Elaine Morgan and the Aquatic Ape

The history of the aquatic ape may tell us more about the fraught relationship between feminism and science than it does about the evolution of humanity.

By  Erika Lorraine Milam

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 Agression, 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".

Ironically, it was while reading The Naked Ape that Morgan first came across the idea of an aquatic phase in human history. She contacted Morris and learned about the theory's architect – Sir Alister Hardy, then the Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford University. She wrote to Hardy for permission to develop a popular science book in which she expanded his ideas as an alternative to the savannah theory. Hardy had no objections. At the time, he still planned to publish his own book on the topic and after consulting with his editor believed that a more popular account of the aquatic ape could only help his later sales. (His book never materialised, if you were wondering.)

Morgan's chief point in Descent of Woman was that too often biologists confused the evolution of "man" (the species) with men (as individuals). Beyond that, she hoped to advance Hardy's suggestion that life at the water's edge may have facilitated the origins of humanity. She insisted that the savannah hypothesis failed because it couldn't account for the survival of females. Abandoned by the hunters out tracking game, fending for herself and her children, a female alone on the plains would inevitably become dinner herself. But by retreating to the relative safety of water, Morgan's Eve might instead discover shelter and sustenance. By cracking open shellfish with rocks, she would begin to use tools; by wading into the water for safety (and carrying her child in her arms), she would naturally walk upright; with her body and scent glands covered, she would speak to be understood.

Reviewers of Descent of Woman typically lauded her feminist critique of the Tarzanists but lamented Morgan's advocacy of what became known as the "aquatic ape" theory. Paleoanthropologist Adrianne Zihlman, for example, worried that after reading the book, other scientists might think this was the best feminist anthropology had to offer.

When presented with such mixed reviews, Morgan chose science over politics. In rewriting her material for The Aquatic Ape (1982), she stripped her prose of wit and added diagrams and new data, effectively refashioning the text into a more canonical form of scientific publication. In this new packaging, her marine musings began to receive more attention. Of course, not all attention is good attention. As last week's excitement on Twitter and in these demonstrated, the aquatic ape theory is far from acceptable mainstream science. Yet even these debates – framed in terms of the theory's plausibility – are a sign of Morgan's success in transforming the reception of her ideas. But at what cost?

Morgan believed that in order for her theories to receive a scientific hearing, they had to be separated from her lambasting of the savannah theory. Historians are often fascinated by how scientists strive to cleanly differentiate between legitimate scientific inquiry, on the one hand, and "pseudo", "pathological", or just plain "bad" science, on the other. That Morgan felt she had to choose between science and feminism highlights how, in addition to such questions of hard demarcation, her critics used the label "feminist" science as a means of what I have come to call "soft demarcation". By describing her original book as "women's lib prehistory", they evaded the force of her critique and simultaneously used the aquatic ape (by means of guilty association) to question whether feminism could play any valid role in science.

If the idea of a human watery past does have merit, then, it may be in the form of a cautionary tale. By uncoupling her feminism from her science, Morgan gained a wider audience but lost her theory's scholarly heft. Were Morgan first publishing today, I hope she wouldn't have to choose.

By  Erika Lorraine Milam

Reproduced from The Guardian,  May 2013

https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2013/may/13/aquatic-ape-elaine-morgan-history-science

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.

Reviewing dogmas about the origin of the human species
Danilo Anton

The Aquatic Ape theory
From the 1930's, and for the next 5 or 6 decades the couple of Louis and Mary Leakey and later several members of their family, discovered pre-human fossils which were called Australopithecus and along with other anthropologists developed the theory of the origin of human species in Eastern and Southern Africa.
The basic hypothesis was that these anthropoids lived in a savannah environment where they had evolved from the original forest. This hypothesis became a dogma that was taken by the anthropological elite as an indisputable fact.
Other researchers developed a different theory: humans had an amphibious phase which give them several very specific physiological characteristics typical of marine animals. They were Allister Hardy (English marine biologist who for many years did not disclose his theory for fear of losing his university post) and later Elaine Morgan, a writer from Wales, who published several books on the subject (including "The Descent of Woman" and "The Aquatic Ape").

These books included a thorough analysis of an amphibian origin of the human species and were "best seller" in Europe and North America. The academic hierarchy of anthropology ignored or despised this work despite the existence of the strong evidence developed by Morgan and others, including the famous biologist David Attenborough.
Elaine Morgan, who died two years ago was scorned for being "foreign" to the anthropological discipline but his brilliant work allowed to rethink the human origin with a radically different approach and strong scientific bases. Today dogmatic "anthropologists" continue to dominate the subject and try to ignore the "aquatic ape"  but this is becoming increasingly difficult because the hard data of science are showing that we, humans, are who we are, because our distant ancestors lived on the shores of lakes and seas, feeding on aquatic organisms, swimming and diving, for hundreds of thousands of years.

It's worth reading the work of Elaine Morgan, fundamental works of paleoanthropology.
(See also daniloanton.blogspot.com, and the book "Peoples Drug and Snakes" of D.Antón, Piriguazú editions.)

Humans experienced an aquatic phase during their evolution?

The Aquatic ape theory

D.Anton

The theory of human evolution, a key element of the reigning scientific paradigm, is no exception to the authoritarian dogmatism of the official scientific establishment.

Several decades ago academic  authorities decreed that the human 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 named Allister Hardy noted some contradictions of the “Theory of the Savannah” and proposed an alternative vision: human beings had developed as such through an amphibious stage of their evolution.

In 1960, after almost thirty years of preaching, The New Scientist agreed to publish an article of his entitled: “Was man more aquatic in the past?” (March, 1960, 642-645 dpi.). During twelve years the paper was ignored.

Only in 1972 the concepts of Hardy were taken by a talented Welsh writer. Her name was Elaine Morgan and she published a book entitled “The Descent of Woman”.

The title was a play on words contradicting the Darwinian famous book called “The Ascent of Man”.

Morgan’s book was completely neglected by the scientific “establishment”. In despite of this disregard, many people payed attention to the idea and the book gradually became a “best seller”.

Ten years after this first book, Ms Morgan published another one on the subject: “The Aquatic Ape” (1982). Then followed “Scars of Evolution” (1990), “The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction” (1991). “The Descent of the Child, 1994) and “The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis” (1997).

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). 
Taken from the book "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents",  Danilo Anton, Piriguazú Ediciones.