Hi All, Here's some stuff from the anti-Ellen site.
Jack Smith -------------------------------- http://www.aquaticape.org/ by Jim Moore The Aquatic Ape Theory (often referred to as the AAT or AAH) says humans went through an aquatic or semi-aquatic stage in our evolution and that this accounts for many features seen in human anatomy and physiology. Using the principle of convergent evolution, it says that life in an aquatic environment explains these features, and that a transition from ape to hominid in a non-aquatic environment cannot ... ------------------------ http://www.aquaticape.org/hardy.html Alister Hardy's original "Aquatic ape theory" Sir Alister Hardy was a marine biologist who specialized in the study of plankton -- and don't even think of laughing; he got knighted for it. Plankton is one of the basic components of the marine food chain, and his work was very important to the British fishing industry, not to mention everybody else's. Among his more important work, he invented a device in 1925 to better record plankton levels and map out the distribution of different varieties. This was called the Continuous Plankton Recorder, which was towed behind ships, and in 1929 he designed a somewhat smaller version of the CPR which could be towed behind merchant ships, getting more and better information from a much wider area than ever before. This device, in essentially the same form, is still used in ocean research today, over 75 years later. Pretty cool ... There are some things that Hardy definitely did better than his successors; his science background didn't desert him completely. He gave a fairly specific timespan for the suggested aquatic period, as well as giving some idea of how many hours he thought these hominids would be in the water, and he recognized that they would have to be in neck-deep water much of the time for his theory to work as well as recognizing that aquatic predators exist ... ------------------- http://www.aquaticape.org/whataat.html What is the Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT)? The Aquatic Ape Theory (aka AAT or AAH) hypothesizes that humans went through an aquatic or semi-aquatic stage in our evolution, generally said to have occurred during the transition from the last common ancestor we shared with apes (LCA) to hominids (Marc Verhaegen claims it continued on through virtually the entire span of human evolution). It claims that certain features are seen in human anatomy and physiology which are only seen in humans and aquatic animals and that these constitute proof that our ape ancestors went through an aquatic phase in their transition from ape to hominid. Using the principle of convergent evolution, it says that life in an aquatic environment explains these features, and that a transition from ape to hominid in a non-aquatic environment cannot. Who thought up the Aquatic Ape Theory? The original theory was done by Sir Alister Hardy, a marine biologist who, late in his career in 1960, gave a talk at the British Sub-Aqua Club (a scuba diving club) and a month later published in New Scientist an article on that talk called "Was Man More Aquatic in the Past?" It presented most of the basic ideas, and definitely the method, of the AAT. Desmond Morris then mentioned Hardy's theory with a 2 page write-up in The Naked Ape in 1967. Elaine Morgan, at the time an Oxford grad in English and a TV scriptwriter, entered the scene in 1972 with the book Descent of Women, the idea for which she got from Desmond Morris's book. This was a pop book, pretty chatty style which seems dated now but was popular then, and it sold quite well. Looking back at it, I wouldn't call it particularly female-oriented, but Morgan presented it as "the" alternative to what she then called "The Mighty Hunter" theory ... Morgan has written another book on this subject (The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, 1997); as a refreshing change this time, she has included references for some, but by no means all of her statements (this is perhaps to be expected since many of those statements are false) ... There have been a few other people who've done articles on the AAT, and they belie Morgan's claim that you can't publish academic articles on the subject. (Good academic articles seem to be another matter entirely.) Chief among them is Marc Verhaegen, who has done a number of articles. Although Verhaegen's articles do have references, they also contain statements such as claiming that rhinoceros are "predominantly aquatic", and several other howlers among their many errors ... Sexual selection and the AAT Sexual selection is interesting vis a vis the AAT because many of the traits that AAT proponents say are aquatic traits due to convergent evolution in response to the environment (and therefore selected via natural selection) are actually, and rather obviously, due to sexual selection. This is obvious because, typical of sexually selected features, they appear at puberty instead of at the age the animal would start using the aquatic environment. We see this, for instance, in the lifespan history of fat in seals versus humans. Seals rapidly gain fat while very young, and at a very early age they are essentially like their parents in their fat distribution and quantity. We, on the other hand, start off fairly fat as babies, drop within a few years to the leanest condition of our lives as children, and then rapidly build up fat at puberty, with radical differences in quantity and distribution of fat between boys and girls, and to top it off, at middle age our fat distribution changes once again. Also, in humans fat distribution and amount is far different in males and females, while in seals the sexes are very similar. The same huge differences between aquatic mammals and humans that we see in fat we also see with our hair and sebaceous glands. AAT proponents say they are aquatic traits, which means they must be due to convergent evolution selected via natural selection, but they are actually obviously sexually selected traits ...
