The Passionate Ape

A milestone book - it traces the roots of mankind on this planet through plausible conjecture based on experience and evidence. It has a lot of parallels with Elaine Morgan's work on the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, but journeys more into the psychological ramifications of a semi-aquatic existence, rather than sticking to plain physiology. One of the most wonderful revelations in this tome, comes towards the end of the book, where Craig talks about the size of our brain as compared with a chimp's, and how the difference is largely down to the fatty nature of our brain cells. Chimp's brain cells are more densely packed than ours. There was an evolutionary trade-off between the size of our heads, the diameter of the stretched womb opening for childbirth, and the buoyancy of our heads when we slept in the sea. I have yet to see the report of this fascinating fact elsewhere and it may be due to the consequences of accepting that we aren't that much more intelligent than other ape species anyway. We just have fat brains that float in water better! There are many such revelations in this book - some easier to accept than others. Neoteny and how it affected human development psychologically, is thoroughly discussed and I learnt an awful lot from this section. Sections on how, when we were in the water, males had to woo females differently, since physical prowess is much more difficult to prove when up to your necks in water and it is difficult to move quickly. Males evolved singing and poetry as intellectual tools for charming the female into mating. Male intelligence grew as a result. We came back onto land, and wooing resorted to physical shows of aggression and dominance. Males became less intelligent than the females they were "chatting up". And, hey presto, modern society! While in water, the face plays the most important visual stimulus for pair bonding, and hence our fascination with appearance. This is such a revelatory book, one is bound to read it repeatedly over one's life. It gives such a perspective on humankind that it empowers the reader with insights that no other book on human development has done in the past. There was even a dedicated website for this book and discussions about it on a forum at http://www.passionateape.com - but, alas it is no longer there.