The Theory Of Human Water Origin - Alternative View

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The Theory Of Human Water Origin - Alternative View
The Theory Of Human Water Origin - Alternative View

Video: The Theory Of Human Water Origin - Alternative View

Video: The Theory Of Human Water Origin - Alternative View
Video: Water comes from Space! - alternative view by Russian scientist 2024, March
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The idea that our anthropoid ancestors went through a long aquatic phase in their development was put forward by the brilliant British marine biologist Sir Alistair Hardy (1896-1985) in an article in New Scientist in 1960.

By the way, Hardy was not the first - his predecessor was the German scientist Max Westenhofer (1871-1957), who suggested the same in his book "The Unique Road to Man" (1942).

Hardy noted that the human body possesses some properties that are rarely found in other mammals and, of course, in our primate friends. For example, we have surprisingly little body hair, and what we have is not located in the direction from the head to the body, but distributed from the middle of the body, for example, on the male chest. We can hold our breath - an ability almost unique in the animal kingdom. We walk straight, etc.

Very few mammals are practically hairless, like us, and almost all of them spend most of their life in the water, or they have ancestors who may have done so; lack of hair allows you to swim faster, which is why athletes-swimmers often wax.

Even apart from that, the very arrangement of our hair contributes in some way to swimming. The fat layer is often jokingly referred to as subcutaneous fat by people, and this term actually shows that we are thinking in the context of human aquatic origin.

The ability to consciously hold your breath in water is invaluable, especially in the case of spearfishing. It's hard to imagine why this ability would be a useful adaptation if the creature lives almost always on land.

Moreover, man is an upright creature. Many paleontologists question the image of our ancestors who came out of the forests to the plains and then developed bipedalism - bipedal walking, which naturally resulted in a leap in the development of their brains.

Here's what seems to be the most likely scenario: perhaps seven million years ago, the world saw the beginning of an ice age that ended (if it really ended) only a few thousand years ago. It even influenced tropical regions: with a change in the planetary climate, large areas of the jungle disappeared, and grassy plains appeared in those places.

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This forced many of the jungle dwellers to change their diet, because their previous fruit diet had become very scarce, and instead they tried to switch to grass and bushes whenever possible. Among those who mastered the plains were the ancestors of modern elephants and rhinos; this is evidenced by their fossil teeth, which show signs of adaptation to lean food.

On the contrary, the anthropoid ancestors, apparently, at first remained in the disappearing jungle, improving in fruit gathering: they developed bipedalism so much that they could walk along the branches, picking fruit with their free hands. By the time they left the jungle, they were definitely walking on two legs, or were close to it - this ability gave them a great advantage.

Anyway, this is the generally accepted version. But no one has yet put forward an absolutely convincing explanation for why our ancestors adapted to this mode of transportation.

Hardy and after him Morgan pointed out that there is only one way of life in which an upright position is not only easier for a creature that is used to moving on four limbs, but can also be a serious advantage in the struggle for survival.

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This way of life can take place if the creature spends most of its time in relatively shallow water. Water pushes the body out, only making it easier to stand on two legs, while the vertical position of the body means that the creature can go from the shore into the sea or river, without getting out of the water and without creating waves, start swimming and at the same time keep its head above the surface of the water …

They assumed that our ancestors went through a phase in their development when they lived just like that. Later, when environmental changes pushed our ancestors to be active again on land, bipedal locomotion was preserved, the body had already adapted to it; therefore, the body was already better adapted for running and walking.

This may explain the peculiarity of posture and gait of the famous Australopithecus Lucy - a fossil hominid who was neither a man nor an ape: by the time he lived, our ancestors had not yet fully adapted to walking on land on two legs.

A few more facts indicate the likely aquatic origin of humans

- The characteristic wrinkling that appears on the fingertips from a long stay in the water can be explained by the fact that it is easier to grasp food, such as shellfish.

- Small children will always try to get into it at the sight of a puddle. Baby monkeys will never climb into the water on their own.

- Long hair on human head allows cubs to cling to them in water. The rest of the primates have short hair on their heads.

- A person needs to consume about two liters of liquid per day. Monkeys get their liquid from fruits and leaves. The savannah theory cannot explain where a man in the arid savannah would take that much water every day. The aquatic theory explains this.

- The human of all primates has the longest penis and there is currently no unambiguous theory explaining why this is so. But when copulating in water, this length ensures one hundred percent penetration of sperm into the vagina.

- The vital necessity of the human body in the consumption of iodine and sodium chloride (salt), found in abundance in marine products. The lack of iodine in the foods consumed leads to thyroid disease.

- Wide human palms, unlike the long and narrow palms of monkeys, allow you to swim perfectly, raking water with your hands.

- A large amount of adipose tissue on the mammary glands is characteristic only for humans. This can be explained by the fact that milk had to keep warm in cold water. Female monkeys have small mammary glands and no fatty tissue.

- A person prefers to live or relax on the banks of reservoirs. If a person is offered to build a house or spend a vacation in the savannah, jungle, deep forest or on the seashore, river or lake, the vast majority will choose the shore of the reservoir.

- Many people have no problem urinating while in the water. For other monkeys, this is unusual.

All this sounds very convincing. The problem is that this hypothesis has not yet been proven: all we have is the fossilized bones of the ancestors of the "prehuman" species and, according to the fossil record, very fragmentary information about prehuman development.

The fact that we cannot find definitive evidence that our ancestors went through the water phase does not prove the hypothesis or refute it, despite the disparaging conclusions made by the Dutch Association for Physical Anthropology at a conference in 1987 on the subject and published in 1991. titled "The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction?" (Aquatic primate: truth or fiction?).

On the other hand, the same lack of evidence makes the hypothesis superfluous; this state of affairs may, of course, one day change dramatically if unequivocal evidence is found. From the time we moved away from other primates to the first known fossil hominids, there is a gap of a million years, and such a time interval is enough for us to have time to pass the water phase.

Since the 1990s, the hypothesis of the aquatic origin of man has changed and has become more often called the hypothesis of the origin of man from a semi-aquatic primate: our ancestors did not lead a completely aquatic lifestyle, but inhabited the shores of lakes and seas and spent most of their time (but not all the time) in water. Proponents of the hypothesis argue that this may explain the place where the remains of Lucy were found (at the bottom of the stream).

By the way, it is curious that of the primates closest to humans (chimpanzees, gorilla, orangutan), no one likes water and cannot swim. In zoos, these monkeys can sometimes splash in the water, but in nature they come into contact with water mainly only when they drink or wade across a stream. In other cases, they prefer to keep a decent distance from the water, probably attributing to it a possible death from drowning or an attack by predators from an ambush at a watering hole.

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By John Grant, from Science Rejected. The most incredible theories, hypotheses, assumptions"