Every time I bring up the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis people laugh. They think it's ridiculous. To me, it makes total sense. Our loss of body hair is similar to other mammals with aquatic ancestors, i.e. the elephant and rhinoceros. Human baby fat, our ability to control breathing, and that bit of vestigial webbing between your fingers all make sense in light of the AAH. It's certainly an idea worth investigating. Unfortunately, leading anthropologists have been laughing since the AAH was proposed in 1942. Check out the videos below and see what you think. The first is incredible footage of chimps wading (90% of chimp movement in water is bipedal). The second is a 15 minute lecture (highly recommended!) by the leading proponent of the AAH. Below the videos is a link to a short thesis on the subject.
What really bothers me is that the discovers of Ardipithecus are blabbering on about how human-like the fossil is, which is unexpected only if you think about evolution strictly from a gradualist perspective and believe in the molecular clock that dates the human-chimp divergence to about 7 million years ago. Meanwhile they should be science-gasming over their own discovery that, "a mosaic of woodland and grasslands with lakes, swamps and springs nearby" was this beast's habitat.
Watch Chimps wading through water on two feet.wmv in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
If you haven't been on Ted.com, you need to go!
http://www.riverapes.com/Me/Work/BipedalismThesis.htm
(what an unfortunate URL...)
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