Philip Copeman

Author and Activist

The Financial Opportunity of Cape Paleoanthropology

One of the biggest weaknesses we have in paleoanthropology is that we rely on external (largely US) funding. I would like to change this and get this funding from local companies in particular from Cape Companies.

Out of Africa carpensis is a hypothesis that effectively places the rise of Homo sapiens possibly anatomically, but certainly culturally, in the Southern Cape between 200 000 years ago and 150 000 years ago. Proving this hypothesis will have major benefits to the Cape's biggest asset, namely tourism. It will find major opposition, from Creationists, Multiregionalists and Out of Africa Ethiopiists.

In my opinion there are a number of options available to build the case for Out of Africa carpensis
Build a Bayesian Model for the probability given all the available data ( $100 000 per year)
Analyze the underlying genetics of Local populations ( $ 500 000 per year)
Archaeological Digs ( $ 2 M per year)

I would like to deal with the first 2.

My barrier at the moment is getting government to give clarity and confirm that the work done is deductible subject to the Research Allowances made available in section 11D of the tax act. Then my next step would be to find the company that takes up the offer.

The Research Allowances are oriented towards computer programs, which may make it easier to sort out the finance than razing funding for the Digs.

The target companies must be Cape based, preferably in the Tourist or property business where they can show that they are contributing to a project that has makes revenue for them.

Building a Bayesian Model

The possibilities for the start of Man are :

In the Cape
In Ethiopia
Somewhere else in Africa
Somewhere outside Africa
Multi regionally
By Creation
By an Alien
By some other as yet unexplained Cause

The events are mutually exclusive and are substantiated by multidisciplinary contributions. The data for each scenario is in all sorts of forms and would need to be collected.

We would build a model that took into account all of this data

Analyze the underlying genetics of Local populations

This has some nasty hurdles to overcome. We need access to a database of DNA samples and made readable in a data format – XML ? There do seem to be local sources of this. I am not sure what has to be done in terms of getting the data made public.

Then I guess it is matter of mapping the scenarios to the genetic data and testing each alternative. I truly would not be able to follow the techniques required to do this.

Archaeological Digs


This is a bit more complicated for me. I would need to get more detail on this and be able to understand how this benefits the statutes of Section 11 D.

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