Bad backs - we are from the great ape family and have evolved to walk uprright. This transition isn't completely seamless and has its consequences, particularly as we grow older or perform manual labor for a number of years. Before modern medicine humans lived much shorter lives. We aren't built to last as long as we do now.

Childbirth - we have evolved to be a less physically imposing ape with smaller muscle mass and smaller skeletal structure while at the same time increasing our cranium's grey matter. This combined with smaller hips causes great risks during childbirth but not enough to cause significant population dips and besides, we have basically circumvented this problem via C-sections with modern medicine.

Sunburn - there are untouched Aboriginal and African tribes that do just fine in the sun all day. Most of modern society, through many generations, have become less resistant to UV rays because we have used clothing for so long (thousands and thousands of years).

We don't like it here - that's a highly subjective assumption. Some of us DO like it here. However, many Behavioral Scientists and Psychologists acknowledge that our artificially created surroundings can cause depression as we are not originally adapted to this environment. It's the reason some people feel so connected to the Earth when they go camping, hiking etc.

Look, the author is basically trying to make an argument for Panspermia. It's totally possible as we know some microbial life can survive the vacuum of space and reentry into our atmosphere. Until more concrete evidence can be provided then it's speculation. Although it is pretty interesting.

edit: punctuation. My background is science, not grammar

This post was edited on 6/21/16 at 9:10 am

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Posted by AlxTgr

Kyre Banorg

Member since Oct 2003

82691 posts

Posted on 6/21/16 at 1:49 pm to brooksbabino

quote:
brooksbabino

Great post.

Have you read about the aquatic ape hypothesis?

quote:

The most widely held theory, still taught in schools and universities, is that we are descended from apes which moved out of the forests onto the grasslands of the open savannah. The distinctly human features are thus supposed to be adaptations to a savannah environment.

In that case, we would expect to find at least some of these adaptations to be paralleled in other savannah mammals. But there is not a single instance of this, not even among species like baboons and vervets, which are descended from forest- dwelling ancestors.

quote:
The Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) offers an alternative scenario. It suggests that when our ancestors moved onto the savannah they were already different from the apes; that nakedness, bipedalism, and other modifications had begun to evolve much earlier, when the ape and human lines first diverged.

AAT points out that most of the "enigmatic" features of human physiology, though rare or even unique among land mammals, are common in aquatic ones. If we postulate that our earliest ancestors had found themselves living for a prolonged period in a flooded, semi-aquatic habitat, most of the unsolved problems become much easier to unravel.

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