Aquatic Ape Theory

Common misconceptions and unproven assumptions about the aquatic ape theory A Guest Post by Marc Verhaegen *2013 m_verhaegen@skynet.be It is often assumed that Alister Hardy’s and Elaine Morgan’s aquatic ape theory (AAT) suggests that more than 5 Ma (million years ago) there was a semi-aquatic phase in our past (explaining e.g. human fur loss, fatness and upright bipedalism), which was followed by a savanna phase on the African plains. In 2011, AAT proponents published an eBook, Was Man more aquatic in the past?, which showed a rather different picture of AAT. Here I very briefly describe my…

I just want to say that Huxley is pretty bad at swimming. I quickly add, for a 3 year old human, he's pretty darn good at it. Amanda's family is very aquatic, as tends to happen when everyone spends several weeks per year (or longer) on the edge of a lake. They can all ski really well, they can all swim really well, etc. etc. So, very soon after Huxley was born, his grandfather started to bring him to age-appropriate swimming lessons. He is now 37 months old and has been to a swimming lesson almost every week. In addition to to that, Amanda brings him to the pool pretty close to once a…

This is a follow-up on the TED talk I just posed. These are my reactions in real time as I watched the video: We start off with a very inaccurate statement that we are not interested in the chimp-human differences. It is, in fact, all we palaeoanthropologists think about. She overemphasizes the difference to say that they are total, but yes, there are differences. She makes the error of implying that "something" happened (when it would well have been a lot of things that happened over time, or some other pattern of change) She correctly identifies the "coming out of the trees" and…

Coincidentally, this appeared over night in my inbox. My critique of it is here.

The Aquatic Ape Theory is being discussed over at Pharyngula. As PZ points out, an excellent resource on this idea is Moore's site on the topic. Here, I just want to make a few remarks about it. The Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) is a human evolution Theory of Everything (TOE) and thus explains, as it should, everything. That is a dangerous way for a theory to act, because if it tries to explain everything then it is going to be wrong in a number of places, and it is going to seem (or even be) right in a number of places but only by chance. (Unless, of course, the TOE is totally rad and really…