Re: AAT Theory
J. Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
Tue, 12 Sep 95 17:55:00 -0500
El> If I had originated the aquatic theory...
El> ...These things need repeating from time to time.
We know you didn't originate it -- Hardy is the one who did so,
saying that hominids spent "some twenty million years or more"
as aquatic beasts, inventing "stone tools like knives and spear
heads" (and immediately upon regaining the shore apparently
forgetting how to make them for 4-5 million years). I think
many of us even know that you're not the only one who develops
it (although you act as if you were when you complain that
someone has offered a criticism of some aspect of the AAT which
you have dropped from your own repertoire).
El> Wegener asked a good question - why all the continents looked as if they
El> fitted together, not just in general outline, but matching in geological
El> detail and parallelism of wildlife. He came up with a good answer: he
El> proposed that the continents had once been one big continent which had
El> split up. Nobody worth mentioning would listen to him.
Let's have a look at just who Elaine Morgan considers to be "nobody
worth mentioning":
>From 1973 *Continental Drift: The Evolution of a Concept*
by Ursula B. Marvin, Ph.D., Smithsonian Institution Press:
Washington, D.C.
Prominent Wegener supporters included:
Arthur Holmes of Durham and Edinburgh universities, "he was
among the earliest and greatest pioneers in developing the
radiometric methods for determining the ages of rocks and minerals
and the age of the earth itself"; Emile Argand, founder of the
Geological Institute of Neuchatel, Switzerland; S. William Carey,
professor of geology at the University of Tasmania; C.S. Wright;
Lester King, professor of geology at the University of Natal;
Professor Reginald A. Daly of Harvard University, who Marvin
calls a scientist "of unchallenged prestige"; Alexander Du Toit,
Johannesburg, South Africa, author of *Our Wandering Continents*;
Armadeus W. Grabau, "an American paleontologist and author of
several textbooks on stratigraphy and index fossils"; Leonce
Joleaud, French geologist; R.D. Oldham, "discoverer of the seismic
evidence for the earth's core"; and Dr. W.A.J.M. Waterschoot van
der Gracht, "a Dutch geologist and vice president of the Marland
Oil Company"; all "nobodies" according to Elaine Morgan.
El> As for the mechanism , the details, the how and where and why- I don't
El> know, I'm only guessing, I'm trying to work it out,
The mechanism is the part of human evolutionary theory proposed by
Hardy: an aquatic transition from ape to human.
El> somebody found an Afar-type First Family of hominids dating from 6mya in
El> an environment which testified to near-desert conditions (not
El> only by the presence of those camels, but by palynological evidence
El> also) then I would say AAT had suffered a near-mortal blow.
El> Elaine
The "near-desert" savannah is your own invention, not part of any
theory of human evolution except your own.
Jim Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
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