Aquatic ape hypothesis
[5][6] The hypothesis was initially proposed by the English marine biologist Alister Hardy in 1960, who argued that a branch of apes was forced by competition over terrestrial habitats to hunt for food such as shellfish on the coast and seabed, leading to adaptations that explained distinctive characteristics of modern humans such as functional hairlessness and bipedalism.
[5] In 1942 the German pathologist Max Westenhöfer (1871–1957) discussed various human characteristics (hairlessness, subcutaneous fat, the regression of the olfactory organ, webbed fingers, direction of the body hair etc.)
[10] He stated: "The postulation of an aquatic mode of life during an early stage of human evolution is a tenable hypothesis, for which further inquiry may produce additional supporting evidence.
[13][14] After he had become a respected academic and knighted for contributions to marine biology, Hardy finally voiced his thoughts in a speech to the British Sub-Aqua Club in Brighton on 5 March 1960.
Several national newspapers reported sensational presentations of Hardy's ideas, which he countered by explaining them more fully in an article in New Scientist on 17 March 1960: "My thesis is that a branch of this primitive ape-stock was forced by competition from life in the trees to feed on the sea-shores and to hunt for food, shellfish, sea-urchins etc., in the shallow waters off the coast.
Some interest was received, notably from the geographer Carl Sauer whose views on the role of the seashore in human evolution[15] "stimulated tremendous progress in the study of coastal and aquatic adaptations" inside marine archaeology.
She took her lead from a section in Morris's 1967 book which referred to the possibility of an Aquatic Ape period in evolution, his name for the speculation by the biologist Alister Hardy in 1960.
[21][22] Hardy's hypothesis as outlined in New Scientist was: My thesis is that a branch of this primitive ape-stock was forced by competition from life in the trees to feed on the sea-shores and to hunt for food, shell fish, sea-urchins etc., in the shallow waters off the coast.
I am imagining this happening in the warmer parts of the world, in the tropical seas where Man could stand being in the water for relatively long periods, that is, several hours at a stretch.
[25][26] Additional features cited by Hardy include the location of the trachea in the throat rather than the nasal cavity, the human propensity for front-facing copulation, tears and eccrine sweating, though these claimed pieces of evidence have alternative evolutionary adaptationist explanations that do not invoke an aquatic context.
[5] Palaeontologist Riley Black concurred with the pseudoscience label, and described the AAH as a "classic case of picking evidence that fits a preconceived conclusion and ignoring everything else".
But they allege that "under pressure from the mainstream, AAH supporters tended to flee from the core arguments of Hardy and Morgan towards a more generalized emphasis on fishy things.
"[40] In "The Waterside Ape", a pair of 2016 BBC Radio documentaries, David Attenborough discussed what he thought was a "move towards mainstream acceptance" for the AAH in the light of new research findings.
[42] Responding to the documentaries in a newspaper article, paleoanthropologist Alice Roberts criticized Attenborough's promotion of AAH and dismissed the idea as a distraction "from the emerging story of human evolution that is more interesting and complex".
Along the same lines, historian Erika Lorraine Milam noted that independent of Morgan's work, certain standard explanations of human development in paleoanthropology have been roundly criticized for lacking evidence, while being based on sexist assumptions.
[46] Anatomy lecturer Bruce Charlton gave Morgan's book Scars of Evolution an enthusiastic review in the British Medical Journal in 1991, calling it "exceptionally well written" and "a good piece of science".
[47] In 1995, paleoanthropologist Phillip Tobias declared that the savannah hypothesis was dead, because the open conditions did not exist when humanity's precursors stood upright and that therefore the conclusions of the Valkenburg conference were no longer valid.
[48][49] Tobias and his student further criticised the orthodox hypothesis by arguing that the coming out of the forest of man's precursors had been an unexamined assumption of evolution since the days of Lamarck, and followed by Darwin, Wallace and Haeckel, well before Raymond Dart used it.
[53] Morgan removed the feminist critique and left her AAH ideas intact, publishing the book as The Aquatic Ape 10 years later, but it did not garner any more positive reaction from scientists.
[68] As evidence, they describe health problems in landlocked communities, such as cretinism in the Alps and goitre in parts of Africa due to salt-derived iodine deficiency,[69][70] and state that inland habitats cannot naturally meet human iodide requirements.
"[72] British palaeontologist Henry Gee, who remarked on how a seafood diet can aid in the development of the human brain, nevertheless criticized AAH because inferring aquatic behavior from body fat and hairlessness patterns is an unjustifiable leap.
She suggests that such abilities are consistent with selective pressure for underwater foraging during human evolution, and discussed other anatomical traits speculated as diving adaptations by Hardy/Morgan.
