Special Edition Part 1 (end 2013)
– Peter Rhys-Evans: Introduction
– Stephen Oppenheimer: Human’s Association with Water Bodies: the ‘Exaggerated Diving Reflex’ and its Relationship with the Evolutionary Allometry of Human Pelvic and Brain Sizes
– JH Langdon: Human Ecological Breadth: Why Neither Savanna nor Aquatic Hypotheses can Hold Water
– Stephen Munro: Endurance Running versus Underwater Foraging: an Anatomical and Palaeoecological Perspective
– Algis Kuliukas: Wading Hypotheses of the Origin of Human Bipedalism
– Marc Verhaegen: The Aquatic Ape Evolves: Common Misconceptions and Unproven Assumptions about the So-Called Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
– CL Broadhurst & Michael Crawford: The Epigenetic Emergence of Culture at the Coastline: Interaction of Genes, Nutrition, Environment and Demography

Special Edition Part 2 (begin 2014) with 12 contributions.

My contribution can be found at
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marc_Verhaegen/contributions?ev=prf_act

Of course running is important in the evolution of modern humans, and endurance is too – not that the two are necessarily linked – but I agree with Marc that adaptations for running appear relatively late in the fossil record, and that running is more a derived characteristic of Homo sapiens, than a general characteristic of the genus Homo (e.g., Homo floresiensis shows no signs of having derived from an endurance runner).

As runners, humans don’t appear to be particularly effective, especially compared to the very best; dogs, horses, antelopes and hyenas, which are all far superior in terms of running prowess, and we’re considerably slower at our fastest than practically every other terrestrial mammal I can think of.

This need for a running explanation seems to stem from the assumption that there was some over-riding need to gain more sustenance from the ever expanding savanna grasslands in the Pleistocene when climatic shifts from wet to dry and back again were common. But this ‘myth’ of an origin on open plains is a pre-Darwinian construct, never subject to proper scientific testing, and which anyway has been given away by most ‘terrestrial defenders’ as a stawman invented by Elaine Morgan! If the scientific establishment once and for all let go of this savanna ‘myth’, there would suddenly be no need for an endurance running ancestor two million years ago.

Arches in the feet are not for endurance running as far as I can see, otherwise we’d see arched feet in endurance runners. We don’t. Are arches important in terrestrial locomotion? I guess its possible, but even so this could easily be accommodated in a scenario which includes wading, walking, jogging or even running short distances along the beach, without the necessity of having to resort to sustained distance running. Other possible functions that may have influenced the evolution of the arch in the foot could be pushing off the bottom of the seafloor or rocky platforms while foraging for shellfish, climbing, swimming and/or diving. I’m not saying I know exactly why humans have an arch, but to assume it was for endurance running seems premature given what we know, I would have thought.

As for efficient sweat cooling, I guess you need to be around water almost permanently for it to be effective, but I don’t see this as evidence for endurance running. Evidence of terrestrialism, sure, no problems, but terrestrialism does not require endurance running. Terrestrial activities could have included sustained foraging on land, but even today humans tend to forage on land without ever having to resort to endurance running.

Modern humans can run, but as Marc has demonstrated, this seems to be a recent adaptation, and is possibly linked at least according to the fossil record, to the appearance of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens). The gradually more gracile body, loss of the long low skull, narrowing of the pelvis, and lengthening of legs, amongst other changes, may all be indications of a move away from a part-time underwater foraging lifestyle, to one that included a more terrestrial component, in which bipedal walking, chasing and hunting became more common, possibly derived from a phase that included increased wading and harpooning of fish from above (as Marc and others have argued). As they came to spend more and more time on land, they naturally would have become better runners, and since they already had good endurance skills (for sustained underwater foraging, for example) they also became capable endurance runners (so long as they had available water). Rather than ‘aquatic apes’, it’s probably more apt, in my opinion, to label Homo sapiens the ‘terrestrial humans’.

The work of Bramble and Lieberman remains relevant here because running is obviously important in the development of Homo sapiens, and nobody could blame them for believing what essentially everyone else in palaeoanthropology has believed for the past hundred plus years. In my opinion we should forget about the endurance running model as a model to explain the lifestyle and adaptations of Homo erectus, and instead look within the last few hundred thousand years at the origins of running and modern human behaviour.

By the way, I caught a documentary the other day, in which two women athletes were left to fend for themselves for a few days in the Okavango Delta; classic savanna territory. They hardly ate and complained a lot about increasing hunger. They made no attempt to run down the kudu they saw while out foraging one day. For some reason it didn’t occur to them that there was dinner, and all they had to do was run after it until it collapsed of exhaustion.

The only thing they did appear to eat was a fish they caught with a hook while wading in a shallow swamp. One of the women was Tanya Streeter. I wondered whether she would have had any trouble finding enough food on a tropical coast.

One more thing, Chak, you mentioned on another thread that chimps have some sort of automatic swim response, similar to that seen in humans, but that it lasts for only ten days, as opposed to the six months seen in human infants. Can you tell us more about this? Has a study been published?

May be that’s where bipedal running steps in?

The endurance running model is a sensible one, we have features that are hard to be explained otherwise (not even the AAT), e.g. sweating, foot arches. The endurance running model (ER) does not necessary contradict the endurance diving model (ED) which is a central thesis of the AAT.

1) I never said propinquity (cool word by the way) to water wasn’t important, but rather that the aquatic model isn’t based primarily on this evidence. There is a difference. If we were to say look at all these ‘archaic Homo’ sites associated with wet environments, they must have been living in wet environments, you, quite rightly, could say, no, that is just taphonomic bias, they could just as easily have been living in dry environments. What we actually say is, look at the features of Homo sapiens – these suggest that our ancestors once went through a stage where they must have spent considerable time in water (as opposed to dry environments). The fact that the fossils and tools of archaic Homo are associated with wet environments is in agreement with these observations. It, of course, doesn’t prove it.

2) Please be specific about the sites you believe contradict the model that states that archaic Homo dispersed around coasts and via rivers to inland basins, swamps etc. References would be great. Specifically, what we say is heavy-boned ‘archaic’ Homo, or ‘erectine grade’ hominins with long, low braincases (e.g., H. erectus, H. ergaster, H. heidelbergensis), were primarily foragers in and around relatively shallow waters, for slow moving and immobile foods such as shellfish. We therefore PREDICT that their remains will be found around permanent water bodies that contain edible shellfish. If this prediction can be shown to be wrong, then the model is weakened.

3) Marc and I have been very specific about our ideas, and Marc in particular has gone to great lengths to explain what his model is (I’ll admit, though, and perhaps Marc would agree, that his style is not always easy to follow). Here’s a quick summary of how I see Marc’s ideas, for what its worth:

Whereas Morgan (and possibly most other AAT proponents?) see the most aquatic phase (which was never meant to be fully aquatic as far as I understand) as occurring at the time of the Homo-Pan split (e.g., 5–7 Ma), Verhaegen argues that the most aquatic phase, according to the fossil record, was mostly Pleistocene (e.g., when we first see large brains, external nose, loss of climbing abilities, larger body etc.). In Morgan’s model, australopithecines are post-aquatic, which (and I agree with Marc here), is probably wrong, whereas in Verhaegen’s model, australopithecines were most likely inland relatives of coastal hominins (aquarboreal) who dispersed around the coasts and up rivers giving rise to the various Homo populations (Java, Flores, Turkana, Dmanisi, Pakefield). The heavy bones of H. erectus especially, totally unsuitable for endurance running or any long distance terrestrial activity, would have been exactly what we would PREDICT in populations of hominins regularly foraging in relatively shallow waters (especially coastal waters) for immobile, sessile or slow moving foods such as shellfish.
We’ve written numerous papers about this (Marc many more than I), so really there should be no confusion, misunderstanding or misinterpretation for people genuinely interested in finding out more about this alternative aquatic model (to the ‘classic’ or ‘traditional’ Morgan model). And if anyone is confused thay can always ask.

Essentially, the difference between humans and the other primates, in Marc’s model, and this of course follows the basic ideas of Hardy and Morgan, is that we learned to forage efficiently underwater, and adapted to this behaviour, whereas no other primate ever has, to the same extant, as far as we’re aware (not to say other primates can’t swim or even dive, just not as well as humans). The difference between Hardy, Morgan and Verhaegen, as far as I can see, is mainly to do with timing. Note that the part-time underwater foraging model does not negate the idea that terrestrialism may have been a constant and important factor in human evolution.

The smoking gun, by the way, in the fossil record, that proves this littoral model (part-time shallow water foraging in the Pleistocene by ‘erectine grade’ hominins) is the presence of heavy cranial and post-cranial bones in Homo erectus.

For more details please google:

– ‘aquarboreal ancestors’
– ‘econiche homo’ and/or
– ‘pachyosteosclerosis archaic Homo’

In any event, there are plenty of middle stone age and a few early stone age (Acheulean) sites in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa that are a long walk from water. There always is temporary water nearby, but not permanent water. That is also where some of the earliest evidence of prepared platform technology seems to show up. This and other evidence may suggest that the shift from “erectine” to modern homo sapiens was earlier there than other places, so maybe those acheulean handaxe users were no longer following the AAT playbook. So there, I’ve argued against you and for you in the same paragraph!

I am hoping to get a better definition of the AAT that more than two AAT proponents (real ones, like you and Marc, not just guys you find waiting outside the courtroom!) will sign on to that is specific about what is currently being proposed.

I sent Marc an email about this but have not heard back yet.