Those who are skeptical of the Biblical record of the global Flood, in which "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished" (II Peter 3:6), often raise this question (so do believers, for that matter). The reason why anthropologists can find so few fossils of primitive people is that they were all drowned and their remains, if they survived scavengers and decay processes after drowning, are now buried in the sediments at the bottom of the sea. However, the aquatic-ape theorists are probably right about this particular aspect. Now, we creationists should usually be very cautious about anything published in a "new age" journal. Here, then, may be the solution to the extreme scarcity of hominid fossils. When earlier published in England, The Scars of Evolution was positively reviewed in scientific journals. Last summer, a symposium on the subject at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) attracted researchers from around the world. While largely ignored by many mainstream anthropologists, the aquatic ape theory has been attracting increasing scientific interest. Some evolutionists think the time is ripe for promoting aquatic apes as the real key. This extreme scarcity of authentic hominid fossils is probably why paleoanthropologists feud so vigorously among themselves as to whose fossils are the best and oldest. And the true origin of modern humans-of upright, naked, toolmaking, big-brained beings-is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter. The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin. The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. As another advocate of the aquatic ape theory reminds us, however, in his article, "The Water People": One would think, if man has been in the process of evolving on land for a million years, and with so many paleoanthropologists searching for these remains, there would now be an abundance of such remains available everywhere to document our human evolution. This new theory of human origins does have the merit of explaining why fossil remains of ape-men are so scarce. In contrast, Morgan argues that the first humans evolved in a flooded wet region of north-east Africa where they spent much of their time swimming or wading hip-deep in water. Traditional evolutionary theory posits that humans separated from monkeys when our ancestors dropped from trees to hunt animals on the dry African plains. My early boyhood had been spent in El Paso, Texas, in a region of mountains and deserts, far from the sea, and I never felt any such compulsion at all.īut now I learn, from a fascinating article in the New Age Journal, that we have all evolved from aquatic apes! This is the theory proposed by Elaine Morgan in her popular book The Scars of Evolution.Įver wonder why we love water? Why we head for the beach at the first opportunity, stay in the shower long after we're clean, even ponder water births for our babies? According to Welsh author Elaine Morgan, this urge to submerge may have an evolutionary explanation-one that holds some surprising implications for our health today. It is a beautiful and moving poem, but I could never identify with it myself. "I must go down to the sea again-to the lonely sea and the sky." This famous poem by John Masefield, former Poet Laureate of England, was one I had to memorize in school many, many years ago.
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