The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis by Elaine Morgan

This suggests that the split with the apes was either occasioned by, or closely followed by, a drastic change in habitat and way of life. The features distinguishing them are far more varied than the features dividing other pairs of species which are so closely genetically related. Humans differ from apes in a surprising number of ways. The argument for the Aquatic Ape Theory was based mainly on facts of comparative anatomy. The book became a best seller on the strength of its readable style and political message, but received a frosty reception from the scientific world as the crackpot idea of a politically motivated television scriptwriter totally unqualified to hold opinions on scientific matters. It had a basically feminist theme, highlighting how the popular versions of human evolution had been envisaged purely from the view of the male hunter. In 1972 I revived the idea in a book The Descent of Woman.

When Hardy published a brief account of it in the New Scientist in 1960 he was rebuked but subsequently forgiven by his colleagues and the suggestion lay dormant again for the following twelve years. He was not aware that a similar idea had been published in Germany during the war by Professor Westenhofer but had sunk without trace.

He waited for thirty years before publishing an account of it, having a shrewd idea how it would be received and how it might damage his career. The theory of an aquatic phase in human prehistory was conceived by Sir Alister Hardy in 1930, when he was a young professor of marine biology at Oxford.

The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis by Elaine Morgan