Humanity’s Waterbaby Ancestry

The Savanna Theory

Continuing up the evolutionary ladder, we see humanity's future.

1. Why does homo sapiens walk on two legs?
2. Why did they learn to speak?
3. Why have they lost their fur?

The agreed upon selective pressure, flimsy though it was, was that man began to walk upright as he migrated from the trees to the open savanna. The height gained from [bipedal|bipedalism] aided hunting, avoiding predators, with the side-effect being hands that loitered ineffectually at the side. Thankfully, instead of vestigial drumsticks like the T-Rex or a jump down the evolutionary ladder from homo sapiens to homo autoeroticus-constans, we instead picked up a freaking stone axe. We were the new badass stone age-lumberjacks on the scene, deal with it!. Oh, and there was supposedly a bit of art and music somewhere in there too.

In a clear chicken or the egg scenario, the process of doing these new creative activities effected intelligence in the brain, which may have given rise to the ability to speak. But then, how did we do these new creative activities without the necessary intelligence in the first place? Let us pause for a second to scratch our chins. “Hmmm…”

As for he new “always naked” apes on the African scene, savanna doesn’t have much to offer in the way of an explanation. The larger problem with the savanna theory is that it makes sweeping assumptions about humanity based upon a small subset of data from an isolated geography.

The whole “Head to the Savannah, young ape-man” theory arose during a time when humman fossils found in South Africa near grasslands were in the limelight. Anthropologists have of course made many other finds of even older humans living in wooded, wet areas bipedally. The famous Lucy was actually buried next to a lake.

A less well-known theory also exists that offers a different selective pressure as cause to bipedalism, nakedness, and hairlessness. Instead of the grasslands as trait incubator, humanity’s ancestors go back instead to the water from which each mammal was born.

Tenets of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis

• 

  Shaved is the sexy new look this summer.

  Every animal that has become naked and hairless has an aquatic ancestor, even the Rhinoceros and Elephant. The one exception is the Naked Somalian Mole Rat, that lives its life entirely underground.
  

• Bipedalism. All primates have the ability to walk on two legs for a short time, but when they wade through the water they always walk upright. This phenomenon was noted by David Attenborough as well, a supporter of the Aquatic Ape hypothesis.
• Unlike all other primates, human have a subcutaneous fat layer (especially prominent in infants). Other aquatic mammals, such as the whale, possess this same type of fat-layer.
• It is no shape in the way the throat is formed, or particular set of muscles in the tongue that the primate possesses that prevent speech. It is not even intelligence – the gorilla cannot even mimic a couple syllables. Why? The important difference lies in the conscious ability to control ones breath, the fine control of which is unseen among land mammals. The only creatures with this ability are diving animals and birds.
• Our bodies our streamlined. Imagine the infinitesimal splash the Olympic diver creates when they enter the water off of the high dive. Now contrast this with a gorilla in a similar attempt. No matter what incredible level of coordination the primate acquires, that body will always be highly prone to an incredibly comedic splash.

Like a duck to water, a monkey to a banana. So are the days of our lives...

Of course, as with most discussions about the exact cause of a unique evolutionary trait gained hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago, the evidence does not prove causality. We have plenty of physical evidence to support something less unique, such as the return of some land-based mammals to the ocean. The unique traits of humanity, which remain the holy grail of evolutionary study, often are explained by very clever answers to “what if” questions.

Consider come counter-points to the AAT, courtesy of Wikipedia.

• Hairlessness – most aquatic mammals that are comparably sized to humans are not hairless, but have dense, insulating fur and swim very well, with fatty layers beneath the skin.
• Bipedalism – the disadvantages cited for bipedalism within the AAT are often the result of comparing humans to medium, terrestrial quadrupeds, but human evolution never included a period of quadrupedal locomotion.
• Body fat – the subcutaneous fat distribution in humans is more similar to a domesticated animal than an aquatic one, and is nearly identical to that of other primates.

But then, some counter-counter-points.

• Bipedalism out of water causes considerable problems for the back, knees and organs, while water would support the joints and torso and permit breathing.
• A hooded nose, muscular nostril aperture control and the philtrum preventing water from entering the nostrils.
• Vestigial webbing between the fingers

Clearly, in the battle between the Savanna and Aquatic Ape hypotheses there is no clear winner and loser. It may be that the questions that begin with Why… are so enchanting because their difficulty alone greatly increases the satisfaction that an answer brings. But of course, these issues hit so close to home that I secretly believe even the most staunch creationist feels a stirring of curiosity and wonder when new news is brought to light. You know who you are, you crazy bastards!

The Scars of Evolution by Elaine Morgan

http://books.google.com/books?id=JkXvp0eAhAoC&printsec=frontcover

Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html

Exhibit A. The arrangement of food to resemble characters or other items from beloved video game franchises. You will witness in the following an attention to detail that some might call lame. Others will applaud the excellence on display here. For the aforementioned, why don’t you take a look at this… here… Ninja!!

So ninja, it makes your mouth water. Just wait - dehydration will set in (ninja!).

Oh. You’re still here. Right, that wasn’t a ninja but a piece of fruit (the resemblance is uncanny!). To be honest, I don’t have much of an interest in all this, but I was taken in when I stumbled across this bizarre imagery on one of my non-porn related internet excursions (yes, they do in fact, happen).

Which leads us to the question of just why I’m doing this. Do I love video games? Check. How about food? Again, yes. Do I stay awake at night dreaming up ways to combine the two? That’s a negative ghost-rider. Well what then? I find all this rather strange. Maybe I’m just attempting some hipster irony. (Hipster irony, btw, is classified as thinking oneself very droll and witty, while all around you think you’re a giant douche). It’s probably the fact that I have no particular love for this strange trend wherein lies the answer. I enjoy the spectacle of it all. In fact, said explanation can explain away much of the time I spend on the internet.

Control Your Appettite

The console wars, in food form. Not pictured: the Wii. Hahaha, the Wii, what a joke!

Made by an Italian Plumber, Mmmmm

'Sorry Mario, but the Princess is in another cake!' 'What?? Shuttup skank, you ruined my childhood!'

Nihonjin-no Okaasa: The Untold Story

For those of you unfamiliar, the following are examples of bento. This is what a Japanese child might take to school as lunch. As such, they generally kick the ass of any school school lunch you’ve ever had in your life. Tradition dictates that a great attention to detail is as important as the actual food that is used. It’s Japanese, you know, Zen blah blah samurai blah blah tentacle rape. Don’t try to understand it or your fragile Western brain will explode.

Doting Japanese mothers will do anything for their sons (notice how I didn't say children?).

Forget about the fact that I had to make my own lunches even when I was in kindergarten. Imagine opening up one of these babies on an American schoolyard. You as child: “Cool, huh? My mommy made this for me.” Bully:”Yeah, well I made you a knuckle sandwich!”. The American bully’s pithy remarks are often overlooked.

And to anyone who says this is a small, unique occurrence, let me show you a few more. There are plenty of these things spread over the internet.

OK, the Bioshock one is pretty damn cool.

What, you want more? These aren’t even video game related (still crazy though).

Now for the challenge. Are my readers crazier than me? Do you like to play with your food? It doesn’t have to be about video games, you could turn your food into any easily recognizable piece of pop culture. If you do, be sure to add it to the comments for the rest of us to see. I leave you with what’s become a bit of a trend lately – putting one’s franchise into the Last Supper.

House, Battlestar Galactica, South Park; it’s almost a prerequisite that you put yourself into the Last Supper if you want to be popular. Oh well, they’re usually more interesting than the original one (and no, that’s not a chick sitting next to Jesus and I don’t care how many “V”s you see.)

If I hear the WWW being compared to the Wild West one more time, I’m gonna have the urge to punch a baby (there aren’t any babies in the audience, are there?). Sure, the modern web is a wild and crazy place. Now, frankly, I think this is awesome, but it begs the question. How does a reputable company or service provider make a name for themselves in such a lawless world?

You can be sure that no matter how much time you spend developing the perfect site, following every rule in the book of SEO and standards compliance, rest assured, someone will either be doing it better, or soon will be. For the vast majority of the web (forget about eBay for a second, such a behemoth is the exception) you succeed by doing one or two things, and doing them extremely well. This focus is best split into two areas.

The First Focus

First, of course, is the “what” of your website. What does your website offer? Why is it even on the web?

The Second Focus

Second, is the design and functionality of your site. Something within this vast world of possibilities must stand out. If you have a great idea and fail here, the web might not be the arena for you.

If you’re lucky, you can get by focusing on one or the other, but who wants to bet on luck to succeed? An example site with such a singular focus would be Craigslist. Craigslist has zero design going for it. Functionality? Forget about it; the site could be transported back five, maybe ten years and still function exactly the same. Besides simplicity, Craigslist is awesome because it provides a service that everyone needs, and yes, it’s free. But forget about them. The following is a list of sites that are doing it right on both fronts.

The Shining Examples

Netflix

The first site that came to mind when I sat down to write this post was Netflix. Sure, providing movies through the mail is a fantastic idea, Netflix came to the table with a stacked deck, but they didn’t stop there. Netflix realized that people love to watch movies, but they don’t always know just which movies to watch. The problem Netflix faced was how to provide their users with the movies that they love. But just how is a website supposed to know that? Based on your previous rankings of films you’ve seen, Netflix utilizes a sophisticated algorithm to deliver just that. And they are constantly improving it. Or, with the Netflix Prize, they’ve come up with an innovative way to not just have a great algorithm, but to have the best.

And talk about great design. The interface is clean and intuitive (if you don’t have a membership, you’re going to miss most everything unfortunately). Everything is just where you expect it to be to the point that the interface becomes unnoticed, just as a good user interface should be. It gets you to where you want to be.

Facebook

I have to mention the website that is popular enough these days to induce groans just by being mentioned. (That’s when you know you’ve really made it. Pissing off hipsters.) In almost no time, Facebook can connect you with just about everyone you’ve ever know in your life. That’s a small exaggeration, but not by much.

What I really admire about Facebook, as a front-end developer myself, is just how well they use JavaScript to enhance the user experience, with modal windows that appear when necessary, and just as quickly fade to get out of your way. Their library is fast, and they’ve designed it in the right way so it plays nice with the outside world, meaning, it doesn’t take much for outside developer’s to integrate their own work.

iGoogle

iGoogle has been my start page of choice for some time now. It is more than just a portal. At any time I can open up my browser, quickly scan iGoogle, and have an accurate, if summary, picture of all that is going on in the web. At least, the parts that I care about. iGoogle is fully customizable down to the overall theme you choose to display your widgets in. Mix and match which widgets you want to show, and then customize each one of those to fit you perfectly.

Service? Check. Functionality? Forget about it. Design? Your choice. It looks as good as you want it to, with just a couple clicks. I don’t want to give too much away, I want you to go and play with it. You’ll never turn back.

Mozilla Dev

There are countless technical resources for the developer, some of which are much more exhaustive than Mozilla Dev. But really, who wants to wade through all that when one is looking for a quick answer and needs to get back to work? It is the combination of both the service and the design of the site that makes it such a success. As a developer, I can find the JavaScript reference I am looking for, load up the page, and find the answer I need without barely even reading. A quick scan will do it. Compare this to MSDN.

Here is a common JavaScript function for a popup, window.open. Let’s compare the two reference sites. Here is Mozilla Dev and here is MSDN. The clean separation on Mozilla, combined with clear headers, allows the reader to find answers right away. You have to pore over material on MSDN, deciphering tiny italics in a serif font (code in a serif font?? really??). Oh, and just as the final nail in the casket, Mozilla has real world examples and a beautiful graphic that clearly describes what each parameter does. This all comes as no surprise for anyone who’s ever tried to debug code in Internet Explorer. Microsoft would rather JavaScript remained some arcane secret, and will only taunt you with cryptic error messages if your code breaks.

One Less-than-Stellar Example

Pandora

I can hear you screaming already. “What?! Pandora is awesome!” I know, I love it too. It has the first focus down perfectly. However, in the long run I think Pandora will come up short against rival services like last.fm, and others, fast emerging. First of all, I am generally not a fan of a Flash website. It’s a great format for playing movies in, and many designer’s websites look gorgeous in Flash, but for utility it is sorely lacking.

Don’t expect your scroll-wheel to work. Want to tab to the next input field? I don’t think so. And if we look under the hood we get to read some strange code.

function setPromotionalTickerLink(url) { // do nothing. (but we're leaving this function here because legacy ads call it.) }

// jh.9.28.2009 - redirect homepage requests from host "pandora.com" to "www.pandora.com" // required for js->tuner communication, which presently expects same host (down to the subdomain) if (document.location.href.indexOf("//pandora.com") != -1) { document.location.href = document.location.href.replace(/\/\/pandora.com/, "//www.pandora.com"); }