The scars of evolution - 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. 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? 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.