Elaine Morgan and the Aquatic Ape

[ismnotwasm]

(I read this book when it came out; I must have been 12 or 13)

I first learned of Elaine Morgan and the aquatic ape theory from a botanist. He had seen a television special on the theory and briefly followed up with a search of the scientific literature, but found very little. He asked me (as I was trained in zoology before becoming a historian of science) whether or not the idea of a watery human past had any merit. I was sceptical. That was the spring of 2007. For several years, I didn't think seriously about aquatic apes. Then, when researching theories of human evolution and male aggression in the 1960s, Morgan's name popped up, albeit in a rather different context.

Morgan's Descent of Woman, published in 1972, was one of the first publications calling attention to the rampant sexism of the so-called "savannah theory" common at the time, and thus continues to occupy a prominent place in the gender and science literature. You know the theory – where humans became human by learning to hunt. Our ancestors walked upright in order to carry weapons, spoke to facilitate cooperation over long distances, lost most of their body hair to help cool down during the hot days of the Pleistocene, and ultimately broke into family units where the women stayed at home gathering roots and protecting the young, while the strapping, competitive men brought back the protein necessary to sustain their new lifestyles. Good times.

Popular science writer Robert Ardrey memorably epitomised the genre with his bestselling volumes African Genesis and Territorial Imperative. Published around the same time, On Aggression, by future Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz, and The Naked Ape, by fellow ethologist Desmond Morris, added fuel to the fire. All triangulated their theories of humanity from insights derived from animal behaviour and paleoanthropology. Morgan imagined a male reader of these volumes derived "no end of a kick out of thinking that all that power and passion and brutal virility is seething within him, just below the skin, only barely held in leash by the conscious control of his intellect".

Playfully appropriating her title from Charles Darwin's Descent of Man, she skewered these books as "Tarzanist" tales that failed to incorporate the perspective of women. Where, she wondered, were the stories that began, "When the first ancestor of the human race descended from the trees, she had not yet developed the mighty brain that was to distinguish her so sharply from all the other species … "? Against the background of these men, reviewers dubbed Descent of Woman "women's lib prehistory".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-h-word/2013/may/13/aquatic-ape-elaine-morgan-history-science

[LiberalEsto]

1. I read that ages ago, and it made a lot of sense to me nt

[Shivering Jemmy]

2. I just don't think the evidence is there

For the aquatic ape hypothesis. That said I hope it is correct because its a fun idea.

[ismnotwasm]

3. Oh, I don't think it is either, but it's a fascinating idea

From what I remember, it explains things like face to face copulation and 'webbing' between our fingers and toes.

[Shivering Jemmy]

4. that's why its fun and its also why I don't trust it

Whenever I run across a hypothesis that explains that much I begin to worry...

It did play a role in this atrocity...which was simultaneously humorous and appalling:

http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/mermaids/videos/mermaids.htm

[ismnotwasm]

5. Argh!

So ridiculous.