Re: >Macroevolution

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Fri, 12 Dec 1997 18:17:47 -0600

Eduardo wrote:

At 01:14 PM 12/12/97 -0600, Eduardo G. Moros wrote:
>Wesley, let me apologize for being a bit loose in my previous statements. Let
>me say a few things seriously.
>
>1) I'm a dignified skeptic. My presupposition is that once a speech was
>acquired by humans (whatever way this happened), they immediately began to
>lie, consciously, unconsciously or subconsciously.
>

Besides the fact that this is a terrible thing to think about anyone who
disagrees with you, I would point out that language is not necessary for lying:

"Forming alliances is only the beginning. If it takes smarts for
a baboon or monkey to keep track of all the facts in his social
relationships, imagine how much intelligence is required when he
and his companions begin to lie."
"Take Paul, for instance, a young juvenile chacma baboon
observed in Ethiopia by Richard Bryne and Andrew Whiten of the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland. One day they noticed Paul
watching an adult female named Mel dig in the ground for a large
grass root. He looked around. There were no other baboons
nearby, though the troop was within earshot. Suddenly and with
no visible provocation, Paul let out a yell. In an instant his
mother appeared, and in a flurry chased the astonished Mel out of
sight. Meanwhile, Paul walked over and ate the grass root she
left behind."~Donald Johanson and James Shreeve, Lucy's Child,
(New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1989), p. 274

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm