Collection Of Voucher Specimens

[Sasfooty]

It's not as ludicrous as you suggesting that everywhere a tool was ever lost or the remains of an old campfire was ever found, there are also human tracks wearing size 12 vibram soles & beer bottles still remaining.

 

Get real! I've been in the woods,"riding a mule", too.

[norseman]

I'm being completely serious, I don't find random axes laying around in the wilderness nor do I see any fires without fire rings and trace evidence on human activity. Cigarette butts, gum wrappers, beer bottles, boot tracks, etc.

The day I find a campfire with an axe lying next to it with Bigfoot tracks all around? You'll be the first to know mkay?

[Sasfooty]

I'm being completely serious, too. Maybe you need to get out of the campgrounds & into some "real" woods if you don't want to be stumbling over beer bottles & campfire rings.

[norseman]

Ever hear of the Frank Church Wilderness?

Tell me Sasfooty? Do the squatch voices in your head tell you they steal tools and build fires? Or is this a assumption on your part?

[Sasfooty]

No, I can't say that I ever did. Does it contain beer bottles & tracks of size 12 vibram soles?

[norseman]

Your sig line is duly noted........

[WSA]

Here to tell you, there pretty much is no place where you can go these days in the lower 48, in either (big W) Wilderness, little dub, NF land, in a NP or SP, on a National Monument, or on a National Wild and Scenic River that you won't find obvious human traces and detritus, and especially campfire rings (and speaking personally, if you build a campfire "ring", you are a cheeser in my book anyway. Those create no draft and block heat, and are generally made by people who watched too many Tee Vee Westerns as a kid). Hell, in the Bridger Wilderness, waaaaay off trail, I found what was probably a Shoshone fire pit, and a large flat boulder propped against a cliff like a lean-to. I have to say I've never found a one (O.K., maybe that one) that didn't clearly have "H.Sapien Slob Was Here" written all over it.  The only thing that changes, and lets you date them, is the kinds of materials the trash is made of. So, we've gone from rusty tin cans and broken bottles, rusting wash pans and leaf springs, to mylar wrappers, aluminum cans and plastic shotgun hulls.   

 

Although I agree that fire use can't be ruled out, I've never come across anything in my wanderings that made me wonder about its origins.

Edited April 23, 2015 by WSA

[Sasfooty]

Nobody wonders about the origins of a campfire because nobody thinks that anybody besides humans could possibly have made it. I don't think BFs regularly have fires because they don't often need or want them. But IF they had a need for it, there's no reason to believe that they couldn't make one.

 

Here's another assumption from me: "BF is smarter than a Bonobo, since we proved that they exist."

 

So why can they build a fire & BF can't?

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/bonobo-lights-fire-roasts-mallows_n_5186701.html

[Guest DWA]

That ol' demon evidence rearing its ugly head again.

 

Humans know of no other species that has harnessed fire.  Until such direct evidence is found, fires can be presumed of human origin simply by observation of what's there.  Science doesn't allow wild-track speculation without evidence.  Just as one seeing equine hooves on an AL trail is ill-advised to presume zebra, one finding a set fire, anywhere, is ill-advised to presume anything but:  us.

(I'd have to see the bonobo gather the wood; structure it from tinder to kindling to starter to the big stuff...and manufacture the matches.  Never mind the peer-reviewed paper verifying no assistance from other species in learning the technique.)

Edited April 23, 2015 by DWA

[Sasfooty]

Well, WATCH the video if you want to see him building the fire!!!

[Guest DWA]

Apes can *learn* stuff, i.e., stuff that is an absolute human hallmark never observed for any other species in the wild, no one said they could not.

 

If I find a campfire, am I to presume a bonobo built it?

 

I'd have no more reason to do that than to presume the bonobo made these deer tracks.

 

Unfounded assumptions don't help the progress of knowledge.  Anyone looking for bigfeet campfires, um, go to, and I'll applaud when you do.  I just might not go *with* you.

Edited April 23, 2015 by DWA

[Sasfooty]

OK. "BF is an ape. Apes can learn stuff. Like building a fire."

 

I rest my case.

[norseman]

Well, WATCH the video if you want to see him building the fire!!!

I've watched Bears ride bicycles at the circus too.....

That doesn't mean every time my kids bike goes missing I go searching for it in Bear dens!!!!

How naive can we be here?

[Guest DWA]

OK. "BF is an ape. Apes can learn stuff. Like building a fire."

 

I rest my case.

Maybe, but the case really does nothing for us, for the reasons I mentioned.

 

You can teach me to walk in high heels.  Doesn't mean every time you see stiletto tracks, you suspect me.

[WSA]

So, maybe it is the BF who watched too many episodes of The Big Valley, and who are making all these KOA campfire rings all over the landscape? Just from my impromptu field research, in the recent past they also carried church keys, knew how to use them, and were prone to leave their twist-ties lying around too. Nowadays they tend to leave bits of parachute cord tied to saplings and low hanging branches, and anti-desiccant pouches laying about.