The origin of humankind

Danilo Anton

The biblical patriarchal paradigm about the origin of human species was based on years of misinformation and religious authoritarianism had created an uncritical culture who resisted hard for many centuries.

However, a couple of centuries ago a new technological and industrial culture succeeded dismantling the old religious model. It did it, gradually but surely,  and finally supplanted it.

The new paradigm was also deeply authoritarian. A new dogma developed. Reductionist approaches to science, contempt for ancient beliefs, profit-based and globalized economic systems gave rise to a presumtuous view of nature as a “resource” to be utilized and exploited.   The “priests” of the technological-industrial aristocracy defined their dogmas and once they were generally imposed they dug in to defend them by all available means. 

Those who did not agree with the technological-industrial supporting theories were considered heretical. They were ignored, ridiculed, and finally excommunicated and excluded from their academic positions or the distribution of research funds.

The theory of human evolution, a key element of the reigning scientific paradigm, is no exception.

Several decades ago. scientific authorities decreed that the species originated in African savannas. To sustain this theory there were numerous arguments, including several hundred fossil bone fragments and some tools.

The “savanna” origin of human primates became an article of faith.

Virtually no one dared to contradict it. Until 1930 when an English biologist Allister Hardy noted some contradictions of the “Theory of the Savannah” and proposed an aquatic origin for the human species (published in 1960). A few years later, in 1972 and following years. Elaine Morgan, a British journalist and writer, further developed the theory and published several books on this subject. All works of Elaine Morgan had great success with the public. Thirty years later it was very hard to ignore the persistent writer, who also became an expert in paleoanthropology.

The arguments of the “Aquatic Ape Theory” were overwhelming.

Humans are very different from savannah animals and, instead, have much affinity with amphibious mammals.

As marine mammals, they have very little body hair, possess 10 times more fat than other primates, and even more at birth.  Unlike ordinary fat in other apes, their fat is subcutaneous belonging to the type called “white fat”. This fat does not provide immediate energy and serves more as thermal insulation and buoyancy (as in aquatic mammals). 

For brain development humans have required and gotten substances found only in fish and shellfish (eg eicosnoic acid).

We discard our inner water through sweat (large number of sweat glands) and salty tears (absent in other primates), we practice frontal sex, such as seals and whales; we can contain breathing for several minutes (which is not true in anyother ape), and instinctively we swim at birth.

Moreover, our specific diseases and parasites development require aquatic stages, and bipedalism (which is a typical human feature) is not found in any savanna mammal, or in any other primate. This last trait  is easily explained if we imagine their daily life in the shallow marine or lacunar waters and banks.

Also we must remember that one human anatomical weaknesses is, even today, the backbone, which must support the body weight (and of coourse, inside the water it is much less vulnerable because in the original aquatic conditions weight decreases significantly, and the effort required to keep the body erect is much lower.
From: "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents". Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.