On Thursday, March 16, 2023 at 11:41:11 AM UTC-4, marc verhaegen wrote:
> Google
> "GondwanaTalks Verhaegen"
> https://www.gondwanatalks.com/l/the-waterside-hypothesis-wading-led-to-upright-walking-in-early-humans/

What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
than African present-day apes. Dubois thought that the fossil he named "Pithecanthropus erectus"
was transitional between gibbons and humans, but that theory was shelved ca.. 1950 in favor
of it being a subspecies of Homo erectus. More importantly, it was not a littoral fossil, but
was found on the banks of the Solo River:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Man

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

Peter Nyikos wrote:

> What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
> than African present-day apes.

Well Harpmun, the real Harshmun, used to babble endlessly about "Ghost
Lineages." He had no idea what he meant by it but consider this:

Chimps descend from a bipedal ancestor. Sahelanthropus tchadensis dates further back
than the conventional dating for the LCA and was perhaps MORE bipedal than at least
some Australopithecines... judging from the foramen magnum. There's clearly a gap there.

And, most "Out of Asia" aficionados I've come across favor Sundaland as the point of
origins. And it makes a lot of sense, being both equatorial and just low enough in elevation
that groups were going to periodically find themselves flooded out, stranded. But that
same flooding would have washed away or at least buried much of it's history... the
Glacial/Interglacial cycle... it was Ground Zero for Toba... hit mighty hard by that asteroid(s)
event(s) of around 800k years ago... lots of more modest volcanic activity...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618211006884

Remember: Toba is in what is now Indonesia -- what was Sundaland! This cite is talking
about what the Toba eruption buried IN INDIA!

Maybe it preserved something?

So a lot of the "Out of Asia" evidence -- assuming it exists -- is out to sea, and buried
under sediments laid down by volcanic activity.

Most of the "Aquatic Ape" evidence would be somewhere beneath the waves right now,
if it exists.

And nobody looks.

The higgs boson particle costs science $13 billion to "Discover." Imagine what a
legitimate scientific search for Aquatic Ape -- human origins -- could do with that
kind of money. It's reasonable. would argue that human origins is worth AT LEAST
as much money.

-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/712626036266926080/jj-foleys

Op vrijdag 24 maart 2023 om 09:52:55 UTC+1 schreef JTEM:

> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
> > than African present-day apes.

"missing", Peter??
Not missing at all, to the contrary:
early-Pleistocene H.erectus at Java was littoral:
e.g. my book p.220:
- Het Mojokerto-kind (~1,8 Ma?) kwam uit een brede delta vol zeepokken, koralen, zee- en zoetwaterschelpen wijzend op mangroves, strand en moddervlaktes, met fossiele botten van olifanten, neushoorns en nijlpaarden, zwijnen, tapirs, buffels en antilopes, tijgers, hondachtigen en apen.
- Het schedeldak en dijbot van Trinil lagen volgens José Joordens bij eetbare zoetwaterschelpen (Pseudodon en Elongaria).
- En Sangiran-17 (~1,6 Ma?), de meest intacte schedel op Java, kwam uit een brakwatermoeras aan de kust."
All very littoral!!

H.erectus = pachy-osteo-sclerosis POS is *exclusively* seen in slow+shallow-diving tetrapods:
H.erectus dived mostly for shellfish: shell engravings (google "Joordens Munro"), stone tools, larger brain (DHA...), platycephaly, platypelloidy, platymeria, ext.nose,
occipital POS (back-floating), human rudiments: handiness, fur loss, hair distribution, SC fat, hyperventilation, voluntary breathing, flat feet, etc.etc.

> Well Harpmun, the real Harshmun, used to babble endlessly about "Ghost
> Lineages." He had no idea what he meant by it but consider this:
> Chimps descend from a bipedal ancestor. Sahelanthropus tchadensis dates further back
> than the conventional dating for the LCA and was perhaps MORE bipedal than at least
> some Australopithecines... judging from the foramen magnum. There's clearly a gap there.

We must discern our different evolutionary phases: very schematically:
>25? Ma +-"monkey"like cf Cercopithecoidea & Platyrrhini: arboreal: mostly pronograde, 4-handed, tail+
>2.5? Ma +-"ape"like cf australopiths-apes: aquarboreal: more orthograde, broad build, tail-loss
>250? ka "aq.ape"like: H.erectus cs: (parttime)shellfish-diving: brain+, pachyosteoscl., Ind.Ocean-shores
<250? ka: H.sapiens: predom.walking (soon extinct?)

> And, most "Out of Asia" aficionados I've come across favor Sundaland as the point of
> origins. And it makes a lot of sense, being both equatorial and just low enough in elevation
> that groups were going to periodically find themselves flooded out, stranded. But that
> same flooding would have washed away or at least buried much of it's history... the
> Glacial/Interglacial cycle... it was Ground Zero for Toba... hit mighty hard by that asteroid(s)
> event(s) of around 800k years ago... lots of more modest volcanic activity...
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618211006884
> Remember: Toba is in what is now Indonesia -- what was Sundaland! This cite is talking
> about what the Toba eruption buried IN INDIA!
> Maybe it preserved something?
> So a lot of the "Out of Asia" evidence -- assuming it exists -- is out to sea, and buried
> under sediments laid down by volcanic activity.
> Most of the "Aquatic Ape" evidence would be somewhere beneath the waves right now,
> if it exists.
> And nobody looks.
> The higgs boson particle costs science $13 billion to "Discover." Imagine what a
> legitimate scientific search for Aquatic Ape -- human origins -- could do with that
> kind of money. It's reasonable. would argue that human origins is worth AT LEAST
> as much money.

On Friday, March 24, 2023 at 4:52:55 AM UTC-4, JTEM wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> > What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
> > than African present-day apes.

Sadly, it looks like we will never find them, as will be clear below.

> Well Harpmun, the real Harshmun, used to babble endlessly about "Ghost
> Lineages."

Yes, and if Harshman [or "Hirschmann" as he once told me when I called him "Harschmann"]
really cared about sci.bio.paleontology any more, he'd be here
saying that your entire "coastal dispersal" lineage is a "ghost lineage."

And, contrary to what you say below, he had a very simple meaning attached to it.

> He had no idea what he meant by it but consider this:
>
> Chimps descend from a bipedal ancestor. Sahelanthropus tchadensis dates further back
> than the conventional dating for the LCA and was perhaps MORE bipedal than at least
> some Australopithecines... judging from the foramen magnum. There's clearly a gap there.

Especially if chimps did NOT descend from S.t.

> And, most "Out of Asia" aficionados I've come across favor Sundaland as the point of
> origins. And it makes a lot of sense, being both equatorial and just low enough in elevation
> that groups were going to periodically find themselves flooded out, stranded. But that
> same flooding would have washed away or at least buried much of it's history... the
> Glacial/Interglacial cycle... it was Ground Zero for Toba... hit mighty hard by that asteroid(s)
> event(s) of around 800k years ago... lots of more modest volcanic activity...

What asteroid event are you talking about? Far earlier than the Toba event, of course.

>
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618211006884

Fortunately, my institutional membership [see virtual .sig at end]
allowed me to bypass the paywall.

Fascinating article, giving a date of 74,000 years ago for the explosion.
The clarity of the on-site pictures reminds me of the posts Inyo does
here every few months. A treat for the eyes in both cases.

> Remember: Toba is in what is now Indonesia -- what was Sundaland! This cite is talking
> about what the Toba eruption buried IN INDIA!

How come it didn't bury "Java man" and "Solo man" even deeper?

>
> Maybe it preserved something?
>
> So a lot of the "Out of Asia" evidence -- assuming it exists -- is out to sea, and buried
> under sediments laid down by volcanic activity.
>
> Most of the "Aquatic Ape" evidence would be somewhere beneath the waves right now,
> if it exists.
>
> And nobody looks.

Hard to know where to look. The tsunami might have washed the human ancestors
out to sea or pushed them out on the land before the ash arrived.
But rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age would have put them far out to sea anyway,
as you noted.

>
> The higgs boson particle costs science $13 billion to "Discover." Imagine what a
> legitimate scientific search for Aquatic Ape -- human origins -- could do with that
> kind of money. It's reasonable. would argue that human origins is worth AT LEAST
> as much money.

I've already commented on the relative importance of these things, and physicists
knew exactly "where" to look. We haven't a clue, as I said above.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 5:41:29 AM UTC-4, marc verhaegen wrote:
> Op vrijdag 24 maart 2023 om 09:52:55 UTC+1 schreef JTEM:
> > Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
> > > than African present-day apes.
> "missing", Peter??
> Not missing at all, to the contrary:
> early-Pleistocene H.erectus at Java was littoral:

Not littoral for "Pithecanthropus" and "Solo man". Riparian. Banks of Solo River.

> e.g. my book p.220:
> - Het Mojokerto-kind (~1,8 Ma?) kwam uit een brede delta vol zeepokken, koralen, zee- en zoetwaterschelpen wijzend op mangroves, strand en moddervlaktes, met fossiele botten van olifanten, neushoorns en nijlpaarden, zwijnen, tapirs, buffels en antilopes, tijgers, hondachtigen en apen.
> - Het schedeldak en dijbot van Trinil lagen volgens José Joordens bij eetbare zoetwaterschelpen (Pseudodon en Elongaria).
> - En Sangiran-17 (~1,6 Ma?), de meest intacte schedel op Java, kwam uit een brakwatermoeras aan de kust."

Your dating clashes with what is at the end of the Wikipedia entry, and there is no mention
of anything suggesting "littoral".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojokerto_child
Excerpt:
In 2003, a paper published by a team led by archeologist Mike Morwood presented 1.49 ± 0.13 Ma as the latest possible date, based on "fission-track dating of single zircon grains".[1] Morwood argued that the rock samples Curtis and Swisher dated came from a pumice bed located 20 metres (66 ft) below the one above which the Mojokerto skullcap was found. The geological horizon immediately under the fossil – Morwood calls it "Pumice Horizon 5" – dates back to 1.49 Ma, whereas the one just above – "Pumice Horizon 6" – dates from 1.43 ± 0.1 Ma.[14] In 2006, Australian archeologist Frank Huffman used pictures and fieldnotes from the 1930s to identify the exact site of the excavation and confirmed that the fossil was indeed found between the two layers that Morwood had dated. Morwood's and Huffman's conclusions have been widely accepted.[15]

[deletia of things familiar from earlier posts]

> We must discern our different evolutionary phases: very schematically:
> >25? Ma +-"monkey"like cf Cercopithecoidea & Platyrrhini: arboreal: mostly pronograde, 4-handed, tail+
> >2.5? Ma +-"ape"like cf australopiths-apes: aquarboreal: more orthograde, broad build, tail-loss

Is there a "smoking gun" here? it's before the first ice age, isn't it?

> >250? ka "aq.ape"like: H.erectus cs: (parttime)shellfish-diving: brain+, pachyosteoscl., Ind.Ocean-shores

See my pessimistic reply to JTEM less than an hour ago.

> <250? ka: H.sapiens: predom.walking (soon extinct?)

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

Op maandag 27 maart 2023 om 19:24:38 UTC+2 schreef Peter Nyikos:
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 5:41:29 AM UTC-4, marc verhaegen wrote:
> > Op vrijdag 24 maart 2023 om 09:52:55 UTC+1 schreef JTEM:

Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
> > > > than African present-day apes.

> > "missing", Peter?? Not missing at all, to the contrary:
> > early-Pleistocene H.erectus at Java was littoral:

> Not littoral for "Pithecanthropus" and "Solo man". Riparian. Banks of Solo River.

Yes, probably partly question of fossilisation chances:
we might preferably see the fossils of H.erectus who frequently (e.g. seasonally??) followed rivers?marshes inland?
H.erectus' profound pachyosteosclerosis (salt>fresh water), Homo's Old-World-wide dispersal & Homo's island colonisations (e.g. Flores) suggest littoral rather than riparian.

> > e.g. my book p.220:
> > - Het Mojokerto-kind (~1,8 Ma?) kwam uit een brede delta vol zeepokken, koralen, zee- en zoetwaterschelpen wijzend op mangroves, strand en moddervlaktes, met fossiele botten van olifanten, neushoorns en nijlpaarden, zwijnen, tapirs, buffels en antilopes, tijgers, hondachtigen en apen.
> > - Het schedeldak en dijbot van Trinil lagen volgens José Joordens bij eetbare zoetwaterschelpen (Pseudodon en Elongaria).
> > - En Sangiran-17 (~1,6 Ma?), de meest intacte schedel op Java, kwam uit een brakwatermoeras aan de kust."

- zoetwaterschelpen = freshwater shells,
- brakwatermoeras = brackish marsh.

> Your dating clashes with what is at the end of the Wikipedia entry, and there is no mention
> of anything suggesting "littoral". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojokerto_child
> Excerpt: In 2003, a paper published by a team led by archeologist Mike Morwood presented 1.49 ± 0.13 Ma as the latest possible date, based on "fission-track dating of single zircon grains".[1] Morwood argued that the rock samples Curtis and Swisher dated came from a pumice bed located 20 metres (66 ft) below the one above which the Mojokerto skullcap was found. The geological horizon immediately under the fossil – Morwood calls it "Pumice Horizon 5" – dates back to 1.49 Ma, whereas the one just above – "Pumice Horizon 6" – dates from 1.43 ± 0.1 Ma.[14] In 2006, Australian archeologist Frank Huffman used pictures and fieldnotes from the 1930s to identify the exact site of the excavation and confirmed that the fossil was indeed found between the two layers that Morwood had dated. Morwood's and Huffman's conclusions have been widely accepted.[15]

Never trust Wiki, but yes, the 1.8 Ma is indeed doubtful, and the fossil record incomplete. I just googled: "‘Mojokerto’ or Perning 1 – a juvenile skull discovered in 1936 in Mojokerto, Indonesia. Radiometric dates have suggested this child’s skull may be as old as 1.8 million years, which significantly increases the previous dates for Homo erectus in Asia. However, this date is debated as the sediment sample taken for dating was taken about 60 years after the skull was collected and the two may have come from different levels."

> [deletia of things familiar from earlier posts]

> > We must discern our different evolutionary phases: very schematically:
> > >25? Ma +-"monkey"like cf Cercopithecoidea & Platyrrhini: arboreal: mostly pronograde, 4-handed, tail+
> > >2.5? Ma +-"ape"like cf australopiths-apes: aquarboreal: more orthograde, broad build, tail-loss

> Is there a "smoking gun" here? it's before the first ice age, isn't it?

The "dates" here are *very* rough indications, only to place everything in perspective (x10).

> > >250? ka "aq.ape"like: H.erectus cs: (parttime)shellfish-diving: brain+, pachyosteoscl., Ind.Ocean-shores.

> See my pessimistic reply to JTEM less than an hour ago.

I'll read it ASAP.

> > <250? ka: H.sapiens: predom.walking (soon extinct?)

After Homo & Pan split (c 5 Ma in the Gulf? cf. opening of Red Sea 5.33 Ma Zanclean mega-flood?? Francesca Mansfield),
--Pan went right ->E.Afr.coastal forests ->southern Rift ->Transvaal ->africanus->robustus (// Gorilla in nothern Rift ->Afar ->afarensis->boisei),
--Homo went left ->S.Asian coastal forests initially? but no Pliocene Homo fossils AFAWK: H.erectus (POS=shallow-diving) is found early-Pleist.

What happened early-Pleist. that aquarboreal Pliocene Homo evolved into shallow-diving Pleistocene H.erectus? different shellfish?? cf. ice age??
cf. larger brain: DHA?? diet shift from fruits/rice/... to more?different shellfish??

Op maandag 27 maart 2023 om 18:57:26 UTC+2 schreef Peter Nyikos:
> On Friday, March 24, 2023 at 4:52:55 AM UTC-4, JTEM wrote:
> > Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
> > > than African present-day apes.

> Sadly, it looks like we will never find them, as will be clear below.

> > Well Harpmun, the real Harshmun, used to babble endlessly about "Ghost Lineages."

> Yes, and if Harshman [or "Hirschmann" as he once told me when I called him "Harschmann"]
> really cared about sci.bio.paleontology any more, he'd be here
> saying that your entire "coastal dispersal" lineage is a "ghost lineage."
> And, contrary to what you say below, he had a very simple meaning attached to it.

> > He had no idea what he meant by it but consider this:
> > Chimps descend from a bipedal ancestor. Sahelanthropus tchadensis dates further back
> > than the conventional dating for the LCA and was perhaps MORE bipedal than at least
> > some Australopithecines... judging from the foramen magnum. There's clearly a gap there.

+-All Mio-Pliocene Hominoidea were BP (aquarboreal), only humans & hylobatids till are.

> Especially if chimps did NOT descend from S.t.

Sahelanthr. was most likely a fossil relative of Gorilla.

> > And, most "Out of Asia" aficionados I've come across favor Sundaland as the point of
> > origins. And it makes a lot of sense, being both equatorial and just low enough in elevation
> > that groups were going to periodically find themselves flooded out, stranded. But that

Pliocene Homo was still aquarboreal in the Asian Ind.Ocean coastal forests:
only early-Pleistocene H.erectus evolved POS, larger brain = diving for shellfish?

> > same flooding would have washed away or at least buried much of it's history... the
> > Glacial/Interglacial cycle... it was Ground Zero for Toba... hit mighty hard by that asteroid(s)
> > event(s) of around 800k years ago... lots of more modest volcanic activity...

> What asteroid event are you talking about? Far earlier than the Toba event, of course.

> > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618211006884

> Fortunately, my institutional membership [see virtual .sig at end]
> allowed me to bypass the paywall.
> Fascinating article, giving a date of 74,000 years ago for the explosion.
> The clarity of the on-site pictures reminds me of the posts Inyo does
> here every few months. A treat for the eyes in both cases.

> > Remember: Toba is in what is now Indonesia -- what was Sundaland! This cite is talking
> > about what the Toba eruption buried IN INDIA!> How come it didn't bury "Java man" and "Solo man" even deeper?
> > Maybe it preserved something?
> > So a lot of the "Out of Asia" evidence -- assuming it exists -- is out to sea, and buried
> > under sediments laid down by volcanic activity.
> > Most of the "Aquatic Ape" evidence would be somewhere beneath the waves right now,
> > if it exists. And nobody looks.

> Hard to know where to look. The tsunami might have washed the human ancestors
> out to sea or pushed them out on the land before the ash arrived.
> But rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age would have put them far out to sea anyway,
> as you noted.

> > The higgs boson particle costs science $13 billion to "Discover." Imagine what a
> > legitimate scientific search for Aquatic Ape -- human origins -- could do with that
> > kind of money. It's reasonable. would argue that human origins is worth AT LEAST
> > as much money.

We do have the "aq.ape": POS in H.erectus = exclusively seen in slow+shallow-diving tetrapods.
Moreover, erectus evolved larger brains, ext.nose, more stone tools, platycephaly, platypelloidy etc.
No doubt they frequently dived, most likely mostly for shellfish.

H.neand. had less POS = less shallow-diving:
IMO they seasonally followed the river (Neander, Meuse etc.) inland, wading: salmon??

> I've already commented on the relative importance of these things, and physicists
> knew exactly "where" to look. We haven't a clue, as I said above.
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > What's missing is a "smoking gun" of Asian littoral fossils with hominids more human-like
> > > than African present-day apes.

Well. I take a different view. Chimp ancestors are claimed to be unknown -- the oldest
fossils like HALF a million years old, and they're only teeth!

So if we split 5 million or 6 million or however many millions of years ago, and the
oldest fossils are HALF a million years ago, they're missing 4.5 million years worth of
fossils or more. UNLESS...

Unless we've been finding them only they don't look the way we want them to.

The same is true for every other "Species." In the case of Homo, even if we don't find
them we find their tools...

-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/705489318794362880