest," a tautology that explains nothing. ("Fittest" means most able to survive. Survival of the fittest means survival of those who survive.) The means by which new survival skills emerge is, at best, murky. Of course, we can't expect Darwin himself to have proposed detailed genetic or epigenetic causes for speciation, given that he was unaware of the work of Mendel, but the fact is, even today we have a hard time figuring out how things like a bacterial flagellum first appeared. When I was in school, we were taught that mutations in DNA are the driving force behind evolution, an idea that is now thoroughly discredited. The overwhelming majority of non-neutral mutations are deleterious (reducing, not increasing, survival). This is easily demonstrated in the lab. Most mutations lead to loss of function, not gain of function. Evolutionary theory, it turns out, is great at explaining things like the loss of eyesight, over time, by cave-dwelling creatures. It's terrible at explaining gain of function. It's also terrible at explaining the speed at which speciation occurs. (Of course, The Origin of Species is entirely silent on the subject of how life arose from abiotic conditions in the first place.) It doesn't explain the Cambrian Explosion, for example, or the sudden appearance of intelligence in hominids,,, http://bigthink.com/devil-in-the-data/the-trouble-with-darwin Scant search for the Maker Excerpt: But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms. - Alan H. Linton - emeritus professor of bacteriology, University of Bristol. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=159282
bornagain77_{June 5, 2015
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"Hi, I'm Dan Marino and I lost 40lbs using the Jane Goodall Chimp Diet. Combine with the patented "Monkey Bar" exercise system and see even better results" "Are you tired of looking in the mirror and seeing a fat nomad? Well, take it from me, Marie Osmond, you will lose 5 pounds in your first week using the Scientifically Proven Jane Goodall Chimp Diet. Guaranteed. What are you waiting for?ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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Modern Nomadic folks will be chubby per this theory. Evidence? Fat Americans wandering around Paris does not count.ppolish_{June 5, 2015
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Ahh, but evolution is pretty smart. It gave humans fat. Not only did they not have to eat as much, but they could reproduce more. Nice job evolution!
Are you trying to make a serious point? They hypothesis here that genetic variants can change the degree to which people deposit fat (still true), and that once our ancestors adopted a lifestyle in which they move from habitat to habitat those variants that let their owners store more fat were more likely to be reproduced. No part of that hypothesis seems unreasonable to me. There are certainly genetic variants that effect fat deposition, there is no doubt that our ancestors were less tied to a habitat that chimps and fat deposition seems a useful trait in that case (and in fact there are pleny of studies of energetics and fertility in modern hunter gatherer societies). You could also (potentially) test the idea that selection fixed fat-deposition alleles using genomic data. So why the childish dismissal of this hypothesis?wd400_{June 5, 2015
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Thanks, BA -- I notice our evolutionary friends almost never answer the wealth of counter-arguments you post. Meanwhile, I've started collecting them in a file just to be able to read and keep up with it all.Silver Asiatic_{June 5, 2015
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Zach
Humans moved for a variety of reasons. The larger brain required a richer food source, which included cooked meat.
When evolution gives you a bigger brain, you better start moving around to find some richer food - otherwise, evolution will take that bigger brain away!Silver Asiatic_{June 5, 2015
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SA if wit were a sword, Zach would truly be the million 'we' he thinks he is after your post. :) Here are a few facts that are not quite as unfactual as Zach's facts turned out to be:
Energy Efficiency Doesn’t Explain Human Walking? Sept. 17, 2012 Excerpt: Why hominids evolved upright walking is one of the biggest questions in human evolution. One school of thought suggests that bipedalism was the most energetically efficient way for our ancestors to travel as grasslands expanded and forests shrank across Africa some five million to seven million years ago. A new study in the Journal of Human Evolution challenges that claim, concluding that the efficiency of human walking and running is not so different from other mammals. Physiologists Lewis Halsey of the University of Roehampton in England and Craig White of the University of Queensland in Australia compared the efficiency of human locomotion to that of 80 species of mammals, including monkeys, rodents, horses, bears and elephants.,,, To evaluate whether energy efficiency played a role in the evolution of upright walking, Halsey and White note that hominids should be compared to their closest relatives. For example, if human walking is more efficient than chimpanzee walking than you would expect based on chance alone, then it lends support to the energy-efficiency explanation. But that’s not what the researchers found. In fact, the energetic differences between humans and chimpanzees are smaller than the differences between very closely related species that share the same type of locomotion, such as red deer versus reindeer or African dogs versus Arctic foxes. In some cases, even different species within the same genus, such as different types of chipmunks, have greater variation in their walking efficiencies than humans and chimps do. http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2012/09/energy-efficiency-doesnt-explain-human-walking/ Another Difficulty with Darwinian Accounts of How Human Bipedalism Developed - David Klinghoffer - February 21, 2013 Excerpt: A Darwinian evolutionary bedtime story tells of how proto-man achieved his upright walking status when the forests of his native East Africa turned to savannas. That was 4 to 6 million years ago, and the theory was that our ancestors stood up in order to be able to look around themselves over the sea of grasslands, which would have been irrelevant in the forests of old. A team of researchers led by USC's Sarah J. Feakins, writing in the journal Geology, detonate that tidy explanation with their finding that the savannas, going back 12 million years, had already been there more than 6 million years when the wonderful transition to bipedalism took place ("Northeast African vegetation change over 12 m.y."). http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/02/another_difficu069411.html
Of semi related note: Anatomical differences between chimps and humans are far more widespread than Darwinists would presuppose:
The Red Ape - Cornelius Hunter - August 2009 Excerpt: "There remains, however, a paradoxical problem lurking within the wealth of DNA data: our morphology and physiology have very little, if anything, uniquely in common with chimpanzees to corroborate a unique common ancestor. Most of the characters we do share with chimpanzees also occur in other primates, and in sexual biology and reproduction we could hardly be more different. It would be an understatement to think of this as an evolutionary puzzle." http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/08/red-ape.html ,,,But…in the second section of their paper King and Wilson honestly describe the deficiencies of such reasoning: “The molecular similarity between chimpanzees and humans is extraordinary because they differ far more than sibling species in anatomy and way of life. Although humans and chimpanzees are rather similar in the structure of the thorax and arms, they differ substantially not only in brain size but also in the anatomy of the pelvis, foot, and jaws, as well as in relative lengths of limbs and digits (38). Humans and chimpanzees also differ significantly in many other anatomical respects, to the extent that nearly every bone in the body of a chimpanzee is readily distinguishable in shape or size from its human counterpart (38). Associated with these anatomical differences there are, of course, major differences in posture (see cover picture), mode of locomotion, methods of procuring food, and means of communication. Because of these major differences in anatomy and way of life, biologists place the two species not just in separate genera but in separate families (39). So it appears that molecular and organismal methods of evaluating the chimpanzee human difference yield quite different conclusions (40).” King and Wilson went on to suggest that the morphological and behavioral between humans and apes,, must be due to variations in their genomic regulatory systems. David Berlinski - The Devil's Delusion - Page 162&163 Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees Mary-Claire King; A. C. Wilson - 1975
A Darwinist informed me that the classification that King and Wilson used to infer that humans that the two species are not just in separate genera but in separate families was from 40 years ago and that Darwinists had now ‘monkeyed’ with cladistic analysis and that humans are now reclassified as apes. (I guess that makes it ‘official’ since a Darwinist did the reclassifying). Yet, contrary to what the Darwinist believed to be true, the known differences between apes and humans have been growing larger, not smaller, over the last 40 years. So if anything, the original classification that had humans classified not just in separate genera but also in separate families should have been reinforced not weakened. In fact, so great are the anatomical differences between humans and chimps that a Darwinist, since pigs are found to be 'anatomically' closer to humans than chimps are, actually proposed that a chimp and pig mated with each other and that is what ultimately gave rise to humans:
A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans? - July 3, 2013 Excerpt: Dr. Eugene McCarthy,, has amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that human origins can be best explained by hybridization between pigs and chimpanzees. Extraordinary theories require extraordinary evidence and McCarthy does not disappoint. Rather than relying on genetic sequence comparisons, he instead offers extensive anatomical comparisons, each of which may be individually assailable, but startling when taken together.,,, The list of anatomical specializations we may have gained from porcine philandering is too long to detail here. Suffice it to say, similarities in the face, skin and organ microstructure alone is hard to explain away. A short list of differential features, for example, would include, multipyramidal kidney structure, presence of dermal melanocytes, melanoma, absence of a primate baculum (penis bone), surface lipid and carbohydrate composition of cell membranes, vocal cord structure, laryngeal sacs, diverticuli of the fetal stomach, intestinal "valves of Kerkring," heart chamber symmetry, skin and cranial vasculature and method of cooling, and tooth structure. Other features occasionally seen in humans, like bicornuate uteruses and supernumerary nipples, would also be difficult to incorporate into a purely primate tree. http://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.html
Moreover, Physorg published a subsequent article showing that the pig-chimp hybrid theory for human origins is much harder to shoot down than many neo-Darwinists had first supposed it would be:
Human hybrids: a closer look at the theory and evidence - July 25, 2013 Excerpt: There was considerable fallout, both positive and negative, from our first story covering the radical pig-chimp hybrid theory put forth by Dr. Eugene McCarthy,,,By and large, those coming out against the theory had surprisingly little science to offer in their sometimes personal attacks against McCarthy. ,,,Under the alternative hypothesis (humans are not pig-chimp hybrids), the assumption is that humans and chimpanzees are equally distant from pigs. You would therefore expect chimp traits not seen in humans to be present in pigs at about the same rate as are human traits not found in chimps. However, when he searched the literature for traits that distinguish humans and chimps, and compiled a lengthy list of such traits, he found that it was always humans who were similar to pigs with respect to these traits. This finding is inconsistent with the possibility that humans are not pig-chimp hybrids, that is, it rejects that hypothesis.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-human-hybrids-closer-theory-evidence.html Gene McCarthy claimed that the evidence points to humans as hybrids of chimps and pigs. Here is a partial list of differences that he provides: https://uncommondescent.com/genetics/at-last-a-proposed-answer-re-98-human-chimpanzee-similarity-claim/#comment-510021
Now Zach, you are going to have to work on your Darwinian story telling quite a lot before you can beat the Pig/Chimp, i.e. "PIMP", hypothesis! :)bornagain77_{June 5, 2015
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Zachriel: Not exactly. Silver Asiatic: That is excellent! We now know even more about it. Thanks for telling us more scientific facts, Zachriel — and especially for correcting Mr. Pomeroy, a “zoologist and biologist by training”. Here's his statement: "We moved with the seasons, we moved to find food, we moved -- perhaps -- just to move." Humans moved for a variety of reasons. The larger brain required a richer food source, which included cooked meat. That meant moving with the herds, seasonal dependency, as well as local depletion of food sources. Over time, wanderlust became part of the fabric of the human animal. Silver Asiatic: as Darwin taught us, the more primitive the tribal society, the more like a chimpanzee you are. Actually all modern humans share a much more recent ancestral population. Silver Asiatic: Plus, bananas taste a lot better and chimps didn’t want to store calories in fat AND be able to climb trees. Chimpanzees don't have to store calories as they live in forests that provide food year round. Silver Asiatic: After all, trees had all that fruit and they needed chimps to go up there and eat it. Colorful and high-caloric fruits evolved as a way to disseminate seeds.Zachriel_{June 5, 2015
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Ok, you almost got me there ... "If chimps got fat, then the trees couldn't hold them". Nice try. But Mung already taught us the facts we need to answer this: "If chimps got fat, then trees would have co-evolved to get strong enough to hold them. After all, trees had all that fruit and they needed chimps to go up there and eat it." As Zachriel explained, "It's not that complicated".Silver Asiatic_{June 5, 2015
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