A milder version of the "Aquatic ape theory"
Jim starts off with kindness. He writes that I'm currently a postgraduate student and goes as far to suggest that I have become "one of the major proponents of the AAH/T" - a compliment indeed, although probably not warranted.

He aso correctly reports that I have "been trying to make a claim for a 'milder' version of the AAT/H for a while now." Unfortunately however, Jim doesn't make any attempt to describe what this milder form actually is. He could easily have done so as I've been banging on about it on various newsgroups for years, as well as in these pages here. Instead he uses my appeal for a more moderate form of AAH as another opportunity to have a dig at other AAH proponents (perhaps of a less mild form) and their 'ZINGability', as he calls it. That's a pity, I think, because if he wanted to criticise my ideas, as opposed to my methods, this would have been the place to do it. 

Sideways Wading
Niceities aside, Jim can't wait long to get his teeth into some odd-sounding juicy-bits to apply his typical exaggerating technique to. He does well. I must compliment Jim on finding what I would consider myself the weakest point of my masters thesis, as written in 2000 it's overemphasis on sideways movement as a putative gait for australopithecines. Jim says: "And by the way, when Kuliukas talks about our ancestors wading, he's talking about wading sideways", and it's true I do mention sideways wading too much. But it is a misrepresentation to suggest that I'm only considering sideways wading. I have written more about wading than just the master's thesis. The Nutrition and Health paper does not emphasise it as much and if Jim had given a fair representation of my newsgroup contributions, for example, he'd have noted that I have tried to extend the idea since then to encompass other possibilities, notably a side-to-side, 'twisting' gait. The point I was trying to make about australopithecines was that they have a relatively narrow anterior-posterior pelvic diameter and it hasn't been adequately explained by orthodox models. I am merely postulating that such a morphology would aid lateral motion through water. If australopithecines did wade, one would predict that, with their anatomy, it would be much more efficient to do so with a degree of lateral motion, whether it be literally sideways or just side-to-side. Lateral wading motion is favoured even with human anatomy and Australopithecines were even narrower in the anterio-posterior direction than we are. Here we see the classic straw man argument in action. It is Jim's main tool. Find an aquatic argument... wading. Find a peice of written work that over emphasises one aspect of it... sideways motion. And then portray that angle as if it were the whole argument.

There are several arguments suggesting that bipedal wading would have been a rather ideal precursor to hominin terrestrial bipedalism, none of which are mentioned by Moore, and none of which require this 'sideways' idea.

However, it is true that I did mention "sideways wading" (rather than "side-to-side" wading or latereral motion generally) several times in my masters thesis and, I accept that this was an error. I should have made it clear that I was speculating about lateral motion generally and not only a specific sideways wading gait.

Tarring AATers with the Same Brush
Next we have a classic example of Jim Moore's standard technique. Make a generalisation about what all "AAT/H proponents" do - as if it were some kind of pathological condition - and then back it up with a single quote from an internet newsgroup posting.

The claim is that AAHers engage in special pleading. Well some of us do that some of the time, I suppose, but then so do many paleontologists of all persuasions. It's hardly something that you could identify as a unique characteristic of AAH proponents and no-one else.

So, what's the evidence? Jim has managed to find one of my postings (out of thousands) on the s.a.p. newsgroup where I repeat one of my arguments that fully modern human bipedalism is optimally efficient only on quite specific, optimal substrates that are flat, firm and relatively vegetation-free.

Jim actually agrees with this but suggests it is damaging to my own argument. This, I suspect, is where he thinks the 'special pleading' comes in, although it's not clear where or why. Typically, Jim has selected a couple of sentences out of a rather argumentative exchange, from the middle of quite a long thread (click here to see it in full), quite out of context in order to twist it into evidence of his pre-determined accusation. If he'd have searched a bit harder he could have found other postings around the same time to the same forum where I think I made my case pretty clear. (see this link for example.)

Jim seems to think that I am suggesting that wading is one such place that would be optimally efficient. (He writes "One of the places where 'maximally efficient human bipedalism' 'simply does not work' is an aquatic environment, whether shallow or deep.") I'm not, suggesting that of course. I have always made it clear that wading is only an ideal scenario for hominid bipedal origins not the later evolution into the modern human form. That, I agree, was purely terrestrial. My point is that as this form of locomotion works best on flat, firm, relatively vegetation free substrates - the kind you find next to water courses, like beaches and river beds - it is likely that this later stage of bipedal evolution happened in such habitats, places where humans would have been likely to ocassionally swim and dive for food.

 Jim has either not bothered to grasp that basic point of my argument, or has willfully misrepresented it. Neither are very encouraging. The irony is that Jim accuses me (as all AAT/H proponents) of ignoring contrary evidence when, clearly, yet again, this is precisely what he does over and over again.

The Masters Thesis
Finally the majority of the page critiques my master's thesis, which I would welcome if it wasn't just a collection of the usual twistings and misrepresentations.

Jim writes: "You may see Kuliukas mention that apes are bipedal 92% of the time they are in water; he frequently says this or some variation of it, and it figures prominently on his web site. As is often the case with AAT/H proponents' claims, it's what they don't say that's key. On the 92% figure, what often isn't seen, or isn't reported, is that this was 92% of 37 seconds total for 9 occasions over 3 days."

Now, hold on. Where, exactly, did he get that 37 seconds figure from? Why, it was in the master's thesis of course. I didn't hide it, I highlighted the fact: "Although only 37 seconds was spent in water in total, almost 92% of this time was spent in an upright (supported or unsupported bipedal) posture" (Kuliukas 2000:33.)

Not for the first time, whilst reading www.aquaticape.org you are left wondering exactly who is trying to pull the wool over who's eyes?

Moore criticises my use quoting of percentages - that of the little time bonobos were observed in water, 92% of it was bipedal. But this is standard fair in orthodox paleoanthropological studies. Hunt (1994) used fact that almost 80% of the instances of bipedalism he observed in chimpanzees were in the context of postural feeding as a basis for his postural feeding hypothesis, even though this actually represented only about 3% of the overall time they were observed.

 Now Hunt's study was a very large and comprehensive one, spanning several weeks in the field, whereas mine was only a masters project but the techniques were similar and so were the observations. Incidents of the bipedal locomotion was rare but the when placed in a particular context they became more predictable. (Only one incident of quadrupedalism was observed whilst the ape was totally in the water, and even that was borderline and could just as easily have been counted as 'partly in water')

Moore criticises my claim that using a video recorder to record behaviour has a number of advantages (e.g. it's a more accurate and data rich method, the data can be analysed frame-by frame, re-used and copied to others) than that usually employed by primatologists by implying that I was equating a second (or even a frame) of video with a recorded incident in more accomplished field studies. Jim asks : "Is this a deliberate attempt to inflate the importance of his study, or simply an inadvertent misuse of statistics? I don't know and don't care, because it really doesn't matter why it's wildly misleading. Whether deliberately dishonest or simply foolish, it's just wildly misleading and this helps demonstrate the thinking (or lack of it) behind the research."   Again, I suggest the only person trying to do any misleading here, is Jim Moore himself.  I have repeatedly stated quite clearly the limitations of my study.

Another attempted twist is Moore's suggestion that I asked one of the zoo workers whether this behaviour was typical, only after reaction to my thesis on line. Wrong again. If Jim had actually read the document, he'd have seen the interview with the student was in the thesis itself from the start as one of the most important pieces of evidence. I did this, note, only because I was accutely aware of how small my data set was. For the record, the student confirmed that bipedalism was the method bonobos employed when getting in and out of the water. (He said he had never observed a single incident of quadrupedal wading.)

Moore then offers the paper by Duchêne as "a far more sensible tack" to mine because "Duchêne compared the time spent bipedal to the time spent quadrupedal" whereas I "compared the time spent bipedal to total time". Wrong again. I also compared the time spent bipedal versus quadrupedal, but only in water. That was the point of the study, to see if moving through water induced bipedalim in extant apes. The evidence, limited as it was, indicated that it did. All the anecdotal evidence from the field I presented also supported that view. A final word on the thesis. Jim is entitled to his opinion, as is everyone. The work certainly had flaws, I agree, but it should be remembered that it did win me a distinction from University College London.

Finally, Moore ends with a couple of quotes from my many newsgroup postings which, I presume, he felt would secure the view in the minds of anyone reading his web pages that I am trying to misrepresent certain interpretations on bits of evidence as 'fact'. However I stand by those quotes, although I've always tried to qualify them a little better subsequently to something like this... "Extant apes are pretty much 100% bipedal in waist deep water." Again, to quote someone out of context is always potentially misleading. Here and here are the links to the full threads of the discussion from which those snippets were taken. Judge for yourself (if you can be bothered) who is being sensible and who is doing the misleading. 

References

Hunt, Kevin D. (1994). The Evolution of Human Bipedality: ecology & functional morphology. J. Hum Evolution. 26 (3) 183-203

Kuliukas, 2000. A. "Bipedal Wading in Hominoidae Past and Present". UCL Master's Thesis 

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