Man's Aquatic Ape Origins

The theory that man's ancestors adapted to an aquatic existence is, by no means, accepted by the paleontological community. Yet, as the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis suggests, mainstream science is all to often mired in its own dogma to explore the boundaries of the bold and fantastic. It is also not at all surprising that while quick to condemn the hypothesis, most scientific journals have never attempted to evaluate our aquatic origins.

The truth of the matter is that there are a number of important human physiological traits that suggest water played a role in our evolution:

Bipedalism: Bipedalism offers a number of advantages in water including improved balance, reduced strain on the back, hips, and knees, and improved blood circulation. Human's elongated lower limbs also improves swimming speeds.

Hairlessness: Human's hairless skin is comparable to aquatic mammals and land-dwelling mammals that have had aquatic ancestors. What hair humans have follows the flow of water over the body.

Descended larynx: The human larynx is situated in the throat rather than the nasal cavity, a featured shared by aquatic mammals who use it to close off the trachea while diving and facilitates taking large breaths of air upon surfacing.

Encephalization: Encesphalization is the amount of brain mass exceeding that related to total body mass. An animal's encesphalization is known to be directly related to its intelligence. Aquatic Ape theorists suggest that man's increased encesphalization was due to an increased diet of fatty acids found in fish and sea foods.

 

 

British author Elaine Morgan is one of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis strongest, and most famous, advocates. Morgan's early rejections of the common-held beliefs of our ancestor's savannah origins stemmed from what she saw as sexism and misogyny implicit in the science of the day. For example, Morgan asserted that if humans lost their hair because the need to sweat while chasing wild game, then why would women who gathered food while protecting young children also lose their hair (the vast majority of our early ancestor's caloric intake came from gathering nuts, fruits, and vegetables and not wild game).

 

Morgan's aquatic ape theories and ideas are profiled in the BBC documentary "The Aquatic Ape." See the complete documentary on-line at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTe9qVEAcXk.



Did Stalin plan to create an army of ape-man hybrid super soldiers?

Since the mid-2000s reports have surfaced of a secret Soviet program initiated by Joseph Stalin to create an army of ape-man super-soldiers. Unfortunately, sometimes fact is not as strange as fiction. None the less, fact is still strange, not to mention disturbing and unethical.

The claims of Stalin's super ape-man army originally surfaced in 2002 in the academic journal Science in Context. Though a Russian scientist funded by a Soviet research grant did in fact attempt to crossbreed humans with apes there is no evidence that Stalin approved or even knew about the program.

The research project was initiated by Russian scientist Il'ya Ivanov who began his experiments to artificially inseminate apes with human sperm as far back as 1910. After numerous failed attempts to inseminate apes, Ivanov attempted to inseminate African women without their consent. Ivanov did eventually find one Russian woman who voluntarily agreed to artificial insemination with ape sperm, but the Soviet Academy of Science condemned Ivanov and eliminated all financial support before any experimentation began.

The various social and ethical consideration of the ape-man hypridization program, and the politicization of the program by the religious right, is fascinatingly detailed in Eric Michael Johnson's November, 2011 Scientific America article Scientific Ethics and Stalin's Ape-Man Superwarriors. The full article can be found at the link below:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/2011/11/10/stalins-ape-man-superwarriors/

Mysterious Stone Structure Found In Sea of Galilee

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For the unititiated, our world would appear to no longer offer any new discoveries of significance. The realm of the anomalous and the extraordinary seems to be relegated only to the cranks, the crackpots, and the conspiracy theorists. Yet, with the slightest examination alone mysteries undoubtedly abound. Just this week, underwater archeologists began exploring a man-made stone structure twice the size of Stonehenge at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee.

As the latest issue of the International Journal of Nautical Archeology reports, "Close inspection by scuba divers revealed that the structure is made of basalt boulders up to 1 m (3.2 feet) long with no apparent construction pattern. The boulders have natural faces with no signs of cutting or chiseling. Similarly, we did not find any sign of arrangement or walls that delineate this structure." 

The structure was most likely built on land only later to be covered by the Sea of Galilee as the water level rose. "The shape and composition of the submerged structure does not resemble any natural feature. We therefore conclude that it is man-made," the researchers write.

Similar megaliths found nearby date the submerged structure to the Third Millennia BCE. Researchers are baffled by the structure's purpose. Though some speculate it may have had significance as a burial site, further research is necessary.