There is also a group of chimps that digs for water. But that is a whole other story and they are not really digging for water, IMO, though I’m not sure if the researchers and I agree on that interpretation.

Technically a “rainforest” which has a long dry season is a monsoon forest, a true rainforest produces its own rain throughout the year, reducing but not stopping during the dry season.

Not according to the classification systems of which I’m aware. However, it is worth noting that if you take the minimum required annual rainfall to be a rain forest and apply it to Africa, there is only one tiny itty bitty rain forest in West Africa and not one bit elsewhere. So, we Africanists tend to ignore that and refer to the parts with the closed canopy and all the rain as rain forests. The problem is that when the classifications were worked out the data from Africa was rare and that which existed was not really used. So there is a Brazilain/Borneo standard, if you will.

Yes, the Wranngham et al paper you cite is one of several extensions of the work that Wrangham and I did earlier.

Interesting that the volcanic soil there is similar to coral atoll soils in that both drain rainwater immediately, so a long dry season is difficult.

Yes indeed, very similar!

Interesting that the volcanic soil there is similar to coral atoll soils in that both drain rainwater immediately, so a long dry season is difficult. Technically a “rainforest” which has a long dry season is a monsoon forest, a true rainforest produces its own rain throughout the year, reducing but not stopping during the dry season.

Shallow-water habitats as sources of fallback foods for hominins
R Wrangham, D Cheney, R Seyfarth & E Sarmiento 2009 AJPA 140:630-642

“Underground/underwater Storage Organs (rhyzomes) consumed by hominins could have included both underwater and underground storage
organs, ie, from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats.”

A view of human evolution as a series of bottlenecks each conditioned on a seminal invention starts to resemble your typical cheap TV drama.

Hominid Lost. Then Found. Then Lost Again. Then Found.
It could be better than a lot of what is on TV now.

So diplomatic. I would have said “couldn’t be worse”.

But there are people who would insist that the appeal of this sort of presentation amounts to a racial memory: everyone alive today is descended from a long series of subpopulations selected for interest in how the elders survived adversity. Tragically, such interest is equally satisfied by falsehoods; hence, religion. And TV.

On the other hand, chimps can learn the difference between poachers/hunters and tourists. In this particular region, habituating the gorillas to tourists changed the local economy and saved the gorillas. Temporarily.

It is no doubt not an easy decision to make.

It could be better than a lot of what is on TV now.

Curtis Marean was insisting recently that a bottlenecked human population of ~150Kya? survived because they, uniquely, had learned to exploit shellfish. Each bottleneck would have its own success story, because all their descendants would know the secret, but only one group among them survives the next one. Maybe tubers get a bottleneck of their own.

A view of human evolution as a series of bottlenecks each conditioned on a seminal invention starts to resemble your typical cheap TV drama.

In looking at wikipedia, there are indigenous pygmies in Africa, Asia, South America and in Australia, and they all seem to live in rainforest.