I value constructive criticism immensely. I have mostly found lessons to be learned there in.
Sadly my Achilles heel has always been sarcasm, of which I just can't seem to develop a high tolerance to....and I overreact to it.
Sarcasm is used as a tool in scientific debate, this I understand...but( to my old fashioned brain) it just comes off as rudeness.
As a bi-product of my upbringing ( in a family of bikers and truckies CIRCA 1970's and a good 10 year run in the army) rudeness was ....shall we say....frowned upon.
So I should write a form apology for my occasional dummy spits because two seconds later I REGRET THEM.
My comment above was one of those CRANKY moments and I apologize for it.
I just don't feel that the Wallace line theory takes into account the scale of archaic time that these clearly super relic hominid arrived/ evolved in Australia and that absence of evidence is not evidence of total absence.
"To state that there's nothing new to be discovered is absurd ! Its really just a question of a lack of samples"
Todd Disatell Ph.D. 1992, M.A. 1987, Harvard, B.A. 1985, Cornell.
http://anthropology.as.nyu.edu/object/todddisotell.html
The question is not a lack of samples, at least not in Australia, the question is whom do we give the samples too and who's paying the massive amount of money it takes to test the samples we all know are out there?
All this has been going on since.....
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/201 ... 145054.htm
Looking at those early documents, Myf believes that McCooey and his claims were poo-pooed by academics like Ramsay
because he was an amateur.
We only have one side of the back and forth between the two but clearly it's a passionate debate.
Again in The Australian Town and Country Journal, McCooey writes:
"The mere fact of no apes [are] found in the Sydney Museum does not justify us in rushing to the conclusion that there are none in the colony, for it is extremely improbable that any ape will be foolhardy enough to present itself at the museum to undergo the somewhat delicate operation of stuffing; and beyond the fact that there are, none to be found in the Sydney Museum there is not one scintilla of evidence to prove that they are not to be found in the colony, while there is abundance of evidence to show that they are."
Imagine Ramsay's reaction at reading that.
McCooey goes on trying to prove his case:
"I do not claim to be the first who has seen this animal, for I can put my finger on half a dozen men at Bateman's Bay who have seen the same, or at any rate an animal of a similar description; but I think I am the first to come forward in the columns of a newspaper and give publicity to the fact of having seen it.
"I may mention that a search party was organised at Bateman's Bay some months ago to surround the locality [and] the supposed ape... and shoot or capture it, but the idea was abandoned in consequence of the likelihood of gun accidents; and I may further state that the skeleton of an ape, 4ft in length, may be seen at any time in a cave 14 miles from Bateman's Bay, in the direction of Ulladulla."
It appears that in December of 1882, Ramsay offered McCooey 100 pounds to bring in his yowie dead or alive. McCooey believed it was a challenge he could meet but, as far as we can tell, the 100 pounds wasn't claimed.
Eleven months later on October 20 1883 the discourse is still bubbling between the two men.
McCooey, writing from Mandurama between Bathurst and Cowra on October 15 1883, says:
"...the position taken by the Curator of the Museum is absolutely untenable... there are indigenous apes in this colony...they have been frequently seen in Budawong mountains, in Jingera mountains, and in the Abercrombie mountains, at Bateman's Bay, at Mount Macdonald, and on the Guy Fawkes-road between Armidale and Grafton...apes were known to the aborigines of this colony, and were dreaded by them, long before a museum was founded in Australia, or a white man crossed the Murray; and that one was actually captured and killed near Braidwood within the memory of persons still living."
Referring to her understanding of the research, Myf Thompson feels Ramsay questioned McCooey's motivations, suggesting he was more interested in claiming the money, and that it was the amateur naturalist who suggested the cash reward not him. Ramsay's impression is perhaps built on talk at the time of McCooey's criminal record which points to claims of fraud.
Ramsay also seemed to suggest that the Australian landscape couldn't sustain a creature such as McCooey's.
Speculation continues to this day about the existence of a yowie in local bush land".
And round and round we go,
Cheers