Aquatic Ape

Modern humans have adapted to practicality every natural environment on earth, their intelligence and use of weapons have made us the predominant animal on the planet.  Yet over 7 million years ago proto-mankind was a small weak creature, who on the savannah would have found it hard to survive and was the prey of most carnivores.  Modern humans only survive on the savannah with the aid of domesticated herds, weapons and agriculture which was not available to early primitive mankind.

Many paleoanthropologiists consider the separation of humans and apes to be approximately 8 million years ago and through mutations this primitive creature evolved to us… Homo-Sapiens. The earliest hominid ancestor was Ardipithecus Ramidus and dated to have lived 4.4 million years ago (mya) discovered in Ethiopia in 1984 when a partial bone was found by a college student and a team of anthropologists from the University of California lead by Tim D White excavated the site. A Ramidus was classified as being in the Homid genus Australopithecus (Southern Ape) the most famous being “Lucy”. 3.2 million years old Lucy was discovered by a team lead by the paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and his team, it appears that when Johanson’s team were back in camp examining their finds the Beatles hit record “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” was playing in the background so the nickname Lucy stuck.

Darwins Theory, which should no longer be called a theory, it is fact, as Newton’s research is now referred to as Newton’s Law so Darwin’s analysis of life forms should be Darwin’ Laws, like other scientific laws they are tweaked and amended as scientific knowledge advances. Charles Darwin and one of his less famous contemporaries Alfred Wallace proposed that animals, and indeed plants, evolved into different species, many remaining in the same genus such as the Panthera genus of lions tigers and leopards are all able to interbreed but looking very different to each other. Darwin’s famous finches living in the isolated Galapagos Islands over 600 miles from the nearest land mass of Ecuador have developed different shaped beaks depending on the food source available on their particular island.

The biblical quotation seems to have been fulfilled for some creatures , particularly Homo-Sapiens. One of the main desires for most creatures is a ready supply of food, even reproduction relies on well fed and fit parents and when a constant food source is secured one holds on to that source, that is until a more powerful creature, tribe, clan, pride, pack decide to take over your territory and food source, then your only course is to move on to find a new source, usually from someone who is even weaker than you or your group. It is instinctive of most creatures do not want to move from their home territory, it is only the constant search for food that drives the weaker groups to move on. This is particular true with primates, if they have a constant supply of food in their home territory and the mutations in their bodies are benign they will remain as a distinct species, chimps will remain as chimps, gorillas will remain as gorillas but the weakest primate, protohumans were the smallest and weakest primate and therefore on the constant move as nomads, living in one area for one or two seasons before moving on. Earliest human ancestors, Homo Erectus, Australopithecus and other hominins were only about 3ft 6 inches tall, the largest, Neanderthals, were not much over 4 ft. , no match for big cats and carnivores of the savannah or forests. So how did they survive?

Pigs and hippopotamuses resemble a human body in many ways, including body fat distribution, cover of hair and size of many internal organs.  For this reason pigs are used for medical research, and are known as a Translational Research Model.  If something works in a pig it has a higher possibility of working in a human.  These similarities do not mean that we are closely related to pigs.  Modern comparison of DNA sequences of different mammals show that we are most closely related to mice than we are to pigs, we are only have similarity to pigs because of Convergent Evolution.

Soft body tissues do not fossilise, it is very likely that any organism on Earth will be either eaten by scavengers or decomposed by microorganisms after it dies. Internal organs decompose more quickly when they are in contact with oxygen. Most environments exposed to the open air and are in contact with plenty of oxygen, so the soft tissues of dead organisms, whether plants or animals, decay quickly. Many, if not most, underwater environments also have a lot of oxygen, since water can dissolve oxygen from the atmosphere.  The hard parts of organisms, such as bones, shells, and teeth have a better chance of becoming fossils than do softer parts. One reason for this is that scavengers generally do not eat these parts. Hard parts also decay more slowly than soft parts, giving more time for them to be buried.

So how did humans become bipedal?  As we have seen, if a species obtains a niche in its environment that has a constant supply of food there is not any need to migrate unless it is invaded by a more aggressive species. However, if a species has to migrate the creature will have to adapt to its new environment.  Occasional mutations are happening to all creatures and if they are harmful that creature will become extinct, usually in one generation, but if the mutation is helpful the creature will prosper as a sub species like giraffes and okapis or sea otters and river otters.

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