Posted on 12/30/2013 2:06:44 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
It is one of the most unusual evolutionary ideas ever proposed: humans are amphibious apes who lost their fur, started to walk upright and developed big brains because they took to living the good life by the water’s edge.
This is the aquatic ape theory and although treated with derision by some academics over the past 50 years, it is still backed by a small, but committed group of scientists. From next Wednesday through Friday, they will hold a major London conference when several speakers, including British naturalist and broadcaster, David Attenborough, will voice support for the theory.
“Humans are very different from other apes,” said Peter Rhys Evans, an organizer of Human Evolution: Past, Present and Future. “We lack fur, walk upright, have big brains and subcutaneous fat and have a descended larynx, a feature common among aquatic animals but not apes.”
Standard evolutionary models suggest these different features appeared at separate times and for different reasons. The aquatic ape theory argues they all occurred because our ancestors decided to live in or near water for hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of years.
The theory was first proposed in 1960 by British biologist Sir Alister Hardy, who believed apes descended from the trees to live not on the savannah as is usually supposed, but in flooded creeks, river banks and sea shores — some of Earth’s richest sources of food. To keep their heads above water, they evolved an upright stance, freeing their hands to make tools to crack open shellfish. Then they lost their body hair and instead developed a thick layer of subcutaneous fat to keep warm in the water.
Scientists have since added other human attributes of claimed aquatic origin, including the sinus, said Rhys Evans, an expert on head-neck physiology at the Royal Marsden hospital, London.
“Humans have particularly large sinuses, spaces in the skull between our cheeks, noses and foreheads,” he added. “But why do we have empty spaces in our heads? It makes no sense until we consider the evolutionary perspective. Then it becomes clear: our sinuses acted as buoyancy aids that helped keep our heads above water.”
Other paleontologists dismiss parts of the theory. One or two human features could have arisen because our ancestors picked homes near the sea, but the entire package of attributes — lack of fur, upright posture, big brains, sinuses and others — is just too much, they add.
It is not just human physiology that reveals our aquatic past, say the theory’s supporters. Our brain biochemistry is also revealing. “Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is an omega-3 fatty acid found in large amounts in seafood,” said Dr. Michael Crawford, of Imperial College London.
“It boosts brain growth in mammals. That is why a dolphin has a much bigger brain than a zebra, though they have roughly the same body sizes. The dolphin has a diet rich in DHA. The crucial point is that without a high DHA diet from seafood we could not have developed our big brains. We got smart from eating fish and living in water.
“More to the point, we now face a world in which sources of DHA — our fish stocks — are threatened. That has crucial consequences for our species. Without plentiful DHA, we face a future of increased mental illness and intellectual deterioration. We need to face up to that urgently. That is the real lesson of the aquatic ape theory.”
The aquatic ape hypothesis
The Observer
Originally outlined by biologist Alister Hardy, the aquatic ape hypothesis achieved prominence when Welsh writer Elaine Morgan took up the theory in the early 1970s. (Her previous work had included writing episodes of “Dr. Finlay’s Casebook.”)
Morgan became infuriated with male-dominated explanations for human attributes such as hairlessness.
According to prevailing ideas, human males lost their body hair when they took up hunting and needed to sweat profusely in the African heat.
But no explanation was given to account for loss of female body hair. As a result, Morgan turned to the aquatic ape theory, which she believed provided a more balanced vision of human evolution.
Morgan wrote a popular account of the theory, “The “Descent of Women,” which became a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic. This has been followed up by other books on the subject including “The Scars of Evolution” and “The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis.”
Why do we have such large empty spaces in our heads, you ask?
So we can fill the void with evolutionary theories, of course.
>> our fish stocks — are threatened... That is the real lesson of the aquatic ape theory.
Good grief.
The liberal idiots will jump all over this while pushing for the destruction of nascent human life via abortion.
Wow ,go easy on the DHA, there...LOL.
Sinuses to keep our heads above water? How does that work? Were they filled with helium? Apparently whoever came up with this hair-brained idea is unaware of basic physics. Sinuses are IN your head, so once your head is above water they wouldn’t help much in that regard. Anyway thanks for the laugh.
Baloney
Gee whiz! Everybody knows the Earth is only about 6700 years old. No time whatsoever to evolve. And running from a tyrannosaur into the mouth of a waiting plesiosaur, no way José!
I thought the Flintstones had all that evilution stuff taken care off!
“Evolution” or young-earth creationism is a false dilemma.
The scientific problems with young-earth creationism are obvious. But so are the scientific problems with evolutionary theory. Yet evolutionists gloss over them.
No one has offered a remotely plausible mechanism for macro-evolution. And against Darwin’s prediction, the fossil record overwhelmingly demonstrates stasis in species, contradicting micro-evolutionary theory.
What difference, at this point, does it make?.
???
whatever the truth is...the fact that a male or female propose it is irrelevant. is this a “gotta give one to the girls” theory or the truth....cant be both.
You are born with the brains you have. Diet developing a larger brain would not be genetically passed to your children.
There is but one reason Humans walk the earth.
God Almighty placed us here.
Evolution is mostly BS, Some of the lesser creatures may have evolved in some small manner, but the one thing scientists cannot explain is that if the creatures evolved, what stopped the evolution.
Please explain some of the obvious problems with YEC. It’s not obvious to me and esp. not from your prior post...
Yet another inconveinent fact?
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