User:Chris55/AAH2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH), often also referred to as aquatic ape theory (AAT) and waterside hypotheses of human evolution, is the idea that the ancestors of modern humans were more aquatic in the past. The hypothesis in its present form was proposed by the marine biologist Alister Hardy in 1960 who argued that a branch of apes was forced by competition from life in the trees to hunt for food such as shell fish on the sea shore and that this explained many characteristics such as man's upright posture. It was not followed up except by Elaine Morgan, a script writer, who objected to the male image of the "mighty hunter" being presented in popular anthropological works by Raymond Dart, Desmond Morris and others. Whilst her 1972 book, The Descent of Woman was very popular with the public, it attracted no attention from scientists, who saw no way of testing assertions about soft body parts and human habits in the distant past.
- This is a redraft of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis page. You are welcome to take part in this redraft. Existing text may be transferred (cut and copied) from the local AAH page. Please discuss any minor related issues on the AAH2 talk page.
Although Morgan removed the feminist polemic in several later books, so that it was discussed at a 1987 scientific conference and her 1990 book Scars of Evolution produced several favourable reviews in the scientific press, the thesis received scathing criticism from an anthropologist John Langdon in 1997 who argued that one hypothesis could not explain so many different phenomena.[1] But another anthropologist Philip Tobias, discussing the role of water in human evolution, had declared in 1995 that the normal scientific explanation of human difference from the other apes, dubbed the savannah hypothesis, was disproved by discoveries about the Paleolithic climate in Africa.[2]
In the last thirty years, one aspect of the hypothesis has received growing support within the scientific community: that at some point in the last five million years humans became dependent on aquatic food resources, including essential fatty acids and iodine, that are in short supply on the savannah and that this largely explains the enlargement of the human brain in this period. This is now supported by evidence of fish consumption by early humans up to two million years ago.[3]
The idea remains controversial and is still less popular inside than outside the scientific community.