Oh, so because your baby sinks (N = 1) suddenly that data must override everything else, is that it? Oh and you “were told this was normal for human children”? Brilliant! Kind of like the argument “well my grandad, who’s 75, smokes 20 a day, and he’s ok. I was told this was normal, so I’m skeptical about all that cancer stuff.”

Blimey, Greg, with aquaskeptic arguments like this, who needs science?

Your final point (it seems, made after a one too many of those beers) was damning…

“Therefore your ideas are rong!!!!11!!”

It’s the paucity of the arguments against waterside hypotheses – as you admirably show here (I note, not one word about Jim Moore’s masquerading web site – I bet you haven’t read more than a few sentences of it) – that most convince me that it is probably right to some degree.

Algis Kuliukas

It is activated by cold and not warm water, so I suppose one could wonder about the evolution of hominids in tropical regions vs. the cold-water diving reflex! In any event, the diving reflex is probably plesiomorphic for mammals, or vertebrates, or some other large taxonomic category, so it is not helpful in identifying the AT “theory/hypothesis” (both words have been used at different times by its proponents)

Hey, here’s a new bit of information: When we put my baby in te water, he sinks right to the bottom. He’s been taking swimming lessons or otherwise swimming with his grand dad or mom once or twice a week sine he was about 6 months old (he’s now 2 1/2). He still sinks right to the bottom if he is not being held or wearing a flotation device. I’m told this is normal for human children.

Therefore your ideas are rong!!!!11!!

Admit it. You heard about this idea over a coffee or a beer when colleagues sneered at it and you’ve been sneering at it ever since, right?

You say “… it was rejected a long time ago by almost all serious paleoanthropologists” so, ok, where was that rejection published?

You mean John Langdon’s unscholarly, straw man portrayal that had no reply until recently? (See here http://www.waterside-hypotheses.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=133 for a discussion, with John, of my critique of his) Or Roede et al – where the decision “against” was rather marginal and even then the editors made it clear that (like you) they were considering a “full on” aquatic ape, not the concept that perhaps our ancestors were subjected to slightly more selection from wading, swimming and diving than the chimps?

You mention the “bipedalism TOE” which, I agree, has been used to explain everything, but you fail to notice the overlap here – the wading hypotheses has to be one of the most obvious and plausible, and least anthropocentric, ideas on hominid bipedal origins.

Perhaps in a future blog you might cite that paper where the idea was “rejected” by paleoanthropology because I’ve been doing a PhD on the subject for years and I cannot find one that so much as even discusses it specifically.

Finally, you ape PZ’s incritical backing of Jim Moore’s masquerading web site and label it as “excellent”. I doubt either of you have even read it.

If you had, you’d note the nauseating hypocrisy throughout – e.g. he criticises Elaine Morgan for not using page numbered citations when almost all of his gossip takes the form “aquatic proponents tend to say x about y” – with no citation at all.

Normally, in science, we use the scientific, peer reviewed literature to refute ideas. Here, I note, the bar has to be lowered so much that the biased twistings of an ex-car mechanic without any academic training in science other than a nepotistic link to Nancy Tanner, can substitute with impunity.

You, like Jim Moore, should be ashamed of yourself for trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes like this.

Algis Kuliukas

2) Subcutaneious fat distribuiton, if for thermoregulation, would be distributed uniformly or greater over heat loss surfaces. But in fact, they are distributed (in humans) the exact OPPOSITE way, as would be predicted by an alternative hypothesis: Food storage without losing high thermal LOSS abilities (not retention, as a mammal would require spending a lot of time even in warmish water).

Fat and hair are interesting, but on very preliminary examination it becomes clear that the actual adaptation is heat LOSS (and that also wipes out your naked fossorial mammals from the equation, by the way) for aquatic mammals not just nakedness or having extra fat.

In other words, it’s like saying a “long appendage” is good for seeing father away or eating leaves off the top of a tree) like a giraffe) but the appendage you are looking at is a tongue (as in woodpeckers, for probing).

Untethered. Way.

Well composed sentence there, Greg, but entirely untrue. Without supporting AAH or any other theory, I’d like simply to point out that indeed, AAH definitely has REAL ACTUAL QUESTIONS (which the theory is “tethered” to) that it hopes to answer with EMPIRICAL (observed) ANCHORS (information).

Example:

Why are we hairless? (Actual Research Question)
Empirical Anchors:
1) sometimes aquatic and subterranean mammals lose much of their hair during evolution because it can no longer thermoregulate temperature properly
2) those same mammals also sometimes evolve subcutaneous fat because it does regulate properly

Valid, actual, empirically driven hypothesis: Maybe homo sapiens are hairless because we evolved in a semi-aquatic environment! Eureka!