Did we evolve into the Water and Return To Land to become More Wise?
In the '70s I read a book called The Descent of Woman.. Author Elaine Morgan promotes the idea that like the dolphin or the manatee we evolved into the water and stood upright to then become more dominant by being smart by having our hands less bound and so more active.
The Waterside evolution scenario would seem to explain a lot of things as the proponents say. It's been somewhat derogatively named an explanation of all there is in anthropology, because it supposedly explains so many things while there's supposedly no evidence for it!
For example we have body fat unlike any other land mammal and this might be easy to explain if we went into the water and developed insulation against the cold of the water and we have little body hair but hair on our head because our head was out of the water as we stood upright and like the dolphins and manatees we lost our body hair so we could be more streamlined in the water.
Our noses are vertical to keep the water out of our nose as we stood upright, and in this explanation like the seagull we have salty tears to keep the salt from toxifying us in the water of the lake. And so on.
It may be said that any good theory explains things that other theories don't like this and this would certainly seem to qualify by this but also makes predictions.
A question is "what evidence do we have?"
Here I want to offer one possible way that we might eventually prove this hypothesis.
This goes back to what else, how I was cleaning my house one day.
I had these storage boxes and I noticed that if I take my hot weather outfits and outfits like rainwear and put the boxes on the bed with an area to sort them in and out of the box with a short trip this is a way to dramatically reduce my room clutter and keep my house cleaner and reduce time cleaning.
I can find everything in my house $10,000 worth of stuff that was mostly out of reach if I wanted to keep my house clean and not go to sleep and have my landlord no she won't arrest me!
In some of his books about evolution of life Carl Sagan talks about how it was much more difficult for life to go from one celled bacteria to larger life like beasts and vegetables. Or perhaps even more so to go from there to higher intelligent life like us based on the time from the first evolution of life to the larger life and also from that time to the evolution of the higher life like us.
My explanation for this is about how at the molecular level it's a sort of cosmic balancing point.
Einstein was asking why the electron has the charge and mass it does. Supposedly this has been solved in quantum physics by taking the in and out waves and balancing them, subtract the in and out waves and you get a finite residue that gives us the electron's charge and mass to like 30 decimal places which is hugely accurate.
This is important because I consider this to be where computation is most maximized because it's in balance and hugely faster.
Think of a lever as a way to move stuff around compared to just lifting it by hand. Much easier.. but for computing in particular a shorter distance to travel like this can dramatically improve efficiency.
So the bacteria were in a much more efficient situation than the larger life would seem to be.. solution alert!.. just wait a few billion years.
The early bacteria were only living by the shore and there was no life at first in the ocean or on land.
In a way this was sort of a paradise for the life because they weren't yet competing because they were continuing to radiate out around the shores without much competition and with sharing of the genes.
Eventually though the distance around the shore matched up and resources got more scarce.. this is my explanation of why some of the life started to become like a predator. This would have made it so this was the first time when competition had begun. And this is important because it puts pressure on the life to evolve larger structures.
One thing I note here is that the length of the shorelines is considerably important to the evolution of life in this explanation because on an archipelago world with many small islands the life is going to wrap around the beach sooner and so higher life may evolve sooner. So as we study exobiology...(life on other worlds) this may have influence on whether we find higher life there or not.
Life like our own hasn't let go of this short distance computing method. The basic method like sorting the boxes is where life with intelligence sorts at short distance with the neurons and this then carries over the signal to control larger boxes!
The main reason larger or higher life may not have evolved right away is not because we couldn't use a longer distance connection but only because we hadn't found it yet
And back to the water evolution for our own life...
One thing (among about 20 or 30 other physiological traits that we have that might be explained by our evolution to the water) proponents of this evolution event idea promote also is about how a woman's hair gets stronger in pregnancy and this would be explained because the baby is sailing around in the water with the mother and holding on to the mother's hair.
But then I start to think about this I would think the baby would surely have sunk if this was true.
And that was when I started to think about sorting with boxes like I was doing with my house as I said.
What if the mother had used a raft in the water with the baby on the raft..
And this was when it occurred to me that the rafts might have a lot of use here too.
And here's my idea that I've been leading up to. If we evolved into the water and had rafts it would enable us to compare different things like wood and name them by reduction of the distance between what we're comparing on a raft this will give us a definite survival advantage.
I read the book I thought highly of in 75. Like the rich lady they gave her a present of a book and she says no thanks already have one! In Morgan's opinion we evolved into the water in our early evolution to stand up to get away from the wolves on the shelf near a level lake.
So as I was sorting my stuff in my house by putting it level on the shelf from my house I realized it's like having $10,000 worth of stuff but my house is not cluttered.
And we may have gotten smarter because we have it sailing around and we're comparing not stones like where it's been believed it was the first science where we would chip the stones and compare them. By comparing masses horizontally in the water it's much shorter trip to figure out out how to control the sticks by whittling them.
I think it would have been much easier to chip wood together and compare and contrast than to do something like chip to make flint.
Life had tried this for millions of years and the dinosaurs went on for more than a hundred million years and they never found how to do chipping stone.
I would think we were both in and out of the water all day so we may have had tools continuously on the shore that might be found to prove we evolved into the water at that time with these chipping marks and rubbing marks with other wood first.
We could have made things like rafts that may be findable for the baby to sail around on and prove the Waterside event.
One of my favorites about why the Waterside Hypothesis evolution event may be valuable is because we have hair on the top of our heads. This is easy to explain if we evolved into the water and only our head was above water like other land mammals or depends on how much!
Benjamin Franklin said trade never hurt any nation and I can imagine we had all these rafts like shiny ships we find with troves and treats and pelf and shining stones just by trading each day with these rafts to find the best values and this is how I think we may have started language because we're comparing sidewise not vertically and this could have rapidly increased our verbal dexterity along with our hands and our brain size especially as we're competing with others around us and trading.
Because of this much closer relationship between what we're handling and our reflexes I think this might be where we got our first language because we're naming the types of wood we may have been using by an easy way to link the sounds we were making to map those changes in our materials.
Many types of animals copy each other so we may have only needed some basic level of brain size. As I say about cleaning my house and finding all the stuff in my shelves it's far easier to compute with a short distance than a longer distance.
Perhaps the first major event may have been where we found clubs and spears in the water and we were outcompeting others who soon copied us as we were also more super cooperating.
In this scenario we were both in and out of the water each day and so we evolved the known physiology that seems to be evidence for Waterside even while there may have been many times we were not in the water.
The advantage of being in the water to make our weapons and tools and use the rafts would have been general and not definitely all the time.
By having the soft wood we could name it with different names as we changed it and this might have been the start of language.
It's been said the first science may have been when people started to chip rocks to make tools and compare them with each other.
But it would be much easier to make tools out of wood that were soft and change them before we begin editing stones like this.
In the history of architecture first usually there were wood buildings like Woodhenge In England followed by Stonehenge where this is made out of stones.
In ancient Greek history and also the history of the Orient first the wooden structures or structures like tents we're used and then later more durable construction.
You may have heard that having a hands-on hobby or just going shopping every day reduces risk of woes by all causes by a third. The vertical distinction between land and air may have been much tougher to find underlying distinctions than a much easier to compare horizontal distinction between air and water.
As we stood up in the water and started using rafts and other valuable improvements like carrying food through the water perhaps like this might even explain why we didn't go deeper into the water like the manatees or the dolphins and not return back per se. The usual explanation based on our water evolution has been that we were in a shallow inland lake so we really couldn't go any deeper into the water.
One advantage of my idea about this the idea that we use the rafts is about how the lake explanation is not needed. By this we were living along the rivers and shores of estuaries as most life has been more recently and our genes were common. By evolving with competition without much change in our genes in connection with the life around us we would also have the rafts to aim our center of attention upward instead of down into the waves and new improved back to land.
It would seem if this about using rafts was a dramatic event our genes would also show a dramatic change to mark out when the raft event was and this might be used to define its area whether the lake or the rivers and estuaries.
This may also be of course how we evolved carrying ability which makes us more portable on land because we get more land to live on by doing things like carrying our food and water from places where we wouldn't have to fight as much. Have a bite without a bit! The food doesn't bite..
An idea used to explain the water ape evolution idea is about how we have more of a childhood than other life. Animals like the galapagos turtle and elephants have little to fear from other life and so they have fewer young because they are safer.
I had believed we evolved this childhood in that lake separated from the rest because it was safe. But my improved event might have where the safety came once we went back to land and we had weapons for the mother to defend with for the baby.
A lot of the things e.g. cooked foods,
supercooperation, more years of childhood so we could have more time to decide what we should be about, I would believe these all came after we just first had our tools and we're able to name, trade, fight, and defend with them.
For the Waterside evolution by Morgan's idea being relegated to not one area or one time that we can find, instead we look to the continuous history of being presumably in and out of the water that the others refer to on the Wikipedia site find it CLICK HERE or see the same link at the end of page if you like..
More particularly by way of the rafts or newer technology like this we assume since most of the people involved were able to copy the finders of this method, after first finding the logs or sticks sailing around and using them like to move things around by flotation and for weapons the technology would rapidly spread and this may have made most of the people go into the water for the advantage of using the rafts more generally. And from there the rest of it might have been how we evolved our genius.
As they say by the Wikipedia, fossil evidence may be the only way we could ever prove or disprove the Waterside Hypothesis.
Research going back to the 1920s shows that every single neuron of a mouse brain contains all the memory of the entire brain.
Here's a General Site about this outlining the general principal and Click Here if you like for the Wikipedia..
10,000 year old DNA has been found, so this may allow the possibility of finding old neurons.
Here by my discovery in addition to the newer genetic evidence that we can find there may be also the method of finding old neurons and using them to measure out the entire life history of the individuals who originally were the owners so in addition to genetic evidence we may also find the neural and the fossil evidence.
Wikipedia site about the Waterside Hypothesis CLICK HERE or see the same link below if you like..
On the Wikipedia post are a lot of anthropologists who agree and a lot who disagree. While it's been ruled out that there's a central area in our history when we were in the water at the same time that Morgan and other proponents of the WH promote by fossil evidence, some of the ones who disagree with WH say that we don't have to rule out that we were generally in and out of the water for most of our evolution.
I would hold that if most of us were connected with the water and some individuals started finding how to use rafts like this it would spread rapidly and this would make them mostly want to go back into the water and this would be during the continuous period where supposedly we weren't in the water but we actually both were and weren't.. so it seems like we weren't by the evidence cited by those who are not proponents of WH when actually we were in the water.. I believe it's possible all the traits supposedly that we "picked up at wildly different times" were only different in time but not in area because of our relatively constant association with the water. We may have not been there to adapt by evolutionary pressure in this scenaro but moreso because we had a motive and then we then adapted to the water.
Quoting the Wikipedia site .....In The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution (2013), Henry G. remarked on how a seafood diet can aid in the development of the human brain. He nevertheless criticized the AAH because "it's always a problem identifying features [such as body fat and hairlessness] that humans have now and inferring that they must have had some adaptive value in the past." Also "it's notoriously hard to infer habits [such as swimming] from anatomical structures".[38
It's the old physiological adage in anthropology and evolution that heredity is stored environment.
Are we just to say that a wing is not evidence a bird can fly because the bird also has legs? Are we to say that flippers and fins are not evidence of involvement with the water?
It seems obvious that our vertical nose would be explained to keep the water out of our nose if we stood upright and we still have hair on top of our head because we were in the water except for our head as we stood.. Do other apes have a nose like this or hair just on their head and not much on the rest of their body?
As we say good science explains things that other science doesn't and it certainly seems that the water side hypothesis qualifies here, and good science also makes predictions that are definite so perhaps what we would look for is evidence within neurons and the genes.
I for one would not be satisfied till the evidence is read.
The Wikipedia goes on to quote historian Erika Lorraine Milam who says that "independent of Morgan's work, certain standard explanations of human development in paleoanthropology have been roundly criticized for lacking evidence, while being based on sexist assumptions"
Much like the assertions that have been used against the Waterside Hypothesis!
So I think of this idea of the Waterside Hypothesis as not dead but like a restaurant that might be revived and improved with good turnaround value.
Remember the wave physics of light? It started and rose to great heights in the mid 1800s and then after relativity supposedly it's out of favor. Science has many of these events that go in and out of fashion and there's no guarantee that some of the ones that were classics may never return. The Waterside hypothesis seems to be possible because of so many things it explains. All it may really need is just more evidence than so many of the things it seems to be of value about.
Einstein said there's evidence for deeper truths all around us if we look for them and I would say there may be evidence of life millions of years ago in evolution, perhaps even by a decluttered and clean house!
For the Guardian Post About Elaine Morgan's 1972 Book
"Creatures of Flame" or, First Waves, Then Fire?
When the first modern humans appeared 1.8 million years ago our ancestors brain size was up to twice the size than our other ancient relatives, our teeth were much smaller, and the ancient physiology was much like ours.
In 1999 influential primatologist Richard Wrangham claimed that due to fire we got smarter because we could cook food and this allowed for easier chewing and digestion, which nourished our fuel hungry brains.
In this scenario firelight could ward off night time predators and allow our ancestors to sleep on the ground and in caves instead of in trees.
Proving this hypothesis would need evidence from 1.8 million years ago when the first apes most like humans arrived.
Evidence has been found for the use of fire dating back a million years after this or 800,000 years at the Wonderwerk cave site in South Africa's Northern Cape province.
Here while I say this is just preliminary hypothesis, so far the time of the first discovery of use of fire from when we first evolved our more modern physiology is a million year hiatus between when the first modern humans arrived and the known use of fire.
For the above reasons about the Waterside Hypothesis I believe it's possible the influence of water came first, and also because other animals living on land could have done the same.
The common ancestors of all primates had already evolved an opposable digit that helped them grasp branches in the trees where they lived
First may have come behavioral resilience by way of the water and the rafts and only then we also might have been able to be skilled enough by this method to begin to use fire.
A million years would be vast event in evolution and I think we might be able to fill this time not with fire, but with water. So evidence may never appear no matter how much we search for the use of fire dating all the way back to 1.8 million while our activities in the water might have been more continuous.
97% of fish live within 5 mi of the shore, as does most life. Today 75% of the world's population of people live by the ocean. Our strong bond with the water is seen by the price of real estate within site of the ocean which is 100% higher in value.
The ancient ancestors in the trees were constantly involved with handling wood, probably a lot more than other stuff so it might have been natural if they're in the water to reach up and grab the branch and start using it for other purposes more often.
Rocks may been used at first for no other purpose than others had used it for.
Firewood would seem to need the ability to carry things like fire, but unlike standing up in the water with our hands more able to move and carry things, fire wouldn't seem to have given this ability itself.
So in this possible event first we were in the water then we got smart and involved our higher modern physiology, and only then perhaps a million or 500,000 years later we discovered fire and our brains got larger with the use of cooked foods or they might not have gotten that much larger with use of fire.
Having fish much more abundantly than we had it before may have been enough to build up our brains to large size by nourishment, and as they say fish is brain food.
More particularly we might find evidence of modern physiology before any evidence of use of fire exists and more evidence of the water influence. Modern physiology could perhaps be there before the use of fire not just after it.
If water was the cause of our brilliance we would expect there to be not as much change in our ancestors physiology before or after our use of fire began. Or by way of the Waterside Hypothesis at any rate not as much change as by way of the water.
It might well have been a million years from the time we got more advanced brains and smaller teeth and our more advanced physiology, to the time of the use of fire.
Of course absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence and if we can never seem to prove definitely that there was no fire, perhaps it will never be found because of poor fossilization or other causes even while people really were using fire all the way back to 1.8 million years ago.
If no evidence is ever found for fire beyond the present 800,000 year limit found we could definitely say with no evidence for fire before this time, this is evidence something else perhaps like the water may have been influential.
I would think just having a lot of fish to eat If we were in the water with wicker nets and other use of wood like spears to get the fish would have been valuable to our physiology and would make it so that our teeth could have gotten smaller because fish being soft and like water are moist and relatively easy to chew and also easier to hunt than many land animals.
A large net in the water might have been much easier to catch fish than a net the same size on land, who can catch fish on land! All the people would have had to do was just set up the net and let the water flow through with the fish.
If we were first making use of wood and the water and trading with each other also in competition this would have much improved our ability to cooperate and make us super cooperators.
Changing and naming the wood in the water would have given us language in a way that using fire wouldn't seem to.
I would think that the spread of the use of fire would only have taken place if we had language and the use of fire itself wouldn't have given us language or the supercooperation. Perhaps from evidence about GE we may find if language was there much before the use of fire by way of our ancient physiology like if speech was before, or much before fire.
It's been found that animals given the computer to type in what they want to achieve don't need language much to solve problems. While this was supposedly evidence that language was unnecessary to our advance and evolution, one thing they're overlooking is that supercooperation itself may have come from language.
In research an ape in diapers if taught with the human child ahead of the child in development for about 2 years but the child passes them because the child knows about cooperation and the ape has no clue.
So a major part of our evolution was about cooperation and I would hold this is much related to language because by naming materials like for trading like the wood we would have been learning about what was beyond our earlier levels of advantage.
In a way language would have been the first writing because we were writing with our memory and storing the results.
This was the first definite ownership also because research shows our brain thinks of what we own as an extension of our thought.
Language could have given us extension of our thought and this would have also enabled super cooperation.
After much competition and evolution we might have finally used fire, with language first.
Super cooperation would have given us fire but fire wouldn't have necessarily given us supercooperation or language, like evolution into the water might have. Fire seems to be evidence of higher cognition already aware that fire might not have had.