6 ms·
Humanlike thumb dexterity may date back as far as 2M years ago
- hntrader 6y agoThis might have evolved in order to throw rocks, which was apparently one of our most important hunting and defence adaptations about 2M years ago after we migrated out of the forests.
- lysium 6y agoI want to ask what you mean when you say „we”. Our species Homo sapiens evolved about 200-300k years ago.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoOur ancestors, to whom we are genealogically and culturally connected, going back to the first cells which lived.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- birdsbirdsbirds 6y agoWe still are the first cells that lived. From a cell's point of view, there are no ancestors.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoTouche!
- harperlee 6y agoI’d be more inclined to say a cell is the ancestor of those that it divides into. Otherwise, saying you are your father and mother would be consistent with what you initially said...
- rendall 6y agoI'm confused by this question. What is the most charitable[1] answer that you can think of that fits the statement? What are plausible alternatives to Homo sapiens? Could homo sapiens be a reasonable answer to your question, evolutionary history notwithstanding? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
- lysium 6y agoAll old world monkeys and apes have opposable thumbs. Some of them still live in trees. So, leaving the wood and hunting by throwing stones does not seem reasonable to me as a reason for thumbs. But maybe I did not understand what is meant by “we”, hence my question.
- rendall 6y agoI see. That's reasonable.
- inglor_cz 6y ago"We" definitely does not include "me", I cannot throw precisely even if my life depended on it. But I am glad that someone in my tribe can.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoYou should give yourself more credit, you just haven't practiced enough. If you spend half an hour straight on throwing practice, you'll get quite good at it.
- inglor_cz 6y agoYes, it is possible. If this lockdown is going on for much longer (here in CZ it probably will), I might take up the practice out of boredom.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hntrader 6y agoI think it was also a law of large numbers game. With teamwork we'd all be throwing rocks simultaneously at the same target. Also the practice component that the other poster mentioned
- krisoft 6y agoI think you are measuring yourself on the wrong scale. Sure you might be less precise than some other humans, but clearly you are way better than a horse, or a wolf or many other animal who might be basically incapable to throw things.
- Etheryte 6y agoWell it's not like homo sapiens suddenly appeared out of thin air and started doing their thing. It's not unreasonable to think the original comment talks about whoever was our predecessor down the line before that.
- rriepe 6y agoYou could see this in action during that "Cheetah follows hiker" story a few months back. Here's the video queued to the moment where he throws a rock at it: https://youtu.be/p25MgRZ9rJc?t=333 https://youtu.be/p25MgRZ9rJc?t=333
- drchickensalad 6y agoThis is actually a really enlightening example. Everyone thinks about throwing to kill, but what about throwing to not die? It's so novel when another animal has it happen to them; they wtf out of there. Could vastly increase our survival rate.
- paganel 6y agoWe used to fight as kids by throwing rocks at each other, granted, that was the last line of defense (so to speak) to which we resorted only when we were really mad at each other. Also, the Intifadas, which were really effective in the short term given the huge resource asymmetry.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoHominids didn't develop in a landscape stripped of trees.
- monadic3 6y agoYou can see orangutans spear fishing. I'd be surprised if pre-humans weren't using spears. Rocks are better for driving animals than they are as a weapon.
- dalbasal 6y agoThis never seemed quite believable to me. Outside of some pretty narrow circumstances, hunting (presumably small game) by chucking stones seems like a very hard way to make a living. It's easier for me to imagine a club being or non throwing stick/spear being a game changer than rock throwing. There are living traditions of so many kinds of human hunting methods. Rock throwing is not in the top 1000. OTOH, there are many hunting/fishing methods that require nothing but bare hands and knowhow. If throwing rocks is such a breakthrough, why does no one do it anymore? Meanwhile, the few hunting methods and/or tools that chimps use are represented in extant human hunting behaviour. Also fighting. I've never seen involved in a paleohuman duel but if I had to, I think I'd choose the hitting stick over a rock. The david vs goliath approach doesn't leave much room for error... and David had a sling. I mean, the technical parts details of this theory is interesting. Explosive movement abilities developing in the Erectus lineage. I just think the rock throwing seems off.
- hntrader 6y agoRock throwing is a traditional hunting technique used by Aboriginal Australians. Think about the scale economies. You have a tribe of 10 individuals all throwing rocks at a single being without having to close distance and risk injury. It also appears to me to be a simpler invention for evolution than club usage and therefore more likely as an intermediate step, requiring less cortex. Accuracy and dexterity are no so important, just bipedalism and law of large numbers - after N rocks are thrown all you need is one of two connections. This is all rather speculative, though, and I'm mostly talking out of my arse :-)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fiftyfifty 6y agoTaken by itself the evolution of the human thumb may not be convincing, but along with other evidence, such as the changes around the human shoulder joint at around the same time period provides strong evidence that the ability to throw was a major factor in human evolution: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23061016#:~:text=Early%20humans%20evolved%20to%20throw,allowed%20this%20ability%20to%20develop.&text=Researchers%20tell%20the%20journal%20Nature,and%20migrate%20around%20the%20globe https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23061016#:~:tex....
- m463 6y agoI'f you've had a pet bird, you might notice many birds have TWO opposable thumbs (toes actually). So they can not only manipulate things, they can also grasp things quite securely, and do things like walk up the side of vertical objects and hang upside down. I'm uncertain if they can do things like turn a screwdriver, which seems to come from the wrists more than anything. and then there's the whole flying thing, which has kept them out of reach of most predators since the dawn of time.
- richardw 6y agoI remember watching a large horse in a paddock, thinking how being 5% smarter wouldn’t help it much. Having thumbs struck me as being an excellent facilitator for realising benefits of increasing intelligence. Obviously it’s just one of many, as demonstrated by dolphins and birds.
- sradman 6y agoTL;DR: opposable thumbs are characteristic of Homo species and not found in Australopithecus The paper (pdf) Biomechanics of the human thumb and the evolution of dexterity [1]: > Here, we develop a new approach to investigate the efficiency of thumb opposition, a fundamental component of manual dexterity, in several species of fossil hominins. Our work for the first time takes into account soft tissue as well as bone anatomy, integrating virtual modeling of musculus opponens pollicis and its interaction with three-dimensional bone shape form. Results indicate that a fundamental aspect of efficient thumb opposition appeared approximately 2 million years ago, possibly associated with our own genus Homo, and did not characterize Australopithecus, the earliest proposed stone tool maker. This was true also of the late Australopithecus species, Australopithecus sediba, previously found to exhibit human-like thumb proportions. In contrast, later Homo species, including the small-brained Homo naledi, show high levels of thumb opposition dexterity, highlighting the increasing importance of cultural processes and manual dexterity in later human evolution. [1] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)31893-5.pdf https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)31893...