Seiken zuki - Part II

[Bill Glasheen]

Let me start this thread by saying what an inspiration Van is on this subject. By drawing attention to controversial subjects such as the use of punches to the head, he pokes holes in conventions that many hold dear. It doesn't go over well - at first. But Van does his homework. He doesn't stir stuff up unless there's a good reason to.

I take this subject in a new and interesting direction with someone who appreciates it.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

From the previous thread about the seiken zuki.

When a monkey fell asleep on a tree branch…and suddenly fell off…the fist reflex activated…the monkey grabbed the branch and survived the fall.

No doubt Van pulled this idea out of some book he read on the subject, which hypothesized why we humans like to use our fists. It's because some common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was a tree dweller, right? Or so we thought.

And then came this. (Source: WSJ.com)

While we still have issues with the appropriate use of our proper fists, we're going to have to re-think the reasons why we instinctively do what we do. As always... when the data don't match your working paradigm, it's time for a paradigm shift.

- Bill

AFRICA NEWS OCTOBER 2, 2009

Fossils Shed New Light on Human Past

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ

After 15 years of rumors, researchers made public fossils from a 4.4 million-year-old human forebear they say reveals that our ancestors were more modern than scholars had assumed, widening the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from apes and chimpanzees.

The highlight of the extensive fossil trove was a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind's beginnings.

An international research team led by paleoanthropologist Tim White at the University of California, Berkeley, unveiled on Thursday remains from 36 males, females and young of an ancient prehuman species called Ardipithecus ramidus, unearthed in the Awash region of Ethiopia starting in 1994. The creatures take their scientific name from the word for "root" in the local Afar language. They aren't the oldest known fossils of hominids -- as prehuman species and their relatives are called -- but constitute the most complete set discovered so far.

"It is not a chimp, and it is not human," said Dr. White. "It gives us a new perspective on our origins. We opened a time capsule from a time and place that we knew nothing about."

Although the differences between humans, apes and chimps today are legion, we all shared a common ancestor six million years or so ago. These fossils suggest that the common ancestor -- still undiscovered -- resembled a chimp much less than researchers have always believed.

In fact, so many traits in modern chimps and apes are missing from these early hominids that researchers now question the notion that chimps and apes are a repository of primitive traits once shared by our ancestors. "We all thought the ancestral animal would look more like a chimp," said Yale University anthropologist Andrew Hill.

Instead, the new finds show that what seems most ancient about modern chimps and apes -- such as canine fangs, long limbs with hooked fingers for swinging through trees, and hands designed for knuckle-walking -- may actually be more recent developments, the researchers said. In that sense, the human hand today actually may be the more primitive appendage, they said.

"It is the chimps and gorillas that have been evolving like crazy in terms of limbs and locomotion, not hominids," said Kent State University anthropologist Owen Lovejoy, a senior scientist on the research team. "We took a different tack. We went social."

Documented in 11 research papers to be published Friday in Science, the fossils offer a detailed look at a species of sturdy, small-brained creatures that dwelled in an ancient African glade of hackberry, fig and palm trees, by a river that long ago turned to stone. Despite their antiquity, their bodies were already starting to presage humanity, the scientists said.

Unlike modern apes and chimps, these hominids had supple wrists, strong thumbs, flexible fingers and power-grip palms shaped to grasp objects like sticks and stones firmly. They were primed for tool use, even though it would be another two million years or so before our ancestors began to fashion the first stone blades, choppers and axes.

There is no way to gauge these creatures' intelligence, but they had brains barely bigger than a golf-club head -- far smaller than the more recent species, called Australopithecus afarensis, to which the Lucy skeleton belonged.

The creatures were still evolving the ability to walk upright, with a big toe better suited for grasping branches than stepping smartly along, an analysis of their anatomy shows. They made their home in the woods, not on the open savannah grasslands long considered the main arena of human development. Yet their upright posture, distinctive pelvis and other toes suggest they walked easily enough. Most important, they showed no sign they walked on their knuckles, as contemporary chimps and apes do.

"They are not what one would have predicted," said anthropologist Bernard Wood at George Washington University.

Already, the discoveries have experts reworking the human pedigree. They undoubtedly will shape debates about human origins for years to come, as scholars argue whether these creatures should be counted among our most ancient direct ancestors or cataloged as an intriguing dead-end.

The project began with the discovery of a single tooth. But it soon grew into arguably the most comprehensive effort in the field of hominid studies, involving 47 scientists world-wide, as scores of unusually fragile and shattered specimens emerged from the rock. The skull, for example, was in so many pieces it had to be reconstructed digitally, through hundreds of CAT scans and 1,000 hours of computer processing. The pelvis alone took six years to reconstruct.

"We took enormous flak" for spending so much time analyzing the fossils, said Dr. Lovejoy. "We wanted to get it right, and people had to wait until it was right."

Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com

[Bill Glasheen]

I have an online subscription to Wall Street Journal. This works for me. It may or may not work for you. Let me know if it does.

Interactive Graphics

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

[MikeK]

I love it when new information turns over our bowl of assumptions and facts.

BTW, What's wrong with having a brain the size of the head of a golf club?