New human fossil finds are exciting, but don't always mean a new species has been found, or really "shake up the human family tree." Should discoverers be banned from studying their own fossils?
I agree with the sentiments here. Such fossil finds are always over-hyped.
As you imply, it's in the interest of the scientists as well as the journalists to put a spin on the news to make out the latest discovery is more important than it really was.
Certainly Dragon Man and Nesher Ramler both seem to fit into that category. So, the hominin phylogenetic tree was "bushy" - didn't we realise this this decades ago? I remember learning it when I did my Master's at UCL at the turn of the millennium. Big deal.
But on top of this cynical frustration with vain fossil hunters and headline seeking journalists, I have a much bigger complaint. They go on and on about "fossil x forces major rethink on the story of human origins" and yet completely ignore a story line on human evolution that really would require a rethink but that has been actively ignored for over sixty years.
I am, of course, thinking of the long mislabeled and misunderstood so-called "aquatic ape hypothesis" - better put under the (plural) umbrella term "waterside hypotheses of human evolution." It really does deserve serious attention, and has for decades.
For example, there is one and only one scenario where an extant ape can be compelled, with 100% certainty to switch from quadrupedalism to bipedalism for as long as the conditions prevail. Unlike wobbling upright in trees, it would do so completely without the support of the upper limbs and unlike threat displays, vigilance behaviors etc, it actually is locomotion...
It is: Wading in shallow water.
All the palaeohabitats of early putative hominids are conducive to a wading lifestyle. The recent Danuvius find (named after a Roman River God) was a river basin found among a plethora of turtle remains and other aquatic fauna. Oreopithecus has been touted as a "swamp ape". Sahelanthropus was discovered in the middle of palaeo lake Chad among hippo ancestors. Lucy's Hadar was a wetland for a million years. Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora had prominent water courses and fish nests. The list goes on.
Now THESE were fossil sites that really should have cause a rethink - and yet Elaine Morgan's brilliant contribution continues to be ignored and the field jogs on across the hot open plains following the fixation with the savannah theory regardless. At the recent CARTA symposium 5 out of 9 of the presentations basically promoted Dan Lieberman's rather extreme variation of the savannah theory - "Man the Mighty Marathon Runner."
When I first heard about Elaine in 1995 I was puzzled. Why is academia so against it? It seemed plausible enough to me, if just scaled back a little from thinking about mermaids and the man from Atlantis etc. So I returned to academia to try to find out. I did a MSc at UCL (under Leslie Aiello) and a PhD at UWA under Charles Oxnard and others. 25 years, a dozen papers and a book later I have come to the conclusion that there is no good reason this idea should be ignored. The only reason it remains in the wilderness is because of a kind of disappointingly groupish peer pressure resulting from generations of academic enculturation.
Isn't it time that someone within the field had the courage to start a real rethink, one that (shock horror) includes the hitherto heretical idea that some phenotypic selection in our lineage resulted from actually moving through water?
Dr Algis Kuliukas
Perth
Australia
28th June 2021
Meanwhile, Elaine Morgan's 40 yrs brilliant work is still completely ignored.
I most admire, and subsequently search for more, articles/reviews that discuss/analyze facts. A little self-promo is understandable but not stretching/mangling facts.
This site welcomes comments and criticisms. Hundreds of anthropologists have now read this article, but you are first person to say that the facts are inaccurate (unless you are referring to the Elaine Morgan comment above.) Naturally I would be curious to know which facts you think are wrong.
I agree with the sentiments here. Such fossil finds are always over-hyped.
As you imply, it's in the interest of the scientists as well as the journalists to put a spin on the news to make out the latest discovery is more important than it really was.
Certainly Dragon Man and Nesher Ramler both seem to fit into that category. So, the hominin phylogenetic tree was "bushy" - didn't we realise this this decades ago? I remember learning it when I did my Master's at UCL at the turn of the millennium. Big deal.
But on top of this cynical frustration with vain fossil hunters and headline seeking journalists, I have a much bigger complaint. They go on and on about "fossil x forces major rethink on the story of human origins" and yet completely ignore a story line on human evolution that really would require a rethink but that has been actively ignored for over sixty years.
I am, of course, thinking of the long mislabeled and misunderstood so-called "aquatic ape hypothesis" - better put under the (plural) umbrella term "waterside hypotheses of human evolution." It really does deserve serious attention, and has for decades.
For example, there is one and only one scenario where an extant ape can be compelled, with 100% certainty to switch from quadrupedalism to bipedalism for as long as the conditions prevail. Unlike wobbling upright in trees, it would do so completely without the support of the upper limbs and unlike threat displays, vigilance behaviors etc, it actually is locomotion...
It is: Wading in shallow water.
All the palaeohabitats of early putative hominids are conducive to a wading lifestyle. The recent Danuvius find (named after a Roman River God) was a river basin found among a plethora of turtle remains and other aquatic fauna. Oreopithecus has been touted as a "swamp ape". Sahelanthropus was discovered in the middle of palaeo lake Chad among hippo ancestors. Lucy's Hadar was a wetland for a million years. Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora had prominent water courses and fish nests. The list goes on.
Now THESE were fossil sites that really should have cause a rethink - and yet Elaine Morgan's brilliant contribution continues to be ignored and the field jogs on across the hot open plains following the fixation with the savannah theory regardless. At the recent CARTA symposium 5 out of 9 of the presentations basically promoted Dan Lieberman's rather extreme variation of the savannah theory - "Man the Mighty Marathon Runner."
When I first heard about Elaine in 1995 I was puzzled. Why is academia so against it? It seemed plausible enough to me, if just scaled back a little from thinking about mermaids and the man from Atlantis etc. So I returned to academia to try to find out. I did a MSc at UCL (under Leslie Aiello) and a PhD at UWA under Charles Oxnard and others. 25 years, a dozen papers and a book later I have come to the conclusion that there is no good reason this idea should be ignored. The only reason it remains in the wilderness is because of a kind of disappointingly groupish peer pressure resulting from generations of academic enculturation.
Isn't it time that someone within the field had the courage to start a real rethink, one that (shock horror) includes the hitherto heretical idea that some phenotypic selection in our lineage resulted from actually moving through water?
Dr Algis Kuliukas
Perth
Australia
28th June 2021
Meanwhile, Elaine Morgan's 40 yrs brilliant work is still completely ignored.
#WatersideRealRethink
I most admire, and subsequently search for more, articles/reviews that discuss/analyze facts. A little self-promo is understandable but not stretching/mangling facts.
This site welcomes comments and criticisms. Hundreds of anthropologists have now read this article, but you are first person to say that the facts are inaccurate (unless you are referring to the Elaine Morgan comment above.) Naturally I would be curious to know which facts you think are wrong.