sábado, 1 de agosto de 2009

Aquatic Ape theory


Elaine Morgan gives a great presentation about the Aquatic Ape theory. She divides it into what the theory is and why it has value, and into why scientific community doesn't even consider it. Strongly recommend that you watch it.

There are two points she didn't go into that I think are also important:
- the way babies can be born in water, float to the surface to breath air and float around freely with 0 concern (she does speak about breathing control... in case you don't know, if you throw any primate into water they'll drown immediately, they'll try to breathe the water in)
- the way the fish and shellfish diet can be a decisive factor in brain development

I agree that there is no definitive proof, but there are too many hints to ignore. I don't think we were aquatic apes in the sense that we spent all day in water, but rather in the sense that we were in contact with water daily.
One documentary I saw went even further to suggest that the origin of man, of this aquatic ape, was Madagascar, as the isle was moving away from the main land and water was filling in. I don't know if geologists back this up, but it's an interesting concept, that throws the water element in the mix with the apes in the forests.

I'll go ahead and throw a theory of mine, which has 0 scientific value, it's an hypothesis:

I recently watched an episode of Mental, where a woman suffered from shark phobia... she couldn't even submerge her head under water inside a pool, for fear of sharks. It got me thinking about our crazy fear of sharks.
I went to wikipedia to read a bit about the topic. Believe it or not, the irrational fear is mainly attributed to the movie Jaws... they stated that the shark phobia increase was caused by the movie.
I just think it got people remembering sharks as predators. We've seen movies with killing whales, octopus, squids, crocodiles, but none spawned such fear... my crazy hypothesis is maybe the film worked so well because it appealed to our biology: maybe those were our predators in the aquatic days. Maybe this fear is genetically grafted in us as it happens with other species and their predators. Maybe our ancestors had to keep a look out for sharks. AND they wouldn't have to do that if they were on land...
... or maybe I've just created the theory about the land shark!?!?! hmmm I think not! :)

Um comentário:

Vasco Névoa disse...

This is one beautiful example of why we must "listen to our elders". :)
She speaks what I've often thought: academia is just another career, and one of deep "shoe-shining" skills if you want to progress and thrive. This effectively stops innovation and prevents evolution of the knowledge. There are just too many tabu areas in science today, that will not get published or funded.
My pet peeve in this area is about "cold fusion"; just like in the aquatic theory, there are unexplained facts that merit more investigation, but because of social reasons they are disregarded. It's entirely human, and a damn shame. We're keeping ourselves locked into the 19th century science, waiting for the next big jump.
Technology evolves every day, but science does not. Go figure.