Guest essay by Eric Worrall
High profile British Climate Advocate David Attenborough, who in 2015 was invited to the Whitehouse by President Obama to advise on climate issues, has come under fire for promoting a discredited “Aquatic Ape” theory.
Sorry David Attenborough, we didn’t evolve from ‘aquatic apes’ – here’s why
Occasionally in science there are theories that refuse to die despite the overwhelming evidence against them. The “aquatic ape hypothesis” is one of these, now championed by Sir David Attenborough in his recent BBC Radio 4 series The Waterside Ape.
The hypothesis suggests that everything from walking upright to our lack of hair, from holding our breath to eating shellfish could be because an aquatic phase in our ancestry. Since the theory was first suggested more than 55 years ago, huge advances have been made in the study of human evolution and our story is much more interesting and complicated than suggested by the catch-all aquatic ape hypothesis.
In 1960, marine biologist Alister Hardy published an article in New Scientist, titled: Was man more aquatic in the past? He re-told the familiar tale of the evolution of land animals from ancient fish, and then considered the return of various groups of reptiles, birds and mammals to an aquatic existence: ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, crocodiles, sea-snakes, penguins, whales, dolphins and porpoises, manatees and dugongs, and seals – as well as polar bears, otters and water voles, who hunt in water. Then he suggested that many of the unique characteristics of humans and their ancestors, marking them out as different from the other apes, could be explained as adaptations to spending time in water.
Hardy put forward all sorts of features which could be explained as “aquatic adaptations”: our swimming ability – and our enjoyment of it; loss of body hair, as well as an arrangement of body hair that he supposed may have reduced resistance in the water; curvy bodies; and the layer of fat under our skin. He even suggested that our ability to walk upright may have developed through wading, with the water helping to support body weight.
…
All the suggested anatomical and physiological adaptations can be explained by other hypotheses, which fit much better with what we actually know about the ecology of ancient hominins. Hairlessness, for instance, is only a feature of fully aquatic mammals such as whales and dolphins. Semi-aquatic mammals such as otters and water voles are extremely furry. Sexual selection and adaptations to heat loss better explain our pattern of body hair. Sexual selection may also explain our body fat distribution, which differs between the sexes. Voluntary breath control is more likely to be related to speech than to diving.
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I’m open to the idea that early humans spent a lot of time living on beaches. Gathering shellfish is a very easy way to get a decent high protein meal – kids in my old hometown used to gather more shellfish than we could carry in a matter of minutes.
But suggesting humans went through a “Man from Atlantis” phase seems a bit far fetched. The truth is we are quite poorly adapted to water. Humans are slow swimmers. Our eyes don’t work well underwater. Thanks to our lack of waterproof fur, getting out of water even in the tropics is sometimes a rather chilly experience, until you dry off.
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The inclusion of “Aquaman” in the League of Justice can be traced back to this theory ?
Nope. Aquaman started in 1941.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaman
So he came before the theory! Aha! Lol!
It really pays to listen to the broadcasts. No “Man from Atlantis” is involved. “Beach ape” is indeed the position that Attenborough was presenting. In his own words, “not living in the ocean but making a living from it”. Frankly, the article from “the conversation” sounds like someone whose mind was sufficiently made up that they felt no need to listen to what Attenborough actually said, rather like people raving about climate den*ers.
Correct, at this site there are many who don’t like hearing alternative debates, they do the ‘let’s make fun of anyone who has alternative information’ all the time. Fans of the wonderful and patient host of this site, they often go overboard defending scientific positions that are still under debate. That is, DEBATE IS GOOD, not evil.
Discredited by whom and on what grounds? True believers, or disbelievers, tend to claim theories are binary, true or false. That can work in physics but not evolution or human behavior. There’s overwhelming evidence human ancestors evolved to be capable in the water.
There is no evidence that we evolved as a result of spending most of our time in the water, as Morgan argued. All the important developments in human evolution occurred as a result of life on the savanna.
Our big brains later enabled us to exploit marine resources, but that’s not what Morgan’s “hypothesis” maintained in her books “The Descent of Woman”, “The Aquatic Ape”, “The Scars of Evolution”, “The Descent of the Child”, “The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis” and “The Naked Darwinist”. Her goal was to make people think that the science as discovered by real scientists working in the field and lab was all wet.
She was not a scientist but a feminist polemicist. That would be OK if she had actually adduced some evidence to support her screed, but she never did nor could.
I’ll bet she never saw “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” either. That may have changed her tune.
I might add that her “hypothesis” was never credited by anyone actually working in relevant fields. It was born discredited.
Sir David has an undergrad degree in natural science, but never worked as a physical anthropologist or paleontologist.
I’ve admired many of David Attenborough’s documentaries. It’s sad that someone who has championed scientific knowledge in the past, now toes the line of an agenda that throws science out the window, yet does so claiming science is their reason.
The same could be said of Stephen Hawking.
Yes, and with Attenborough’s resources, it isn’t difficult swaying the masses.
I loved Attenborough and presented clips from his videos to my students, but I was appalled that he became a mouthpiece for climate alarmism. His video on polar bears, re constructed old BBS videos showing how polar bears naturally hunt and eat walrus each summer, and created beautiful cinematic illusion and bogus portrayal suggesting polar bears only eat walrus due global warming.
http://landscapesandcycles.net/attenborough-s-polar-bears–believe-only-half-.html
When a scientist becomes an activist, essentially it is the end of his career. I have known and admired lot of old scientists that had become emeritus and kept a sharp mind and a sharp scientific method.
He isn’t a scientist! He’s a Naturalist – two different things.
You are right bazzer, yet I still like the guy. He is entitled to his opinion even if it is the wrong one. He has spent an entire life promoting and defending the natural world while producing documentary masterpieces. To me that is a lot more worth than what most people have done.
https://www.wired.com/2008/02/evolution-expla/
The best (jocular) cure for hiccups is to remind yourself that you’re not a fish anymore and quit trying to breath with gills.
Actually the best thing for hiccups is to bite into a lemon. I have seen it work hundreds of times and never failed.
I’ve heard of this idea before, but didn’t realize it is discredited and even mocked. We’ll probably never know for sure.
Strange that Attenborough insists that we follow the consensus on climate change while promoting an off-the-wall theory on human evolution.
Well, he is NOT a scientist, he’s a Naturalist. He doesn’t have a science degree, he has one in Natural Sciences…which means he’s a Naturalist. The BBC keeps this very quiet.
bazzer1959, Attenborough may well be a naturalist, but that cannot be deduced from the fact that he has a degree in natural sciences. As far as I know every Cambridge science graduate is awarded a BA in natural sciences.
One part of human development which is harder to explain is: infants up to 3 years have a direct connection between mouth and lungs so that drowning is hard to happen generally they swallow a lot of water.
It has been explained. Baby infants need to breath while breastfeeding.
…just like adults.
No, not like adults. Babies have a typical mammalian disposition of the larynx. This makes choking very difficult and that is why they manage to breathe easily while breastfeeding. From about 3 months until 6-8 years the larynx and hyoid descend to a lower position facilitating language but making choking very easy. A reasonable trade off.
Human hairlessness, with limited hair to shield the brain from solar energy and in areas it lots of friction, and our wonderful ability to sweat makes humans excellent savannah hunters. We are designed to run one distances, such that we can choose a zebra and chase it. It will run away and we will follow but, if we keep following it and force it to keep running with little time to stop and cool down, eventually the animal will have to stop and will actually stand still to be killed. That’s our key skill, attrition on a hot day, and keeping cool is the advantage—sweating and little hair was a fantastically powerful strategy.
I saw somebody do that in Namibia on the TV. He ran down a deer until it was exhausted but he was carrying a spear which must come later in evolution. Humans really do excel at two things – long distance running (and swimming). I believe that the only mammal that can outrun a human at long distance is a husky. Even a horse can’t do it. We find easy the things that we are evolved for. Long distance running is a good reason to loose a furry coat. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun? No, humans do it all the time.
Not a deer – an antilope, if it was in Namibia.
“I’m open to the idea that early humans spent a lot of time living on beaches. Gathering shellfish is a very easy way to get a decent high protein meal – kids in my old hometown used to gather more shellfish than we could carry in a matter of minutes.”
Yes, agree, it’s called “the path of least resistance” plus humans constantly evolved out of their ecological niche due to intelligence.
“Gathering shellfish is a very easy way to get a decent high protein meal”
Easy perhaps but not simple. To do it well requires coming to the coast at the right time of month and to the beach at the right time of day when the state of tide is right. This is probably the reason that there is no evidence at all that humans collected shellfish until about 150-200,000 years ago (in South Africa), and the neanderthals apparently never mastered it (except in the Mediterranean where there are no tides).
If one wants easy protein, bird eggs and insects are plentiful and low risk.
There is something very specific that no one has mentioned yet. Predation and water depth. It’s all very well talking about catching food to eat but you have to avoid being eaten first and especially by the big cats. Think about a family today or in the past. You are in the middle of the Savannah and a pride of lions approaches. What can you do? Nothing. You are all lunch for the lions. Try it again when you are on the shore of a lake or the sea. The females grab the children small enough to carry. The males grab a club and you all run into the water and stand in water about 3 or 4 feet deep. The water is shallow enough for the humans to stand but deep enough to make the lions swim. Lions swim head first. When they get close the human males swing their clubs hard. The lions have to retreat or be killed and you survive. This isn’t a small adaptive advantage. It’s a really big one. There are always plenty of clubs around – leg bones.
Human ancestors could never live in the middle of the Savannah until spears came into use for protection as well as catching prey. Before that ancestors lived on the EDGE of the Savannah. At all times they needed two things – access to fresh water and a safe place to escape predation. Early on it was climbing trees to escape predators. Interestingly the big cat that can climb trees (leopards) are very wary of humans possibly because our ancestors could club them out of a tree if they came after a meal.
When you move away from trees big enough to climb away from danger, the only remaining safe place is water. Now that doesn’t make the aquatic ape theory right. The idea that all ancestors lived on the Savannah then moved to the beach then moved back again has got to be nonsense but I think the ability to gain safety in shallow water is a major abaptive advantage and enabled our ancestors live away from trees.. The mutations for bipedalism came before any of this, and we were dependant on running between clumps of trees. So the water bit must have come after bipedalism.
Lastly, food from the sea. Humans now are very good at swimming and have no difficulty swimming out to a reef, diving down and collecting shellfish and Crustacea which is a very high quality protein with added fats. But that is more the Beachcomber theory than the aquatic ape theory. I think it came about in the last 200,000 years or so. The human color is swimming pool blue which is found between the shore and a reef. We like shellfish. That’s all part of our evolved natures.
We moved where ever there was the easiest and best chances to survive. As I said, path of least resistance, like water 🙂
True but that’s a bit of a cop out. There has to be a mechanism and an order in which things evolved including behaviour. Predation can never be ignored
Maybe that is why DA is confused 🙂
Well he is getting on a bit. 🙂
Just like I have been saying, thank you for a good summary of this issue. Closed minds means not thinking out of the box. The discovery of bones lying in the savanna greatly excites everyone, and the rocks used as tools were easier to find, both are very hard to find in quantities where water rises and recedes all the time and you have to dig to find things and not, like Leaky, just wander about, picking up stuff lying open on the ground.
We know for a fact, humans much preferred living where there is lots of water. Still do today. I speak as a person who grew up in the desert. Our swimming pool was very popular with wildlife, for example, including Big Cats.
All our vacations were to where there was lots and lots of water. What a relief.
“What can you do? Nothing. You are all lunch for the lions.”
Actually no. A couple of people with sticks and stones could probably hold the lions off unless they were quite desperately hungry. Carnivores are very risk-averse. As someone put it: the prey risks losing his life, the predator only risks losing a meal.
Neoteny – the retention into adulthood of infant or juvenile characteristics, is a much better explanation of human characteristics such as the large ball like skull and large brain, thin skull bones, hairlessness, flat face, large eyes and some aspects of the gential organs. The places where hair remains on humans for instance represent the locations where it first grows during fetal development of other primates.
Sexual selection by both sexes probably reinforced neoteny in human evolution. To this day, people of both genders show preference for members of the opposite sex who are “cute”, that is, neotenic.
Aquatic ape is a poor explanation by comparison. Primates are almost the worst swimmers among the mammals. Almost but not quite. The camel takes the wooden spoon for swimming in mammals – due to the concentration of its body fat in its back humps, the creature floats in water with its head a yard under the surface.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny_in_humans
Very few people know that David Attenborough is not a scientist. ALL of his science degrees are honourary.
no, he has a degree from Clare college Cambridge
Leo, he does NOT have a science degree. He has a degree in the Natural Sciences, which makes him a Naturalist, not a Scientist. I don’t think I could have made it any clearer. Go look it up.
bazzer1959 September 18, 2016 at 5:38 am
Leo, he does NOT have a science degree. He has a degree in the Natural Sciences, which makes him a Naturalist, not a Scientist. I don’t think I could have made it any clearer. Go look it up.
I suggest that you go look it up, a degree from Cambridge in ‘Natural Sciences’ does not mean what you think it does.
If you look at the Cambridge undergraduate prospectus you’ll see the following:
“Natural Sciences
Natural Sciences (NST) is the framework within which most science subjects are taught at Cambridge. If you want to study any of the biological and physical sciences, this is the course for you.”
If you specialize in Physics or Chemistry there, for example, your batchelor degree will be described as being in Natural Sciences.
It’s very easy for humans to sit in an armchair and watch TV. What more evidence do we need that man evolved from an alien race of couch potatoes?
Some nice contributions in this thread, despite its scant relevance to the AGW debate.. Would particularly like to commend gabro, alan G, ptolemy2 for some interesting stuff, well put.
I don’t think we need spend too much time on Elaine Morgan, but Alistair Hardy was one of the grand old men of biology and his opinions deserve respect. I think he had no axe to grind and promoted these ideas in a spirit of genuine enquiry rather than as dogma. Of course, today we have a lot more palaeo information than he did.
As sceptics we should be prepared to tolerate and indeed welcome non-consensus science, don’t you think? But yes, of course, I do notice the irony of Attenborough’s promotion of the aquatic ape, and his contemptuous dismissal (or censoring – I believe he still writes his own scripts) of anything smacking of even the mildest climate scepticism. He’s been a gem of a nature broadcaster for many years, but he’s past it now.
Thanks. I’ve listened to the broadcast and think that surviving predation hardly got a mention but it must have been a significant factor. I have no problem believing that catfish and shellfish were a significant part of the ancestor diet from early on. I’ve seen leopards catching catfish from rivers and drying up pools on TV so the behaviour is not unique to human ancestors. The leopards do it during the same season every year.
I accept the necessity of fats to support a large brain. But that can come from fish or from animal brains. The problem is that all the adaptations that help us in an aquatic environment also help us on the Savannah. Ok, there was much less Savannah 5 million years ago but it was growing. The question becomes which came first. We know that bipedalism came before the large brain and loss of body hair. Was it bipedalism that made us better at catching fish which then enabled the development of a large brain, or was it catching fish that selected for bipedalism and then a larger brain?
As for subcutaneous fat, that could simply be to keep warm on land after losing the furry coat. Vernix could simply be because babies are hairless in the womb after their fur coating disappears. Many primates catch fish but have yet to evolve bipedalism or large brains.
In spite of that, it’s a decent broadcast. At the end DA does say that the argument is about when our interaction with water started – early on, middle or late. We are a semi aquatic species now. When did it start?
rogerthesurf September 17, 2016 at 11:14 pm said, amongst other things:
“Of course the catch is that the sea level rise is still stuck at 1.7mm per year which it has been since records began.”
“In spite of this people still seriously warn me that the (EPA) of the US Government seems to think that sea level has risen 10 inches since 1880.!! Mia Culpa!”
1880 to 2016 = 136 years. Times 1.7 mm per year is 231.2 mm. This is, strangely, 9.102 inches. Well, not quite 10 inches, but within a bull’s roar of being right.
BTW, Elaine Morgan stated this (paraphrased) When the Miocene became dry and the forests became clumps of trees, humans descended to the plains. When ferocious animals attacked, what happened? Men ran away, women followed, rather slower. Men turned into the bipedal savannah dwelling primate, women turned into the leopard’s dinner. End of savannah ape. AlanG has the right idea.
The comments by “Gabro” are enough to make one think that Elaine Morgan MUST have been right to have invoked such unscientific language from him. Reminds me of the language thrown at a certain Dr I M who must not be mentioned! Reminds me of the language thrown at most climate sceptics – the establishment does not like your ideas – we have no grounds to support ours, so you must be vilified to shut you up.
All evidence of humanoids (pre-homosapiens) living by the ocean during Ice Ages is underwater. NO ONE is excavating for evidence of all this because…it is way underwater. We know that humanoid creatures spread to China, to all the island chains in the Pacific Ocean, all over the place and then they all died off in various catastrophes including the one that happened 70,000 years ago which eliminated what, 80% of all human homo sapiens?
Yes, catastrophes push evolution, too. And we know precious little about our own evolution. Mastadon bones are gigantic and last much longer than say, tiny mammal bones. Humans are in between in size and since we are prey to the big predators, not much of our bones survive and since humans went to great lengths to HIDE BODIES starting when?
Half a million years ago? They are much harder to find.
Indeed, finding human remains only became much easier when our ancestors began building burial mounds, pyramids, stone circles, etc. These are ridiculously easy to find, especially pyramids. 🙂
Yet we do know that H. neanderthalensis didn’t navigate or swim even to islands that he could see with his eyes. They never made it to Corsica or any other island. Neanderthals were open water averse.
Perhaps but not the people who reached Australia so very, very, very long ago and who live there today.
“All evidence of humanoids (pre-homosapiens) living by the ocean during Ice Ages is underwater.”
Not quite. There are places where shores have uplifted, and there are interglacial coastlines that are above water. But coastal sites older than the last glaciation are extremely rare. There is one last interglacial site in Normandy and possibly one in the Channel Islands, and that is all.
“Perhaps but not the people who reached Australia so very, very, very long ago and who live there today.”
Forty or fifty thousand years is not very long ago in paleontological terms. However humans made it to Sulawesi and Flores about 500,000 years ago, and there is actually some evidence that humans made it to Corsica/Sardinia at about the same time. These were however probably cases of “sweepstake dispersal”, where people were washed out to sea by hurricanes or tsunamis, and managed to survive long enough on floating debris to drift across. After the 2004 tsunami one man was found alive at sea after nine days.
Well, the “Aquatic Ape” theory doesn’t convince me but it still makes more sense than CAGW.
That pretty much defines how bad CAGW theory is.
We all come from the sea in an evolutionary sense.
The changes needed to be aquatic have to start somewhere.
We are primates who have fished in the sea for Millenia.
We could be at the start of Waterworld but I doubt there are enough changes/adaptions evident to say that we went that way and are coming back.
Nice theory though.
It is strange how commentators here seem to accept the idea that humans evolved solely in the savanna because that is the “consensus” says and therefore it must be true. There are major problems with the savanna hypothesis, as exposed by Elaine Morgan. Here is a link to an interesting article on the subject.
The Aquatic Ape Theory: challenge to the orthodox theory of human evolution
Jerry Bergman
https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j21_1/j21_1_111-118.pdf
Attenborough and Obama? Two fellows well met. Attenborough -BBC lackey. Obama – well intentioned. Where does that leave us? What would really great scientists of the past say?
Is this relevant, (or a bit ‘superfishial’)?
“
“All vertebrate embryos develop “branchial clefts” (also called “pharyngeal arches” or “branchial arches”) at an early stage, and these are almost certainly the vestigial remnants of the clefts of our fishy ancestors, which develop into gills.”
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/are-the-gill-slits-of-vertebrate-embryos-a-hoax/
We can explain the existence of David Attenborough by looking to his adaptive feature.
He clearly went through a phase when he was Homo Skepticus, and when characteristics of hard headed skepticism were rewarded or at least tolerated in this environmental niche.
Then, during the following era of the absurdocene, he has gone through a period of accelerated adaptive modification in which he has shed the use of his frontal cortex and become Homo Loboticus.
Homo Loboticus is primarily driven by the innate drive to maintain security and to acquire possession and status within the tribal group. It worships tokens and taboos, and forms ritualistic cults.
This is how we can use post-hoc, just-so story telling to explain away some stuff that nobody can deny has already happened.
Send me some grant money and I’ll expand this into a scientific paper and then maybe, a TV series.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the theories of human evolution changes frequently. Call this ‘evolution of science thinking’ which frankly, happens all over the sciences. For example, we have wild guesses about how the universe was first formed but no real truth that we can bet on being real.
It is insanely impossible to figure out how and why our universe suddenly appeared out of nothing and what caused this to happen. I once wrote a story about this, in a nutshell, the Creatrix was sitting about, doing her knitting and she dropped a stitch and got pissed off and said, ‘Damn, to hell with this’ and threw her clue (ball of wool) away and it blew up and become the Universe. See? Just as good as any other theory at this point.
We know very little about very big things! This is why shutting down debate is not smart.
No bother. You ain’t bursting my bubble. I don’t have a closed mind relative to this issue.
I was just having fun mocking David Attenborough’s official acceptance of the CAGW consensus narrative.
I was a big Desmond Morris fan as a teenager. And I’ve always found it easy to consider adaptation and human characteristics in a versatile and flexible manner ever since.
But, I usually find that I am in the company of people who want security of polarized thinking and consensus conclusions. I’m not that guy. I’m happy to keep gathering evidence and adding weight to one of several working hypothesis, or on some rare occasion disproving the nul.
I’m just a hunter gatherer, picking fruit that’s in season, and cockles from the shore. Metaphorically speaking.
I’m totally comfortable maintaining the aquatic ape along with my collection of other un-disproven, (i.e. active) hypotheses.
Keep on fighting the good fight. The only reason that I did not say what you have said is because I can’t really be bothered fighting stuff out on the internet.
Indeed, to go insane, just try imagining nothingness forever and forever in all possible directions. There is zero existence. The literally out of nowhere and for no reason, the Big Bang blows up and voila: we have all the stuff that becomes stuff like galaxies, stars and little animals appearing spontaneously. How real is this theory?
It is real but explains nothing. There was nothing and suddenly there was everything actually sounds insane but this is what happened. The mechanism causing this is utterly obscured from our vision. We can only look at the results of this event, not the event’s cause.
Without proof, theories are purely speculative.
Although it might make for an interesting SciFi channel flick.
“Get your flippers off me, you damn fishy ape!”
For a school project, I asked my uncle about our family’s predecessors and I smile when I remember his advice.
“Just make it up; who will have the ability or inclination to question whatever family history you may write”