The Decent of Woman-Elaine Morgan

So when we decided to go to Seattle I had it in mind to read a book on human evolution. One that was recommended to me was The Decent of Woman – The Classic Study of Evolution by Elaine Morgan. I thought ‘hey, it’ll go good with the trip.’

I should have looked harder for it locally.
I should have read the back.
I should have read the table of contents.
I’m out $12.95 or whatever we paid on Amazon.
I’m about 4 chapters into it. I may not proceed, I haven’t decided yet.
I may go back and write all over it and what is wrong with it and send the damned thing to her. (I doubt she’ll care see here.)

The basic premise is that Humans evolved into hairless upright apes because we moved to the water at some point when the earth developed a receding tree line.
In the beginning a few things she was saying didn’t really make sense, such as fuller breasts were developed so babies would have something to hold onto in the waster. Long hair developed so babies could have something to hold on to and not float away. These triggered my “Um, OK” response. I assumed she would elaborate on them later (she may, as I said I haven’t finished reading.) Personally I don’t buy it, I can’t see a baby holding on to hair for any length of time while in the water and not either ending up in a tangled mess, or choking on the hair, or being choked by the hair in a bad floating baby/hair entanglement problem. I have been choked in a similar instance just in the tub. I can’t imagine a baby panicking out in open water being better able to cope. It also seemed obvious that Ms Morgan has also never tried to hold someone else’s wet breast. Either that or she is much more aggressive than I.

Then in the chapter I am currently on she says that humans are the only creatures that have a hymen. This is actually what prompted me to look up the book more throughly. At some point as a teenager I had a discussion with someone (I assume a specific girlfriend as it would make sense since she was really interested in anthropology) The Hymen came up (don’t ask, you’ll regret it) and she had said that many animals have a hymen, such as Chimpanzees and Elephants because of similar reproductive systems. The idea that she missed that was a bit much so I decided to Google her. I put the book down on my desk face first. I now noticed the quips on the back cover.

“Part feminist polemic, part evolutionary bombshell.” -The Guardian

Well, that explains male hating tone of the book :-) I’m sorry, but Male or Female, that kind of crap writing has no place in a modern scientific book.

“Elaine Morgan was best known as a writer for television until the publication of The Decent of Woman in 1972, which became an international bestseller. She then spent ten years researching human evolution before publishing The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis in 1982. In the years since theAquatic Ape Hypothesis has gone on to win widespread support among scientists.”

Oh shit. It isn’t really a science book.
What the hell am I reading.
Writer for television?
Yup. according to WIKIPEDIA
* Campion two episodes (1989)
* The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981)
* Testament of Youth (adaption of the book) (1979)
* How Green Was My Valley (adaption of the book) (1975)
* Nine episodes of Dr. Finlay’s Casebook (1963-1970)

But what got me was the “She then spent ten years researching human evolution” part.
So she wrote a book on evolution, (well, she is certainly qualified to write a book) THEN did the research. (not well I may add) It then dawned on me what was missing from the book. Sources. No foot notes, or anything. just quotes without a where from. other than the ‘in a article I read somewhere’ type. (maybe she isn’t qualified to write after all) So I decided to search one of the quotes. Oddly when I typed in the quote, the first link wasn’t from the source, but from a whole website devoted to the same thing that I’m bitching about. http://www.aquaticape.org/ Since this person has already devoted a lot of time and bandwidth to this book on his site, and I haven’t finished reading the book yet I will stop here.

So I was all set to be reading a good book on human evolution for my trip to Seattle and ended up with crap. Crap that I can’t decide if I should continue reading or not. It is an easy read :-) if not easy on the digestive system. I may pick it back up after I finish reading Death from the Skies! by Phil Plait. Yes a much better book by a long shot. I mean it has no other choice for one, and the other thing is it starts out with “The universe is trying to kill you”. Gotta love that.