Aquatic Ape Theory - What is it?

A Brief Summary of AAT - key arguments

A Brief History and Key Proponents of AAT

When / Where / How?

Ape to Human Evolution Timeline

Alternative theories of human evolution

Wikipedia and the scientific community

... Anatomical Evidence
... Bipedalism
... Birth and babies
... Brain
... Breath control
... Descended larynx
... Diet
... Diseases
... Fat
... Fingers, toes and feet
... Furlessness
... Hair and baldness
... Human ailments
... Kidneys
... Language & Song
... Menopause
... Nose
... Olfactory sense
... Pachyostosis
... Paranasal Sinuses
... Platycephaly
... Reverse osmosis
... Sexual features
... Sleep (USWS)
... Surfer's ear
... Sweating
... Tears
... Underwater vision
... Viruses
... Waterside environments

. Homo Ancestors
... Trachillos bipedal hominids
... Homo erectus
... Homo neanderthalensis
... Sea Gypsies/ the Moken
... Homo sapiens - water afinity
... Coastal Migration
... Pan and Gorilla ancestry
... Semi-Aquatic Animals

. Testable Hypotheses
. Fossil evidence
. Genetic evidence
. Paleoecological evidence
. Retroviral marker in apes
. Acheulean handaxes

A call to scientists...

Recent News and Updates

Books and publications

Articles

Videos links

Links

Contact

Human ailments

Marc Verhaegen says that if the most aquatic phase had ended before 3 million years ago, we would have lost most aquatic features and would certainly not suffer so much from a variety of common ailments and problems, eg: obesity, asthma, acne, cretinism, seborrhea, male pattern alopecia, vernix caseosa, vasomotor rhinitis, sinusitis, sleep apnea, Cheyne-Stokes, varicosis etc.

files/aquarboreal-ancestors-MV-etal.pdf

Elaine Morgan. The Scars of Evolution: What Our Bodies Tell Us About Human Origins.

Roger W. Wescot

EVOLVING BODIES Elaine Morgan, The Scars of Evolution: What Our Bodies Tell Us About Human Origins.
London: Souvenir Press, 1990, 196 plus xii pages; hardcover, £19.95

In this brief, clear, and engaging presentation of the Aquatic Hypothesis on human evolution, Mrs. Morgan succinctly details the evidence for our ancestors' ecological detour from Miocene forests to Pleistocene grasslands by way of Pliocene seashores. More precisely, she follows the late Leon P. La Lumiere of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in locating the cradle of the hominids on what used to be Danakil Island (but is now the Danikil upland microplate in Ethiopia) between Africa and Arabia. The twelve chief scars considered by Morgan are:

1. lower back pain
2. inguinal hernia
3. varicose veins
4. hemorrhoids
5. sunburn
6. apnea
7. crib death
8. swollen adenoids
9. acne
10. dandruff
11. obesity
12. sexual dysfunction

Of these, she attributes the first five to our shift from shallow-water bipedalism to savanna bipedalism; the next three to the descended larynx resultant from our having become aquatic mouth-breathers; acne and dandruff to our retention of furwaterproofing sebum in the two non-arboreal environments in which we had become furless; obesity to our retention of white fat for aquatic insulation and buoyancy; and sexual dysfunction to our shift from dorsal to frontal coitus and our loss of olfactory sensitivity to cyclical pheromones, leading to confusion of erotic solicitation with threat and preventing detection of genital receptivity. [pdf]

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