Origin of the human species  from Peoples, Drugs and Serpents, D.Anton, Piriguazú Ediciones

The seashore

Max Planck, the famous German scientist and Nobel laureate, once said:

“A new scientific truth does not triumph convincing its opponents, but rather due to the natural death of the older generation, it is replaced by a new one that has become familiar with the new theory or belief.”.

The technological-industrial paradigm of today’s world is no exception. After three centuries it is destined to succumb under the weight of its own contradictions.

Its domain has caused unprecedented destruction of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and has developed several generations of disoriented women and men lacking roots or references.

The human species is not larger, or more capable, even more complex than the others that make up the planet. Nor it is very different.  Humans shares with other animals and plants much of their genetic code, and have evolved to what they are presently through a pattern similar to many other animals.

The starting point for an analysis of our species should be understanding that we are not “superior” to any other.

We are not the top of natural evolution, far from it.

We can certainly say that, in a sense, we are “special”, but so are dolphins, palm trees or flatworms.

Each of these organisms live their lives, develops their own metabolism with the resources at their disposal, and do their  best to survive through their descendants.

The “special”, and not better, human traits, are the result of an old history.

About 5 or 6 million years ago, some ancient primates, probably pf arboreal origin, evolved, became bipedal, lost their body fur, developed a large brain and created sophisticated cultures based on the generation and interpretation of symbols. 

To produce these super-brained culture, they managed to prolong the infant stage of their offspring. Human babies take a long time to grow. For several years, they remain very vulnerable, totally unable to defend themselves. This children’s stage is the longest among all known mammals.

The end result this long period of human growth during childhood is an adult who is not really very different from adults of other species. Females and males carry out the normal physiological functions of the species, feed and metabolize plant and animal tissues, breathe oxygen from the air, put great efforts to protect their children, and finally they die and degrade like other plants and animals.

And here we are. 

Trying to hide our essence and roots. 

Wearing clothes that attempt to hide (unsuccessfully) our bodies, making us believe that we are not animals, destroying the same nature  which sustains us, polluting the water where we were born, and raising our offspring in large impersonal concrete and metal buildings.

  

Water Primates

The biblical patriarchal paradigm about the origin of human species waas base on years of misinformation and religious authoritarianism had created an uncritical culture who resisted hard for many centuries.

However, a couple of centuries ago a new technological and industrial culture succeeded dismantling the old religious model. It did it, gradually but surely,  and finally supplanted it.

The new paradigm was also deeply authoritarian. A new dogma developed. Reductionist approaches to science, contempt for ancient beliefs, profit-based and globalized economic systems gave rise to a presumtuous view of nature as a “resource” to be utilized and exploited.   The “priests” of the technological-industrial aristocracy defined their dogmas and once they were generally imposed they dug in to defend them by all available means. 

Those who did not agree with the technological-industrial supporting theories were considered heretical. They were ignored, ridiculed, and finally excommunicated and excluded from their academic positions or the distribution of research funds.

The theory of human evolution, a key element of the reigning scientific paradigm, is no exception..

Several decades ago. scientific authorities decreed that the species originated in African savannas. To sustain this theory there were numerous arguments, including several hundred fossil bone fragments and some tools.

The “savanna” origin of human primates became an article of faith.

Virtually no one dared to contradict it. Until 1930 when an English biologist Allister Hardy noted some contradictions of the “Theory of the Savannah” and proposed an alternative vision: human beings had developed as such through an amphibious stage of their evolution 1.2 .

In 1960, after almost thirty years of preaching, The New Scientist agreed to publish an article of his entitled: “Was man more aquatic in the past?” (March, 1960, 642-645 dpi.). During twelve years the paper was ignored.

Only in 1972 the concepts of Hardy were taken by a talented Welsh writer. Her name was Elaine Morgan and her work “The Descent of Woman”.

The title was a play on words contradicting the Darwinian famous book called “The Ascent of Man”.

Morgan’s book was completely neglected by the scientific “establishment”. In despite of this disregard, many people payed attention to the idea and the book gradually became a “best seller”.

Ten years after this first book, Ms Morgan published another one on the subject: “The Aquatic Ape” (1982). Then followed “Scars of Evolution” (1990), “The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction” (1991). “The Descent of the Child, 1994) and “The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis” (1997).

All works of Elaine Morgan had great success with the public. Thirty years later it was very hard to ignore the persistent writer, who also became an expert in paleoanthropology.

The arguments of the “Aquatic Ape Theory” were overwhelming.

Humans are very different from savannah animals and, instead, have much affinity with amphibious mammals.

As marine mammals, they have very little body hair, possess 10 times more fat than other primates, and even more at birth.  Unlike ordinary fat in other apes, their fat is subcutaneous belonging to the type called “white fat”. This fat does not provide immediate energy and serves more as thermal insulation and buoyancy (as in aquatic mammals). 

For brain development humans have required and gotten substances found only in fish and shellfish (eg eicosnoic acid).

We discard our inner water through sweat (large number of sweat glands) and salty tears (absent in other primates), we practice frontal sex, such as seals and whales; we can contain breathing for several minutes (which is not true in any other ape), and instinctively we swim at birth.

Moreover, our specific diseases and parasites development require aquatic stages, and bipedalism (which is a typical human feature) is not found in any savanna mammal, or in any other primate. This last trait  is easily explained if we imagine their daily life in the shallow marine or lacunar waters and banks.

Also we must remember that one human anatomical weaknesses is, even today, the backbone, which must support the body weight (and of coourse, inside the water it is much less vulnerable because in the original aquatic conditions weight decreases significantly, and the effort required to keep the body erect is much lower.

Water birth

When we consider the changes of human behaviour and culture that may be necessary in order to adapt to a new aquatic paradigm new approaches may be required.

One of these is the natural birth of human offspring. If the species was originated in water environments, then, that condition should have influenced the modalities of natural childbirth.

This is something that has been known for a long time in some traditional cultures, and is being used successfully in some naturalist circles of contemporary societies.

Many midwives and authors have successfully explored the water birth method. Estelle Meyers, of Australia studied the connection between the birth of humans and dolphins, Jessica Johnson and Michel Odent published: “We are all children of the water”, and the book of Lakshmi Bertram and Michel Odent, “Choosing Waterbirth”, among others, have shown that water birth is not only possible, but in many cases, desirable.

Obviously, it is necessary to create the rights conditions for maximum relaxation. This implies an emotionally cozy, intimate, safe and personal environment. Delivery in warm water pools or bathtubs allows a more harmonious development of the maternal physiological process and above all reduces the trauma experienced by the child at birth.