Marc Verhaegen wrote:
> Eccrine Hydration
> Gareth Morgan 2023
> Ideas in Ecology & Evolution 16
> doi org/10.24908/iee.2023.16.2.n
> keywords:
> Eccrine glands, Reverse osmosis, Drought, Human evolution, Dehydration
>
> A series of immersion experiments has indicated that humans are able to
absorb sufficient fresh water from sea water by reverse osmosis through
their eccrine sweat glands to remain fully hydrated without drinking
anything at all. This unique facility would have enabled our ancestors to
survive periods of severe drought.
>
>
> :-) Thanks a lot, Gareth!
> Very interesting & intriguing.
> I'd conclude:
> "This unique facility would have enabled our ancestors to stay in
sea-water for days."
> Do sea-otters have something comparable?

I'd conclude that neither of you looked at the paper.

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/IEE/article/view/16666

We are land creatures and always have been. You really
want to spend hours and hours bobbing around in sea
water? Day after day???

Homininds ranged well inland, FAR from salt water. Even
chimpanzees developed strategies for other water sources.

https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/environment/31891/rainforest-chimpanzees-are-digging-wells-for-cleaner-water

From the book "Eating Apes" by Dale Peterson
"Eating Apes is an eloquent book about a disturbing
secret: the looming extinction of humanity's closest
relatives, the African great apes—chimpanzees,
bonobos, and gorillas."

<https://books.google.com/books?id=AOQlDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=clematis+%22in+the+arid+region+of+Tongo%22&source=bl&ots=Ix1w7hFj2w&sig=ACfU3U1k3V2o0mqFLX56FJXbJcG74js1rg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0xe-SqJiDAxXwMzQIHfU3CNcQ6AF6BAgMEAM#v=onepage&q=clematis%20%22in%20the%20arid%20region%20of%20Tongo%22&f=false>

"Meanwhile, in the arid region of Tongo (in eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo), chimpanzees carry
around with them the water-filled roots of a Clematis
plant, which they use and sometimes share in the style
of a water bottle."

This is far more reasonable than the AA fantasy of
bobbing around in the ocean...

Marc Verhaegen wrote:

> > Our genus spread across the globe because our ancestors exploited
> > marine resources.
>
> Likely. Partly?

Oh, it's inevitable! They picked up stuff & ate it. And no matter how rich
a stretch of coastline might be, eventually they were going to deplete it.

Maybe not entirely, but enough so that it was more advantageous to
simply move on...

Even if it took a thousand years -- which is nothing in terms of geological
time -- their population was going to grow, eating all that free protein,
and stocks were going to drop.

So they're standing on a beach, picking up stuff & eating it. When the
pickings grew slim, they move on, find a new stretch of beach and
repeat the process.

That's it. They're eating. Nothing else. And by just doing that we have
them stretching across continents, plural. We have them everywhere
from Sundaland to Africa. We have them feasting on a bounty of DHA.

And, no, there is no "Intelligent Design" that the Out of Africa purists
insist upon. Nobody said, "If these guys were smarter they'd be much
better off, so give them bigger brains."

The had a diet rich in brain building Omega-3s. When bigger/smarter
brain mutations cropped up, their bodies were at the ready. They could
build brains just as large as genetics might allow. And when genetics
(mutations) allowed bigger, they got bigger.

Savanna idiocy is backwards. Circular. "Well they ran after antelope,
which made them evolve into runners, and that's why humans are
walkers."

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https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/737090580790820864

Marc Verhaegen wrote:

> Of course they once exploited marine resources, but exclusively?
> And did they spread across the globe (America...) because of this?

Yes & No.

Groups peeled off, pushed inland. Always. From the start. They
followed freshwater sources inland. They followed transitional
wetlands, arriving inland. And once there many settled, adapted
and even radiated out..inland.

And humans were already in the Americas during Glacial
Maximum. So they couldn't have walked here. They had to
arrive via the coast. The water.

The Americas weren't a destination. They were following the
waters edge. They were living, eating.

> There are still many unanswered questions, e.g.
> when was our most-aquatic phase? already Pliocene?? (fossilisation chances)

Remember: All humans alive today have many ancestors, but
the only ancestors that WE ALL share in common would be
the Aquatic Ape ancestors.

There were many Neanderthals. The ones we most likely have
as ancestors were the waterside Neanderthals...

There were numerous cataclysms that struck the planet across
the eons. I've pointed to Yellowstone almost 9 million years ago,
for example. These cataclysms would have heavily favored coastal
populations, and the closer to the equator the better. The point is,
there would have been many choke points, bottlenecks, filter
points where it wasn't a matter of a species surviving, it was a
matter of a POPULATION: The waterside population.

> The connection DHA/brain? why/how exactly?

You can't build a brick house without bricks. The DHA is the bricks.

Out of Africa purity is I.D. -- Intelligent Design. It posits a benefit to
larger brains so they decided to grow their brains larger. Waterside,
on the other hand, is based on evolution and not Woo.

By turning to the sea, by exploiting the marine environment for food,
they consumed large amounts of DHA and EPA.

What did they do with it? Nothing.

Oh, sure, their brains grew just as large as genetics would allow
but, that wasn't very large. Not yet. Eventually though, mutations
did crop up. There were "Bigger" and "Smarter" brain genetic
mutations, and when those happened, being waterside, they had
everything in place, ready to take maximum advantage of these
new mutations.

Inland? They had no bricks so they never built any brick houses...

Simple as that.

No magic, no Woo. Their diet provided all the brain building Omega-3s
they could ever need -- and more than they could use -- so when bigger
brain genes did pop up (mutations), their brains grew bigger and
better.

Again, with the brick analogy: The waterside group had tons & tons
of bricks laying around, so when circumstances allowed it, they built
brick houses. But the inland groups had no bricks so circumstances
never mattered...

-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/737988506051313664

Marc Verhaegen wrote:

> > There were many Neanderthals. The ones we most likely have
> > as ancestors were the waterside Neanderthals...

> In any case, neandertal-like.

According to the geneticists, we have Neanderthal ancestors.

> The sapiens/neand. differences are comparable to grizzly/polar/brown bears?

The problem is that we know for a fact that there were differences,
but we have no idea how significant they were.

We would expect populations, genetics, appearances to coalesce
over time. It's how ethnicities are formed. No, it didn't just happen
once a very long time ago, it's ongoing. Ethnicities. This is why we're
not all Goths, Celts, Vandals, etc. Effective, they coalesced. One
language. One culture. One people. And with breeding primarily
intragroup, even their DNA and very appearance coalesced.

But the more humanity grew.. the more contact between groups...
the individuals not only coalesced into ethnicities, but the
ethnicities coalesced....

Put short: The more people interbred, the more similar everyone
became.

This is how the DNA evidence should be interpreted. The population
of Europe didn't only fall out of the sky 4,000 years ago. New people
moved in, interacted and the population, the DNA coalesced.

We see the same thing in the Americas. The foolish ones who
worship DNA claim that the American were only settled [Blah-Blah]
years ago, at a point where their imaginary molecular clock tells
them. No, what we see today is the end product: What their DNA
looks like after it coalesced.

Running this in reverse: The differences should have been greater,
between people, some 5k years ago. And the differences between
people should have been far greater than that, looking back 50k
years... 100k years...

> > You can't build a brick house without bricks. The DHA is the bricks.
> There is certainly a correlation between aquaticism & brain size.
> But why exactly??

Because DHA is the bricks we use to build our brains.

Look at protein in your diet:

https://www.cff.org/managing-cf/importance-proteins-muscle-mass

You want to build muscles? You need protein. You want to
build brains? You need DHA.

We can synthesize it, our bodies, but we're lousy at it. And we're
far better than Heidelberg man or erectus...

> DHA, iodine etc. in seafoods? brain-carrying & head-moving costs
> are higher outside the water? recent?drastic environmental changes?
>complex lifestyles in varied environments (seasonally following rivers?)?
>why larger brains in Cro-Magnons than in us? why larger brains in more
> norhtern populations? colder? ...?

You're over thinking it, ignoring the beauty of your own model!

Bigger brains never mattered. Not at first. Not for a very long time.

All that mattered was that the marine environment gave them oodles
of protein. They ate stuff. Simple as that. They were on a beach, they
picked up stuff & ate it. When the pickings got slim they moved on.

That's it.

But that was more than enough.

It got them traveling between continents. It got them everything they
needed to grow bigger, better, smarter brains when the genetic
mutations arrived.

Fire would have been a phenomenal advancement for them. It was
labor saving: Throw the shellfish in, they'll open when they cook!

And if they don't open? They're bad! Don't eat them!

Still, it took them millions of years to gain the cognitive abilities to
work that one out... BECAUSE this is evolution, not intelligent
design.

Your model works. It fits. It makes sense. The Out of Africa purity
nonsense is disarticulated idiocy.

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https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/738633354111533056/my-birthday-is-almost-here