Sometimes there’s a whole ‘world’ in a cartoon ;-)
‘Civ, I was looking at some of your links in post 73, and I became interested in the ones pointing to Elaine Morgan.
What do you think about the Hardy/Morgan ‘aquatic ape’ idea?
I’m not schooled in this stuff; but for some reason I’ve lately become interested in Early Man - (sometimes I’ll wake up on a Saturday, and decide that I need to know about something that I never really thought about before; last weekend it was the Lascaux and Chauvet caves) - and. consequently, various theories about evolution.
The ‘water’ origin idea appeals to me - maybe it’s just because of my lifelong (atavistic?) proclivity toward Water ;-)
I found this Ted Talk by Morgan; and an old BBC documentary:
https://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WIxdKLTX7E
-JT, Naked Water Lover
Her aquatic ape model grew out of her radical feminism, was published for a general audience in the book "The Descent of Woman". She cherry-picks info that fits her feminist outlook, but Todaro's idea wouldn't have come to my attention had it not come to hers. :^) So, I'm grateful. During the last 2 million years the part of the Earth we know as the submerged continental shelf was mostly dry land most of the time, while higher, interior areas were covered with ice and had little or no food supplies. Our ancestors (and perhaps competing and/or similar species) spent much of their time developing, breeding, changing, in the words of Donovan, way down below the ocean. :^)
Oh, and I wholeheartedly agree, I love the water. Something like 90 percent of humans live within 500 feet of sealevel, largely due to the availability of fresh water for physical use and agriculture. Humans' ancestors were -- at least 800,000 years ago -- using watercraft to cover distances best measured in miles. We're a maritime species. Of course, these are not the same thing as, the female of the species stood around in the ocean waves evolving lower body fat for warmth and long hair for their kids to cling to.