Elaine Morgan (1920–2013)

The third and last of the books by this author in my collection. Before reading it, I had a look at the debunking site discovered on the internet which pours cold water on the aquatic ape theory, as it is known, which originated with a scientist called Alistair Hardy, mentioned in this volume. The site is able to debunk the AAT, as it refers to it, but not always so successful in providing alternative more convincing explanations.

The book shows no sign of the quirky style of the author's first and most famous ('The Descent of Woman') but instead is written in a very 'straight', bordering on academic style, perhaps chosen because she wanted to be taken seriously. The author develops some information from a previous work, regarding isolation of a particular area of Africa cut off by water ingress for millions of years which would have led to adaptations by species trapped there. This, she argues, led to various humanoid characteristics developing which led eventually to our own species which inherited them.

The author had abandoned her speculations about large brains and an aquatic origin by the time she wrote this, probably because evidence from the 'Lucy' skeleton revealed that bipedalism (walking on two legs) predated the development of a large brain or tool use by millions of years. But her speculations about loss of hair, development of particular types of fat deposit, retention of child features (neoteny) and other factors pertaining to humans and humanoid ancestors are interesting. As she says, attributing these to a move to the savannah doesn't convince when primates such as baboons did not develop them. So I remain open minded about this book until more compelling evidence is presented from the other viewpoint. Hence a middle of the road 3 star rating.… (mehr)

A re-read of something read many years ago, and I've discovered during this read, the subject of a lot of controversy. The author based a lot of this book on the theory set forward around 1960 in an article in 'The New Scientist' by marine biologist, Alistair Hardy (her own book was published in the early 1970s). It seems she wrote to Desmond Morris, author of a popular work, 'The Naked Ape', which she had a lot of disagreements with, and asked why he had dismissed the theory in a page or so. He explained that it was actually based on Hardy's paper.

I won't go over the various aspects of humanity which the author says are unique to ourselves and which authors in the scientific community say are not (she had no scientific background, but instead hailed from the humanities). It's hard to know how much credit to give the book despite the website I found which rebuts all its claims and those of later books by herself and other authors. Having moved on to read a couple more of hers, she did modify her ideas somewhat: for example, accepting that locomotion on two legs came millions of years before some of the other developments that in this book were all supposed to result from an aquatic existence for an ancestor of humankind and to have developed all at the same time.

Also, it's clear that Hardy himself did not claim this ancestor became fully aquatic - which would have involved our legs atrophying as they did in dolphins and other sea-going mammals, rather than remaining the long 'primitive' legs of a primate which did not specialise in tree dwelling unlike chimpanzees etc. Instead, he said they would have spent five or so hours a day in water and the rest of the time roamed the shore to gather other foodstuffs etc (the author's follow-up publishes his article as an appendix).

One aspect of the book is the author's rallying cry against the male-centric nature of much of palaeontology at the time and this is of more interest. The style is popularist and irreverent, in contrast to her later, more academic sounding works. Altogether I would give it around 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.
… (mehr)

About ten years after her success with 'The Descent of Woman', the author returned to the subject with this book and gave more prominence to the originator of the aquatic ape theory, Alister Hardy. This book concentrates on that side of it and drops the original feminist angle, maybe because the author felt progress had been made in the formerly male-centric field of anthropology and palaeontology.

The author makes use of discoveries since her original book, such as the beginning of protein analysis, a precursor of DNA sequencing. This puts the splitting off of hominids from the line that led to the gorilla and chimpanzee as being much more recent than originally thought, therefore reducing the long interval in which the purported move to water and back again (before anything drastic could happen such as losing our legs along the lines of seals, dolphins etc), could take place. That didn't appear to faze her however.

The end of the book is disorganised and peters out. Not only are there appendices which include, among other things, Hardy's original article setting forth his theory and his follow- ups - which reveal that he didn't go the whole hog but rather suggested that our hominid ancestors spent about 5 hours a day in water - but the final chapter is a reprint of a paper by a man from the Washington Naval Research Laboratory who made an investigation into whereabouts the suggested aquatic migration could have taken place. The penultimate chapter doesn't reach any conclusion or warn the reader that the author's input has ended. As as a reader I was expecting a conclusion after La Lumiere's research, which would be more appropriately included as an appendix. So the book came to a limping halt for me.

The style in which it is written is much more academic in tone with none of the jokey or pithy remarks of 'The Descent of Woman' and comes across as a bit dry. Altogether, I would award this an OK 2 stars.… (mehr)

I was intrigued by the references to this book in Peter Dickinson's [A Bone From a Dry Sea]. While Dickinson's story only nibbled at the edges of the theories of Morgan's treatise, The Descent of Woman delves fully into a feminist interpretation of the evolutionary and cultural aspects of human evolution.
For my money, the science behind the author's premise was flimsy, perhaps even the source of unfounded speculation that wound its way into Morgan's narrative. Interpretations and theory in human evolution have sparked tremendous controversy, as different agencies favour their preferred view point. Using the biblical Genesis story does little to promote credibility for how the females actually lived. And therein lies a great flaw to a supposedly academic text.

One never 'proves' a theory and my reading of this book begs the question why were other interpretations of the evolution of humans not discussed? Those may counter the author's point of view, but there was nothing written to convince the reader that Morgan's ideas have superior merit. The attitudes expressed came across as an agenda to promote female equality, yet the ancient historical record is not of the quality to establish the life females lived on the basis of a societal culture.… (mehr)