Elaine Morgan - The Descent of Woman

Elaine Morgan

Why do humans differ in so many ways from other primates?

What do these differences tell us about human evolution?

The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is Elaine Morgans definitive summation of the theory, where she asks her readers to consider the only evolutionary hypothesis that explains our anatomical anomalies:

Why, unlike other primates, are we naked and covered with fat? The only other mammals with these features are whales, seals and pachyderms.

Why do we have a descended larynx? Why are we able to alter our rate of breathing? Chimpanzees cannot do this, but walruses can.

A revelatory read for anyone interested in human origins.

BBC Wildlife

The answers, Elaine Morgan argues, rewrite human history and evolution. They point to one inescapable conclusion: millions of years ago our ancestors were trapped in a semiaquatic environment. This readable and meticulously argued book forces scientists to question long-held theories of human evolution, which now seem seriously flawed.

Part feminist polemic, part evolutionary bombshell.

The Guardian

What our bodies tell us about human origins

Elaine Morgan

In this lively and controversial book Elaine Morgan presents a challenging interpretation to the question of human evolution. With brilliant logic she argues that our hominid ancestors began to evolve in response to an aquatic environment.

Grippingly well written, argued clearly and with enormous intelligence Morgan outlines the various evolutionary arguments concerning the homo sapiens body and brilliantly demolishes 150 years of woolly theory.

Literary Review

Millions of years ago something happened that caused our ancestors to walk on two legs, to lose their fur, to develop larger brains and learn how to speak. Elaine Morgan discovers what this event was by studying the many incongruous flaws in the physiological make-up of humans. The human body is liable to suffer from obesity, lower back pain and acne. In support of her aquatic ape hypothesis she points out the flaws in our physiological make-up: the difficulties of erect bipedalism, our hairlessness and fat-layers, our preference for face to face sex and the way we breathe. Are these flaws a record of the history of the species, the scars of evolution that are clues to earlier stages of evolution? Morgan establishes the origins of the evolutionary path that separated humans from other animals and questions the theories currently accepted by science. Did our ancestors adapt to an aquatic environment that subsequently dried out?

It was one of the most outrageous, improbable evolutionary ideas ever proposed now the idea is becoming respectable.

The Observer

Elaine Morgan has made the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis a plausible alternative to conventional theories of evolution and in The Scars of Evolution she brings a real understanding of who humans are and where they came from.

Copyright 1972, 1985 by Elaine Morgan

The right of Elaine Morgan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 1972 by Souvenir Press Ltd,
43 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3PA

Revised Edition 1985

Reissued in paperback 1989
Reprinted 1992
Reprinted 1996
Reprinted 1998
Reprinted 2001
Reprinted 2006 (twice)
Reprinted 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner.

ISBN 978 0 285 62700 0

Printed and bound in Germany by Bercker, Kevelaer

The quotations from Sir Alister Hardy and Desmond Morris, appearing on pages 276 and 277, are taken from the script of the documentary film The Water Babies by kind permission of Golden Dolphin Productions Ltd.

According to the Book of Genesis, God first created man. Woman was not only an afterthought, but an amenity. For close on two thousand years this holy scripture was believed to justify her subordination and explain her inferiority; for even as a copy she was not a very good copy. There were differences. She was not one of His best efforts.

There is a line in an old folk song that runs: I called my donkey a horse gone wonky. Throughout most of the literature dealing with the differences between the sexes there runs a subtle underlying assumption that woman is a man gone wonky; that woman is a distorted version of the original blueprint; that they are the norm, and we are the deviation.

It might have been expected that when Darwin came along and wrote an entirely different account of The Descent of Man, this assumption would have been eradicated, for Darwin didnt believe she was an afterthought: he believed her origin was at least contemporaneous with mans. It should have led to some kind of breakthrough in the relationship between the sexes. But it didnt.

Almost at once men set about the congenial and fascinating task of working out an entirely new set of reasons why woman was manifestly inferior and irreversibly subordinate, and they have been happily engaged on this ever since. Instead of theology they use biology, and ethology, and primatology, but they use them to reach the same conclusions.

They are now prepared to debate the most complex problems of economic reform not in terms of the will of God, but in terms of the sexual behaviour patterns of the cichlid fish; so that if a woman claims equal pay or the right to promotion there is usually an authoritative male thinker around to deliver a brief homily on hormones, and point out that what she secretly intends by this, and what will inevitably result, is the psychological castration of the men in her life.

Now, that may look to us like a stock piece of emotional blackmaillike the woman who whimpers that if Sonny doesnt do as she wants him to do, then Mothers going to have one of her nasty turns. It is not really surprising that most women who are concerned to win themselves a new and better status in society tend to sheer away from the whole subject of biology and origins, and hope that we can ignore all that and concentrate on ensuring that in the future things will be different.

I believe this is a mistake. The legend of the jungle heritage and the evolution of man as a hunting carnivore has taken root in mans mind as firmly as Genesis ever did. He may even genuinely believe that equal pay will do something terrible to his gonads. He has built a beautiful theoretical construction, with himself on the top of it, buttressed with a formidable array of scientifically authenticated facts. We cannot dispute the facts. We should not attempt to ignore the facts. What I think we can do is to suggest that the currently accepted interpretation of the facts is not the only possible one.