The aquatic ape hypothesis was never crazy

None of you have taken apart seeing water in human loss of fur coupled with blubberesque skinfat. Fully from all those annoying analogies seen in other mammal species in the tree of life who evolved exactly the same traits for that exact wet reason, or all those that didn't for dry reasons. Without all those analogies straight from the ever dwindling natural world, the aquatic ape theory would not exist. And that lack of fur + skinfat is just Hardy's very first observation from 1929.

How am I to see the error of my ways? You keep claiming this one is so damn easy to pick apart, without any of you actually doing it. While you also keep demanding that I take their word for it. That's not science as I learned it.

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Moderator note: 247 posts have been split to a separate thread, here:

I believe in the aquatic ape hypothesis and people persecute me for it.

So... where's the discussion topic? What is the hypothesis and what do you want to say about it that we can discuss? All I see is a nice epistemological homily and an illustration. Do you actually want me to answer? Or will you just demand my ban all over again when I do and you can't shoot...
www.sciforums.com www.sciforums.com

If there's anybody who would like to discuss the aquatic ape hypothesis, as opposed to entertaining CEngelbrecht's persecution complex and his uncivil insults can do so here. Most of CEnelbrecht's focus, however, seem to be on the latter rather than the former, so if that sort of thing captures your interest please use the thread linked here.
 
Current tally is: 181 posts vaguely on arguments for and against the aquatic ape hypothesis, and 247 posts in which CEngelbrecht compares himself to Galileo, complains about a conspiracy in the scientific community to persecute True Believers in the aquatic faith and mostly whines about how unfair it all is that people no longer take him seriously. Anyway, see the other thread for that stuff from now on.
 
billvon said:
Early hominids were both growing their brains and using tools. Our most recent common ancestors are chimpanzees and bonobos; they both use tools (sticks, rocks.) Picking up a rock and bashing a gazelle's head in was within that MRCA's skill set even before their cephalic evolution took off.



As mentioned, they already had tools.



Not over long distances.
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TheVat said:
Why? Another red herring.

The core problem is that AAH is an umbrella hypothesis. Do you understand what that is? You can't really disprove it. It has the flavor of being a parsimonious explanation, but it is depending on cherry-picking traits acquired at wildly different times and is really no more powerful an explanation than the null hypothesis. (viz. human evolution is not particularly guided by water) Yes, bands of hominids camped by water, left fossil evidence there, because, erm, that's a good place to camp. There's often shade, water for bathing and drinking, and I hear the fishing goes better when you have water.

If PH theory were overturned, that would still not validate AAH. Theory is not a binary matter. Mobility adaptations that could aid hunting can also aid other means of survival - gathering can also be a long-range activity. Spotting predators is also aided by tall legs. Etc.
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There's 0 doubt:
1) Ideas of savanna hunting ancestors are impossible: we have poor olfaction(!!), vulnerable skin & nose, flat feet & slow speed, fat belly & heavy brain etc.
2) H.erectus cs followed coasts & rivers, they even colonized islands (e.g. Flores), they frequently dived for shellfish etc.: this explains: large brain, pachy-osteo-sclerotic skeleton, ear exostoses, stone tools, shell engravings, fossilisations near marine oysters (Mojokerto), barnacles & corals (Trinil), enamel wear caused by "sand and oral processing of marine mollusks", etc.

Recent biological insights in why/how/where/when Hominoidea (apes+humans) & Homo evolved, google e.g.
- GondwanaTalks Verhaegen English
- AAT@groups.io
- aquarboreal
- Vaneechoutte 2024 Australopithecus https://www.sciepublish.com/article/pii/94
 
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exchemist said:
Do you think you can dismiss the concept of persistence hunting by mockery, then?

en.wikipedia.org

Persistence hunting - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

www.newscientist.com

Did humans evolve to chase down prey over long distances?

Outrunning prey over long distances is an efficient method of hunting for humans, and it was widely used until recently, according to an analysis of ethnographic accounts
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com

This Britannica article https://www.britannica.com/topic/persistence-hunting makes clear the hypothesis is not universally accepted: but uses an argument about the evidence, rather than resorting to mockery.
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The "persistency hunting" ideas of human evolution are pure fantasy: poor olfaction, labile equilibrium, vulnerable skin, heavy head, thick belly, flat feet...
The savanna hypothesis reasons: our nearest relatives chimps+gorillas are quadrupedal & live in African tropical forests, humans are bipedal & live outside forests (i.e. the savanna in Africa), therefore we became bipedal when we left the forest for the open plain. But
- our Pliocene ancestors did NOT live in Africa, e.g.
--"Evolution of type C viral genes: evidence for an Asian origin of man" RE Benveniste & GJ Todaro 1976 Nature 261:101-8 … only gorilla & chimp seem by these criteria to be African … gibbon, orang & man are identified as Asian: most of man's evolution has occurred outside Africa ...
"Lineage-specific expansions of retroviral insertions within the genomes of African great apes but not humans and orangutans" CT Yohn cs 2005 doi 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030110 ... Pan troglodytes endogenous retrovirus-1 (PTERV1) has become integrated in the germ-line of African apes … absent from human & Asian ape genomes ... a RV infection bombarded chimp & gorilla genomes independently & concurrently, 3-4 Ma ...
  1. "Have we been barking up the wrong ancestral tree? Australopiths are probably not our ancestors" M Vaneechoutte cs 2024 Nature Anthropol.2(1),10007 open access doi org/10.35534/natanthropol.2023.10007 ... upright posture/gait is already present to different degrees even in Miocene apes … hominoid orthogrady is a primitive characteristic … knuckle-walking has evolved in parallel, independently in both Pan // Gorilla ... numerous similarities between australopiths & extant African apes ... not our direct ancestors ...
 
The "persistency hunting" ideas of human evolution are pure fantasy, see our poor olfaction(!!), labile equilibrium, vulnerable skin, small mouth & dentition, heavy head, thick belly, flat feet...
The savanna hypothesis reasons: our nearest relatives chimps+gorillas are quadrupedal & live in African tropical forest, humans are bipedal & live outside forests (= savanna in Africa) -> we became bipedal when we left the forest for the open plain.
But gibbons are also "bipedal" (vertical). Our Pliocene ancestors lived in S-Asia ("Evolution of type C viral genes: evidence for an Asian origin of man" Benveniste ...1976 Nat.261:101, "Lineage-specific expansions of retroviral insertions within the genomes of African great apes but not humans and orangutans" Yohn ...2005 doi 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030110, "Have we been barking up the wrong ancestral tree? Australopiths are probably not our ancestors" Vaneechoutte ...2024 Nat.Anthrop.2,10007): australopiths were fossil relatives of Gorilla or Pan, not of Homo.
Chimps & gorillas have different kinds of knuckle-walking (early apes were aquarboreal: Gorilla & Pan evolved quadrupedalism in parallel). Most likely, our ancestors (re?)entered Africa early-Pleistocene.

For recent scientific insights in hominoid evolution (biology, comparative anatomy etc.) google "GondwanaTalks Verhaegen English".
 
verhaegen said:
There's 0 doubt:
1) Ideas of savanna hunting ancestors are impossible: we have poor olfaction
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We didn't use olfaction for hunting. We used sight.

flat feet & slow speed
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We can outrun a great many prey animals. They have the speed - but we have the endurance.

heavy brain
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Which allowed us to make spears, so as to become better hunters.

H.erectus cs followed coasts & rivers, they even colonized islands (e.g. Flores), they frequently dived for shellfish
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Sure, some did that. They also caught fish. But since far fewer humans can fit on coastlines vs interiors, their numbers were always limited.
 
verhaegen said:
The "persistency hunting" ideas of human evolution are pure fantasy, see our poor olfaction(!!), labile equilibrium, vulnerable skin, small mouth & dentition, heavy head, thick belly, flat feet...
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The Kalahari Bushmen use the persistence system, learned from the African painted dogs.
 
verhaegen said:
The "persistency hunting" ideas of human evolution are pure fantasy, see our poor olfaction(!!), labile equilibrium, vulnerable skin, small mouth & dentition, heavy head, thick belly, flat feet...
The savanna hypothesis reasons: our nearest relatives chimps+gorillas are quadrupedal & live in African tropical forest, humans are bipedal & live outside forests (= savanna in Africa) -> we became bipedal when we left the forest for the open plain.
But gibbons are also "bipedal" (vertical). Our Pliocene ancestors lived in S-Asia ("Evolution of type C viral genes: evidence for an Asian origin of man" Benveniste ...1976 Nat.261:101, "Lineage-specific expansions of retroviral insertions within the genomes of African great apes but not humans and orangutans" Yohn ...2005 doi 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030110, "Have we been barking up the wrong ancestral tree? Australopiths are probably not our ancestors" Vaneechoutte ...2024 Nat.Anthrop.2,10007): australopiths were fossil relatives of Gorilla or Pan, not of Homo.
Chimps & gorillas have different kinds of knuckle-walking (early apes were aquarboreal: Gorilla & Pan evolved quadrupedalism in parallel). Most likely, our ancestors (re?)entered Africa early-Pleistocene.

For recent scientific insights in hominoid evolution (biology, comparative anatomy etc.) google "GondwanaTalks Verhaegen English".
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That seems to be a website run by a Belgian science writer with no particular credentials in palaeontology or anthropology - or none that are apparent.

But you, I see, are managing director of something called the Study Center Anthropology, in Belgium. Can you refer me to some more information about this Study Center, who belongs to it and where its research is published?
 
exchemist said:
That seems to be a website run by a Belgian science writer with no particular credentials in palaeontology or anthropology - or none that are apparent.
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Should've been the Fraternity all along. But they would not abide that peasant voice from the wilderness. The Earth was never the center of the universe.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
And you're still full of shit too.
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How so? I used to give tours at the Endangered Wolf Center outside St. Louis. The painted dogs there stalked me and the guests as we went by. Fifteen painted dogs would make a adult deer disappear in short order. The people from Africa gave us instructional talks on how to talk about the painted dogs. The information I posted here, and my own experience in Africa, is enough to be quite confident that while one of us is full of shit, it's not me.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
None of you have taken apart seeing water in human loss of fur coupled with blubberesque skinfat.

How am I to see the error of my ways? You keep claiming this one is so damn easy to pick apart, without any of you actually doing it. While you also keep demanding that I take their word for it. That's not science as I learned it.
Click to expand...
Do you really think bringing that theory to a public forum is going to give you or the theory any credibility? You need to take it to a group of experts in that field and find out how much credibility you earn from them. That's what you should have learned from science.
 
(Q) said:
Do you really think bringing that theory to a public forum is going to give you or the theory any credibility? You need to take it to a group of experts in that field and find out how much credibility you earn from them. That's what you should have learned from science.
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Indeed. That's what I hoped to get into a bit with this verhaegen guy, who may (or may not) be a researcher of some sort, possibly pursuing this as a minority hypothesis. However he seems to have just made a couple of drive-by posts and disappeared again. That doesn't bode particularly well for his credentials, it seems to me.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
World_human_population_density_map.png
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Yes. This map shows two things:

1. It confirms that human populations away from water far exceed human population at coastlines. 'Coastal', to a hominin, would be a narrow strip along these shores maybe a few miles wide - walking distance - so thin as to be invisible at the scale of this map. In other words, you gave provided us with a map of the vastly overwhelming population of the world that do not live within walking distance of a coastline.


2. A modern map - after the invention of boats and shipping - makes this map an even worse offering. Populations were drawn to the coasts because boats were a cheap form of cargo transport. Without that, coasts were not particularly useful. In fact, coastlines formed a boundary they couldn't navigate. (I live on a peninsula - surrounded on three sides by water. If I want to go anywhere, escape rival tribes or follow food, I am hindered in all directions but one. Being in an interior is better for survival.)


Well done, CE. With advocates like you, AAH doesn't need detractors.
 
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