k.e
Posts: 1948
Joined: Mar. 2006
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| Quote | Couldn't adaptations for swimming have come about from occasional swimming, without needing the near continuous swimming implied by the aquatic ape theory?
Henry |
Hehe.... would a creo answer for the AAT be "Then why do we still have boats?"
The following comments are completely without any intended sarcasm so bare with me and dip a toe.
Do we actually have any adaptations for swimming?
Offspring that can't fend for themselves for say the first 12 years ,may not be giving the beginnings of culture, tool making (millions of years old) and language, enough credit
Most mammals seem to be able to swim if the need arises. Maybe being able to swim is just a happy accident, a consequence of having our noses in the right place...maybe.
Besides...never underestimate the power of the naked form in water for both males and females.
Even in mythology, the girl by the well is a repeating meme, as is water itself which symbolically represents the feminine, so I think water played an important role in why we are the way we are without resorting to half evolving into dolphins a comparison of time lines may give the best answers.
We do have one unique ability that other animals don't and that is our ability to control water and the diverse environments we can range to. The Australian aboriginal was able to move across vast desert hunting grounds all by cultural control of water passed down through story telling (dream time myth) that laid out the landscape as a 'story map'. Water was available in springs that had to be dug up or trapped in rock wells and accessed with a string and bark bucket made from materials close to hand.
Anyway just a thought.
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The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
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