mistermack

I think it's natural for any ape to adopt an upright position in water. Apes feed using their hands, and naturally adopt an upright position, whether on land, up a tree, or in the water. We would generally go in the water only to feed, so upright is natural. That has no bearing at all on locomotion out of the water. There's no advantage in the water to lose the grasping big toe, or evolve changes in the hips and spine. That sort of change would obviously happen to improve upright performance OUT of the water, not in it.

I seem to remember that the dna of Denisovens is today represented most of all in Papua New Guinea and the Phillipines. Also in Australian Aboriginals, and the Denisovans were originally centred in central Asia. The Australian Dingo is also thought to have evolved from Asian dogs, so that supports the picture of a general spread from Central Asia eastwards and south.

I haven't kept up with this thread, so apologies if i'm repeating earlier comments. A guy called Jim Moore set up a website on what's wrong with the AAH many years ago, and it's well worth visiting for refutation of pretty much all of the wrong claims made for aquatic apes. It's called "aquatic ape, sink or swim? " and here's the link : https://www.aquaticape.org/ I have no idea if he's still active on the subject, but his analysis of all of the guff still 'holds water' in my opinion. On the slight reduction in brain size of modern homo sapiens, it's a tiny change, and it could be for any of many possibilities. The trend has been for humans to get more gracile physically, more lightly built, more mobile and less stocky. That might mean that people slimmer of hip would favour a smaller head during childbirth. The Neanderthals did have a slightly bigger brain, on average, but it was longer front to back, and the extra volume was not in the frontal lobes. So Neanderthal women probably had an edge during childbirth, with wider hips and narrower babies heads. But the difference would be fairly insignificant. This is over-claiming on a huge scale. There's no evidence whatsoever that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens prior to 40,000 years ago were chiefly aquatic. It's pure invention without any evidence.

Like I said, I'm just going from memory. But one theory of how humans got to America is by coastal people just inching further along the new emerging coastline, as the ice cap advanced. Edit: Ice cap advanced, making new land as the sea levels dropped.

Just going by my own memory of what I've read, I think that there was a major lifestyle difference between modern humans and Neanderthals, in that Neanderthals tended to be more sedentary and Modern Humans more mobile. Neanderthals would settle near favourable landscape resources, where they could concentrate prey, and be on the migration route. Modern humans were more adept at following migrations, and upping sticks when the resources got thin. This difference put the Neanderthals at a disadvantage when the ice came down from the North, and led to populations becoming tiny, so that when the ice retreated, they didn't have the numbers, and were easily replaced by more numerous modern humans following the new migration routes north. Another factor in the spread of humans was the coastlines. The coast has alway been a great place to find food, and a lot of spreading was done by people moving up the coasts to find places that had yet to be exploited.

12 has been used by many cultures for bartering. With a mix of languages present, you use the fingers to signify your offer. In the case of 12, you use the finger bones of the hand, and point with the thumb. 1,2,3 are on the index finger, 4,5 and 6 on the middle finger, 7,8 and 9 on the ring, and so on. So you can point to 8 or 12 etc. with one movement, and any trader will know what you mean.

No it hasn't. The USA needed to be attacked by Japan, and declared war on by Hitler, before they joined WW2. Nothing to do with an 'alliance'. And in WW1 the USA sat it out for two and a half years, until they saw who was winning, and the German UBoats started sinking American shipping. And of course, the Russians played a teeny weeny part in Hitler's downfall, to the tune of about 30 million of Russian lives lost, compared to a less than half a million Americans.

That's a strange question. You seem to have no understanding of the word, to ask that. Living is nothing to do with consciousness, it's the ability to grow and reproduce from organic matter in the environment. Conscious animals are just a tiny fraction of the living world.

Is it considered that there is a minimum parcel of time, or can it be divided infinitely to zero ?

Come on, I've repeatedly said that I don't propose that. Yes, but with the clock, you are just comparing like with like. The change in this system amounts to three of the change in that system. What I'm arguing is that change is what actually exists, and the accumulation of change is what we experience as the past, and the expected change is what we feel as the future. But both are actually a facet of the present. If there is no change, how will there be time? If everything in the universe froze, a second or a billion years would be no different.

I see it as the opposite. The past exists only in the conditions of the present, and the future will only happen as a result of the conditions of the present. Even if you ignore random variation, and claim that every detail of the future is inevitable, it's still stretching it to say that something exists 'in the future'.

I didn't really think too much about that phrase, because I was contrasting the 2,000 election with the last one, so that's what I meant by 'it's a new era now'. I wouldn't say the past was squeaky clean by any means, but most of it happened in the shadows, it wasn't done in broad daylight and been supported by half of the population, like Trumps exploits. In the context of American history in my lifetime, Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the election are something new and sinister. Especially given the support he still has, and that he's not locked up. I wear them with pride !!

Yes but the fact is that when you specify a past event, you are by definition describing something that no longer exists. You need time to describe a non-existant past situation, and the same applies to predicting an event. So what you need time for, is to model the past or future which don't exist. What does exist is an ever changing present.

I thought 150 and 200 year old examples were a bit out of date to be relevant to the conversation. Back in those days the UK still had 'Rotten Boroughs' and I wouldn't be quoting them on here.

I think we're spoilt here in the UK, having a fairly simple system that works. The ruling party hires and fires the PM. Genius !! Having said that, you need a majority to make it work well. Coalitions are a different story.

Yes, but if you spin that around, then one second is the time for light to travel that distance. So your unit of time is produced by a phyical change, in the three dimensions of space. Yes, but if you do that, you are assuming a clock, and that clock is essentially no difference to the system you are modelling, ie a physical change in 3 dimensions. So you are plotting one system against another similar one, not introducing an extra dimension. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong in portraying time as a dimension, for the sake of the model.

I agree of course. But that's not the whole story. Up till now, people have acted with a certain amount of honour. Al Gore (for all his faults) didn't claim the 2,000 election had been stolen from him. (by 543 votes) It's a new era now, and people are prepared to do stuff that people in the past would not have contemplated. Like pressuring Raffenspurger to "find me" 11,780 votes. It makes you wonder about George W's win in Florida by 543 votes. Maybe that sort of stuff used to go on in the background. The fact that Trump isn't in jail says a lot about modern standards.

What's bugging at me is that while it's hugely successful to model time as the fourth dimension, does that mean that it really is one? Every device for measuring time is simply a three dimensional object of some sort, that records three dimensional changes. So when you plot movement in 3D against time, you are really plotting movement in 3D against another movement in 3D. In other words, the fourth dimension is just a product of the three spatial dimensions.

It's a very strange line of succession rule anyway. It seems to go against democracy that a party that lost the presidential election can end up having their man in the White House. It would be more democratic to have a vice-vice president in line, rather than a speaker. There is a possible motive for assassination in the present system, in that assassination could actually change the party in power, Edit: That would also provide a motive to impeach. The house might be swayed by the fact that their speaker is one step closer to becoming president if the incumbent gets impeached.

So, it looks like, the speaker is third in line to the presidency. One single vote cause a no-confidence vote. So if he ever had to take over the presidency, just one vote could start the removal process. Let's hope Biden stays healthy, and Harris stays sane.

This actually works, and did exist as late as the stone age, but seems to have gone extinct now.

You can easily design a wheel that would work in animals. Just grow four circular bony structures like antlers, that harden and require no sustenance. Have them mounted on ball and socket joints like our hips. The problem would be how something like that would evolve in the first place. For a feature to evolve, it needs to be viable and desireable in every stage of it's chain of evolution. That couldn't happen in that sort of arrangement. The end result might be ok, but the route to it is unviable. Edit: You'd still have the problem of propulsion, of course.

I think the fundamental problem of evolving an axle is the transfer of materials across a sliding bearing. While it's not theoretically impossible, it might only be possible at rates that are not enough, in the real world. So sending fuel etc, and removing waste can't be done enough to maintain life. The alternative would be to have the wheel living independently of the body. But it's never happened, it's probably not competitive. Anyway, a wheel's not much use on land, without a road. And very little use under water, with neutral bouyancy. I can't see many applications where one would evolve as an organ.

Well, I hope it remains mild. Fully boosted would have been better I think. I've had every jab on offer without questioning it too much. I did my research ages ago.

You haven't even said if you are vaccinated, or boosted. That's the most fundamental question.