Aquatic Apes
Tom Donohue

We humans are a most unusual species. While we are clearly primates,
and similar to our mammal cousins in many ways, we differ
dramatically in a number of others. No other earthly organism
exhibits our erect, bipedal posture. Our brains exceed all others in
size except for those of the whales and elephants. Our brain size to
body weight ratio is matched only by the bottlenosed dolphin,
Tursiops truncatis. While we are clearly the dominant terrestrial
animal of this planet-time, somehow we just don’t seem to fit.
Most of our activities are accomplished by the use of prosthetic devices.
We need beds to sleep comfortably, toilets for defecation and clothing to
survive in most environments that we inhabit. These differences have
led many people into wild speculation about our origins, from special
creation by a craftsman-like god to extraterrestrial invasion. At a
recent gathering of scientists and theologians at the University
of California at Berkeley, John Polkinghorn, a particle physicist
turned Anglican priest, asked, “How is it that humans’ cognitive
abilities greatly exceed the demands imposed by evolutionary pressures,
so that we can perceive the quantum nature of the universe and map
its cosmic features?” He went on to suggest that we were the
special creation of an omnipotent god and intended for some lofty
purpose.

Evolution is as important to Paganism as it is to Biology. Creationism is
rooted in the concept of transcendant divinity; the immanent divinity
of Nature operates through biological processes like birth, sex, and
Natural selection. Evolution is Nature's maternity viewed through
deep time.

Since the early years of the twentieth century, the most commonly held
view of human origins has been the savannah theory, which posits that
we diverged from our primate kin when climactic changes forced us to
change habitat from lush forest to tropical savannah. (grassland spotted
with occasional clumps of trees) This theory was largely based on
the observation that most ancient hominid fossils have been discovered
in parts of the world that are now savannah. Recent research in
paleobotany has discovered that these parts of the world were not
savannah at the time that these proto-humans actually lived, but were,
in fact, lush forest. “Lucy”, the well known Australopithecus afarensis
fossil, was discovered surrounded by fossilized turtle eggs,
crocodile eggs and crab claws. These new discoveries led the great
South African paleoanthropologist, Phillip V. Tobias, long a proponent of the savannah theory, and the discoverer of several Australopithecus fossils,
to completely reverse his opinion. He is now giving serious
consideration to the forty year old, aquatic ape hypothesis,
popularized by Elaine Morgan in The Descent of Woman.

It is impossible for me to report all of Ms. Morgan’s observations in this
article. She has written at least three books on the aquatic ape
hypothesis, as well as a few videos and numerous essays and lectures.
The best I can do is to recommend reading The Descent of Woman, The
Aquatic Ape, and The Scars of Evolution. I prefer, instead, to focus on
my own experiences and observations concerning our possible
aquatic origin.

In the early 1950’s there was a television series named You Asked for It.
As the title indicates, the show consisted of several segments based
upon viewer requests. One often repeated segment  called “Water Babies”,
showed human infants swimming around in a pool, holding their
breath while swimming under water, eyes open, with all the facility of
baby seals or sea otters. The researcher, whose name and nationality I
never really noted, said that human infants were born with these
abilities but seemed to lose them unless they were exposed to the
water before four months of age. An instinctive ability to swim so well,
immediately suggested an aquatic phase in human history. More
recently, the soviet researcher, Igor Tjarkovsky has combined the water
birthing techniques pioneered by Frederick LeBoyer with aquatic training
of infants. His work is reported in the book, Water Babies, written by
Erik Sidenbladh of Sweden and lavishly illustrated with amateur
photographs of the babies swimming. Sidenbladh describes his
experience, “... it feels strange to be standing here, chest-high
in lukewarm water in a swimming pool in Moscow. All around me,
babies and children are splashing, swimming and diving. The oldest
ones amuse themselves by climbing up on to the edge of the pool only
to jump, with delighted shrieks, back into the water again. There they
dive like small otters, staying underwater for long periods of time.”
Although this book is out of print, it is well worth seeking out. The
photographs are astounding and offer clear proof of the babies’
aquatic abilities. Tjarkovsky and the water babies have also been featured
in at least two BBC video documentaries.

In a nutshell, the aquatic ape hypothesis suggests that our human
lineage passed through an aquatic or semi-aquatic phase during the
pliocene, about five million years ago.  It was first propounded by
Sir Alister Hardy in 1960 to explain the numerous ways in which we
humans differ from our primate cousins. Our erect, bipedal posture and
large brains have already been mentioned. Other differences include
our nearly totally hairless bodies, a layer of fat just beneath and
attached to our skin, large breasts, fat babies, verbal
communication, sweating and our preference for ventro-ventral
(face to face) copulation. Although most primates mate belly to belly
occasionally, it is only the primary position of choice for humans
and bonobos. While this array of characteristics makes us unique
among primates, most of them can be found among aquatic mammals.
Whales, manatees and dugongs are hairless; they and the seals
and walruses have a layer of subcutaneous fat, commonly known
as blubber. Enlarged thoracic breasts only occur in humans and sirenians, (Manatees and dugongs) and may well have provided the basis for
mermaid myths. All of the aforementioned mammals, plus sea lions and
otters, mate ventro-ventrally. All other primate babies
are born scrawny to the point of apparent emaciation; aquatic mammals
are not. Possibly most important, the gross enlargement of our brains is a characteristic shared by those mammals who returned to the sea,
most obviously whales and dolphins. Otters have cranial capacities
much larger than their nearest terrestrial relatives, the weasels. Seals
and sea lions are bigger brained than their land-bound carnivore kin.

Very few animals play as adults. Dolphins, other whales, seals, sea lions,
otters and humans are major exceptions to the rule. We humans also
have several nutritional needs which suggest a close ancestral
connection, not just to water, but to sea water. Many years ago, iodine was
added to American table salt, at the request of the federal government,
so that people in the midwest wouldn’t develop goiters. Coastal people
fulfilled their iodine requirement with local seafood. In Nature,
vitamin E, essential to male human fertility, is only easily available
from fish. Fish are also rich in vitamins A and D. These are now available
from a number of grain and bean sources but we didn’t start farming
until the neolithic. We humans have been described as being, “profligate
of water and salt.” We excrete salt at such a rapid rate in our sweat, that
people who perform heavy labor in hot environments, need to take salt
pills in addition to drinking plenty of water. Not a very useful adaptation
for the arid African savannah. There are also a few fats which are
essential for brain development and fetal development, which are only
available from seafood. Mammal fats, beef, pork, lamb etc., clog our
arteries with a hard plaque; bird fats like chicken, also contribute to
this sclerosis. Vegetable oils are much less harmful in this way, but
some fish oils actually reduce the level of sclerosis.Numerous studies
have shown that the high density lipoproteins, (HDL’s) found in
salmon and sardines, significantly reduce the risk of heart attack.  While
they are not actually nutrients, two of the most widely used flavor
enhancers, monosodium glutamate and disodium guanylate, occur naturally
in kelp and fish skin. .

Our erect posture sometimes seems more of a liability than an asset. As
we age we develop all sorts of back problems from the stress of
carrying so much weight on such an unusual skeleton. We seem to
require external support devices like bras, jock straps and support hose.
Many men develop inguinal hernias when the muscles of our pelvic floor ,
fail to support the weight of our viscera. Large breasts can be especially
problematic for the upper back.

In The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris writes, “The evolution of 
protruding breasts of a characteristic shape appears to be yet
another example of sexual signalling.”  He goes on to describe them
as frontal self-mimicry, a reiteration of the rounded buttocks
which frame the genitalia from the rear. What makes Morris’ claim,
that breasts evolved  for the purpose of sexual decoration, seem so
plausible is the intensity of their impact, at least on males. They’re
certainly our favorite sexual dimorphism, a fact which has led millions
of women, worldwide, to have silicone implants, and millions more to
wear falsies and padded bras. They are considered so provocative that 
most states require that they be covered in public places while men
are only required to cover our genitals. Breast size has little impact
on milk production; the smallest breasted women are quite capable
of producing enough milk for their offspring. So are all the rest of our
flat-chested primate kin. But the sexual display and pair bonding
explanations of Morris and Lovejoy never quite rang true. I have said
before, that Nature is economical. While specialized structures of sexual
display do exist, they are seldom so wasteful of living tissue. They usually
take the form of lightweight, low-maintenance materials like the plumage
of a peacock or bird of paradise, or the facial pigmentation of the mandrill.
It seems unlikely that Nature woul d have provided women with such burdensome appendages for decoration alone.
 
My personal epiphany of human mammary evolution occurred during
those halcyon days of peace, love and The Whole Earth Catalog, skinny-
dipping in the Perkiomen creek with my friend and lover, Sandra. Sandra
had the kind of  build often referred to as “softig” (pronounced: Zoff tik)
a Jewish term which translates somewhere between plump and
voluptuous. Her ample bosom bobbed on the surface of the water like
a pair of pontoons.  “That’s it! That’s it! They float”, I exclaimed, with the
same sort of excitement Archimedes must have felt as he ran nude
through the streets of Athens shouting “Eureka!” after having made
his own observations about buoyancy and displacement. “ Uh yeah, tits
float,” she responded, “What did you expect?” I explained that my
excitement was because I’d always suspected that there had been an
aquatic phase in our human ancestry and buoyant breasts would have
been quite useful for nursing babies in the water, and in water they
provided none of the gravitational burden that they do on land.
“ Oh, you’re an Elaine Morgan fan I see,” she said. “Who?”
“ Elaine Morgan. Haven’t you read Descent of Woman? She proposes the same theory as you’re talking about.”

Needless to say, I bought and read the book as soon thereafter as
possible. Our discussion of  the aquatic theory continued through the
afternoon and well into the evening. Sandra pointed out that the
Birkenstock company had designed their basic sandal sole on the
supposition that our feet were adapted for walking on sand. My
brother David and I presented our ideas about the distribution of human
hair and fat. We have a layer of subcutaneous fat, which insulates very
effectively in water, coveriof that idyllic spring day, we discussed
human evolution, foraged fresh water mussels and began to fall in love.
When we feasted on the mussels, later that evening, we found several
pearls, a perfect end for a perfect day, and a perfect beginning for a long
and loving relationship. Sandra died three and a half years later,
ironically, of breast cancer.

Perhaps the most important contribution of the aquatic theory is the fact
that it is the only theory that adequately explains the rapid and dramatic enlargement of our brains. There is a joke that recurs in rural America
whenever a dog, male or female, is seen eagerly licking its own genitalia.
“Know why they do that don’tcha?”
Someone always bites and asks, “No, why?”
“ ‘cause they can!”

The same principle applies to the enlargement of our brains. We evolved
this way because it was possible.

During my tenure as a microbiologist,  one of my more unpleasant duties
was the dissection of animal brains to determine if  they were rabid.
Most game wardens and law enforcement officers continued the
classic practice of shooting a suspected rabid animal, or any animal
that had  seriously bitten a human, decapitating it, and sending the head
off to the state lab. Proper procedure required that pets be confined
and observed by a veterinarian for two weeks; only wild animals were to
be killed. Most  law enforcement people simply didn’t know any better so
most of the severed heads I received were dogs and cats. I LOVE DOGS!
However emotionally unpleasant the task was, somebody had to do it.
Somewhere there was a person, usually a child, facing the possibility
of a horrible death, a nightmarish series of mega-injections or both.
A negative result would save them from the treatment; a timely positive
result could save their life.  As time wore on, I got used to it. After the
initial horror of the first few dog heads, the process became routine,
scientific curiosity took over, and I started paying attention to the
similarities and differences among the hundreds of heads I’d dissected and
brains I’d excised. All dog brains are about the same size. From
Chihuahuas to Saint Bernards, they show very little difference in the
size of their brains. The larger breeds of dog do, indeed, have larger heads,
but most of the space is taken up by masseters (biting muscles) and bone.
I also noticed that small animals had relatively large brains when
compared to their body weight. The mouse has the same brain weight /
body weight ratio as a human. For large animals, it is the reverse.
There is some increase in actual brain size as animals become larger,
but their relative brain size decreases rapidly. The exceptions are, once
again, the marine and aquatic mammals. I assumed at that time that it
was the result of buoyancy and support. Brains require a lot of protection
and bone is heavy. The mechanical burden of a big head in a terrestrial
environment is maladaptive. Immersion in water alleviates that problem
and frees the head to enlarge as the rest of an organism enlarges. Michael
Crawford, in his monograph, “Apes, Dolphins and Big Brains”, ascribes
the increase in brain size among mammals that have returned to the
sea, to diet. He states, “Laboratory work showed that the brain did not
just use any old neural fatty acid but a consistent balance of 1:1 of
both the Omega-3 and Omega-6 families.” One of these groups of
fatty acids is plentiful in seafood, the other from terrestrial sources.
Evidence is increasing that we were not quite sea monkeys but rather,
beach apes, frequently entering and leaving the water not unlike the
present day natives of Polynesia.

At this point, it is necessary to address the concept of neoteny,  the
retention of juvenile characteristics. It occurs quite frequently in
Nature, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the reason can be a
simple genetic error. It has been pointed out, that the heads of all
primate babies are similarly shaped, but those of the non-human
varieties change shape as they mature. The best example is the baboon.
Baby baboons look much like human babies, but as they mature,
baboons grow a long, dog-like muzzle, and some formidable fangs.
Adult human skulls retain a child-like shape and child-like size, in
proportion to the body. Neoteny is a genetic mechanism, from the
internal variation side of the evolution equation. Few theorists of
human evolution doubt that neoteny played an important role, at the
genetic level. If some mutation induced this cranial neoteny in a savannah
dwelling ape, it is doubtful that it could have survived. It would have been
like a seed on rocky ground. A large brain would have been a
nutritional and mechanical impossibility.

While buoyancy and the availability of certain fats allowed our brains
to grow larger as our bodies grew larger, (I.E. to remain in the same
proportion to our bodies.) what factors might have encouraged this brain
growth? How might it have provided an immediate adaptive advantage?
What use might we have found, for this suddenly burgeoning
intelligence? A look at the anatomy of our brain provides some clues.

Let’s forego the anatomy lesson. A very large portion of our brain is
dedicated to the production, hearing and interpretation of speech. We
receive about 90% of our direct sensory information from vision;
90% of our interpersonal communication is via speech. Most primates
and, indeed, most animals, communicate primarily through body
language and gesture. Vocalizations tend to serve as emotional punctuation.
This is why it is possible to teach chimpanzees and gorillas American
sign language while attempts to teach them to speak have failed.
But to an organism up to our chins in water, body language and gestures
are quite useless. Sound, however, carries quite well over water. Vocal communication was already part of our primate repetoire. When an
organism loses an ability it compensates by refining another to do
the same job, much like the blind learn to read with their fingers.
Deprived of one means of communication, we refined another. One
of the more fanciful hypotheses suggests that our impressive musical
ability is a leftover from the time when we communicated by singing. I
find the idea as plausible as it is charming.

Most mammals identify individuals of their own species by scent. Dogs
sniff each others anal glands when they meet; cats sniff noses. Many
animals are able to recognize their kin by scent alone. In The Youngest
Science, Lewis Thomas reports that the entire genome is reflected in
the scent signature. In contrast, humans identify each other by facial
features. We recognize our friends and family immediately, even
though there are billions of humans, all with remarkably similar faces.
The subtle variations we use to accomplish this, defy description,
possibly why police artist sketches tend to be such poor likenesses of
the actual suspects. To a wading or swimming ape, our sense of smell
would be useless. Unlike the fish, we can’t smell under water.
The only part of us that was always visible when swimming or wading, 
would be our faces.

When my wife, Lynn, was pregnant with our daughter, her hair grew
luxuriously long and dense. The common explanation is that it is a side
effect of the increased hormone levels of pregnancy. The pair
bonding theorists consider it a sexual decoration but, once again, the
economy of Nature suggests otherwise. Hair is composed almost
entirely, of the protein, keratin. Gestation requires a good supply of
amino acids to make proteins for the developing fetus and is a very
unlikely time for the body to suddenly divert these nutrients for a
mere decoration, especially at the time when it would be least necessary to encourage mating.  If, as Elaine Morgan suggests, this extra long hair,
which reaches its maximum size at the time of birth, is to provide
floating babies with a convenient handhold, the whole process begins to
make sense. Other primate babies cling to their mothers by clutching
their hair, so the behavior is not without precedent.

Opponents of the aquatic ape theory have tended to be arrogant,
contemptuous and smug. Possibly, their most specious argument is, that
the aquatic hypothesis is “unnecessary” because, “We already have a
theory.” It is surprising that paleoanthropologists are willing to echo
the usual creationist attitude, “Don’t confuse the issue with facts;
we’ve already made up our minds.”  Their second most common
argument is, that variations like our near hairlessness and subcutaneous
fat are not relevant because they are only “a matter of degree”. They
appear to have failed to notice that most evolutionary changes are
matters of degree. For example, the same eight carpal bones of the
terrestrial vertebrate wrist, have elongated, foreshortened and
occasionally fused to form hands, paws, flippers, wings and the whole
panoply of thousands of different front appendages. If we look at each bone individually, all of these variations are only a matter of degree.                                                                                             

Their attacks are so emotionally charged that one wonders what
underlies such fierce attachment to the savannah theory. Does their
entire paradigm rest on the belief that, “Mankind has only grown
strong through perpetual struggle”? (Pop quiz: Who am I quoting?)
Would their view of humankind crumble if they had to recognize that
we played and partied and orgied and frolicked and sang our way
through the Pliocene? Does it disturb them that “man the hunter”
was in fact , human the beach forager?

Science is constrained by the requirement of objectivity. This limits useful information to the kind of observable, measurable and verifiable data,
that have been thus far discussed. As Pagans, we also have access to
subjective channels to our understanding of nature. The greatest
deficiency in science education, is that students seldom get an
opportunity for the direct apprehension of Natural processes that
can be provided by  watching the sunrise from a mountaintop as the
clouds carry water inland from the sea, spending a lazy afternoon by
a babbling brook or foraging for one’s own food. We can find further
evidence of our semi-aquatic origin by looking within.

We love being in water. It feels good! We swim in mountain lakes and rivers, sheltered ocean coves and swimming pools. We love to soak in hot
tubs and hot springs and spas and bathtubs. We vacation at the beach
or the lake or, if we can afford the air fare, tropical island paradises.
Much of Northern California has been turned into an artificial
savannah, at least during the summer months. It doesn’t feel like
Eden; Hawaii does. It is in water that we most enjoy being naked.
When I imagine myself sky-clad on the savannah, I think of thirst
and sunburn and insect bites. It may be that the greatest testimony to
the aquatic ape theory is its popularity. For thousands of people, it has the
ring of truth, regardless of the opinions of  academicians. As the mass
of evidence increases, it seems ever more likely that we were actually
beach or island dwellers, dividing our time between land and sea just
like we do when we vacation at the beach now. Recent geological
discoveries may have pinpointed the location of this Pliocene
paradise on Danakil Island (Now the Danakil Alps of Ethiopia), an island
that lay in a large shallow bay, with the enchanting name, The Sea of
Afar. If we need a new Eden for a new paradigm, I nominate Danakil.
There is a certain appeal to the vision of hairless, slightly chubby
protohumans cavorting in our animal innocence, in warm tropical seas,
of fat little babies bobbing at the surface, some nursing at their
mothers floating breasts, some clinging to their mothers’ luxurious
swirls of hair. Did we sing to each other? Did the sound of lullaby’s
float across moonlit waters? What did we sing about, five million years
ago, as we were becoming what we are?     

While living in the area of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in the mid 1960's I
read an article in the local newspaper about a young boy who had
fallen through thin ice on the Monongeheia River, and apparently
drowned. Hours later, his apparently lifeless body was recovered.
Following the normal protocol, the emergency medical technicians
began CPR immediately, even though the patient appeared to be quite
dead. To everyone's surprise, the child was successfully resuscitated
and recovered with no ill effects from the trauma.

The apparent miracle was attributed to the "diving reflex" a
characteristic response to immersion in cold water, that we share with
whales, seals and other marine mammals.

More specifically, when our faces are immersed in cold water, our
pulses slow down and the rate at which our cells use oxygen slows to
a near stand still. The fact that we share this reflex with various marine
mammals has been used in support of the aquatic ape theory.
Some scientists ascribe the boy's survival to simple hypothermia.
(All chemical reactions slow down with a reduction in temprature) and
deny that we have a diving reflex at all. Fortunately, it is possible to
demonstrate the diving relflex to ones self with no specialized
scientific equipment. All you need is a dishpan filled with ice water in
front of you. Relax for a few minutes, then have your friend
take your pulse. (Ideally, one should take the cartoid pulse where
the neck meets the angle of the jaw, count the number of heartbeats
that occur in fifteen seconds and multiply by four.) Then immerse
your face in the water and have your friend take your pulse again.
You'll be surprised by the difference.