Holy Hominid, Batman!
There have been several articles on subjects anthropological that have penetrated the mainstream press of late. Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that Australian anthropologists had discovered "...a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 13,000 years ago on an Indonesian island." There've also been several items on the ongoing matter concerning the first human occupants of the Americas.
And then in today's LA Times, I see that researchers at Harvard and the University of Utah are theorizing that it is our species' ability to run long distances that set us apart from the other great apes of Africa and led us to developing our modern anatomies. This notion smacks up against the largely discredited aquatic ape theory, first espoused by Alistair Hardy, and then teased out in a series of books by anthropological laywoman and writer Elaine Morgan. I like the aquatic ape theory. It's sexy. It makes for good television on the Discovery Channel. I also like the way it makes "serious" anthropologists whirl around in a dervish-like frenzy of superiority and condescension.
I haven't been keeping up very well with the big anthropological controversy in the last few years, though it appears to me, through various anecdotal sound bites, that biogeneticists and the large majority of anthropologists have further buttressed their "Out of Africa" theory with yet more mitochondrial, DNA, and fossil evidence. Maybe Milford Wolpoff is still holding strong to his multiregional hypothesis, but I wouldn't know. The idea, though, that seems to have all the traction these days is one that I will dub the "Immaculate Cerebrum Flogging" theory. The proponents of this set of ideas, while controversial to a large segment of the scientific community, have succeeded in convincing a great many laypeople that the real story of human origins is quite a bit different than the narrative delivered by the academics. They say that all evidence points to there being an original guy who, with the kindly help of his homely girlfriend--she, by the way, was created out of his extracted rib-- propagated the species in rabbit-like fashion, despite O.G. girl's bearing only two male children, at a far more recent time than the anthropologists would generally put it. It's a truly revolutionary theory, and only time will tell if it will be accepted, grudgingly, by the scientific community at large.
For my part, I've been working on a pet theory of my own that posits that all organic life started out as spores that were germinating in the folds of fat in Frank Black's skin and spontaneously ejaculated into mastigophora, labyrinthomorpha, Ascetospora, and all other types of protozoan life, culminating finally, after a long lunch or two, in the highly evolved hominids that we are today.
And then in today's LA Times, I see that researchers at Harvard and the University of Utah are theorizing that it is our species' ability to run long distances that set us apart from the other great apes of Africa and led us to developing our modern anatomies. This notion smacks up against the largely discredited aquatic ape theory, first espoused by Alistair Hardy, and then teased out in a series of books by anthropological laywoman and writer Elaine Morgan. I like the aquatic ape theory. It's sexy. It makes for good television on the Discovery Channel. I also like the way it makes "serious" anthropologists whirl around in a dervish-like frenzy of superiority and condescension.
I haven't been keeping up very well with the big anthropological controversy in the last few years, though it appears to me, through various anecdotal sound bites, that biogeneticists and the large majority of anthropologists have further buttressed their "Out of Africa" theory with yet more mitochondrial, DNA, and fossil evidence. Maybe Milford Wolpoff is still holding strong to his multiregional hypothesis, but I wouldn't know. The idea, though, that seems to have all the traction these days is one that I will dub the "Immaculate Cerebrum Flogging" theory. The proponents of this set of ideas, while controversial to a large segment of the scientific community, have succeeded in convincing a great many laypeople that the real story of human origins is quite a bit different than the narrative delivered by the academics. They say that all evidence points to there being an original guy who, with the kindly help of his homely girlfriend--she, by the way, was created out of his extracted rib-- propagated the species in rabbit-like fashion, despite O.G. girl's bearing only two male children, at a far more recent time than the anthropologists would generally put it. It's a truly revolutionary theory, and only time will tell if it will be accepted, grudgingly, by the scientific community at large.
For my part, I've been working on a pet theory of my own that posits that all organic life started out as spores that were germinating in the folds of fat in Frank Black's skin and spontaneously ejaculated into mastigophora, labyrinthomorpha, Ascetospora, and all other types of protozoan life, culminating finally, after a long lunch or two, in the highly evolved hominids that we are today.
posted by captionjockey at 12:58 PM
