I am currently reading Nancy Tanner’s book (see above) and will give my views once I have completed it.

I would suggest that the Aquatic Ape thingy is an hypothesis rather than a theory.

‘Bible thumpers probably believe all animal life had an aquatic phase.’

Why? Are you referring to Noah’s flood? If so, didn’t the animals that re-populated the earth find sanctuary in the ark?

BTW you missed a good lunch.

Today I read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7347284.stm

Bible thumpers probably believe all animal life had an aquatic phase.

Many thanks.

Anthrosciguy:

I have now read through substantial chunks of your website and, although I find the sarcastic and supercilious tone off-putting, there is nonetheless some interesting stuff. The whole tenor is so tendentious, however, that I will now need to re-read the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (not theory) alongside the Tanner book that should be on its way to me right now.

Call off the search – I tracked it down on a second hand book site.

I cannot find ‘On becoming Human’ (nor anything else by Nancy Tanner) in any bookshop or on Amazon.

Can you please provide me with some more information, such as the publisher or ISBN.

Thanks.

Thanks.

I don’t think I can go any further with this discussion until I have read your book recommendation, which I will as soon as I can find the time.

Please keep checking here and also feel free to contribute to any other thread that takes your eye.

Biskie:

A piece on Neanderthals would be very welcome.

I offered it; you can fairly easily find the book I mentioned, usually in a public library. (The refutation of the “aquatic ape” idea of course does not depend on the viability of any other viewpoint; theories either work or they don’t, they either make sense and follow the facts or they don’t, and the “aquatic ape” idea doesn’t. That’s not an opinion; I back it up on my site.)

It’s common, especially to people who’ve read Morgan, to think that some big factor — usually environmental — forced bipedalism, but that doesn’t seem to be so. For one thing, we find that all primates use some bipedality, to varying degrees. Some, such as gibbons and siamangs, use it exclusively in terrestrial locomotion. But their background, an ape that uses brachiating as its primary movement, isn’t like our ancestors’ according to fossil evidence (although all apes, and humans for that matter, use brachiating — that’s what kids do on the monkey bars in playgrounds). And we find that the further back we look as we find earlier and earlier hominid fossils, they’re all bipedal. They used other forms of locomotion, as all primates do, but their fossils show they were effective bipedalists.

To see why we look at how and when other primates use bipedalism, and also at the idea that bipedalism is terrifically difficult or energy consuming until you’re really built for it.

The latter just isn’t so. Tests of chimpanzees show that even for them bipedalism is not more costly than quadrupedalism. This was a bit of a surprise when it was first tested. But it shows that it woulodn’t likely be a problem for early hominids, even earlier than we’ve found so far.

When we look at when apes use bipedalism, the biggest reason, by far, is food-getting and carrying. Better observation is another, but not as much, as are indulging in displays, and a host of things. The data from wading is that bipedalism comes in handy sometimes there, but also that wading is not bipedal most of the time (by a fair margin). And it should be noted that wading alone is not the AAT/H; it simply doesn’t make sense — as its proponents insist — that an animal would wind up with the characteristics of fully aquatic mammals like whales, seals, and serenia through wading. (And then they’re wrong about those characteristics being the same, as my annotated list and other pages on my site show.)

The bottom line, in as shorthand as I can get it, is that during the time of the transition there were several separated populations of last common ancestors (between apes and humans). Some used more quadrupedalism and some used more bipedalism, but both worked pretty well. In the same way we now see different populations of chimps do the same things different ways, for instance in how they fish for ants and termites, or how they open nuts (biting in some groups, hammering them with wood clubs in others, and hammering with stones in yet others). These all work fairly well, and it’s only after a lot of time that you see any significant differences in how useful any method or habit is.

In our case we were in the lucky group; it happened that bipedalism allowed us, after many millions of years mind you, to use more tools in more ways, and develop both tools and food-getting to the point that larger braisn became useful enough for selection to not lop off that trait. (In animals the brain tends to wind up being about what they need and not more, because more brain means more energy to grow it and maintain it — if you don’t need a big brain, you’re better off having that energy go toward something else.) Now the ape side of the family, particularly chimps, did pretty well for a long time too, but in a more restricted set of environments. This worked great for them up until we got to the point where we had really effective weapons and massive numbers and habitat-altering abilities — a couple hundred years ago. After that they were in trouble, because of that lucky or unlucky break in the family (depending on which side you were on) many millions of years ago.

People are often uncomfortable, I find, with the idea of chance and luck during evolution, but for us it was simply a lucky break that we were in the branch of the family that used more bipedalism, and the fact that it was lucky wasn’t so for several million years after it had happened. That’s luck.

It could be argued that we are still specialists, particularly in our social organisation which we have perfected to a far higher level of sophistication than other primates.

Yes, that was our specialization, not an environmental specialization as the AAT/H insists. The fact that we can, with our social and tool-making skills, use so many different environments is precisely because we were lucky enough to not physically adapt very much to any of them. Clifford Geertz put this well, I think, when he said “One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.”

I’m far from being an expert, just someone who has studied human evolution a bit (quite some time ago now) and still has a passing interest in the subject.

My post was a rehashing of an old essay plus some notes from a talk I went to.

I agree that the move to bipedalism must have come about due to extreme conditions. That no other primate is an habitual biped leads me to think this.

As most people who have read anything that I have ever written would know, I do not invest a great deal of weight to *any* particular theory on *anything* (I am so open minded that my brain regularly falls out and I don’t actually care about it, I just scoop it back up and carry on). However, at the time I was looking into it, I did feel that the aquatic ape theory could well be of merit. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t consider looking at other theories.

On a different subject, I’m interested in the Neanderthals and might try writing something about them soon.

That’s if I manage to conquer my current Nintendo DS addiction.

I would just like to clear up a number of points implied in your last comment.

I have no vested interest in the aquatic ape hypothethis other than that it seems a better explanation given the current state of (my) knowledge of the subject than others.

I have not read your website in its entirety but I have (admittedly some years ago) read other explanations, all of which seem more unsatisfactory than the aquatic ape hypothesis.

I think you might be reading too much into my request for your view and supporting evidence. Science advances through the formulation of hypotheses based on the available evidence, experimentation that verify amend or destroy the hypothesis, reformulation etc. I really am interested in your view as to the most likely explanation, particularly as you have some expertise in the field. But I am not interested simply in your opinion qua opinion. I would like to know, however, on what you base your view. As an analogy I think of the current state of theoretical physics. String theory is emphatically not a theory – it has not been verified through predictive experiment – but it is very fashionable and those engaged in other lines of research are finding great difficult in attracting funding. It is often said that string theory is the only game in town (by string theorists) but that is because it is mainstream and not because of its innate superiority. The aquatic ape hypothesis is not mainstream either and I would like to know whether it too is suffering from this prejudice of orthodoxy.

Of course one can take the view that we do not know enough even to formulate hypotheses but sufficient only to know that none the the current conjectures is likely to be true. This is a postion some people are taking in the world of physics. But we could take that stance in anything as we can be certain of almost nothing. My brain needs some sort of of picture – I cannot visualise wholly negative or purely abstract ideas. So, I look at the world and ask, ‘What is the most likely scenario given the current (scant) state of our knowledge?’ But I know that this can change tomorrow as we accumulate a little more data. The enemy of learning is dogmatism.

Returning to the subject, wasn’t the move to bipedalism so big, with all its attendant risks, that it must have been in response to extreme conditions? Why could not humans have specialised at a certain period in their development? It could be argued that we are still specialists, particularly in our social organisation which we have perfected to a far higher level of sophistication than other primates.

I would also be interested in Biskie’s response to your comments as someone with far more knowledge on the subject than me.