There seems to be a common belief in this news group that human evolution was shaped by a fairly narrow range of environmental pressures. A lot of squabbling revolves around conflicting claims of just what those pressures were e.g. the aquatic ape debate.
I don't know whether it is the fashion for post-modernism and deconstruction, but people seem to have a tendency to forget previous knowledge rather than build on it.
This is an unfortunate habit "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana).
Thirty or forty years ago one of the most basic accepted facts about humans, the kind of thing that was taught in primary school, was that humans are generalists. Although this particular implication was not fully understood at the time, such creatures are likely to have been shaped by very complex evolutionary forces.
This acceptance of a very generalized human behavior was based on real knowledge. Remember that at that time there were still plenty of people alive, especially in the British Commonwealth, who had experienced extended interaction with hunter-gatherers.
It was widely known that the lifestyle (and therefore evolutionary pressures) of a single tribe varied greatly with the seasons. What may have not been fully appreciated was the full evolutionary effects of this.
At one part of the year a tribe might be enjoying the seasonal abundance of fruit, nuts and other plant food. They would be filling an ecological niche very similar to that of the great apes.
At another, much of their food might be gathered from the sea shore. Ecologically, they would be competing with wading birds.
At yet another they might be hunting medium and large game in the glades and open forest. In other words, acting as large carnivores.
To survive the year they had to be good at all these roles.
To make things even more complicated, a neighboring inland tribe would have to cope with a very different environment. Yet, both tribes would be genetically locked by frequent intermarriage.
Developments since then only strengthen this idea.
One example is the understanding of how important different sex roles are in hunter-gatherer societies. The more productive ape-style gatherer niche is reserved for women; men are often restricted to the more uncertain carnivore role. Thus, one species is able to fill two quite different niches.
The surprising thing is just what very good generalists humans are.
Human senses and abilities in any one ecological role were once though to be quite poor when compared to specialized animals. This does not seem to be the case. When realistically tested humans abilities are often surprisingly close to those of specialized animals of like size.
In other words, you are all correct. Most of the things people
in this group champion as important factors in human evolution
probably did have an effect. The point is that they all helped
shape humanity so much of the squabbling is pointless.