Why humans lost their fur coats.....

[tholden]

A stray thought here.....

Granted I don't have any sort of a time machine and it may well be that God simply created humans without fur coats.

Nonetheless IF humans originally had fur coats and subsequently lost them, and particularly if they lost them via any sort of a process which you might describe as microevolution, then none of the explanations or attempted explanations for it which I've ever seen really work.

Best attempts I've seen are those of Elaine Morgan and Danny Vendramini but I still could not recommend either for various reasons, and neither really provides any idea of an ADVANTAGE which losing fur coats might have conferred.

But just from my own studies, I've come up with one really big advantage which losing a fur coat would confer, assuming you didn't freeze to death in the process i.e. before you learned to manufacture clothing.

What I'm talking about here is handling fire. Picture some poor homo erectite or Neanderthal eating a piece of raw meat on some hunting trip and thinking to himself:

"Man I wish I could cook this stuff and I would if I were safely back in my cafe without all this damned WIND, but NO WAY am I gonna risk catching my own butt and myown 6" fur coat on fire...

THAT would be the one really big edge to losing the fur coat and naturally you'd only ever see it on a creature which handled fire.

[ifrean]

could be an economics thing, human fur was an early fashion accessory!!!
thus the need to shed the fur was a shock mutation or something

[Observist]

That's one important decision that could decide the fate of a Species. I doubt this is the case. Life is a arms race, A predator stays in the same league as its prey to ensure its survival. On the flip side the prey must continually evolve and change. When the ice started receding I bet that fur coat was a complete handicap for hunting fast prey in warmer environments. It could also be Man moved closer to the equator or into warmer regions. Life is amazing

[mague]

IF

Well if, then its the crazy thing called love. It always depended on what womans and men thought is sexy.

[tholden]

With one or two meaningless exceptions like mole rats, every other land mammal besides man has a fur coat. The fur coat is a first defense against the elements and also against all of the hard and sharp things which animals bump into, so that for any normal land mammal, there is no possible advantage to losing a fur coat.

But to a creature which handles fire?? An incident which would cause a minor burn to a human would light a Neanderthal or other ape up like a torch and fry him. That's a gigantic edge.

[mague]

With one or two meaningless exceptions like mole rats, every other land mammal besides man has a fur coat. The fur coat is a first defense against the elements and also against all of the hard and sharp things which animals bump into, so that for any normal land mammal, there is no possible advantage to losing a fur coat.

But to a creature which handles fire?? An incident which would cause a minor burn to a human would light a Neanderthal or other ape up like a torch and fry him. That's a gigantic edge.

Ceratin is almost not inflammable. Its doesnt melt too. Its more a protection then a danger from open fire. Try it with an old glove made of 100% wool and a candle. If its dirty and maybe even moistured it will never burn and give you tiem to go away before the skin takes damage.

Personally i really think emotions did slowly select the less hairy specimen. An apes breast where the baby is drinking is naked. The belly, face and the inner side of the hands are naked. The most emotional touch happens where the ape is naked.

But if you want to look at it from a species vs. environment point of view, then the loss of hair saves energy. Its growing fast and uses energy. Military doctors found that soldiers stopped to grow a beard once long enough in Alaska. It has something to do with the bodies energy budget.

[tholden]

With one or two meaningless exceptions like mole rats, every other land mammal besides man has a fur coat. The fur coat is a first defense against the elements and also against all of the hard and sharp things which animals bump into, so that for any normal land mammal, there is no possible advantage to losing a fur coat.

But to a creature which handles fire?? An incident which would cause a minor burn to a human would light a Neanderthal or other ape up like a torch and fry him. That's a gigantic edge.

Ceratin is almost not inflammable. Its doesnt melt too. Its more a protection then a danger from open fire. Try it with an old glove made of 100% wool and a candle. If its dirty and maybe even moistured it will never burn and give you tiem to go away before the skin takes damage.

Personally i really think emotions did slowly select the less hairy specimen. An apes breast where the baby is drinking is naked. The belly, face and the inner side of the hands are naked. The most emotional touch happens where the ape is naked.

But if you want to look at it from a species vs. environment point of view, then the loss of hair saves energy. Its growing fast and uses energy. Military doctors found that soldiers stopped to grow a beard once long enough in Alaska. It has something to do with the bodies energy budget.

http://animalrights.about.com/od/fur/a/ ... OrReal.htm

As Pierre Grzybowski, Deputy Manager of the Fur Campaign at HSUS, demonstrated at the Taking Action for Animals conference, it’s nearly impossible to tell real fur from fake fur by look or by touch. Real furs can be dyed any color of the rainbow, and fake furs can appear very real. Even touching the fur does not always reveal the answer, since today’s fake furs are designed to mimic real fur in every way.

The Burn Test

The best test is the burn test. In general, natural fibers burn and synthetic fibers melt. You probably won’t be able to do this test in a store, but if you buy an item or if you already have an item you’re unsure of, cut or pluck a few hairs off of the garment. Using a lighter or a match, try to burn the ends of the hairs. If the tip of the hair burns, crumbles away when you touch it and smells like human hair burning, it is real fur. If the tip of the hair melts, curls up into a hard ball and smells like an unnatural chemical, the fur is synthetic.

[Ras]

There was a great video by Discovery Channel (1998), but it has recently been removed from every single site in the world. I have a copy of it, but I can't publish it due to copy rights.
Here is another video that also explains the reason why we don't have fur. We a had waterside phase in our development, we are 'Aquatic Apes'. So simple, so true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRYtPQf ... re=related

[tholden]

There was a great video by Discovery Channel (1998), but it has recently been removed from every single site in the world. I have a copy of it, but I can't publish it due to copy rights.
Here is another video that also explains the reason why we don't have fur. We a had waterside phase in our development, we are 'Aquatic Apes'. So simple, so true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRYtPQf ... re=related

The main problem, seals have fur and spend most of their time swimming. I have a lot of respect for Elaine Morgan, but I like the thing about fire better as an explanation for us not having fur.

[Corpuscles]

The most appealing theory I have come accross, is a need for larger amount of Vitamin D? ...created by skin exposure to sunlight.

from a chapter in the Book: "Left in the Dark' by Graham Glynn and Tony Wright (a version is available on internet as a free download ebook)

[tholden]

There was a great video by Discovery Channel (1998), but it has recently been removed from every single site in the world. I have a copy of it, but I can't publish it due to copy rights.
Here is another video that also explains the reason why we don't have fur. We a had waterside phase in our development, we are 'Aquatic Apes'. So simple, so true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRYtPQf ... re=related

One caveat.....

You don't need to be an evolutionite to comprehend that Morgan is almost certainly correct in thinking that humans originally lived in water, as she notes, we share a hundred or so traits with the aquatic mammals.

The caveat is this: That original aquatic existence had to have been somewhere other than here. There has never been a body of water on this planet which would be safe for humans to live in.

[Ras]

The theory is that humans lived BY the water, not IN the water. Water is much safer than soil for humans. Fewer predators. We are so slow that even a much smaller animals than us are a serious threat to us on the ground. In water, there are almost no predators. Sharks? They do not feed on humans, you can swim with the sharks as people often do.
We were, in my opinion (I read that somewhere) humans have been slowly becoming sea animals but that process has stopped because of our ability to use tools.

[D_Archer]

...and still losing.

Why would that be?

Regards,
Daniel

[Vasa]

The best answer is that we never did. I'm all for evolution and I think.as a process it happens to a certain.degree. However, as we know in our explorations of electric universe concepts, what the mainstream scientists are telling us is not the whole story. There's alot of evidence that modern man has existed for geologic timescales, not the 100 thousand years that we are led to believe. Even in a Young Earth scenario humans were placed in a tropical climate, fur coats would be a detriment in this case. Is

[tholden]

The best answer is that we never did. I'm all for evolution and I think.as a process it happens to a certain.degree. However, as we know in our explorations of electric universe concepts, what the mainstream scientists are telling us is not the whole story. There's alot of evidence that modern man has existed for geologic timescales, not the 100 thousand years that we are led to believe. Even in a Young Earth scenario humans were placed in a tropical climate, fur coats would be a detriment in this case. Is

Give me about another month or so on this one and I'll have an answer for you.