Red Dragon  wrote 

> Has anyone come out with the explanation as to  why the Australopithecines
> evolved into Homo?  

Yes, but don't get ahead of the game.  First we need an 
explanation of how Apes evolved in A'pith.

> What factors or forces propelled the evolution of the
> Australopithecines and why did the same force not acted on  other mamals in
> terms of increase in intelligence and developing bigger brains?  Why did
> the law of evolution failed to apply to the present day apes in the same way
> that it did for the Australopithecines?  Meaning that why did  Homo's
> cousin, the Ape remained stagnant in intelligence?
> 
> It has been explained that Homo Sapien's intelligence and brain size
> increased when he turned from leaves eater to meat eater.  It is felt
> that its large brain will require the rich protein of meat to sustain its
> performance.  If that be the case, then why is that the lion having the
> same nutrient as Homo failed to develop  much intelligence?  It appears to
> me that the lion being meat eater is no better in intelligence than the
> deer which is  totally a grass eater. So how do we explain this anomaly?
> I hope someone has the answer.

I have the answer. It starts with a shift in climate, at 
about 8mya, that introduced a monsoon climate, a climate 
that had not existed on this planet for at least 300 
million years.  The element of this climate that is most 
significant with respect to understanding human origins 
is seasonal dessication.  

http://tinyurl.com/2yq23

Seasonal dessication created a problem in A'piths habitat 
that did not exist in ape habitat, the seasonal scarcity 
that is associated with an extended dry season.  Seasonal 
scarcity weakened them and made them vulnerable to 
predators.  Most of the other large quadrupedal mammals 
in the greater environment were able to deal with the 
implications of seasonal scarcity by way of their ability 
to migrate to locations that were less effected by seasonal 
dryness, most notably patches of forest near rivers, 
stream, lakes and places of high ground water.  Migration 
was a good strategy for most species because their 
quadrupedalism afforded them the ability to move 
efficiently over the land and the ability to move swiftly 
to escape predators.  

http://tinyurl.com/yscvq

For our tree-dwelling A'pith ancestors migration was not a 
good strategy, mostly because they were too slow to escape 
large predators that infested the surrounding treeless 
habitat, trees being their main strategy to avoid 
predation.  Moreover, and inconjunction with the fact that 
the discontinuous nature of the remaining treed habitat 
left them isolated at whatever treed patch they happened 
to reside, migration itself was a problem: the inmigration 
of large browsing/grazing food competitor species 
exacerbated the seasonal scarcity at their localities.  
This weakened them during the depths of the dry season and 
caused them to have to take chances to find food and water, 
making them vulnerable to predations, most notably from 
social predators, lions, hyena, and dogs.  So, not only was 
migration not a good strategy for their own survival but the 
poverty inducing effects of migration of other species often 
resulted in poverty induced, predatory massacres of the 
A'pith community that occupied a locality.

http://tinyurl.com/26bye

The strategy that emerged amongst our A'pith ancestors can 
be best understood from the fact that if they could avoid 
the depths of poverty associated with the dry season then 
they would, largely if not completely, be ignored by hyena, 
lions, and dogs that might otherwise decimate their 
community.  And the best way to avoid the depths of poverty 
is by stopping or reducing inmigration from competing 
browsing/grazing food competitors.  More precisely, the 
strategies that emerged involved the following: 1) Mob 
oriented, rock-throwing, stick-wielding assault behavior 
directed against inmigrating browsing/grazing species to 
effect the preservation of the food resources at their 
locality; 2) Private ownership of property within the 
greater context of the communal site (city-sized, town-sized 
treed patches) to give the bands that comprise the community 
the incentive to stand their ground against the assaults of 
inmigrating browsing/grazing species as well as the exchange 
or trade of this property to effect the earliest palpatations 
of commerce; 3) Consciousness, communicativeness, and a 
hierarchical social structure that enabled a community of 
relatively disparate bands to network and thereby effect a 
collective entity that could more efficiently achieve the 
rock-throwing, stick-wielding continuing war against poverty 
inducing inmigrating species.  

http://tinyurl.com/3glag
http://tinyurl.com/2xdf4

The very unusual form of selection that resulted from the 
scenario described above set the stage for the emergence of 
homo.  But this scenario is not a scenario that we would 
expect to produce much in the way of brain growth, afterall 
their main competitors in this scenario is other relatively 
small brained migratory species and predators.  The growth 
of head size that we start to see with the emergence of homo 
was more directly a result of the fact that by that time, 
2.5 to 1.8 mya, our ancestors had achieved greater dominance 
over the inmigrating species as well as the predators that 
previously were such a problem.  But now they had a new 
competitor, themselves.  This marked the beginning of the 
evolutionary arms race that resulted in the growth of human 
brain size.

Jim
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