John Green: More on Bipedalism in Higher Primates
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on March 22nd, 2013
John Green, legendary sasquatch researcher and author of “Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us”, offered this additional information via email in response to critics of his previous piece: John Green: Bipedalism in Higher Primates.
Look up “The Upright Ape” on Amazon. The author, Aaron Filler, took a PhD in anthropology, during which he studied a vertabrae almost identical to its human counterpart that was found in an archeological dig in material firmly dated at 21 million years. Later he studied medicine and became a spine surgeon, an unusual and perhaps unique combination of qualifications. He also researched the history of theories before Darwin’s about how living things evolved. His book deals with that history and he presents a theory that all major changes resulted not from accumulated gradual adaptions but from extreme individual mutations. That is what most of the book is about, and it would be hard going for the average Sasquatch enthusiast.. However:
In the last two chapters he deals with what I have mentioned, that there is no fossil evidence that any higher primates were ever quadrupeds. All the fossil evidence shows that they all walked upright. There are no fossils leading to the chimpanzee, bonobo and gorilla, which walk half upright today, and their spines prove that they were originally bipedal.
Remember that not long ago humans were believed to have split off from the gorillas and chimpanzees some millions of years ago, but then immune reactions and DNA established that gorillas split off from the basic stock first, while chimpanzees and bonobos remain very closely related to humans, not to.gorillas. This cuts short the time that humans were supposed to have had to come down from the trees and evolve into bipeds. The evidence is plain that Homo Sapiens as well as the others arbitrarily called Homo or Australopithicus or Gigantopithecus etc. Follow the basic upright pattern and it is the gorillas and the chimps that are evolving a new way of walking. Both are called knucklewalkers, but the adaptions that allow them to use their arms in walking are not the same, while the orangs, even though they are much more evolved to be tree dwellers, follow a very different pattern which includes considerable bipedalism and the gibbons, although always in the trees, are fully bipedal.
Someone many years ago came up with the theory that humans were quadrupeds that became upright through living in trees and then came down to earth, continued to walk upright and evolved feet adapted for walking on two legs. That theory became almost universally accepted a long time ago and is considered by most scientists dealing with such matters to be established fact. I expect Filler isn’t the only sceptic, but he is the one with unique qualifications and the guts to challenge the prevailing belief in a book.
I happen to have an atlas of primate anatomy with detailed drawings of vertebrae of baboon, chimpanzee and human. It showed immediately that human and chimp vertebrae are almost the same while those of the baboon, a real quadruped, are basically different. Since humans and chimps are designed to support their weight with a stack of vertebrae that rest on top of each other they have no attachments on the main bone column for locking the spine together in a horizontal position. You don’t need an atlas, you can look up illustrations on the Internet.
So Filler is presenting proof that most scientists are dead wrong about human evolution. If that isn’t a big story I am not a journalist.
~ John Green
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
I really like “it would be hard going for the average Sasquatch enthusiast.. However: ”
It would, of course, be utterly impossible for the above-average bigfoot skeptic. It involves delving; thinking; consideration; application of one’s degree to what one sees in the world; research.
You know, Meldrum. Krantz. Swindler. Bindernagel. That kind.
All the reasons bigfoot skepticism isn’t skepticism.
Excellent article even for a Creationist like me. Brilliant man.
This isn’t really all that controversial, and more-or-less fits in with mainstream evolutionary anthropology. Early apes, like gibbons, were brachiators, meaning they swung through the trees hand-over-hand, like we do on the monkey-bars as children. Brachiation gives apes a basically vertical posture, though with the weight being suspended from above rather than supported from below, as in bipeds. As apes grew larger, like gorillas, they spend more time on the ground, using their big brachiating arms for support as they knuckle-walk. Chimpanzees independently evolved knuckle-walking, so it’s entirely possible that the last common ancestor of Gorillas, Chimps, Bonobos, and Humans was not a true knuckle-walker, but a brachiator and occasional biped.
Ardipithecus seems like a good representative of these early African apes. She has some adaptations for bipedalism, like an angled femur, but she still has the opposable-toe of the non-human apes. Hominins, like Australopithecus, later evolved the in-line big toe that we still have.
So this isn’t controversial at all. Chimps aren’t built like baboons, chimps are apes, baboons are monkeys. Chimpanzees took a generalized ape body-structure that originally evolved for brachiation and adapted it to knuckle-walking. Our ancestors took the same basic body-plan and tweaked it for bipedalism. That’s how evolution works.
“You know, Meldrum. Krantz. Swindler. Bindernagel. That kind.”
DWA: SANDERSON. I promote his seminal book every chance I get. It’s my Bigfoot Bible. Probably shouldn’t say that; Mormons and 7DA will be swarming into the forest to convert our hairy buddies.
Craig: Thanks a lot for posting this. I had no idea gorillas once walked upright. Is there any theory on why they changed to all fours?
“So Filler is presenting proof that most scientists are dead wrong about human evolution. If that isn’t a big story I am not a journalist.”
~ John Green
Nope, theyre not. So, what is your other line of work?
And just what have the holy men of footery brought to the table?
Thats right nothing more than books for sale. And speaking/appearance fees.
muircertach:
The “holy men of footery” have brought everything to the table that is required.
We do not hold them responsible for the proof, which we delegate to the scientific mainstream. That the scientific mainstream does not seem up to this job is their failure. This is how it will be recorded by history, so don’t bother arguing about it.