Pharyngula

Posted by: Zeno | October 11, 2009 8:37 PM

I think I am the last person in the western hemisphere to rely solely on broadcast TV. Perhaps I should consider satellite or cable.

But then I might watch more TV.

Posted by: Andyo | October 11, 2009 8:45 PM

Dammit this typepad crap is annoying. Is any of the other login types better?

Zeno, it's two of us, and I already watch too much TV.

Posted by: AlgaeGirl | October 11, 2009 9:18 PM

Discovery channel? Soup? Snow?! I miss the midwest...

Posted by: SC OM | October 11, 2009 9:28 PM

I think it's good so far.

(I don't understand this "we seem so different from other animals" stuff, though. I never thought we did, particularly.)

Posted by: scooter | October 11, 2009 9:37 PM

Hmmmmm
Discovery Channel.
Why not cut through all this roundabout sciency crap, bust the mediums out, round up those ghost hunter freaks with the infra red and shiney eyes, send them over to poke around in some basements, they'll get those hobbit ghosts talking, I have every confidence.

Mystery solved, they were eaten by Sasquatch, just like Meltdown Man from Danger Squad in Tasmania, and Nazis and sharks. Also.

Posted by: phat | October 11, 2009 10:00 PM

Zeno, you're not the only one without cable. I sometimes wish I had it.

Posted by: Standard curve | October 11, 2009 10:27 PM

I can't watch Discovery for that exact reason. The total content of most of their programs would fit into about 10 minutes for an hour long show, but since they have commercials, and recap everything endlessly it pads it out. It's excruciating to watch.

Posted by: speedweasel | October 11, 2009 10:47 PM

Dammit this typepad crap is annoying. Is any of the other login types better?

I switched to Vox and it's been fine. No, scrap that. It's been *awesome*

Posted by: foxfire | October 11, 2009 10:54 PM

PZ (and all),

This is so well done (I'm watching it now), for the very reasons you mention.

Did you see how the documentary "channels" RD's TGSOE, from a cold case crime perspective. And they present their evidence as if this was a court case.

Eat this, Disco-I, because (being a non-scientist) I can envision other non-scientist-yet-rational people watching this, learning (and even getting excited about learning more) about our origins (as in *getting* the common ancestor, not descended from a monkey thing).

The Discovery show portrays, in addition to the results, the techniques used to put together the results. It does it by showing how current technology, used for medical/crime scene situation, can be applied to reconstructing the past on planet earth.

GAAACK! End commercial at 106 min - Paula Zahn is gonna show us what it all means? GAAAAHHH! However, good move for disseminating information to rational people who might not quite get it yet.

When this show (and supporting stuff) comes out on DVD, I'm buying a copy - well several actually, an additional copy for my local library and a copy for my local high school.

Woah! They are getting into sexual selection (the teeth thing ~ 117 min into the program - I tried to cut the commercials).

THANK YOU PZ for somehow contributing to resolution of the login situation. Not that I have anything of value to add.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | October 11, 2009 10:59 PM

I just caught about a bit of it. I could have heard wrong, but did one of the interviewees say that Ardipithecus ramidus was NOT an ape?

Posted by: Noadi | October 11, 2009 11:01 PM

Are you saying we don't have evidence for Ardi being bipedal or that their reasoning for why is shaky? The pelvis is very good evidence for Ardi being bipedal, inconvenient toe or not. However their reasoning for why we became bipedal, yeah that is pure speculation.

I didn't find it too dragging (though commercials are always annoying) but I like slower paced documentaries so I have time to absorb things. As much as I love Mythbusters and faced paced shows, it's not the best way to really understand information for me.

Posted by: NewEnglandBob | October 11, 2009 11:09 PM

It was a poor production. As PZ mentioned, the commercials broke it up too much and the constant recapitulating is annoying.

I also got tired of seeing helicopter shots of mud and bushes. That is what is there now, it was forest back 4.4 million years ago!

Posted by: MaleficVTwin | October 11, 2009 11:11 PM

I liked the message at the end, about putting aside myth and fairy tales. Two thumbs up for that.

I too was worried when I saw the ad for the Zahn discussion, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that she was only discussing it with the science team responsible for the find, no clergy or religious types at all. Bravo for that as well.

Posted by: Blue-eyed Videot | October 11, 2009 11:39 PM

I became confused at the discussion of the selective benefits of bipedalism. To me, It seemed the show went from a discussion of large self-sharpening canines to suddenly smaller, rounder canines with a helping of bipedalism and monogamous relationships on top. I don't understand: Ardi & Co. were so busy carrying food and monogamously mating--how did they know this from a pile of bones, anyway?--that they no longer needed to show their teeth as it were? Did they mean that the focus then dropped from big teeth to big penises?

Posted by: Leigh Williams | October 12, 2009 12:10 AM

One thing I noticed was that the male member (pun intended) of the pair-bond was not shown from the front in the Hollywood reconstruction of Ardi's world. I did wonder at that; I guess they didn't want to speculate about the size of his penis!

Zahn did a fine job, though I didn't like it that she spent too much of the time looking at, and posing questions to, the old white guys, and didn't pose enough questions to the Ethiopian members of the team. Well, okay, Haile-Selassie is junior to White, but really now. And I would have liked to hear more from WoldeGabriel about the dating.

Posted by: Tony | October 12, 2009 12:59 AM

@ Cathy:

Wow. Way to project your modern feminist views onto a 4.5 million year old ape. The ancient world was not an egalitarian liberal democracy. Get over it.

Regardless, it never said that female Ardipithicus was a hand-wringing, helpless Victorian waif. It said that selection pressure COULD HAVE BEEN associated with a food for sex barter coupled with female selection of non-aggressive males.

Posted by: melior | October 12, 2009 2:30 AM

Good on Sam Harris, some of his neurophysiology PhD research got published in PLoS One with him as a lead author.

In the first neuroimaging study to systematically compare religious faith with ordinary cognition, UCLA and University of Southern California researchers have found that while the human brain responds very differently to religious and nonreligious propositions, the process of believing or disbelieving a statement, whether religious or not, seems to be governed by the same areas in the brain.

Posted by: Barry Pearson | October 12, 2009 4:18 AM

One of the major advantages of the BBC (I'm in the UK) is the absence of advertisements. The BBC is often under attack because all UK viewers of broadcast TV pay a license fee however much BBC they watch or not. But it also enables the BBC to make non-commercial programs that others wouldn't touch.

But ... I often view by BBC's iPlayer, which enables me to watch by streaming to my PC. So I get continuous viewing if I want, or breaks if I want.

(To be honest, the main reason for posting this was to go through the registration process to see how hard it is! I used Vox, and so far it hasn't posed a problem. Now to press "Post" .........!)

Posted by: cathy | October 12, 2009 6:03 AM

@ Tony It could have been a lot of other things too. They basically had a guy come on and say they did not know why hominids became bipedal and then they spout some crap about how this ape (unlike other species and quite a lot of modern human behavior) was strongly pair bonded and had males as the primary food gatherers. Assuming without real evidence that social cooperation = pair bonding with useless females is a pretty huge leap. Okay, I concede that it is technically possible that unlike modern humans and apes, this species did strongly pair bond and had females that were so weak and stupid that they could not gather food for themselves, but without a scrap of evidence for that assumption, this looks like every other piece of flimsy bullshit used to claim polyamoury is evil and that women are naturally inferior.

Posted by: bynkii | October 12, 2009 8:24 AM

oh dear Cthulu...

Cathy, it is not all about the patriarchy keeping womyn down to oppress the true leaders of society. Seriously, did you actually pay attention to what the scientists were saying or had you already initiated your +5 Unnecessary Offensensitve Rage and tuned out all the facts that didn't have the female ardis single-handedly doing all the work?

Just in case you didn't, (and considering how many times they repeated it, you must have been frothing mightily), they never, ever, ever even came close to saying or implying that the female ardis were helpless. In fact, at least on that show, they never went into the social group dynamics.

What they said was that the male Ardis used food as a way to get sex. Rather than spending all their time in displays of dominance and agression, the male ardis might have used the superior carrying abilities that bipedalism gives you to bring food to the females and show, perhaps by being more reliable about bringing food and maybe even bringing more interesting food, that they were a superior choice for sex, and therefore reproduction, because they were *reliable*. Not stronger, or better than females, but more reliable than those hyper-aggressive douchebags in the tree next door.

The smaller canines showed that for Ardi, there wasn't a particular need, or advantage to having large manly canines, because they seemed to have adapted to other methods of pitching woo. At least that's they hypothesis.

They never said 'males were the primary food gatherers', although given we are talking about a different species, that would not be unlikely. Since, with mammals, even ones that live in large family groups, the females spend more time taking care of their young, the job of gathering food does tend to fall on the members that aren't having to carry young, nurse them, etc. Gee, in a mammalian species, what sex isn't dealing with that the most...oh look, the male. This dovetails nicely with the reliability hypothesis. If you're a mostly arboreal species, and you spend a lot of time having young, the male that brings you food regularly and makes your life a bit easier while you're taking care of your young is going to be just a bit higher on the "which mate should I pick" scale.

They freely admit that they aren't sure, but it's a decent hypothesis, and it has nothing to do with declaring females to be inferior. Or superior for that matter.

But now that I, a dirty male, have disagreed with you, let the raging begin.

Posted by: Tony | October 12, 2009 8:58 AM

@ Cathy:

What bynkii said...and:

Who EVER said that the females were "useless" or that this in ANY WAY implies exclusive monogamy? It certainly implies some kind of pair bonding, but how is that even remotely related to your views on polyamory? It gives the females a leg-up over OTHER females who aren't doing this!

Pair bonding is a good way of increasing the liklihood that your own genes are propagated by pairing them more often with a good partner. It is a simple application of game theory and has nothing to do with your polyamory agenda. If you had listened carefully to the narration, it said that the offspring of a male that sticks around are -more likely- to be fathered by the mate he is bartering food for sex with. Apes still get around. From a genetic standpoint, it's good to "cheat" once in a while if you find something slightly better even if pairs are nominally monogamous. So there goes your idea.

And even if it is a projection of what you claim are "modern morals" so f-ing what? Aridipithicus wasn't capable of ordering a Big Mac, designing a carbon fiber jet engine compressor, or even rudimentary agriculture! Why the insecurity over your choice of lifestyle which is just as human and just as OKAY as any other aspect of human culture? You seem to be leaping at the opportunity to be offended because it gives you a chance to grand-stand when nothing of the sort was implied by the show.

Posted by: Corey S | October 12, 2009 9:32 AM

Recapping what has happened in the same episode/show, is dumb. It does not look good when it will came out on DVD.

Posted by: stoic.myopenid.com | October 12, 2009 10:05 AM

I've been noticing that on a lot of science programs. They take 1/2 hour of programming and stretch it out to one hour, or one hour and make it into a two hour "special". At a certain point you want to start screaming at the television for them to "get on with it".

Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian | October 12, 2009 10:59 AM

@Barry Pearson #37 & ekcol #40

I think the incredibly annoying 10 minute recap has more to do with the actual programme makers than with the channel (commercial or not) on which it is shown.

For instance, the recent (and currently being repeated) series by Richard Dawkins ("The Genius of Charles Darwin") is on the commercial Channel 4 and that had advertising breaks but no recaps whereas, as eckol says, some BBC programs do seem to have started recapping every 10 or 15 minutes. (Good explanation of it catering for resale to commercial channels abroad, I hadn't thought of that ~ I just thought "WTF?")

Anyway, tonight we have David Attenborough's new series "Life" on BBC1 (can't wait). I'll bet there are no recaps in that. If I'm wrong I'll probably never watch live TV again.

PS ~ Kudos to VW for "sponsoring" the Dawkins series. I get the impression that in the USA few big companies would risk associating themselves with a programme where "Anti-Christ Promotes Evolution and Trashes Religion".

Posted by: Josh | October 12, 2009 11:37 AM

I would have liked to hear more of the dating as well. How fortuitous that Ardi rested between two like-dated bands.

It is fortuitous, and it's the wonderful thing about prospecting for fossil vertebrates in an a subsiding rift-basin. You end up with one of the better situations in the terrestrial realm.

The tectonic stress that is affecting the area is one of extension over a major upwelling of heat. The reasons for this upwelling aren't important. What is important is that this extentional stress causes a general "stretching" and "thinning" of the crust in the region.

http://www.geo.arizona.edu/geo5xx/geos577/projects/mooney/Review.htm

http://moho.ess.ucla.edu/projects/rift2.jpg

This stretching results in lots of faulting, which divides up the local crust into fault blocks, and then "sinking" of these fault blocks. This sinking generates surface area for weathering and erosion to act upon, and eventually provides accomodation space for all the sediments that are produced through this weathering and erosion. The long and the short is that there is a high sedimentation rate and most of the accumulating sediments remain in the basin.

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/dees/U4735/projections/pitman/34.strike.slip.jpg

Now, we get high rates of sedimentation in lots of other places in the world too, and honestly the preservation potential in this rift isn't that good (for a bunch of reasons which aren't important to this comment) compared to some other regimes. What keeps this rift higher up on the "ideal situations scale" goes back to the fact that the reason we're accumulating sediments here is because of tectonic extension.

This stretching and thinning of the crust, combined with a lot of faulting, makes it easy for heat to get to the surface. Thus, we end up with lots of volcanic materials interbedded with the fossil producing sediments. These volcanic sediments and volcanic igneous rocks can be radiometrically dated. This is what everyone always wants to see and what is so rarely obtained. In most places, you get kilometer thicknesses of beautiful fossil-bearing rock and not an igneous horizon to be seen. Since we can radiometrically date so few types of sediments, we are often forced to use other methods of getting dates for quarries. The error bars on the dates often end up being larger than the error bars on dates obtained from places like this rift (because we're extrapolating sedimentation rates from igneous horizons that are a ways away, or we're using paleomag, or index fossils or what-have-you). The rift provides nice things like tuffs, often only a few stratigraphic meters from the quarry in question.

Science has put the articles related to Ardipithecus on its website. You can access them with a free registration. A number of the papers are actual Research Articles, rather than the extended abstracts that Reports so often are. And each one is preceded by an authors' summary, which is written in fairly straight forwarded language. There is a ton of really good shit in this special issue.

Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian | October 12, 2009 11:41 AM

Hmm, obviously haven't got the hang of this quoting thingy yet. I'll try once more.

Clare #50
"Perhaps no-one has provisioned you recently?"
PSML

Posted by: Tony | October 12, 2009 12:20 PM

@Pygmy Loris:

2 Points:

1. How we feel about something doesn't determine its truth.
2. The hypothesis proposed is NOT anti-feminist.

Absolutely there is and should be criticism of such an idea. But it should be based on evidence and not ideology. Finding an idea offensive because of what it implies has no bearing on whether it is true or not. If we had evidence that male Ardipithicus beat his monogamous partner and withheld fruit unless he got booty, would you find that offensive? Would it -matter- that you found it offensive? That said, the hypothesis given in the show is 100% speculation, but it could yield testable claims and those should be investigated, not squelched because someone thinks it makes women look inferior.

If anything, I'd say it puts the female Ardi's in a position of power! Do you think male peacocks grow those tails because they want to? No. They do it because the females select them for it and mold their genes to waste huge amounts of energy in an arms race with other males. Seriously: who's got the power here?

Responding to your point: To say that we can make extrapolations from modern apes and recent hominids about gender roles in humans is one thing. To extend those behaviors to an ancestor living 4.5M years ago in an environment completely different from any recent hominid? And then to accept those views because they make us humans feel comfortable with some preconception about how culture "should be"? That's not rational.

An example: "The Bell Curve" was not wrong because it was racist; it was wrong because it was factually WRONG.

@ Clare:

Thanks for your concern, but my wife puts out on a regular basis. We're also not monogamous, in case you'd like to crack that joke too.

Posted by: BeadKnitter | October 12, 2009 1:29 PM

I thought the show was absolutely fascinating.

Posted by: amphiox | October 12, 2009 3:04 PM

Cathy, while you can certainly criticize this hypothesis for possible oversimplification of gender roles, the charge of assuming gender inferiority is not justifiable.

It's pretty implicit in this hypothesis that female Ardis are getting an advantage from an extra pair of male arms to carry food because their own arms are busy carrying something even more important - baby.

If it makes you feel better, you can think of the males not as "provisioning" the females, but offering tribute.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 12, 2009 3:46 PM

I'm reading the dentition article right now, and I've already found a one of my pet peeves. There is no C/P3 honing complex in anthropoids. Platyrrhines (New World Monkeys) have a C/P2 honing complex*. There's a good argument that this is what catarrhines (Old World Monkeys and apes) have (since they would have had to lose the P2, and replace it in the honing complex with P3) too, but it's currently widely accepted that the two premolars present in the Catarrhini are P3 and P4.

This is a nitpick, but taxonomic terms are very specific, and they made a mistake.

*Platyrrhines have three premolars compared to Catarrhines that have only 2.

Posted by: kopd | October 12, 2009 4:11 PM

Since my deconversion I have become quite interested in the subject of evolution in general and human evolution specifically. I have heard a bit about how important Ardi is, and I understand a bit of the impact, but I'd like to know more. I taped, err DVRed, whatever, "Discovering Ardi" and "Understanding Ardi" but haven't watched yet. As it appears from this thread that watching may be unpleasant, or at least not as insightful as I may have hoped, may I ask for links to good reading materials? Could somebody provide links to some good articles that a layperson like myself would understand? Not that I'm clueless about biology, but I'm no scientist.

Thank you very much. :-)

PS - of course I intend to search the blog and see if Dr. Myers has already linked to some good stuff, which I'm sure he has.

Posted by: Kristine | October 12, 2009 11:21 PM

What? Nothing about an asteroid nearly hitting earth, or volcanic eruptions nearly baking Ardi and her family? Zeno, we got rid of cable because it got to the point where the science shows were all Rev. Barky and I could stomach, and we couldn't even stomach them anymore! All these winking graphics, hyped unnecessary melodrama and obtuse camera angles, like the cameraman was staggering out of the way of a drunken attacker - totally MonsterQuest mimicry - we simply could not take it anymore. (Watch some science show or even some pseudoscience crap program from the 1990s and you'll see that it's much less frenetic; in fact, you'll marvel at the unobtrusiveness of the production.)

We watch hulu, liketelevision.com, and youtube. Otherwise, I get DVDs from netflix and the library. Sorry Ardi, until you're at the library I promise to read about you!

Posted by: cathy | October 13, 2009 4:05 PM

#64. Pointing out that modern ape and modern human behaviors do not fit this theory shows that it was not extrapolated from modern sources. The show itself said that it was not directly inferred from the fossil evidence of Ardi. It didn't come from study of modern relatives and it did not come from the fossils. In other words, as I said in an early post "but without a scrap of evidence for that assumption, this looks like every other piece of flimsy bullshit used to claim polyamoury is evil and that women are naturally inferior." Why should we assume without evidence that ardi was a monogamous species where males were the primary resources collectors? You claim I am projecting, but the kind of wild speculation that was made about ardi's habits was pure projection of the notion that humans are by nature monogamous with male contributors. I admit my first comment involved more of a kneejerk reaction, but that does not change the fact that this assertion has no more weight than if I asserted without evidence that female ardis were the sole food gathers and males developed smaller teeth because they wanted to appear less threatening to the females. Without evidence, my claim is no less of a projection than his (with the fact that modern ape species more closely match the latter speculation, I might even have more weight). I'm not saying I know the exact social interaction of ardi because I do not, but the program's claim was at face value highly suspicious and lacking supporting evidence. What a coincidence that a program which had virtually no women speaking ended up with the projection which perpetuates the notion of male as provider.

Posted by: Tony | October 14, 2009 12:37 AM

@ Pygmy Loris

First, most of the researchers were Western, white males. The culture and cultural roles you grow up with affect the way you perceive the world. That's been empirically tested.

I don't care if most of the researchers were jackboot-wearing, goose-stepping, Nazi pedophiles. Their theories, tainted though they may be, will be (and by your account, have been) defeated on the weight of evidence-not by how many ideologues they offend. That was my entire purpose in responding to Cathy in the first place. A statement such as:

Some prior hypotheses of hominid interaction were tainted by male domination of anthropology and have since been discarded due to contrary evidence and lack of supporting data

is perfectly reasonable. But:

This hypothesis is wrong because it implies female Ardi's were helpless milktoast baby-machines whose only recourse for sustinance was to prostitute themselves for mangoes

is asinine. Not only is it a mischaracterization of the model, but it's an argument that relies solely on a perception of rupugnance to establish plausibility.

I am not characterizing your particular views by this statement (unless you'd like to take that position). The accusation of letting "how we feel" about a theory was not directed at you, but at Cathy. You at least appear to understand evidentiary standards.

Posted by: cathy | October 15, 2009 9:32 AM

@#68 The word for female genatalia is not pootang, it is vulva and vagina. If you can use the proper term for male genatalia, presumably you know the proper term for female genatalia.

Okay, fine, let's break down the evidence:

1. The hypothesis is not based on evidence. It contradicts modern ape and human behavior and by the shows own admission was not directly inferred by the fossils.

2. We live in a sexist society.

3. We live in a society where monogamy is viewed as an ideal.

4. People who live in a sexist, anti-polyamourus society are raised with a bias, particularly upperclass males who benefit most from our social structure.

5. Disproven hypothesis virtually identical to this one have been used in an attempt to justify amoung other things male dominance and punishment of polyamoury.

6. The only hypothesis presented was one virtually identical to 5.

7. This hypothesis has the underlying assumption that females are not the primary or equal food gatherers because of reproductive burden, despite the fact that modern female apes can and do exist as primary food gathers while still maintaining reproduction. (As a side note, nowhere did I say or imply that males did not gather food or were not equal food gathers, or that females are superior, you projected that all on your own)

8. The program speakers were almost exclusively upperclass western males.

Funny, how I might extrapolate from those facts that this theory is being brought up to uphold sexist anti-polyamourus stereotypes. I also noted the unessecary focus on my presumed sex, gender, and sexual practices. You don't know me. You do not know whether I have a penis or vulva, you do not know whether I am monogamous or polyamourus, you do not know whether or not identify and present as male. You saw a feminine name (Cathy) and made huge assumptions. Using random slang terms about my supposed genatalia isn't really a mature evidence based argument either is it? And one of you responded with a link which had a basic point of 'Gorillas sometimes fight, now we know why women are bitches!' And yet somehow I'm the only one accused of projecting sex, gender, and sexuality into this...

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | October 24, 2009 2:08 PM

Banhammer, please. #72

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 24, 2009 2:16 PM

Oh Noes! Feminists!

Guess I need to donate some money to my local domestic violence shelter in honor of #72,

Posted by: aratina cage | October 24, 2009 2:19 PM

It's gone now. *bows to the squidlord*

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | October 24, 2009 2:27 PM

*bows in general direction of Morris MN*