Does humans climbing support the theory of evolution?
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Buff Johnson wrote: we still have one, albeit more vestigialTails |
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michaelp wrote:squirrels and spiders are also damned good climbersTrue. I watched a squirrel down free-solo an 11b, head first. Was probably an onsight too. It didn't even faze her when she got off route either. I'd really like to put a harness on a chimpanzee and teach it to sport climb. Then I could live vicariously through my monkey. Backwardz evolution? Buff Johnson wrote:Further differentiation between quad & bipedal compared to climbing would be more attributable to homoplasy than that of a trait unique to inter-class evolution.LOL |
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No. Evolution explains how the distribution of heritable traits in a population changes as heritable traits granting greater fitness become more abundant. Climbing per se has not been shown to be a heritable trait, and as such its changes in frequency/abundance in the human population are not due to evolution by natural/sexual/artificial selection. |
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Well, the vast majority of primates (both extant and extinct) are (were) arboreal. |
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I have a plus two-inch ape index and I crave bananas. Isnt this solid evidence that climbers came down out of the trees later than most people? |
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Brian wrote:I have a plus two-inch ape index and I crave bananas. Isnt this solid evidence that climbers came down out of the trees later than most people?Climbers never came down. They're still up there. |
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JesseT wrote: On a side note, I don't seem to have the palmaris longus muscle/tendon. Looks like I have a new item to place at the top of the list of excuses for why I don't crush. I find that excuses with Latin names always sound more convincing.Maybe you should get on the transplant list? Joe Fitschen (early California climber) wrote an essay for the book 'Climbing - Philosophy for Everyone: Because It's There' in which he argued that we like to climb because we come from primordial climbing species. The book makes an entertaining read, including an essay defending chipping and another describing climbing as a 'gift culture.' |
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Brian wrote:I have a plus two-inch ape index and I crave bananas. Isnt this solid evidence that climbers came down out of the trees later than most people?Speak for yourself. I'm posting this from up in a tree. |
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Though climbing isn't a heritable trait, it is thought that brain chemistry is. I think the current theory is that in a small group of humans, some would be motivated to do low-risk activities such as picking berries, while other "adrenaline junkies" would get a dopamine reward from climbing a tree to get food or hunting an animal. This increases fitness for the community. |
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We could always make climbing evolution conformant by placing lots of predators at the base of every crag, and reproductive opportunities at each summit. |
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JesseT wrote:The ability to climb has not been as necessary for their (our) survival as, say, the ability to walk and manipulate objects (tools) with their (our) hands.Interestingly, these abilities may have originated from the same place in our ancestors' brains. Example: Our ability to use synonyms (i.e., replace one word for another), or to use a tool in a new way, may come from our ancestors' need to view a tree branch as a "hand hold" no matter which orientation it has in a 3-dimensional plane. In other words, seeing "hand holds" in different ways (up, down, big, small, etc.) may have given rise to our ability to see words, tools, and everything else in different ways, too. Heard that in a lecture once from a visiting researcher. |
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wow! i did not know anyone had responded. some very cool info was shared. |