The latest generation of paleoanthropologists in the Leakey family is Louise, daughter of Maeve and Richard, granddaughter of Louis and Mary; and this week she's featured in a TED video, speaking on "Who Are We?"
Louise Leakey Digs for Humanity's Origins, 15:35 on TED.
Comments
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/louise_leakey_digs_for_humanity_s_origins.html
I fully agree with LL’s conclusion that humans have to try to control their numbers if they want to survive, but otherwise her lecture was unfortunately an enumeration of all possible savanna biases, for instance:
- Fossil-hunters of hominid fossils don’t dig up human ancestors! They dig up members of side-branches of the lines leading to the living hominids: chimps, humans & gorillas. (And it’s of course totally impossible that, as she claimed, 3 species of our ancestors were contemporeous!)
- LL makes H.erectus (she means the Nariokotome Boy H.ergaster) about half a million years older than it really was.
- She claims that the Nariokotome Boy was tall, but she forgets that he had very flat vertebrae (platyspondyly) that made his trunk not much more than about 2/3 of ours.
- She assumes that he had a pathological spine, whereas there’s nothing that excludes that these “pathologies” were simply his normal anatomy (adapted not for running, of course, but for waterside food collection). Her attitude reminds of Virchow who claimed that the remains of a neandertal were those an old arthrotic Kossack.
- She believes our ancestors left Africa early-Pleistocene, whereas the oldest Homo fossils come from Mojokerto & Dmanisi, both in Asia. (Tim Bromage has shown that the older KNM ER 1470 was not Homo, but australopithecine.)
- She assumes that these early people ran over the savannas, which of course is completely imcompatible with our physiology: we need lots of water & sodium & iodine & poly-unsat.fats – all very rare in savannas, our naked skin is unprotected from the sun, we move slowly & grow up slowly, we have a poor sense of smell etc.etc. All anatomical & physiological evidence suggests that human ancestors have always been strongly waterside, in savannas & elsewhere.
- She assumes that our ancestors sweat to cool in the savannas, but apparently doesn’t know that the most-sweating mammals are sealions on land.
- She claims that the Nariokotome Boy fell into a swamp, whereas all evidence suggests that the swamp was simply his natural habitat where he got its food.
- She thinks that stone tools come from our ancestors, whereas all great apes use tools, so hominid-pongid tool use is at least 15 Ma old, probably an adaptation to durophagy (hard-object feeding cf.thick enamel, eg, hard-shelled invertebrates & nuts).
I enjoyed watching this video/talk, thank you for sharing.
Marc Verhaegen makes a good point: “Fossil-hunters of hominid fossils don’t dig up human ancestors! They dig up members of side-branches of the lines leading to the living hominids: chimps, humans & gorillas.”
As I listened to the talk, though, I interpreted Louise Leakey’s use of the term “ancestor” in a more general sense (ie. as meaning “cousin” or a hominid whose ancestral line branches off from ours at some point in our shared past, and not specifically our “lineal ancestor”).
Hi Laura, sorry for this very late answer.
Yes, probably Leakey used the term “ancestor” in a more general sense, but AFAICS, all the points I made were good.
Pleistocene Homo spread as far as Flores, the Cape & Pakefield in England along coasts & rivers, of course, not running over dry plains.
Nariokotome Boy was no runner. The heavy cranial & postcranial bones leave no doubt archaic Homo spent a lot of time in the water, eg, collecting DHA-rich aquatic foods, essential for our very large brain.
Some recent info on the littoral theory (a more correct term than AAT):
- benthamscience.com/ebooks/9781608052448/index.htm
- google “pachyosteosclerosis”, “aquarboreal”, “econiche Homo”
- or contact me.