Whether swimming with sharks or acting as a body double, these women were made for the water, writes Shelley Seid
Is it possible that we evolved not from the ancestors of chimps and baboons but from apes who spent much of their time in an aquatic environment?
Elaine Morgan thinks so. She has written six books and countless papers on the subject and mainstream palaeontologists have taken her seriously enough to write a host more in response, many hotly disputing what has become known as the aquatic ape hypothesis. Simply put, unlike today's apes we humans are physically adapted to spending time in water.
Morgan, 90, has a masters from Oxford, two university fellowships, one honorary doctorate, and last year was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). She posits that our lack of body hair, our capacity to walk upright, our voluntary breath control and ability to mate face to face like other aquatic mammals mean we were originally naked apes living off a sea shore. And, taking the theory a step further, would it then be fanciful to attribute our attraction to water to a collective unconscious? Is our desire to be in water a primal urge?
