Our aquatic stage?

(latest major update of this section on or about 10-22-2000)

_________by J.R. Mooneyham_________
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Back to Perspectives 59,999,999 BC-51,000 BC...

Approximately 5,000,000 BC: Earth possibly suffers a 'cosmic ray' winter for thousands of years; human ancestors are walking upright on two legs (and consequently gain the power of imitative speech)...

...possibly evolved this way because they have been living in a seasonally flooded or swampy location (or other highly liquid environment such as off-shore islands, lagoons, or continental seashores) for a lengthy period of time by now.

These humanoids have also acquired several other characteristics normally associated only or primarily with aquatic mammals by this time: a substantial loss of body hair, development of insulating and bouyant fat under the skin, breath control and flexibility suitable for diving, the weeping reflex, face-to-face sex, body temperature regulation via sweating, and others.

It may be at this point where human newborns and infants lose much of their early powers of dry land mobility in terms of crawling, climbing, and walking, as compared to most other primate young. Being born in an aquatic or semi-aquatic environment, infants needed only aquatic breath-control, buoyancy, and mobility (plus a grip on momma's long hair) to survive. 20th century human infants will often display all these remarkable traits when given the opportunity, but also appear to lose some of the instinctive protections these traits provide as their 'dry-land' mobility capacities assert themselves (i.e., they become well-established toddlers).

Such a loss in land mobility allows human young to emerge in an earlier, still embryonic state, allowing for eventually larger brains-- but also requiring longer periods of child rearing than before. Longer child rearing creates an urgent need for longer lasting and stronger pair bonding between parents-- and/or much stronger maternal instincts in mothers. Note that females of this time are likely much smaller and weaker than the males, making them and their children much more vulnerable to predation and starvation, as well as murder by males wishing to free a potential mate from child rearing duties involving unrelated progeny. At least, such females and their embryonic children would be more vulnerable on land. However, in the water such size and strength differences may matter less. A plentitude of local food would also reduce a female's need for male protection. Another possibility is that protohuman groups themselves are somewhat matriarchial around this time, rather than patriarchial, making males more attentive to the needs of females and children. This may contradict much of what is known about primates in general and even much early human history, but could still be possible for a limited period in our evolution, or perhaps exist in repeating cycles throughout the process. And history itself does show that matriarchial societies are possible in modern humans as well.

The extra stresses and complexities embodied in adapting to such a wildly changing environment within a period of only a few million years may also have been responsible for the growth in brain size among this population.

If a semi-aquatic environment is what drove the evolution of these primordial humanoids up to now, that environment is also changing again around this time, drying up and ending the isolation of this group from the dryer savannahs of Africa.

Of course, if the 'aquatic ape' theory doesn't explain things to your satisfaction, you must seek an alternative explanation for how these strange changes in primate DNA came about to create modern humanity's 'naked ape' ancestors. Either external forces of nature and climate forced these changes upon us, or something else did....

The great improvement that walking upright allows in breath control also gives humanity another new power: that of speech. They can now better imitate the sounds of other animals or one another, or many other environmental noises. Such impersonation powers allow surprising new flexibility in entertaining one another, more complex signalling, and advances in stalking prey or defending against predators. Even at this early stage, humanity's crude power of speech may rate up there with the discovery of fire, in terms of the benefits gained.

Though true language remains far off, humanity is now firmly on the path to achieving the abstract/symbolic thought processes that language development will require. Note that even before gaining imitative speech capacities, these naked chimp-shaped pseudo-people may have possessed crude sign language skills. I include this speculation based on the fact that 20th century chimpanzees and gorillas are capable of learning quite sophistocated sign language skills from human teachers; it is unknown to me at the time of writing however just how much such skills are practiced among wild chimps and gorillas. Such information would seem highly relevant to the history of human predecessors, in respect to language development.

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