"Walking with Cavemen"

[King of the Americas]

Wht a bunch of absolute CR*P!

"Here's how we 'think' a bunch of primative primates used to go through their daily lives. However, we didn't evolve from any of these species, and we aren't going to show ANYTHING from those we actually DID evolve from.

Once again, 'science' ignores the 'gap' in the fossil record, and refuses to provide any evidence worth looking at.

Okay, so we didn't come from Homo Erectus who beget Homo Habalis, or vice versa, who beget Neaderthal who did NOT beget Cro Magnon...

No, No, NO...'We' came from an earlier species from before Homo Erectus & Habalis. My problem with the incrimental steps in the fossil record 'leading' to us, is that it is anything BUT incrimental or leading to us!

The primate Modern Man evolved from, was less than 4 feet tall, and had a cranial capacity of more than 400 cc's less than what we have. The missing steps/links from this ancestor and us are to be found IN Homo Erectus, Habalis, and Neaderthal, ...but NONE of our DNA came from this line.

What this SHOULD have been called is, "Walking with things we DIDN'T come from."

This whole argument and Science's refusal to History's Scribes as accurate. And INSTEAD, ignore the finding of any 'gap' and gloss over any details.

"And the sons of god saw the daughters of men and that they were beautiful, and they took wives that they chose. And there were giants in those days, men of renoun."

And the small 4 foot men of earth 'grew' in stature, intelligence, and ability.

It was evolution, but a kind of hyper or assisted-evolution.

It is actually easier from ME to believe these scribes, rather than accept a VERY incomplete grouping of evidence, for a theory that just doesn't fit other findings.

'Science' requires evidence for belief. That they have been able to peddle this for so long with incomplete proof is baffling to me.

 

[CFLarsen]

KOA,

Are you a masochist or do you suffer from amnesia?

We've been through this issue at least once before, and you were severely trounced then. So, why do you think it won't happen again?

Do some studying, before you post, will'ya?

 

[aggle_rithm]

Wht a bunch of absolute CR*P!


What this SHOULD have been called is, "Walking with things we DIDN'T come from."

??? Does this mean they can't be called cavemen if we did not descend from them?

Until recently (evolutionarily speaking) there were more than one species of human cohabitating on the planet. Now there is just one. Is this so hard to understand?

 

[CurtC]

But didn't they say that we *did* come from one of the specimens, namely the Homo Heidelbergensis (or however you'd spell it)? It branched out to Europe and Africa before the ice age hit, which made Europe colder but Africa hotter and dryer, so the people in the two locations evolved different characteristics. One became Neanderthal, and the other became Homo Sapiens.

That's what I heard watching the program, anyway. I think programs like this are great for a lay audience, because they show the basic structure of our understanding, presented in a way that is engaging. Instead of studying abstract names and dates, you see the individuals trying to stay alive.

There is one thing I thought they didn't get right: shouldn't the humans who lived in sunnier climes have darker skin? They showed all the characters as light-skinned.

 

[Bluegill]

I think programs like this are great for a lay audience, because they show the basic structure of our understanding, presented in a way that is engaging. Instead of studying abstract names and dates, you see the individuals trying to stay alive.

One of my co-workers watched it and really enjoyed it. She was telling me about it this morning, and kept expressing surprise that they didn't show dinosaurs. So thank you Discovery Channel for making shows that both educate and entertain!

(I don't know if she has actually caught on to the fact that dinosaurs died out before humans walked on stage. I wanted to make sure she knew it, but I'd already made some comments that I was worried would make me sound smug, so I kept quiet for diplomatic reasons. Besides, after watching that show, she probably knew about as much as our ancestors as I did.)

 

[MRC_Hans]

A number of different extinct hominid species have been found. We are a hominid species. Unfortunately DNA preservation over such long time-spans is poor, so we cannot pinpoint our origin that way. So what? They were here, we are here, what is the problem?

I never understood these people who, when faced with the fact that scientific knowledge is incomplete, prefer religious explanations. If you find a 10$ bill in you sofa and cannot find out how it came there, do you assume God placed it?

What research in human origins has shown us so far is that hominids DID evolve here. So how can anything be more logical than assuming that WE also did? Why the need for supernatural explanations?

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

*snip* She was telling me about it this morning, and kept expressing surprise that they didn't show dinosaurs. *snip*

Yeah! A very widespread misconception, curtesey of Fred Flintstone . Plus the fact that the time-spans involved tend to go over the heads of a lot of people. 70 million years is hard to imagine.

Hans

 

[arcticpenguin]

'Science' requires evidence for belief. That they have been able to peddle this for so long with incomplete proof is baffling to me.

So the 'proof' science offers has to be perfectly complete? And yet the religious explanations are not only incomplete but riddled with self-contradictions.

Do you understand that not every single organism that ever lived becomes a fossil? Is your great-grandfather a fossil, and his father? If not, then there are gaps in the record, aren't there?

Why is the fossil record for man subjected to such higher standards than that for other species?

 

[c0rbin]

I think Walking with Cavemen could have been a great 20 minute program. I really go tired of watching people run around in monkey suits

 

[Dymanic]

I sat down with my dinner in front of the TV to watch it. Whoo boy, what a mistake that was. They should have added something to the warnings like, "This program contains scenes of proto-people doing really vile things like drooling, and eating tarantulas, and spitting out disgusting looking stuff. Diner discretion is advised".

I tend to try to gauge the success of these shows by how well they strike a balance between being entertaining enough to engage viewers with only mild interest in the subject, and being factual enough to make it worth watching.

It is frustrating that we have no more evidence than we do, and it is amazing how much rivalry and how much wrangling over details takes place between professionals in the field of paleoanthropology -- and how much the wrangling over details is influenced by the rivalry. I think this first became clear to me when I read the book 'Lucy'.

 

[aggle_rithm]

There is one thing I thought they didn't get right: shouldn't the humans who lived in sunnier climes have darker skin? They showed all the characters as light-skinned.

They should, if they don't want to go extinct.

Oh, right. They are extinct.

 

[aggle_rithm]

I didn't see the program, but I have two comments about the commercial:

First, I couldn't help singing the title to the tune of the song, "I'm walking in sunshine":

I'm walking with cavemen,
And don't it feel good!

Second, when the commercial asked the question, "how did they survive?" the first thing that popped into my head was: "They didn't survive! They're all dead!"

 

[Denise]

Why are they called "cavemen" anyhow? Just curious, did most of them really live in caves? I know that there are cave paintings in France and such, but back when we were evolving in Africa, it seems to me that many of our anscestors would have lived in the trees in the forests, and probably had other shelters on the plains.

 

[CurtC]

Lots of the evidence we find is in caves, because that's where it gets preserved better I think. But hominids are different because we started walking upright, and we didn't do that until our ancestors came down out of the trees. I would think that a cave would be a great place to hang out - shelter from rain, only one entrance to guard against predators, etc.

 

[SquishyDave]

"Walking with cavemen" is the third in a series that started with "walking with dinosaurs", moved on to mammals in the series "walking with beasts", and has ended up "walking with cavemen".

The great thing about these shows are that they pretend that some documentary film makers went back in time and filmed what was happening and present it too us as such. Now they make a buttload up, like in the dinosaur one they said stegosaurus flushed blood into its back plates to help make it look more scary when it was presented with danger, as well as waving its massive tail spikes at the enemy, purely theory of course, but it looked good and is a good theory as they know that there was a tone of blood vessel all over the back plates (could be for heat dissapation also).

So they do make a lot up and present it as fact, but that's because of the style they have chosen to adopt, and it is entertaining and well made, so I am all for it.

It is called cavemen for the same reason they called the second series "Beasts" instead of "mammals", "cavemen" sounds better than say "early humans" or something.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Why are they called "cavemen" anyhow? Just curious, did most of them really live in caves? I know that there are cave paintings in France and such, but back when we were evolving in Africa, it seems to me that many of our anscestors would have lived in the trees in the forests, and probably had other shelters on the plains.

Because treesinthesavannahmen doesn't flow off the tongue.

Most excavations of hominids in the 1800s occured in caves because that's what was accessable to European paleontologists. The term stuck even after fossils were found in other environments.

 

[King of the Americas]

To CurtC:

Before Neaderthal, there was Homo Erectus, and before that Homo Habalis.

Before THAT, was the common ancestor that split, one line becoming Neaderthal and going extinct, and the other in Africa becoming Homo Sapian

The problem or 'gap' occures between the common ancestor and Homo Sapian. It took Neaderthal to previous incarnations before becomign LESS evolved than Homo Sapian.

HOW did Homo Sapian 'leap' ahead out of what species? The FAR distant common ancestor?

That far distant comon ancestor was almost 2 full feet shorter than Modern Man and had just a bit more than half the brain we do.

The program showed how Neaderthal man had evolved and taken millions of years to change very slowly, but this was the line that died! This was NOT about who 'we' are and where 'we' came from, at all.

Thus MY problem with it.

 

[King of the Americas]

To MRC_Hans:

Is your contention that all of these 'different' homonid species came from seperate lines, and that some died out and we didn't, such that all of us existed together at the same time?

Evolution suggests (I thought), that we ALL came from a common ancestor, who grew and developed differently, in accordance or response to their environment.

Who were our "'great' raised to the 50 power" grandparents?

NOT Neaderthal, those where our great cousins now far gone. Nor was it Homo Habalis or Erectus.

'We' appearantly, 'shot' up the evolutionary ladder seemingly overnight, with no traces whatsoever that caused this unfathomanable transformation, other than our broken historical texts. Nor they HAVE found Neaderthals and THEIR ancesterial line...but not our's.

I can think of no greater pursuit that finding out our true origins. But to dismiss historical texts outright, giving them no validity, and then pursuing a speculative 'theory' without proper evidence, seems to ME, very irresponsible.

 

[King of the Americas]

To arcticpenguin:

How to determine the truth of the matter:

-Gather as much evidence as possible
-Weigh it equally without prejudice
-Make the conclusion based on facts

---

The mistake you and others make is saying that because 'history' has made some mistakes, that it is all completely useless, to be regarded as pure fiction.

Indeed, my great great grandfather may NOT be a fossil, AND YET I and other can still read about him as his life, knowing full well we won't have all of the details, exact and perfect, but we sure as hell can see that there WAS such a man who lived as just such a time.

Now, what do the facts show?

That the ancesterial line WE came from took a giant leap forward in evolutionaly standards, while our cousins' line was wiped out.

A VERY short, hairy, small brained creature became 'us' without any transitional fossils or ancestery to bridge the gap.

Does our historical texts shed ANY light on this period of our existance?

Well, as a matter of fact, it does...

 

[Denise]

There was an article about five years back about a find in England with bodies of more ancient people. I remember it because the dude was called CheddarMan and me and my daughter would play knock knock jokes- Who's there? Chedderman! Ok we are weird. Anyhow, they did a DNA test and it seems that a local school teacher was related to him. Hundreds of years later the descendants were only a couple of miles from where he was buried. That was the cool thing that stuck in my mind.