Here's the story we were told: we evolved in the advancing savannahs of africa, hunters, broken into small family tribes, competing with each other for scarce game, a brutish life in which woman survived by securing the protection of powerful males. Males developed pack hunting. Much time was spent in marauding or defending.
And here's the other story:
We lived in a warm climate by the watershore with plenty of fruit vegetables and fish and small game. We lived in abundance. There was no warfare, no straggling and starved hunters fighting over a carcass, only a large and flourishing community of healthy, happy, watershore primates. We lived alot in the water. We began to evolve in the way that dolphins and whales did before us, becoming Aquatic Apes, losing body hair, displacing the glottis, and other anatomical transformations which were well in gear, when earth changes disrupted the sheltered area we lived in (Afar triangle c. bce 200,000 yrs) and we spread out into the continental worlds.
The northern European weltanschaung is much based on the first version. Spoils to the victor, survival of the fittest, etc.
The other, which lurks in our psyche, and beckons to us in images of freedom and happiness-at play by the sea, on the beach, lolling about our pools, the blue lagoon, this other history may be more useful to us now that population density is forcing us to evolve rapidly what community instincts we have; conflict resolution rather than war, shared social caring, and especially a social compassion and conviviality by which we welcome each other to this shared experience of life on earth.
This second story is known as The Aquatic Ape Theory, and it is gaining some grudging support, as findings come in from many fields.
Elaine Morgan has authored 2 books on the subject with much interesting and insightful thought.
The Scars of Evolution, Elaine Morgan,
The Aquatic Ape Theory- Elaine Morgan 1997
Related:
Web posted at: 10:36 a.m. EDT (1436 GMT) 11/7/97
LONDON (AP) -- DNA from a Neanderthal skeleton is
giving powerful backing to the theory that all
humanity descended from an "African Eve" about
100,000 to 200,000 years ago -- and that
Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end.
MORE on Neanderthal
AAT at Exotica
Letter:
I noticed, while on the coast of New South Wales last year, relaxing in the tide pools
warmed in the sun, that if I fell asleep while floating on my back (arms
back over the head,) that while my body would rise and sink with each in an out
breath, it was possible- by completely relaxing- to be in such a position
that even on the full relaxed outbreath, still my nose, though only my
nose, would be out of the water. (On inbreath, rising up , the face
emerges).
So I found an evolutionary imperitive for the length and angle of my
personal proboscis, which heretofore had eluded me!
Yours,
Peter S. Hillmen