Are Other Hominins (Hominoids) Alive Today?

[salubrious]

It sounds to me like you're misunderstanding the DNRs' language, salubrious. First, even at their lowest population point (probably in the '70s), Peregrine Falcons most likely were still migrating through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and everywhere else in their former range. They kept right on migrating along the Atlantic Flyway, for example, even though the breeding population had been drastically reduced along the Coast. There'd be no reason to doubt that someone saw a Peregrine Falcon, and your observations likely didn't add to what was already known. So I assume that statements from the DNR that Peregrines were extirpated from WI and MN refer to the breeding population. Can you clarify that? If you reported Peregrines but had no details that could be used to determine that the birds were breeding, then there's really nothing DNR could do with your information. You can be sure that the "state ornithologist" at the very least understands that raptors make use of updrafts as that's about as elementary a concept to us as "beavers use ponds."

Once Peregrines reclaimed portions of their former breeding range through the '80s and '90s, it took them a while to get to actual historical nesting sites. Across most of the range in temperate eastern North America, breeding Peregrines were recovered through hacking programs in cities. It's only recently that the birds have returned to some historical breeding locations on cliffs, for example in the gorges near Ithaca, NY.

It's also possible that you reported your observations to the wrong person, even though you reported to somebody in the right agency. Birds don't just cavalierly get placed on one list or another. We have technical committees that assess monitoring data usually quarterly. So the paper trail is long before a species is given a new status, e.g., "threatened" versus "special concern." Agencies receive reports like yours all the time, but if the report is in the form of "some guy at a meeting told me that he saw a Peregrine" then there's not much to go on. For something really rare or unusual, an anecdotal report like that isn't going to get anyone excited unless it's submitted to the state bird records committee and it passes muster there. So another scenario might be that you reported your observation, whomever heard it thought "Cool, I hope we can get some confirmation that there are really Peregrines up there," the confirmation ultimately was provided, and then it still took years before that information could be incorporated into official statements from the DNR. This may come as a surprise, seeing as how you're such an expert tracker and all, but state agencies don't have rapid response teams waiting around for you to report all the things you see that they don't have the skills to find on their own.

The person from the Raptor Center basically told as that 'there were no Peregrins in Minnesota' and by that meant that there were none to be seen, migrations or no. We got very clear on that- as we told her flat out that we were seeing them, and so she was adamant- that we must have been misidentifying a different bird, which was not the case. What was the case is that they were there all the time, they just did not know how to go out looking for them (in this case, they lacked the knowledge that the wind had to be blowing *towards* a hill in order to make the ridge lift that soaring birds like).

FWIW I am not by any means an expert tracker, that takes years of dirt time, but what little I know about the subject I have found over and over again is worlds more than most people I run into. But I don't have to be a tracker to know that state agencies are inefficient, glacially slow and frequently corrupt.

Cervelo, its obvious to me that you did not read that book- if you had you would know about some people that in this day and age could indeed run an antelope right off its hooves.

[Drew]

There were tribes in Africa who did run game to exhaustion. I believe there was an article in NG a few years ago about one of the remaining tribes that still practiced persistance hunting. (that is the term you are looking for)

A BBC production about one of the last persistance hunting tribes in Africa.

[Guest]

The person from the Raptor Center basically told as that 'there were no Peregrins in Minnesota' and by that meant that there were none to be seen, migrations or no.

But that's complete nonsense. Either this one person you spoke with at a "raptor center" was a complete buffoon, or you misinterpreted her remarks.

. . . she was adamant- that we must have been misidentifying a different bird,

I suspect that as well. I, too, am skeptical of heavy reliance by Peregrine Falcons on updrafts. Certainly they do use them, and that's why Peregrines are spotted migration spots like Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania. But the whole point to being a Peregrine Falcon is that you are so supremely adapted for fast and powerful flight that you don't rely on updrafts and thermals for your daily business nearly as much as other species of raptors. Peregrines commonly dart out from a secluded perch, course low overground in surprise attack, or stoop from great height on their prey. None of these common hunting techniques involve birds riding updrafts along a ridgeline. If you had Peregrines doing that as a daily occurrence then you either misidentified something else as a Peregrine or you had some very unusual Peregrines.

What was the case is that they were there all the time, they just did not know how to go out looking for them (in this case, they lacked the knowledge that the wind had to be blowing *towards* a hill in order to make the ridge lift that soaring birds like).

Again, this is so elementary that I don't think you realize how insulting your remarks are. It's vastly more likely that you misinterpreted remarks made to you by the person you spoke with at the raptor center then it is that that "they" don't understand this special knowledge of yours that raptors use updrafts.

[Guest BFSleuth]

The raptor thing is very fascinating to me and I look forward to reading more about it...

.... in another thread.

This thread is about the emerging documentation of other hominoids existing side by side with homo sapiens sapiens.

[salubrious]

But that's complete nonsense. Either this one person you spoke with at a "raptor center" was a complete buffoon, or you misinterpreted her remarks.

You'd think someone who was an expert in the field would know better, huh?

I suspect that as well. I, too, am skeptical of heavy reliance by Peregrine Falcons on updrafts. Certainly they do use them, and that's why Peregrines are spotted migration spots like Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania. But the whole point to being a Peregrine Falcon is that you are so supremely adapted for fast and powerful flight that you don't rely on updrafts and thermals for your daily business nearly as much as other species of raptors. Peregrines commonly dart out from a secluded perch, course low overground in surprise attack, or stoop from great height on their prey. None of these common hunting techniques involve birds riding updrafts along a ridgeline. If you had Peregrines doing that as a daily occurrence then you either misidentified something else as a Peregrine or you had some very unusual Peregrines.

I've seen many hawks and eagles use much of the same technique. I've also (from the air- I've been within 6 feet of balds) seen them fly over 200 mph. Its something to see.

Again, this is so elementary that I don't think you realize how insulting your remarks are. It's vastly more likely that you misinterpreted remarks made to you by the person you spoke with at the raptor center then it is that that "they" don't understand this special knowledge of yours that raptors use updrafts.

Yes- it *is* elementary and I wrote my text to emphasize that. Its not intended to be insulting, however it is truthful. Keep in mind there are no hills around here other than the Mississippi River Valley. Beyond that, its flat. So if you are looking for a bird in a thermal, that would be entirely random. Ridges have a way of collecting birds, but someone born in Minnesota may not even believe that there *are* ridges here, unless they have been to Lake Pepin. Then once they got there they would have to know how ridge lift is generated.

I feel our conversation is such we might as well be talking BF. I'll just leave it at that; meanwhile we are OT per moderation.

[Guest]

(Hawk Ridge, Duluth. The first hawk watches began there in 1951; prior to that it was a place people went to shoot raptors. Ergo, the knowledge that raptors use the ridges in Minnesota has been there since people starting living there.)

So, other hominins extant? No, I don't think so.

[norseman]

Tom Brown Jr of the Tracker School says that humans are the easiest of all animals to sneak up on. They make the most noise in the forest and are also the least aware. Its something of a miracle that people see animals in the forest as a result. With most animals we have no idea that they are even there, even if we pass within a few feet.

Maybe modern humans who live in concrete jungles. You can read stories about Apaches or even watch how Indian prowess was celebrated in westerns. It was even present in our own culture such as Scottish game keepers and the birth of modern sniper techniques.

No I would rather have a Griz or a Sasquatch on my tail, than a group of determined paleo Homo Sapien hunters...........ANY DAY.

For those of you who haven't found it yet, Dr. Meldrum has started a web site: The Relict Hominoid Inquiry (http://www.isu.edu/rhi/). His latest paper, Are Other Hominins (Hominoids) Alive Today? (http://www.isu.edu/r...Are%20Other.pdf) responds to David Robson's article, Puzzles of evolution: Are other hominins alive today?

In particular he takes exception to Robson's dismissal of bigfoot evidence based on an assumption of misidentification to invalidate the use of ecological niche modeling (ENM), which had shown "remarkable overlap with distributions resulting from analysis of coordinate data for black bear".

Meldrum goes on to note the recent discoveries of Denisovans, Homo floresiensis (with a "possible parallel with the orang pendek), the recent discovery of the Red Deer Cave people, the Salkhit skull cap, and the Lishu skull. All these are hominoids that dated from 10,000 to 30,000 years ago, meaning homo sapiens sapiens lived concurrent with these species for most of our history.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The common idea that of all of the genus homo only we (homo sapiens sapiens) could have survived seems to have a fundamental error in logic. We like to pride ourselves with the fact that we are the most intelligent and advanced life form on the earth, yet for some reason we sprang from a genus that was an entire failure. The rest of our brethren died out. The idea that we killed them all, or that they were all too stupid to move away from slow moving glacial advance, or that we alone were strong enough and capable enough to survive natural catastrophe seems on the face of it preposterous.

With the advance in understanding of our evolutionary heritage, such as our interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans, and the discoveries of so many new species of our brethren that had survived to as recently as 10,000 years ago it begs the question whether there still exists other species within the genus homo. We are on the cusp of a potential paradigm shift in our understanding of our heritage, especially with the use of DNA sequencing.

These discoveries, all within the last 10 years, have laid the groundwork for the scientific community to receive a paper from Dr. Ketchum et al with an open mind. Note the comment in Meldrum's article noting the reaction to Curnoe's discovery of the Red Deer Cave people: "had the remains been found to be 300,000 years old the reactions might have been quite different. It was the young age that was such a surprise." It is time for the scientific community to get over the surprise and to shed the notion that only homo sapiens sapiens could be the sole survivor of the entire genus.

It's certainly a possibility that we could still stumble upon a group of relic hominids living in some very remote location on the earth........not likely, but not impossible.

One thing is for sure, is that our history never seems to fit the nice tidy box we assign it.

[salubrious]

Maybe modern humans who live in concrete jungles. You can read stories about Apaches or even watch how Indian prowess was celebrated in westerns. It was even present in our own culture such as Scottish game keepers and the birth of modern sniper techniques.

No I would rather have a Griz or a Sasquatch on my tail, than a group of determined paleo Homo Sapien hunters...........ANY DAY.

You are highlighting the one exception that Tom Brown Jr. extols- he was taught by an Apache scout.

[norseman]

You are highlighting the one exception that Tom Brown Jr. extols- he was taught by an Apache scout.

Not to split hairs, because I hear you.

But Special Forces were sent in to find Dan and Don Nichols (the father and son mountain men that had kidnapped a woman while jogging in Montana) and they didn't have any luck.

The point is is that the mastery of the wilderness is in each and everyone of us.......we simply as a species do not put it to practice anymore. But genetically speaking of course it is in each and everyone of us to utilize if we so choose.

[Guest]

Well, you've proven Ray's point, that's for sure!

Let's take your first example: Fahrenbach's length to width ratio. Fahrenbach has discovered that footprints left by what some people think are bigfoots are wider than footprints left by people. Even if he is correct about that (the difference may be statistically significant but the effect is quite small), could you please explain the logic dictating that the prints included in the "bigfoot" category were actually made by bigfoots? How does "some footprints are wider than others" = bigfoot? What from this analysis conclusively rules out hoaxed prints in the sample of "bigfoot" prints?

The distribution curve, as Fahrenbach himself points out in the paper.

A collection of hoaxes would skew the curve into a series of jagged peaks clustered towards the bigger end of the scale (no reason to 'hoax' SMALL bf prints after all).

A natural distribution is the hallmark of a dataset composed of traces from a real, living population of creatures.

In which peer-reviewed scientific journals did Fahrenbach, Meldrum, Pinker, Kerley, Rosen, Moore, Sarich, Swindler, Schaller, et al, publish their conclusions?

RayG

In which peer-reviewed scientific journals have their detractors published their conclusions?

Not that the almighty "peer review" has anything to do with the quality of the science to begin with.

[Guest]

Evasive.

[Guest]

The distribution curve, as Fahrenbach himself points out in the paper.

A collection of hoaxes would skew the curve into a series of jagged peaks clustered towards the bigger end of the scale (no reason to 'hoax' SMALL bf prints after all).

. . . and no reason to think that those small prints are hoaxes, Mr. Scarecrow. Barefoot humans and bears could easily explain the small prints in those data. How did Fahrenbach rule those explanations out? Next, if you were hoaxing prints, how big would you make them? Next, it's unclear to me if Fahrenbach used prints from the same individual in his data and treated them as independent observations. All of which means . . .

1. No one would hoax small prints = strawman logical fallacy because those small prints do not need to have been hoaxed to not have been made by bigfoots.

2. Assumption that only data from a population of living feet would provide peaked distribution = logical fallacy of argument from ignorance regarding motivations and methods of those who hoax bigfoot prints.

3. Ambiguity regarding independence of observations in the data = potential fatal flaw in the distribution, regardless of the fallacious interpretations re: 1 and 2.

Now if Fahrenbach would like to address 1-3 and try to publish his analysis, that'd be great.

[Guest FuriousGeorge]

"In which peer-reviewed scientific journals have their detractors published their conclusions?"

[salubrious]

Not to split hairs, because I hear you.

But Special Forces were sent in to find Dan and Don Nichols (the father and son mountain men that had kidnapped a woman while jogging in Montana) and they didn't have any luck.

The point is is that the mastery of the wilderness is in each and everyone of us.......we simply as a species do not put it to practice anymore. But genetically speaking of course it is in each and everyone of us to utilize if we so choose.

Right. Sounds like we are on the same page.

[Guest]

. . . and no reason to think that those small prints are hoaxes, Mr. Scarecrow. Barefoot humans

Do not leave footprints with the biometric indices of bf tracks, as Fahrenbach discusses.

and bears could easily explain the small prints in those data.

A humanoid footprint is visually distinct from a bear track, even a "double step". This has been demonstrated repeatedly.

How did Fahrenbach rule those explanations out? Next, if you were hoaxing prints, how big would you make them? Next, it's unclear to me if Fahrenbach used prints from the same individual in his data and treated them as independent observations. All of which means . . .

2. Assumption that only data from a population of living feet would provide peaked distribution = logical fallacy of argument from ignorance

Bell curve distributions are well-accepted scientific analyses.

regarding motivations and methods of those who hoax bigfoot prints.

Are meaningless when it comes to the statistics of measuring a natural vs artificial dataset.

3. Ambiguity regarding independence of observations in the data = potential fatal flaw in the distribution, regardless of the fallacious interpretations re: 1 and 2.

Large sample size and distribution of samples crossing large areas and long amounts of time rule that out.

"In which peer-reviewed scientific journals have their detractors published their conclusions?"

Is a more than fair question...after all, isn't the almighty "peer review" the supreme arbiter of scientific rigor?

Sauce for the goose, sir...sauce for the goose.