I can sympathize

Well in that case I'll be a monkey's uncle
(Monkeys have a shorter generational life span so in that case I guess I'm their elders)

If you'd seen my neighbour taking out his wheelie bin at 6 am this morning you'd realise that sometimes that cousinship isn't quite that distant. I suspect he's the missing link.

By November of 1914, the Western Front has already been bogged down into trench warfare but the true horrors of attrition was yet to appear.

The Masses was a socialist magazine that was shut when the US entered the conflict. The federal government came down very hard on people who criticized the conflict.

If you follow the link, you will find some very familiar names that were involved with the magazine.

Great find.

We make war when we ought to appease
And we're killing the world by degrees;
Though those apes may deny,
I just have to ask, Why
Did we ever come down from the trees?!

Chimps aren't much better, though. Even they do kill (in their case, other chimps) "just for fun."

Richard Dawkins made the very same point in his recent lecture at Eden Court, Inverness, in response to the old chestnut of a question "Why are there still monkeys if evolution is true? WHy haven't they all evolved into humans?"

At least they did not evolve into raving religionists. Here again, it is the brain that conceives of the word god but only when it evolves into a thinking creature like we humans. Try and tell me that chimps believe in gods, you roving and raving religionists on this blog!

Is the mom wearing some sort of fluffy tutu, or is that a bush floating in mid-air?

I say Richard Dawkins is wrong if he said we didn't evolve from monkeys.
http://karmatics.com/img/yes-we-evolved-from-monkeys.gif

re. #8

I hope I'm not getting this wrong (I'm not as clever as Richard Dawkins or, no doubt, most of you here) but I think what he was saying was that, while we come from the same common ancestor as monkeys and apes, there is no reason why chimps and monkeys should have evolved into us - in other words, he was rebutting the old chestnut that we are somehow the pinnacle and ultimate object of evolution.

Better question is that if Americans are descended largely from the English. Why does Dawkins exist?

Chimps also hunt and kill for food - bushbabies yumyum.

My question is why would a mostly furless ape live where water can freeze outdoors?

My question is why would a mostly furless ape live where water can freeze outdoors?

Because after they figured out how to wear animal fur as clothing, fur became disadvantageous? (hard to get rid of parasites, not easy to take off when it is too hot, etc)

Bride of Shrek @ 2 Sort of one of those males I described and excoriated in the Texas ranch raid posting?

robbrown, are you positing that humans still had fur before the exodus from Africa?

Just checked eBay out of curiosity, and there's an issue up for sale, close to 100 bucks so far. Title art is "The Southern Gentleman Demonstrates his Superiority."

http://cgi.ebay.com/Aug-1915-THE-MASSES-Labor-SOCIALIST-Woman-LITERARY_…

@Jamie #3. I followed the link, spotted the familiar names, but the very first thing I saw was an ad for 'Expelled.'

@Puddock. We share the same common ancestor as monkeys and apes because we ARE apes. We share a common ancestor with Chimps (alas not Bonabos- directly anyway).

@Hollach. There is evidence, dried flowers in graves, that it is possible that Neanderthals had reverence for their dead and may have had religious beliefs. If better archaeological evidence comes to light it will be amusing to see the creos explain it away. The present evidence is (as far as I have read) ambiguous because the site was repeatedly and alternatly occupied by both Neanderthals and H. sapiens. Where do the gods go when their followers die out?

I was cruising the youtubes last night and ran across my favorite Scopes monkey trial rock and roll song.

Aren't we just as closely related to bonobos as we are to chimps?

"Is the mom wearing some sort of fluffy tutu, or is the bush floating in mid air?"

--hmc, #8

I believe it's the artist's version of a fig leaf! Common ancestor fashion sense, I would guess.

As I understand it, chimps and bonobos are sister groups who share a unique common ancestor. Humans are the sister group of (chimps + bonobos + their unique common ancestor) and share a unique common ancestor with them. All of us great apes are presently considered to be members of the family Hominidae, a monophylitic lineage sharing a unique common ancestor. Said ancestor not shared with gibbons, monkeys, etc. I'm not expert on primates, however.

I just ask them if their cousins died when they were born.

Or I would if anyone ever asked me such a stupid question.

Where did you find it, PZ?

I saw pee wee myers in that same skirt outside the My Oh My Club in the Bourbon Street area of New Orleans last year with his sometimes girlfriend Cheetah.

April 18th...The Day of the Great Enlightenment

"Why did we ever come down from the trees?"

It was to avoid those unscrupulous bees.
And to pray to gods
by falling down on our knees.
But by reason better than any of these,
It was to count to infinities,
A plural forever denoted in powers of threes
--Adam's and Eve's and thee.

My apologies to Cuttlefish.

Mothra, the name is Janine. Jamie is a schmuck who got sent to the Dungeon. Sadly, I also see ads for *xp*ll*d all over the net, even ScienceBlog. I also saw my first print ad in todat's Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.

Where do the gods go when their followers die out?

Harlan Ellison wrote a bunch of short stories that were collected in Deathbird Stories that in part, deals with that question. This being Ellison, the forgotten gods are less then kind.

Neil Gaiman also deals with half forgotten gods who emigrate to the US to end up as mostly con artists and thugs in American Gods.

That's the damnedest, most baroque estral genital swelling I've ever seen.

keith, take your meds. You are seeing things.

April 18th... The Day Of The Collective Yawn

@Jim Thomerson. Technically you are absolutely correct and I could have stated my point better- I was trying to work in a slight humor angle. However, our aggressive behaviour is much more chimp than bonabo. I read somewhere, and I believe it was Johnathan Kingdoms's book 'Lowly Origin' that Bonabos are a very recent split from the chimpanzee lineage, PYGMIES & DWARVES!!

Is Keith: a) simply a F***W*T, b) a creobot, c) human parody, d) ineffectual humorist, e) all of the above?

robbrown, are you positing that humans still had fur before the exodus from Africa?

No I don't think I posited anything on that issue. It gets cold in Africa as well.

I am suggesting that wearing clothes (i.e. animal fur) probably came first, then lack of fur.

@Janine #26. My most humble apologies for misspelling your name! I NEVER believed you to be the same person as that banned emotional 12 year old. I have for some time apparently been misreading your name (I am VERY near-sighted).

I am a great Harlan Ellison fan, own a copy of DEATHBIRD STORIES (as well as most of his other works) and that connection to gods loosing believers crossed my mind while writing the post. Even Star Trek nicely covered the topic in 'Who mourns for Adonis?'

There is evidence, dried flowers in graves, that it is possible that Neanderthals had reverence for their dead and may have had religious beliefs

There is rather less ambiguous evidence that H erectus had some sort of religion. They carved "Venus" figurines... two found so far, as I know to.

Pratchett also covers the issue of forgotten gods in Small Gods, which is a must-read for everyone on both sides of the debate

Is Keith: a) simply a F***W*T, b) a creobot, c) human parody, d) ineffectual humorist, e) all of the above?

My current favourite hypothesis is "keith" isn't a living creature but a rather simple computer program which takes semi-randomly-chosen words from a dictionary, strings them together in a mostly correct order albeit with some fairly random punctation, ends with one or more stock phrases about Excrement, and then auto-posts the results every few hours. Of course I have no evidence, and whilst that makes me like "keith" in one sense, I think it could be argued there is a qualitative difference.

No, no, no - humans ( or rather humans ancestors) lost their fur during their short-lived semi-aquatic stage ....
Although"The Descent of Woman" is dated, and obviously wrong in some details, about which more informatoin has come to light ...
The Alister Hardy/Elaine Morgan theory has a LOT going for it ...

What do you mean, short-lived?

If you study the distribution of humans, you'll find we tend to congregate near the sea. Just about all cities are either on rivers or harbours. At need, we can swim better than any other ape.

Incidentally, elephants are also thought to have developed their trunks due to an aquatic stage in their evolution. It'd be interesting to look at what sort of things increase the chances of a species achieving significant intelligence.

Keith is a performance artist.

Keith is a bullshit artist

How can you discuss literary examinations of the forgotten gods questions without referrence to the great, late and much lamented Douglas Adams? or did Dirk Gently and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul not cross the Atlantic?

I can see him reading his Prufrock when the line:
We measured out our lives with cofee spoons

got his mind working.

I love the line from The Salmon Of Doubt about Thor using the telephone...

he stands ten feet away and shouts godly commands at it, which works pretty well for the dialing, but isn't so good for the actual conversation.

I am suggesting that wearing clothes (i.e. animal fur) probably came first, then lack of fur.

A good hypothesis otherwise, but the genetics say no! Humans apparently evolved dark skin 1-2 million years ago, suggesting they were already naked then, while body lice (which live in clothes) are younger.

@Windy Since the information on lice you have linked to, Nicholas Wade has published 'Before the Dawn' which slightly updates the lice story, going with a more recent date of between 75 and 50,000 years for the separation of the subspecies of Human head and body lice and hence the wearing of clothes.

The difficulty in these types of studies, and alluded to in your link, is what about other lice species. Pubic lice appear to have been extirpated from chimps but still exist on Gorillas. A similar situation occurs with respect to the Elephant louse, Rhyncoptherina, which occurs on African elephants and warthogs and nothing else.

mothra: yes, the lice evidence is less conclusive than the skin color evidence, IMO.

Incidentally, elephants are also thought to have developed their trunks due to an aquatic stage in their evolution.

I seem to remember reading that the shape of the elephant's foot (essentially a stump) argues against an aquatic stage. Compare to the Hippo's much more splayed out toes that provide support on soft mud and an advantage for swimming. What I remember was in context of determining whether brachiosaurs were land dwelling or shallow aquatic to bouy their huge mass. It was the shape of the brachiosaur's foot, similar to elephants, that decided it to be a land dweller.

This rendition could as easily work as our direct ancestors, never mind the implication of what the artist knew back in 1914 and that (s)he was obviously depicting contemporary chimps. If that drawing was flashed on me and I did not have that caption to further inform, I might have considered that OLD drawing as telling a tale all its own - and that's a pretty interesting commentary in itself...

Back in 2nd year undergrad Physiology 2A, cardiac lectures we started with a theoretical consideration of pump design then went on considering simple, single chambered hearts through evolution to mammalian ones. On the way we did dinosaurs. One theory had been that brontosaurs lived in quite deep waters and that long neck was to facilitate both browsing on aquatic plants and as a periscopic breathing device. We calculated however that in order to pump blood to the head under that sort of pressure they would have needed hearts that filled their chest cavitities. There are multiple strands of evidence against the aquatic brontosaurs (or whatever they are called today).

The same would apply to a sumberged elephant. Yes, swimming elephants use their trunks to breathe since their necks don't appear to bend sufficiently, but they are floating then. Get them diving to graze like hippos and then it all goes pear shaped. Hippos don't make the mistake of trying to breathe while diving. They also have nostrils on an upward trajectory, moving towards the tops of their heads, like another group of mammals...