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Water babies
Read, Dwight ANTHRO (Read@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU)
Fri, 3 Feb 1995 09:45:00 PST
Nicholas writes;
"The differences as observed are:
Humans have little body hair
Humans sweat profusely
Human urine and faeces have a high water content
The nose is streamlined in a downward direction
The explanation give for this is that in recent evolutional history
humans took a brief foray to the oceans and led a semi-aquatic
lifestyle."
Discussion on the so-called aquatic theory has come up before. In my view it
is an example of coverting association into causation without establishing
what would be the underlying process for so doing: humans have traits A, B
and C; if humans were adapted to an aquatic mode (whatever that is supposed
to mean) then they would have traits A', B', C'. Therefore humans had an
aquatic adaption. I leave it to the reader to determine the logical fallacy
of the argument.
D. Read
READ@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU
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