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Re: Aquatic ape theory
Sean Stinson (sstinson@uoguelph.ca)
29 Sep 1995 17:07:31 GMT
Phillip Bigelow (n8010095@cc.wwu.edu) wrote:
: Since humans don't even remotely resemble semi-aquatic animals such as
: the otter, or fully aquatic animals such as the dolphin, this "selection"
: toward a better aquatic hominid apparently didn't go very far along, if it
: occurred in the first place.
: The evidence a *scientist* would look for before suggesting selection for
: aquatic predator resistance would be:
: 1) A "sprint-mode" for swimming.
: 2) Extremely good underwater eye-sight.
: 3) Extremely good underwater hearing.
: 4) Extremely long breath control (for sustained sprint-swimming and
: for diving to avoid surface-attacking predators.
: 5) Morphological adaptations for silent-swimming (in nuclear submarine
: lingo, this is called "silent-running").
Sean replied,
Everything you've argued here strikes me as blatantly WRONG.
You're argument suggests that modern humans are aquatic animals.
I think we can safely say this is not true.
AAT says that some of the traits we as modern humans have, cannot be
easily explained by a strictly terrestrial evolution. This does not
mean that we evolved into the water then sometime in the last ten thousand
years climbed out of the water and became an immensely successful
terrestrial animal. You're argument would hold more water(excuse the pun)
if we were looking at a fossil record of human development. Then we could
analyze your points and argue their various validities.
It's somewhat like arguing we could never have lived in the
plains and eaten grains because our appendix is non-functional.
Now, if you had a fossilized appendix, well then...
In fact by your argument we could say that dolphins were never terrestrial
mammals because they can't outrun a lion.
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