Aquatic Hybrid Ape Hypothesis

• A synthesis of a version of the AAH (Aquatic Ape Hypothesis) and Stringer's Out of Africa II.

• Stresses littoral (coastal), riverside and/or Lakeside habitats and that human ancestors need not have ever spent very long in water. No great aquatic phase is needed or postulated.

• Aims to hybridise as much of the existing evidence as possible, if necessary merely reinterpreting it. (e.g. Fossil evidence of hominids in arid zones in Africa may paradoxically indicate a greater dependence on water - not less.)

• Attempts to explain human chromosome reduction from 48 to 46 and rapid evolution of Homo sapiens since recent proposed speciation event as a result of a hybridisation of two semi-aquatic hominids: One marine and one fresh water.

• It is proposed that an estuarine hybrid zone was the original habitat of H. sapiens and after language evolved there humans out-competed all other hominids around the world and could not interbreed with them due to karyotypic incompatibility.

savannah origin for humans. It is my view that both sides of this  divide have something to offer and the AHAH is deliberately inclusive of elements of both.
There are many such contradictory ideas that can be moulded together as unifying theories with a bit of thought.
Take for example the debate about the model of locomotion of Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis). Two opposing views seem to have emerged: One (championed by Crompton and others) that she walked like a man the other (promoted by Berge and others) that she waddled like an ape in a bent-hip bent-knee (BHBK) mode. Crompton has claimed that BHBK would have been impossible from a thermoregulatory point of view,  Berge that a fully upright posture would not have been stable enough. However, both models assume that she was either terrestrial, arboreal or a bit of both. However if we, question that assumption and, instead, assume that she waded in water both objections disappear. Another long running dispute that the AHAH might ultimately even pour some oil over is that between Richard Dawkins and the late Steven J Gould.

I was taught many techniques and methodologies that seemed to be just as applicable to the AAH and certainly did not argue against it, as seemed to have been assumed. Consequently the model is built upon lines which are deliberately predictive in such a way that they can be tested objectively.
Secondly, the model has been constructed so as to be as inclusive as possible of existing orthodox  theories and fossil evidence. It consequently has a strong timeline -  based on  the increasingly accepted 'Out of Africa II' theory and is based very much on neo-Darwinian natural selection theory, drawing much of it's thinking from the work of Richard Dawkins.

A hybrid, not a fudge
The model is thus an attempt to draw together the best strands of existing models as far as it is possible to do so. It does this not as some kind of 'politically correct' fudge - so as to try to appease critics but in the logical pursuit of pieces of evidence which suggest that supposedly contradictory models might actually be more complementary than we have been led to believe.
Along similar lines, assumptions made in various models are questioned to see if consequently contradictory models might actually be complementary if the assumption in question were false.

Science, and particularly it seems, anthropology is full of such competing and contradictory theories. My philosophy has been that so much intelligent thought cannot be wrong.

Natural Selection and Substrate Driven Evolution
An example where a re-interpretation of a good theory is sought after is Aeillo & Wheeler's expensive tissue hypothesis. They suggests that the driving force of the human's large brain was a kind of positive feedback loop with high energy food needing to be sought by an ever increasing brain but being achieved by ever-increasing levels of intelligence and sophisticated hunting methods. It  is, in my opinion, a very plausible notion - but what if it was catching fish and not hunting for meat that was the driver?
This kind of idea is very similar to the thinking of people like Michael Crawford who proposes a complementary mechanism to Darwinian natural selection called "plastic heredity" where nutrition acts as a driving force for evolution. The AHAH is consistent with that idea too.

Verhaegen and PAs
Marc Verhaegen and his views are looked upon as rather extreme by many traditional paleoanthropologists (PAs) and he has been similarly quite dismissive of those who have promoted a 

Gould has been amongst those criticised by Dawkins (and especially other pure neo-Darwinists like Daniel Dennett) for apparently claiming that evolution often works in distinct leaps. Dawkins has suggested that this is only a matter of geological timescale. So called 'evolution by jerks' is only rapid when considered over a very long timescale.
However there is another, long overlooked, mechanism in evolution that is consistent with Dawkins' purest selfish gene model which would provide such 'saltatory' leaps - especially those often proposed to account for humans' amazingly rapid recent evolution..
This is where the AHAH gets the extra 'H' from - hybridization.

The AHAH is admittedly a "just so" story. How could it be anything else? I claim that as a story it fits the fossil and anatomical evidence better than any other currently promoted and I am committed to revise it as and when new evidence emerges.