michaelm@3comvax.UUCP (Michael McNeil) (10/04/85)
[ +(8=<>- ] (<- watch out for this guy -- he eats lines!) KEY: > > Ted Holden > Piotr Berman > > In an article now on the net entitled "Powerlifting and the > > Ultrasaur", I present an outright mathematical and physical proof > > that at least one species of sauropod could not possibly exist or > > function in our gravity. The conclusion regarding the ultrasaur was... > > [TED] Isn't it wonderful the way Ted can provide us with "outright mathematical and physical *proof*" (emphasis added) about species which have been dead for (he says) thousands (I say) millions of years? One of the things many people frequently object to about scientists is their reluctance to definitely say "I have proven..." or "I know for sure..." (A prominent American politician once asked for a "one-handed scientist" -- so that he *couldn't* say, "But on the other hand...") Most scientists, unlike Ted, recognize that absolute proof is unavailable in this universe, with the exception of wholly abstract fields such as mathematics. (Mathematics and Ted -- now that's another story...) As a result of their being all too aware of the limits of human knowledge, most scientists tend to be maddeningly humble in their definitive pronouncements. But not Ted... > > I don't particularly like being involved in an argument over > > whether or not man could have caused the extinction of any or all > > of the planet's megafauna. [TED] Who cares whether you like it or not, Ted? If you don't like it, *don't do it* -- I'm sure we'd all be happier if you left the subject alone! > > The notion seems preposterous to me... [TED] Lots of things that don't seem *at all* preposterous to you, Ted, seem *utterly* preposterous to virtually everyone else! Who cares about what you think is preposterous! (Actually, I tend to regard Ted's considering something to be preposterous as an argument in its favor.) > > Let's take a hard look at this whole notion of stampeding animals over > > a cliff. > > > > What would I want for an ideal victim for such a hunting > > technique, assuming I intended to practice it? Several things, > > actually. These would include: > > > > 4. I would want the prey to be big enough to justify the effort, > > but not big enough to pose any ridiculous danger to me and my > > companions. Again, elephants are the wrong choice; bison > > would be more like it. [TED] So you think *bison herds* are safe to hunt, do you Ted? Can I watch? (There is solid archeological evidence that entire herds of bison were driven off cliffs en masse. Only weeks ago Ted was arguing that this was an impossible, idiotic idea for our ancestors to have performed. But was it *safe* to hunt bison? Of course not! Probably the only people who ever hunted bison *safely* were those who shot them from American transcontinental railroad trains during the last century!) > > I can't believe that writers on net.origins keep refering to > > mammoths as HERD ANIMALS. New York city street gangs travel in > > something like the same numbers as elephant groups; that doesn't make > > them herd animals. I have to believe that attempting to stampede a > > group of elephants over a cliff would be about like attempting to > > stampede one of these street gangs over a 40 story roof top or the high > > point of the G.W. bridge. I would expect either group to turn and > > fight to the death before going over the edge. In any scene of actual > > human inflicted carnage amongst mammoths in the vacinity of a cliff, I > > would expect to find the mammoths AT THE TOP OF THE CLIFF, DEAD FROM > > SPEAR WOUNDS, along with many human skeletons. [TED] > > I read about Pigmies hunting elephants. A little hunter can incapacitate > a big elephant by himself. First, he spread shit of some animal on his > skin, so the elephant would not feel the human smell. Then he walks > under the elephant and slits Achilles tendons. Voila! The giant cannot > walk anymore. No skeletons of Pygmies at all! [PIOTR] Very interesting example, Piotr. I don't actually recall anyone in this newgroup arguing that *mammoths* were stampeded off cliffs. In all probability, other techniques (such as that of the pygmies) were used on them. As to whether mammoths are "herd animals," elephants certainly are gregarious, family-oriented animals. Whether elephants are considered to be "herd" animals depends on how many individuals are considered to constitute a "herd." Given the huge size of elephants, I suspect most people feel that relatively few animals are needed to make them a "herd." > You theorise, those people were doing this for living. I would not > consult you how to hunt (if I would be a primitive tribesman) or how > to walk, if I would be a dinosaur. [PIOTR] I would add: In what sense, when hunters are out trying to obtain food to feed their families, are they not doing it "for a living"? > > I am completely turned off by modern science's insistence on > > describing our ancesters as idiots at every opportunity. Can anybody > > believe that our ancestors were so stupid as to ALWAYS go after the > > biggest and most dangerous and wretched tasting game when there were > > always deer and cattle and buffalo and rabbits and ducks nearby? [TED] No, I'd say it's the present-day idiots who think that "there were always deer and cattle and buffalo and rabbits and ducks nearby." Which world are *you* living in, Ted? (Or was it the Garden of Eden?) There are dry seasons, droughts, animal migrations, changing climates, etc., etc. This was the ice age! It's ridiculous to suggest that, "Oh, They could have picked up food anywhere -- why go out and work for it?" A mammoth is virtually a walking treasure-house of meat -- as even *you* realize: > > Like I have said, one mammoth would feed a whole > > tribe for a hell of a long time, assuming the tribe consisted entirely > > of masochists willing to eat elephant. [TED] (A history I rather like reported on the fact that most people in ancient Sumer ate only bread and onions. In an invented conversation, one person asks another, "Don't you ever get tired of onions?" The other looks at him blankly for a moment, then wonderingly replies, "Get tired of food?") > > There was no need for any of > > this. It would be far simpler to pick out a straggler and kill him > > with spears or kill one elephant in a pit trap; this would have the > > added advantage of not destroying your entire hunting ground for the > > season. > > Oh, man killed mammoths here and there... [TED] So Ted Holden *can* pick up an idea, if it's repeated frequently and clearly enough! Yes, probably stragglers frequently were singled out, probably lone mammoths were killed in pit traps, etc. It's nice to hear Ted admit, for the first time, that men *did* kill mammoths! > > ... but that is not why > > mammoths are extinct. The really big mammoth kill sites, in Alaska > > and in northern Siberia and in the islands off the north coast of > > Russia and Siberia, show no evidence of man's hand; only that of a > > violent nature. Velikovsky's book, "Earth in Upheaval", gives a good > > account of several of these. [TED] > > Mammoths are found in those plases because they got well preserved in the > permafrost. Probably the drown in Arctic bogs and later were submerged > in the permafrost, like a lot of other creatures. Because of those > marvelously preserved specimens we know that mammoth, unlike elephant, > was very hairy: a trait of a subarctic animal. [PIOTR] Enough theorizing in a vacuum! Let's look at a specific culture and see if Ted's hypothesizing pans out. In central Russia there was an extraordinary culture some 15,000 years ago (as determined by carbon-14 dating) which is usually known simply as Mammoth-Bone Dwellings. I quote from the November, 1984, *Scientific American* article entitled "Mammoth-Bone Dwellings on the Russian Plain": ... it became clear that the mammoth bones were not merely refuse. On the contrary, the bone was the structural material for an extraordinary style of building. The mammoth-bone structures were generally round or oval in plan. Skulls, mandibles, scapulas and other bones formed the foundations. The superstructure was probably a wood frame covered with hides or sod. [1] ... As at other sites, each dwelling has a foundation wall assembled from large bones of the mammoth. The bones were not just packed into the structure at random. Instead their geometry was exploited as an element of the design. Skulls were placed at regular intervals in an arc or a full circle to form the foundation of the interior base wall. There were several methods for inserting the skulls in the wall. At Mazhirich and Dobranichevka the skulls were put in with the rostrum (the portion of the skull holding the ends of the tusks) down. At Mezin, on the other hand, the skulls were put in with the occipital region (the back of the head) down. In both placements the flat frontal part of the skull faced the dwelling's interior. The interior wall was sometimes completed with pelvises and scapulas. The foundation wall was extended upward and outward with bones arranged in an intriguing architectural-anatomical pattern. At Mezhirich the pattern is different for each dwelling that has been excavated. In Dwelling No. 1, which is circular,the upper part of the wall apparently consisted entirely of mandibles. The 95 mandibles are stacked above the skulls in a herring-bone pattern with the chins down. ... Although all the dwellings have significant structural features in common, they vary greatly in how elaborate the design is and in how much bone went into them. Dwelling No. 1 at Mezhirich includes about 21,000 kilograms of bone, No. 2 about 19,000 and No. 4 about 15,000. In contrast, several of the structures from Dobranichevka and Mezin include only 1,000 kilograms of bone apiece. [2] > Actually, the population of mammoths had to be sparse: semiarid tundra > would not support them otherwise. [PIOTR] This is incorrect, Piotr. It's now thought that the environment of the sub-glacial arctic was very different during the ice age, a rich grassland steppe environment more closely akin in its quantity and complexity of life to the present-day African savanna than to the cold desert we find in arctic regions today. I quote further from the *Scientific American* article cited above: As the Paleolithic hunters moved between their winter and summer homes their economic activities centered on the harvesting of large mammals. The periglacial steppe habitat, which has no contemporary equivalent, supported big herds of gregarious herbivores. In addition to the woolly mammoths there were rhinoceroses, reindeer, horses, bison, musk oxen and also smaller animals such as hares. The large mammals, which provided the local hunters with the bulk of their caloric intake, were supplemented with fish and birds. The Paleolithic sites include the bones of salmon, perch, pike, ducks, geese, swans and arctic ptarmigans. The wolf and the arctic fox were also taken, but the way the carcasses were treated indicates that these species were hunted for their pelts rather than for their flesh. [3] The demise of this rich environment no doubt had a great deal to do with the extinction of the mammoth -- but so did the human hunters! > > Anybody who would go out after one of these guys with > > a spear, with or without an atlatl, a zip-gun, chucks, a straight > > razor, a switch-blade knife or anything else like that would have to be > > out of his mind. Judging from what I read, I can believe that one or > > two of the ivory tower dwellers who contribute to net.origins might be > > capable of attempting such a thing (about once), but I give Alley Oop > > credit for having had more sense than that. [TED] > > The problem is that YOU do not know how to hunt. A Masai brave hunts > alone a lion with his spear and knife only. Pigmies kill elephants. > Eskimo were killing whales with their stone-age tools. Primitive > people were as intelligent as you, and they were spending generations > polishing their hunting technics. Not the firepower but the cunning > tricks and deep knowledge on animal behavior were the effective > weapons. [PIOTR] Ditto, in spades! Aren't you the mighty hunter, Ted! (Talk about ivory towers!) In case you weren't aware of it, Ted, archaeology and anthropology are *experimental* sciences nowadays. Scientists have learned how to make and use these tools, not by theorizing about them ("Figure things out logically with no further ado" -- isn't that your motto, Ted?), but by chipping the stone, throwing the spear, skinning the animal, *doing what our ancestors did* to find out how they lived. As far as "Alley Oop" goes, Ted, you're not giving your own ancestors credit for possessing the *same* talents which *present day* stone-age peoples display, when they perform the very feats that you, theorizing in your easy chair, say *can't be done*! You're on pretty shaky ground, Ted! People are *doing* that which you claim is impossible! It's easy to see why a person as far removed from reality as Ted is would have trouble dealing with people who singly or in groups *would* consent to hunt creatures such as lions, bison, elephants, or mammoths. Ted is quite correct -- such people "would have to be out of his mind." In fact, they usually *are out of their minds*. Most hunting societies have highly developed techniques for "psyching up" before the hunt that make high school pre-game pep rallies look pretty "primitive." There's the tribe's medicine man -- who magically transforms the hunters into invulnerable monsters -- and there are music, dance, and drugs which leave the people in highly unusual states of mind, to say the least. And do you "give Alley Oop credit," Ted, "for having more sense" than people do *today*? Let's look at the sense displayed by some *modern* humans. During the First World War *hundreds of thousands of men* heard their orders and (outwardly) calmly jumped out of the trenches and dashed onto No Man's Land -- only to be cut down, again and again and again, by the buzz saw of machine gun fire -- only to try again and again and again. After the first few times at least, these men knew full well the danger of those guns, yet they went. The danger was *much* more fearsome than any mammoth, yet they went. Were they idiots? Perhaps -- but a better case can be made for their generals. And what about the man who, after the fact, says it couldn't happen? One last quote from "Mammoth-Bone Dwellings on the Russian Plain": Flesh obtained by hunting and also perhaps bones obtained by collecting were put in pits near the dwellings. The pits were as deep as 1.5 meters, which was deep enough to penetrate the thaw layer of the permafrost and provide extended protection of the meat. In the processing of meat and the building of the mammoth- bone dwellings stone tools played a crucial role. Among the types of stone tool found at Mezhirich and other Upper Paleolithic sites on the Russian plain are end scrapers for processing hides, burins for shaping hard material such as antlers or ivory, push planes for shaping bone into spearheads and stone points for the initial cutting of meat. One of the reasons stone tools had such a central position in Upper Paleolithic culture is that they were employed to make artifacts from other materials. Among these materials were bone and ivory, which formed the material for utilitarian objects such as hammers, hoes, piercers, awls, burnishers and needles (with eyes!). Members of the community also made nonutilitarian objects from bone and ivory. Among the art objects from Mezhirich and Mezin are many mammoth bones covered with designs in red ocher. The residents made decorative objects to wear as well as for their dwellings. From Mezin and Mezhirich come necklaces of seashells, amber and bone beads and perforated wolf and arctic fox teeth that were used as pendants. The art of the community had advanced beyond decoration to representation: the objects found at Mezin and Mezhirich include stylized figurines. [4] -- References [1] Mikhail I. Gladkih, Ninelj L. Kornietz, and Olga Soffer, "Mammoth-Bone Dwellings on the Russian Plain," *Scientific American*, Scientific American, Inc., New York, November, 1984, p. 164. [2] *ibid*., p. 167. [3] *ibid*., p. 169. [4] *ibid*., p. 170. Further Reading I. G. Pidoplichko, *Pozdnepaleoliticheskie Zhilishcha Iz Kostei Mamonta Na Ukraine (Upper Paleolithic Mammoth-Bone Dwellings in the Ukraine)*, Naukova Dumka, Kiev, 1969, in Russian. Richard G. Klein, *Ice-Age Hunters of the Ukraine*, University of Chicago Press, 1973. I. G. Pidoplichko, *Mezhirichskie Zhilishcha Iz Kostei Mamonta (Mezhirich Mammoth-Bone Dwellings)*, Naukova Dumka, Kiev, 1976, in Russian, summary in English. Edith M. Shimkin, "The Upper Paleolithic in North-Central Eurasia: Evidence and Problems," *Views of the Past: Essays in Old World Prehistory and Paleoanthropology*, edited by Leslie G. Freeman, Mouton Publishers, 1978. -- Michael McNeil 3Com Corporation "All disclaimers including this one apply" (415) 960-9367 ..!ucbvax!hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm Life, even cellular life, may exist out yonder in the dark. But high or low in nature, it will not wear the shape of man. That shape is the evolutionary product of a strange, long wandering through the attics of the forest roof, and so great are the chances of failure, that nothing precisely and identically human is likely ever to come that way again. Loren Eiseley, *The Immense Journey*, 1946
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (10/08/85)
In article <242@3comvax.UUCP> michaelm@3comvax.UUCP (Michael McNeil) writes: > >So you think *bison herds* are safe to hunt, do you Ted? Can I watch? >(There is solid archeological evidence that entire herds of bison were >driven off cliffs en masse. Only weeks ago Ted was arguing that this >was an impossible, idiotic idea for our ancestors to have performed. >But was it *safe* to hunt bison? Of course not! Probably the only >people who ever hunted bison *safely* were those who shot them from >American transcontinental railroad trains during the last century!) Actually, even that was not entirely safe, Bison herds have been known to derail trains! > >No, I'd say it's the present-day idiots who think that "there were always >deer and cattle and buffalo and rabbits and ducks nearby." Which world >are *you* living in, Ted? (Or was it the Garden of Eden?) There are >dry seasons, droughts, animal migrations, changing climates, etc., etc. >This was the ice age! It's ridiculous to suggest that, "Oh, They could >have picked up food anywhere -- why go out and work for it?" A mammoth >is virtually a walking treasure-house of meat -- as even *you* realize: > Also, even where they are present, such animals as deer are not necessarily that common. When I lived back east(actually in the midwest) I spent much time walking in a number of forested nature preserves where I KNOW there were deer, I saw the tracks by water, but I *never* saw a wild deer. I also know that modern deer hunters often take several days to get *one* deer. Believe me, after weeks subsisting on squirrels and sparrows, you would do almost anything to get a substantial meal, including attack a mammoth or a bear. Look what the plains Indians did to ensure a steady supply of Bison meat, they gave up fixed homes and took to following th herds around! >(A history I rather like reported on the fact that most people in ancient >Sumer ate only bread and onions. In an invented conversation, one person >asks another, "Don't you ever get tired of onions?" The other looks at >him blankly for a moment, then wonderingly replies, "Get tired of food?") > Nice point. >> >> The problem is that YOU do not know how to hunt. A Masai brave hunts >> alone a lion with his spear and knife only. Pigmies kill elephants. >> Eskimo were killing whales with their stone-age tools. Primitive >> people were as intelligent as you, and they were spending generations >> polishing their hunting technics. Not the firepower but the cunning >> tricks and deep knowledge on animal behavior were the effective >> weapons. [PIOTR] > >Ditto, in spades! Aren't you the mighty hunter, Ted! (Talk about >ivory towers!) In case you weren't aware of it, Ted, archaeology and >anthropology are *experimental* sciences nowadays. Scientists have >learned how to make and use these tools, not by theorizing about them >("Figure things out logically with no further ado" -- isn't that your >motto, Ted?), but by chipping the stone, throwing the spear, skinning >the animal, *doing what our ancestors did* to find out how they lived. > There is even a Time-Life(I believe) book which has a pictorial on how to make stone tools! You know what I find absurd is scenes like the opening scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where a few hundred natives are chasing the hero and throwing spears at him and *missing* all the time. No way! If they were that poor a shot they would starve to death! See below. >As far as "Alley Oop" goes, Ted, you're not giving your own ancestors >credit for possessing the *same* talents which *present day* stone-age >peoples display, when they perform the very feats that you, theorizing >in your easy chair, say *can't be done*! You're on pretty shaky >ground, Ted! People are *doing* that which you claim is impossible! > -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen ARPA: ttidca!psivax!friesen@rand-unix.arpa