hello all.
You ask yourself what's the story about Lucy? Here comes..
Archaeologists and Palaeonthologists discovered the fossil remains of the
Australopithecus afarensis in a ditch in Ethiopia (back in 1974). New research
analysis has now been published [Nature 443, 268-269 (September 2006)] ,
following the palaeoanthropolgists' extensive examination of skull, inner ear
of the skull remainder (location of proprioceptional system), shoulder and
spine bones, finger bones, etc etc,
[anecdotal aside: the team of archaeologists in Ethiopia were listening to the
Beatles during that dig ("Lucy in the Sky with Dianonds"), and so the team
decided that it was a smart idea to name their found fossil remains of an early
prehuman specimen "Lucy" . So our Australopithecus afarensis now performs under
the name "Lucy."
Shocking result of the analysis of the performative input: "Lucy"
apparently was already bipedal and could walk upright (3.2 million years ago),
and the PA [palaeo-anthropology] systems programmers can confirm this
hypothesis with footprints (just two, not foot and hands, just feet) found
imprinted/fossilized in volcanic ashes in Tansania, same species, roughly 3,6
million years old, and the hypothesis of walking upright was carefully
researched, as they looked at bone structures and the way bones were bent or
straight etc.
In the latest findings (after another dig, where a 3-year old humanoid girl,
another Australopithecus afarensis, was found in Ethiopia, just south of the
"Lucy"-site, as the landscape is now called by PA), the scientists compared the
skull, inner ear paths, and pelvis, of the new find, now called "Lucy"s
daughter," and apparently they can project the hypothetical manner of walking
upright from the way in which the inner ear basal ganglia. and the shoulders
and pelvis, legs and feet, and fingers were formed. The findings are
ambivalent but at least they now have a near-complete skeleton, revealing a
strange mosaic of evolution of the species ? "the upper limbs have
characteristics of gorilla or chimp, whereas the lower limbs are made for
walking upright like modern humans":
i.e. at times, Lucy walked, and at other times apparently she loved to move
along, dangling and swinging from branches in trees, as in "Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon" ? bamboo tree-style swinging/jumping. Lucy loved to fly into the
air, like Ziyi Zhang, and see the world and the men below from a helicopter
perspective. Amazing, isn't it, our foremothers and their Amelia Earhart-like
daughers.
In other words, palaeoanthropology can tell us something about dance, movement
behavior, and kung-fu proprioception (and we might speculate on the emotional
and affective dimensions), just from the skull and bones.
And the theory that Lucy desired to swing from trees, after all, is
corroborated by deep scan analysis (provided by The Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology, Leipzig) that her hand apparently was more chimp-like (finger
curvature from grabbing branches). Interestingly, they came to this
conclusion, even though only o n e finger has survived from the skeleton
of Lucy's daugther.
This is dance-science at its best, and I congratulate our colleagueas at the
IEA Leipzig.
regards
Johannes Birringer
DAP Lab
London
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
Attachment:
Lucy_skull.jpeg
Description: Lucy_skull.jpeg
