Aquatic Ape Fact or Fiction
In Valkenburg, in the hilly southern part of the Netherlands, above limestone caves in which fossils like the Mosasaurus bear witness to a former marine environment, a conference, organised by the European Sociobiological Society and the Dutch Association of Physical Anthropology, was held in August 1987. Its aim was to evaluate the pros and cons of Sir Alister Hardy‘s daring idea about the Aquatic Ape, a presumed early ancestor of humans.
So begins the published book “Aquatic Ape Fact or Fiction” which remains the only serious academic work to properly evaluate the AAH in a serious and scientific way. (The other paper which is often cited as the AAH-killer is John Langdon’s 1997 JHE paper about ‘Umbrella hypotheses and parsimony.’) 22 participants went to the Dutch town of Valkenburg to try to come up with some kind of a official statement about the theory.
Here’s a link to a set of pages I wrote summarising key points of the symposium.
And here are links to PDFs of the chapters themselves…