Posted on 05/29/2002 2:11:46 PM PDT by Salman
Seriously, though, when our 2 kids were babies many years ago we taught them to swim before they learned to walk. We thought it was a necessity since we had a pool.
They actually learned to swim as babies very easily, though they could probably do it only fairly briefly.
No. Why do you ask? You think the "Naked Ape" thing really makes more sense? I have read Elaine Morgan's book, and it makes a very compelling case. After reading her book, it's hard to consider that anyonw would take Desmond Morris seriously. She really shoots holes in his theory.
Why can't humans swim from birth?
How can we be descended from aquatic apes, and have forgotten how to do that?
Prometheus
Some theorize that man first walked erect,
To carry simple tools, or throw a spear,
The fossil record proves this incorrect:
Walking predates tools, two million years.
Others think that walking freed the hands,
To gather and to carry precious food,
But this selects the group and not the man,
And won't select at all when times are good.
I think 'twas fire that taught the ape to stand,
It's fearful, but it's pretty, warm and bright,
One stoopéd ape picked up a fire-brand,
And banished cold, and predators, and night.
Encumbered, thus unfettered, torch in hand,
An ape, tempered by fire, became a man.
Hey now!
Actually, I believe there's some merit to your theory...
Man evolved bipedalism to make fire and free their hands for shadow puppets.
Actually, I believe that bipedalism helped the hominids to carry fire. Making it came much later, I believe.
Fire occurs naturally. There are parts of Africa that burn every year. There are many reasons why an intelligent creature would be attracted to fire: it's interesting to look at, it gives light and heat, it scares away predators, it kills and cooks animals that lie there to be consumed.
I imagine that our ancestors made a habit out of looking for fire and staying near it. After a while, the fire dies out, and they have to move on. But wait a minute: fires can be fed and kept alive. I'll bet a chimp can learn to do that. Furthermore, it can be carried around from place to place.
Ah, but now look: the ape with the torch has gained a very serious, immediate survival advantage. Sabertooths (no offense) are suddenly no problem. Walking and seeing at night, no problem. Impressing the ladies, well, naturally.
This, I believe, solves one of the great problems of the evolution of bipedalism: a half-bipedal creature doesn't make much sense. The survival advantage conferred by partial bipedalism has to be immediate and huge, to get "over the hump".
Tool use is one obvious thing that can do this, but first of all, hominids were walking several million years before their brains expanded, second of all, there's not much need to carry tools that can be obtained whenever needed (sticks and stones are everywhere), and third, use of the simplest stone tools (unfashioned rocks used as hammers) doesn't appear in the fossil record until well after bipedalism. (Recent discoveries put the gap at longer than the two million years in my sonnet, which I wrote two summers ago.)
So, I really think fire is it.
Chimps aren't fully bipedal, and make tools now.
But the rudimentary and disposable tools they make aren't likely to be the kinds of artifacts that archaeologists will find in a few million years.
Why can't humans WALK from birth? Obviously, we must not be land animals.
Seriously, human infants can swim. I once saw a video of an experiment in which a young infant was put in water, and it instinctively began kicking and paddling with its arms. Apparently, this ability disappears rather quickly in an early child's development, unless it is nurtured. I understand that it disappears entirely after the first six months or so.
Moreover, the Aquatic Ape theory holds that we (obviously) never completed the transition to a purely aquatic species, like whales, or even sea lions.
Glad you brought that up.
Have you noticed that only the fully aquatic cetaceans have shed their body hair? But isn't the aquatic lifestyle Elaine Morgan's explanation for why humans are almost hairless?
Further, we've got all kinds of fossils of the various families of aquatic mammals. Water is good for fossil-making.
Where are the aquatic ape fossils?
If I recall correctly (I haven't read Elaine Morgan's book since 1969), she makes the point that other semi-aquatic animals, such as hippopotami, have also lost most of their hair.
Besides, we have not completely lost our hair -- certainly not to the point of dolphins and whales. Moreover, the hair that remains on us grows in patterns that are more consistently found in aquatic mammals that still have their hair. This pattern tends to follow the flow of water over the bodies of a forward swimming animal.
Now here's one for you -- how come none of the other primates cry salty tears, which is something only associated with aquatic mammals?
Now here's one for you -- how come none of the other primates cry salty tears, which is something only associated with aquatic mammals?What aquatic mammals have hair primarily on their heads, armpits, and pubic regions?
I don't know. Do otters have salty tears?
Are their non-aquatic non-primates with salty tears?
There are a lot of things different about humans. Our hairlessness, our pronounced sexual dimorphism (pendulous breasts on non-nursing females), our brains, our posture, the lack of a penile bone in males (other primates have them), the helplessness of our babies, our relative physical weakness, etc... and we don't have a lot of the answers as to why these things are the way they are.
But we also don't have a single fossil of an aquatic ape.
In any event, Regarding our ongoing debate about the Aquatic Ape, perhaps you will find this article -- particularly the part called "Interpreting the Power of Water" -- to be of interest. I did.
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References 1 Odent M. Birth under water. Lancet, 1983:1476-77. Excerpted and reprinted by permission of the author from Chapter 15 of The Scientification of Love. |
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As for Genesis, I believe it is a divinely inspired allegory for the origins of man, of which I believe evolution is an important facet.
I believe in evolution because I believe in the standard biological interpretation of the fossil evidence. As for anthropology, we have a long way to go before we've got the whole story figured out...
But we've got fossil evidence for savannah apes, and none for aquatic ones.
And it's a heck of a lot easier to make a fossil in water than on a savannah.
Further, our closest relative, the chimpanzee, is a lot closer to being a savannah ape than an aquatic one. In fact when you look at living primates, you don't find an aquatic one in the bunch.
But the rudimentary and disposable tools they make aren't likely to be the kinds of artifacts that archaeologists will find in a few million years.
True, but they also aren't the kind of tools that anybody would need to carry around. You'd want to carry around either tools that were difficult to make or tools that couldn't be easily and immediately obtained. Furthermore, I would expect rude stone hammers to be employed early on in the toolmaking tradition. It's not out of the question that sophisticated organic-material toolmaking existed long before it occurred to anyone to pick up a rock to crack a nut, but it seems unlikely, in my opinion. It's somewhat surprising to me that chimps don't do this even now, and it's certainly surprising that early hominids didn't do it, but they just didn't.
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