The aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH), also referred to as aquatic ape theory (AAT) or the waterside hypothesis of human evolution, postulates that the ancestors of modern humans took a divergent evolutionary pathway from the other great apes by becoming adapted to a more aquatic habitat.[1] While the hypothesis has some popularity with the lay public, it is generally ignored or classified as pseudoscience by anthropologists.[2][3][4]
The theory developed before major discoveries of ancient hominin fossils in East Africa.[5][6] The hypothesis was initially proposed by the English marine biologist Alister Hardy in 1960, who argued that a branch of apes was forced by competition over terrestrial habitats to hunt for food such as shellfish on the coast and seabed, leading to adaptations that explained distinctive characteristics of modern humans such as functional hairlessness and bipedalism.[7] The popular science writer Elaine Morgan supported this hypothesis in her 1972 book The Descent of Woman. In it, she contrasted the theory with zoologist and ethnologist Desmond Morris's theories of sexuality, which she believed to be rooted in sexism.[8]
Anthropologists do not take the hypothesis seriously: John Langdon characterized it as an "umbrella hypothesis" (a hypothesis that tries to explain many separate traits of humans as a result of a single adaptive pressure) that was not consistent with the fossil record, and said that its claim that it was simpler and therefore more likely to be true than traditional explanations of human evolution was not true.[9] According to anthropologist John Hawkes, the AAH is not consistent with the fossil record. Traits that the hypothesis tries to explain evolved at vastly different times, and distributions of soft tissue the hypothesis alleges are unique to humans are common among other primates.[5]
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