From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2003 - 07:15:51 EDT
David Campbell wrote:
>>Another article looked at the degree of differentiation between head lice
and body lice; the latter habitually live on clothing. Using a molecular
clock, which is not a method that I especially trust, and the doubtful
assumption that body lice diverged from head lice as soon as clothing came
into use, they suggest that clothing came into use about 72,000 years ago.
However, depending on the merits of the molecular clock calculation, this
might represent a reasonable minimum date for clothing. The presence of
hominids in cold climates long before this, for example, suggests some use
of clothes. <<
I saw this report while I was on vacation in Thailand, Malasia, Japan and
Singapore. My thought is that the claims (made in New Scientist) are typical
of the Out of Africa group (who believe that modern humans replaced everyone
else in the world in the past 200,000 years. Stoneking is quoted
"There's a very distinct possibility that clothing was one of the factors
allowing the spread of humans,' says Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany." New Scientists
Aug 23, 2003, p. 22
As David points out, there were people, (engaging in Art, religion, and
other typically human activities) living in northern climes as long as
400,000 years PRIOR to when Stonking claims. Stoneking, like many out of
africa advocates, simply ignore this simply little fact. Clothing was going
to be required, even for hairy apes to occupy cold climates. The only
primates which exist in cold climates are those like the ones who live in
geothermal pools in the winter in Japan. Primates even with hair are poorly
adapted to the cold.
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