Comments on: A New Aquatic Ape Theory

By: Nina

Nina — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 05:14:19 +0000

Elaine Morgan’s ‘research’ is full of factoids, distorted truths, and downright lies – and Verhaegen’s contributions to the ‘theory’ are even worse. The way they’ve reacted to the widespread criticism over the years is thoroughly unscientific, and quite distasteful.
http://www.aquaticape.org/whataat.html

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 02:52:18 +0000

I think humans were probably mud walloers like the pig and hippo. P.s they were also probably black to protect from sunburn on bare skin under the water…

By: marc verhaegen

marc verhaegen — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 20:58:56 +0000

AFAIK it was me who first proposed that australopiths lived in swamp forests & later wetlands, eg, in 2000 in a paper with Pierre-François Puech in Human Evolution 15:175-186 “Hominid lifestyle and diet reconsidered: paleo-environmental and comparative data”, or google “aquarboreal”.
1) The Miocene was very hot & wet, and most if not all hominoid fossils are found in mangrove or swamp forests or wetlands then, eg, Helio-, Austriaco-, Pierola-, Dryo-, Siva-, Lufeng-, Khorat-, Oreo-, Ardi- & Australopithecus. The monkey-to-ape transition (larger body, more vertical spine, broad thorax, dorsal scapulas, below-branch locomotion etc.) is most parsimoniously explained by spending a lot of time in the water (wading & surface-floating) & feeding on nuts or shells (durophagy: thick enamel & tool use, eg, capuchin monkeys in mangrove forests) &/or aquatic plants (lowland gorillas in forest bais), and grasping branches above the head (climbing vertically). This is the aquarboreal hypothesis of Mio-Pliocene hominoids.
2) During the Pleistocene, sea levels dropped, and vast territories became available on the continental shelves for an intelligent, handy, durophagous, aquarboreal “ape”. Homo c 1.8 Ma is found amid shells from Mojokerto (deltaic sediments, even with barnacles) to Dmanisi (near the Caspian-Black Sea connection then) to Aïn-Hanech (coastal plain) to Turkana Lake (where archaic Homo appeared together with stingrays: marine connection), and from the coasts they ventured inland along rivers. Archaic Homo had extremely thick, dense, heavy & brittle crania & postcrania (twice as thick as in gorillas) – this trait is only seen in slow & shallow diving tetrapods (google “pachyosteosclerosis”). This is the littoral hypothesis of Pleistocene Homo (AAT sensu stricto). It explains our large brain (DHA), extreme plantigrady, fur loss, SC fat, squalene-rich sebaceous glands, vernix caseosa, salt sweat & tears, head-spine-legs on 1 line, small mouth (seafood) & voluntary breathing (speech origins), slow diving skills etc.
3) Neandertal fossils are found inland as well as at coasts. If we don’t want to postulate 2 different lifestyles, they had a littoral diet of shells, seals, seaweeds etc. (eg, Gibraltar) and seasonally followed the rivers inland (eg, salmon trek?), where they butchered ungulates caught amid reeds, in mud or shallow water, ate cattails (traces on neandertal tools) etc. Late-Pleistocene Homo evolved thinner skulls (Herto & Omo after c 200 ka, and neandertals in parallel in Europe), suggesting they stopped diving, and waded bipedally (eg, with spears & later nets to catch fish & fowl) and still later walked & finally ran on land.
These ideas on what you call a “New AAT” can be found in an eBook with contributions of the late prof.Tobias, Elaine Morgan, Anna Gislén & many others: M.Vaneechoutte, A.Kuliukas & M.Verhaegen eds 2011 ebook Bentham Sci.Publ. “Was Man More Aquatic in the Past? Fifty Years after Alister Hardy: Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution”.

By: Phil abbott

Phil abbott — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 21:44:18 +0000

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120919190100.htm. This article about a mutation allowing homo sapiens to migrate out of central africa once they aquired the ability to metabolize Polyunsaturated fatty acids from plants clearly implies that before this mutation, these hominids were tethered to their diet of fish and shellfish, due to their brain nutional requirements, for 100,000 years. Adds a lot of strength to this hypothesis!

By: RiverApeWoman

RiverApeWoman — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 22:41:51 +0000

Claim: Human fat quantity and distribution is like that of aquatic mammals; it is adapted for insulation and swimming in an aquatic environment. Humans have subcutaneous fat which is bonded to the skin rather than anchored within the body, unlike non-aquatic mammals.

Fact: Human fat characteristics show no sign of any aquatic adaptation, and are radically different from the aquatic mammals AAT/H proponents say we resemble. Human fat deposits are anchored to underlying depots, just as those of all mammals are. Human fat deposits are found in the same places, and are anchored the same way, as those of other primates.