"KEEP A G00D FOOT RIGHT OFF IN HER AZZ (LUV)" - FUZZY BAD F00T
Then there is the issue of pair-bonding. Why do men and women form such intense lasting relationships compared to the casual, temporary dallying that goes on with most other primates? Why do we mate, not necessarily for life, but often for very long periods? Some researchers suggest the tendency dates back to those days when Homo erectus women, having just evolved narrow hips to help them walk upright more effectively, faced the ancillary problem of having to give birth to neurologically immature children. Saddled with particularly helpless infants, we evolved a mutual support system in which males and females cooperated closely in the raising of their children.
Science of Sex- Bipedalism and Pair Bonding
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"Keep That Bitch 10 Toes, Firm On The Hoe Stroll" - Ralo Da Piiiiiimp
...the most important of all our evolutionary developments over the past five million years - our adoption of an upright stance and gait. As we have seen, it left hands free for tool design when the human brain eventually began its enlargement and onward push to consciousness and intelligence. "Upright posture is the surprise, the difficult event, the rapid and fundamental reconstruction of our anatomy," writes Stephan Jay Gould in his essay Our Greatest Evolutionary Step:
We sadly take our two-legged prowess for granted, says Gould. "It is now two in the morning and I'm finished," he concludes. "I think I'll walk over to the refrigerator and get a beer; then I'll go to sleep. Culture-bound creature that I am, the dream I have in an hour or so when I'm supine astounds me ever so much more than the stroll I will now perform perpendicular to the floor."The subsequent enlargement of our brain is, in anatomical terms, a secondary epiphenomenon, an easy transformation embedded in a general pattern of human evolution. As a pure problem in architectural reconstruction, upright posture is far-reaching and fundamental, an enlarged brain superficial and secondary. But the effect of our larger brain has far outstripped the relative ease of its construction.
The move to upright gait involved major anatomical changes all right, but not all were beneficial. Walking on two legs produces greater wear and tear on hips, which have to bear our entire body weight. In other primates, this load is shared over four limbs. Bipedal humans pay the price through disablement, in our later years, that can only be put right through hip replacement operations. Such medical intervention is also a consequence of our increasing longevity, of course. However, other side effects intrude at a far younger age, the most profound emerging because we have evolved relatively narrow hips and pelvises. Had we retained the wide hips of apes, our centers of gravity would have swung around all over the place when we walked, and our gait would have become enormously draining in terms of energy expenditure. So we adopted a narrow, cyndrical form and stance, with knees tucked underneath our bodies. (We may take pride because Homo sapiens is "the smart ape," yet we could equally call ourselves "the knock-kneed primate.") This posture has allowed us to stride across the globe - but at a cost.
Our hips form a bony ring - the pelvis - and possessing narrow hips produces a tight pelvis. Given that a child must pass through this constricted gap when it is born, this meant that human anatomy faced a drastic challenge once our cortexes began to expand. "No rational animal would knowingly be bipedal and have large brains," says Leslie Aiello, of University College London. "The consequences for women have been horrendous." For a start, there is the issue of brain growth. In other primates, indeed in nearly all other animals, this stops after birth. An ape goes through its most crucial neurological development within the womb. A human being is born having undergone less than half this critical increase, for the simple reason that our heads would be too big to pass through our mothers' pelvises if our cortexes were allowed to reach their full size. "A human pregnancy would have to be about twenty-one months long if we were to be born as fully-fledged neurological entities," adds Dr. Aiello:
We are not, of course, and so a child has to spend the first year of its life in a particularly helpless form as it completes the brain development that should have occurred while it was a foetus. This in turn constrains the mother. She is tied to an utterly dependent young child for a long period, yet she needs good nutrition to provide milk rich in protein, fats and carbohydrate for her offspring. She is therefore particularly reliant on the support of her spouse and the rest of her group.This process probably began with tall, slim Homo erectus, which was capable of striding across the savanna with an ease that dwarfed that of its australopithecine and habilis predecessors, and which also started to evolve significantly larger brains. The consequence was that neurologically immature infants were born for the first time, a trend that has become more pronounced as the millennia have passed. Yet even with the delivery of babies in extremely early stages of development, which occurs today, problems still occur. Other primate babies can pass straight through the pelvis. A human child has to twist through the narrowest of gaps like a cork being pulled from a wine bottle - a maneuver that requires much effort from the mother, and the attention of midwives. Even with the intervention of modern medicien, however, human birth remains a surprisingly risky business. This conflict of function also takes its toll on women who are slightly less efficient bipedalists than men because of their roles as potential mothers. Women have wider hips, to reduce the trauma of childbirth as much as possible, and pay the price by being slightly poorer walkers, runners, and jumpers, as is demonstrated by their somewhat inferior Olympic running and jumping records. (Women's higher fat levels, and lower muscle mass, also play a role in limiting their ability in many sports, however, while enhancing their ability at long-distance swimming.) (African Exodus)
EX E DUST (EXODUS): MOVEMENT OF D P PULL [MOVEMENT OF THE PEOPLE]
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| 20 Big Toes Down Maine! How Many Feet Is That? "Keep That Bitch 10 Toes, Firm On The Hoe Stroll" - Ralo Da Piiiiiimp |
The key paradox is that a woman does not necessarily achieve
greatest reproductive success simply by having as many children as
possible as quickly as possible. The very fact that women, like most
primates, usually have only one child at a time is testimony to the
dangers and difficulties of trying to raise more than one child
simultaneously. Twins might seem a good way of increasing reproductive success, but there is more than twice the danger that both
will die. Unless the woman's circumstances are very favourable, she is
less likely to raise two healthy, fertile children by conceiving twins
than she is by conceiving two children a few years apart.
Women inherited a basic problem from their primate ancestors —
it is very difficult to carry more than one child at a time when walking
long distances. This difficulty is particularly great when walking
upright on two legs, and has plagued women throughout human
evolution — it is not totally unfamiliar even to those living in modern
industrial societies. Of course, the limitation was, and still is,
particularly crucial in those cultures in which women are responsible
for collecting and carrying large quantities of food, water, firewood,
or other materials. Carrying even one child as well is difficult. Under
such circumstances, the greatest reproductive success is achieved by
those who avoid having another child until the previous one can not
only walk but can keep up.
The time interval between successive children is not the only
aspect of 'family planning' that influences a woman's reproductive
success. Children are most likely to survive and grow into healthy,
fertile adults if they are born into a favourable environment. Plenty of
space and an adequate supply of healthy, nutritious food are
paramount. Children then have the lowest risk of contracting diseases
and the greatest resistance to those they do get. In modern societies,
space and nutrition depend on wealth. Even now, the chances of a
child from a poor family dying before reproducing are double those of
a child from a rich family. In the historical and evolutionary past —
when wealth will have been measured not in terms of money but in
terms of crops and livestock, or even simply in terms of access to the
best areas for food, water and shelter — these differences will have
been even greater.
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| Why...would an animal fully adapted to quadrupedal movement in trees elect to walk bipedally on the ground? Lovejoy has a provocative answer...:SEX. Lovejoy views the origins of bipedalism as the consequence of an epochal shift in social behavior. A key part of his theory is not something gained in our lineage but something lost: those daggerlike male canine teeth of apes, so effective as weapons against other males vying for mating opportunities. Males of virtually all living and extinct apes have large, pointed canines that sharpen by honing against their lower teeth. Hominid male canines are much smaller, more like a female's. Canines from 21 individuals were found in the Ar. ramidus sediments of the Middle Awash, presumably both male and female. All share the same hominid pattern. Instead of gaining access to females through conflict with other males, in Lovejoy's view, a male Ar. ramidus would supply a targeted female and her offspring with high-fat, high-protein foods, gaining her sexual favors exclusively in return - a reproductive strategy that ensured the children he was providing for were his own. This would require, however, that the male's hands be freed from their role in quadrupedal locomotion so they could carry back the food. Bipedality may have been a poor way for Ar. ramidus to get around, but through its contribution to the "sex for food" contract, it would have been an excellent way to bear more offspring. And in evolution, of course, more offspring is the name of the game... |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmo6UdJHiyE
Bipedality (The Roots Of Monogamy)
LOVE Is An Adaptation. Humans Evolved This Adaptation To Establish Pair Bonds, Produce Offspring And Raise These Offspring (This Is An Adaptation Typical Of Monogamous Species. It Increases The Likelihood Of Offspring Surviving To Reproductive Age). Physical Attraction, Which Often Leads To Love Or At Least Lust, Is Mediated By The Neurochemicals Dopamine, Serotonin, And Norepinephrine. When Attracted To Someone, Dopamine And Norepinephrine Levels Increase While Serotonin Decreases.
If A Male And Female Developed A Long Term Sexual Relationship (Pair Bond), Produced Children While In This Relationship, And Reared The Children Together (Helped Each Other Raise The Children), The Probability That The Children Would Survive To Reproductive Age Increased. In Certain Environments In Our Evolutionary Past Those Who Employed This Mating Strategy (Monogamy) Experienced High Reproductive Success.
Bipedality (The Roots Of Monogamy)
LOVE Is An Adaptation. Humans Evolved This Adaptation To Establish Pair Bonds, Produce Offspring And Raise These Offspring (This Is An Adaptation Typical Of Monogamous Species. It Increases The Likelihood Of Offspring Surviving To Reproductive Age). Physical Attraction, Which Often Leads To Love Or At Least Lust, Is Mediated By The Neurochemicals Dopamine, Serotonin, And Norepinephrine. When Attracted To Someone, Dopamine And Norepinephrine Levels Increase While Serotonin Decreases.
If A Male And Female Developed A Long Term Sexual Relationship (Pair Bond), Produced Children While In This Relationship, And Reared The Children Together (Helped Each Other Raise The Children), The Probability That The Children Would Survive To Reproductive Age Increased. In Certain Environments In Our Evolutionary Past Those Who Employed This Mating Strategy (Monogamy) Experienced High Reproductive Success.
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