"Christoph Rippel" <crippel / primenet.com> wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ben Tilly [mailto:ben_tilly / hotmail.com]
[...]
>The best part (IMO a bit excessive) of California's anti
>smoking laws is that the non-smoking zone extend about 12 feet
>(meters-yards? sorry I am a not smoker) of any public building
>and you will have a hard time of meeting publicly drunk people
>if you are able to ignore the abundance of homeless people.

That is IMHO way too excessive.

I would comment further, but politics is a good way to
arouse flames and I appear to have offended one person
already...

[...]
><really off topic>
>Hm the juvenile characteristics you quote include
>large body size and small teeth.  I believe that
>you won't have trouble finding anthropologists who
>will be rather skeptical if neoteny is particularly
>relevant for human evolution and some of Gould's
>more material claims have been proven wrong.
></really off topic>
>
Actually I didn't quote any specific traits that
indicate neoteny in humans.  I have not seen a large
body quoted as one.

My impression is that Gould's theories generally were
much better accepted by people in evolutionary
biology than anthropology.  It always appeared to
me that there is somewhat of a turf war there.

The biologists of my aquaintance universally agree
that, compared to the nearby great apes, homo sapiens
shows considerable neoteny.  The list of traits that
Louis Bolk came up with of features retained into
adulthood by homo sapiens and lost in adulthood in
the great apes includes a vaulted cranium and large
brain/body ratio, small face (ie no muzzle), hair
confined largely to head, armpits, and pubic regions,
and the unrotated big toe.

How and why we have those characteristics is another
question.  but we clearly do have them when compared
to chimps, women to a greater degree than men, and
Orientals to a greater degree than Caucasians.
(Particularly the lack of facial hair.)

BTW I find the photo of the chimp and bonobo of the
same age in the following link interesting, showing
the effects of neoteny between two very closely
related species...

http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/phychar/culture-humans-22twentytwo.html

Cheers,
Ben
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