And before that...

So, allright, I did some lengthy link following on Aquatic Ape Theory last night after I wrote that entry, which I hadn't done in a while, and I did find some new stuff.

1) Apparently, a lot of scientists are claiming that Elaine Morgan tends to conjure up straw men theories and then bat them down with AAT (or AAH, for hypothesis, as it is probably more accurately called). They seemed to particularly complain that the Savannah Theory was Morgan's favorite straw man. Hello? Did you go to grade school, high school, or college? Did you ever watch or read anything in popular media dicussing evolution? I'm pretty sure the Savannah Theory was critically "accepted" at some point in time. If it's not now, FABULOUS. What's the new accepted theory? And could someone please fucking notify the Discovery Channel and US Department of Education?

2) I do see some of Morgan's straw theory stuff in action though, and there is a really interesting sociological angle to this whole debate. On the one hand, you've got this woman with no doctorate and with a pretty far out theory, taking it directly to the masses, who "have read some stuff about evolution," making what might just be deceptively well-crafted arguments, and totally engaging the scientific community in a rumble that they didn't ask to be invited to. Then she builds this rabid fanbase (chen included) who start invading usenet anthropology boards (i only lurked, i promise), taking their "little bit of knowledge" and pronouncing themselves correct over people who have dedicated their lives to answering these questions, and tying the AAH into atlantis, and mermaids, and what have you. She's, pretty deliberately it seems, built herself a rebel army.

On the other hand you've got this community of scientists who take the fact that there is a rebel army behind this idea to mean that the whole hypothesis is clearly incorrect. Early on, the vast vast vast majority of responses to questions about AAH were something along the lines of "fucking amateur." To which the obvious response is, "really? sorry! School me then!" To which a long litany of refutations should be presented, at which point many rebels will continue yapping and can thereafter be ignored, but some rebels will back off and be like "doh! my bad."

3) I finally found a page of counterarguments. However, it's pretty uncompelling. First of all, it picks a select few physiological characteristics from Morgan's list of affected characteristics and deals only with them. Second of all, "Fat" (by which I suppose he means subcutaneous fat) is not even linked. Third of all, of the arguments I read, very few contained solid refutations; the rest heatedly argued that there could be other explanations for the characteristics, or that there were other landdwelling animals that shared those characteristics. No fucking duh. [Funny side note: these people seem to love to use the Elephant as the shining example of land-dwelling hairless, hymen-having Non-Aquatic mammals. Please. The fucking things have, like, flesh snorkels.] Morgan's point in general is the the AAH is the most elegant of the evolutionary theories. There are many theories that could explain many characteristics, but AAH explains many, many, many characteristics simultaneously, some of which were previously unexplained or underexplained.

Of the actual evidential refutations, one was totally uncompelling (see diving... humans inhale on hitting water, other aquatic mammals exhale) and the other was pretty good (taking to the water to escape predators was a pretty bad idea given the existence of crocodiles). Neither allowed me to write off the entire hypothesis as worthless though.

There were two other refutation pages linked to frequently that have since been taken down, and I'm dying to read them. One had this tantalizing quote: ""There are very good reasons why this theory is dismissed by almost all biologists. It's a classic example of why a little knowledge about evolution can be a very dangerous thing. -- U. Toronto Evolution page." I WANT TO READ THAT SO BAD. I know a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, so I'm really really curious to see what the supporting evidence is on that statement with regard to AAH.. but the page is gone. Also gone is Jim Moore's page, frequently linked to, that is supposed to convincingly bring the hypothesis to its knees.

Anyway, i just didn't want to leave the whole subject on that kind of "neato theory about monkeys in the water" note. I am totally willing to be shot down, I hate to be lied to or misled by stupid theories, but nothing I've read on "The Net" has satisfactorily shot this hypothesis down yet. Maybe it's not on the net (omg, is that possible?); so if you know of extra-net resources for AAH counterarguments, let me know.