The Aquatic Ape Theory: Jury Still Out ?
Posted By Leslie Randall on 17 October 2005
Freedivers, readers of Deeper Blue and other devotees of the Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) may be interested to learn that there are currently several science writers contributing to the debate on the aquatic genesis of mankind, some knowingly, and some not.
In The First Chimpanzee (Barnes & Noble Books, 2003) co-author John R. Gribben offers up a decent review of the basic AAT, mostly in the service of buttressing his main thesis: that chimpanzees, and their sister species the gorillas, diverged from the human line after it was already well on the way to human-ness. This makes you and me, as the title indicates, into ancestral chimps. Surprisingly, this isn’t as nutty as it sounds, and is somewhat supported (if not necessitated) by recent research in molecular dating, which has determined that humans and chimps split only 4-6 million years ago (MYA), though who did the splitting from whom is still up for debate. Perhaps divorce lawyers, rather than scientists, should handle this one.
Gribben and co-author Jeremy Cherfas touch on all sorts of interesting issues, such as the timing of a proposed aquatic phase in human evolution. Why, they also ask, did humans abandon the aquatic way of life if it was so successful? They also take issue with the traditional ladder of evolutionary progress, which always puts man at the top. All very heady stuff. Unfortunately, after tantalizing the reader with details of the aquatic theory, Gribben and Cherfas confess to a disagreement over it, and sideline the theory from the rest of their argument.
Two other books which aren’t about the AAT at all nevertheless contain ideas that give the theory a direct and reinvigorating jolt. They provide an answer to one of the most pernicious objections to the Aquatic Ape Theory, i.e., that there are no candidate ancestors among the living apes who don’t run screaming in fear from water.
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