Re: The brain and the hand

Michael S. Lorrey (mike@lorrey.com)
Sat, 07 Aug 1999 04:48:44 -0400

John Clark wrote:
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> Jeff Fabijanic <jeff@primordialsoft.com> Wrote:
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> >upright animals see better over tall grass, and present a smaller
> >cross-section to the hot savana sun
>
> I've heard that theory but I think it unlikely. It seem like lots of
> open grass land should push us in the opposite direction toward a fast
> animal with 4 legs, bipedalism should work better in a dense jungle but
> that's not what happened. It's a mystery.

Not so mysterious. Its all to do with throwing. No other ape or monkey can throw as far, as hard, or as accurately as human beings, and its to do with the upright carriage. Moreover the human carriage is optimized for long distance endurance jogging, to run a wounded animal down as it slowly bleeds to death.

>
> >they adapted a grasping hand into a *throwing* hand. And it is perhaps
> >the increased brain power necessary to accurately project a missile to
> > it's target that really started our incredibly fast ride up the river of intelligence.
>
> I've heard that too, and it would be a very hard way to make a living. I think even
> major league baseball pitchers, who are better at it than 99.99% of the other members
> of their species, would soon starve to death if they were just eating animals they killed
> by throwing irregular rocks at them.

You are judging by today's wildlife densities and today's human population densities. Time was they were reversed. Even today though, I know of people in my state who live off of the land.