We’re in the car, Sarah and I, on a drive from somewhere to somewhere else. “Honey,” I say, “don’t you just love the Aquatic Ape theory?” Sarah is quiet for a moment. I see an eye twitch and white knuckles grip the steering wheel. My beloved wife, an archaeologist with her Masters in Cultural Heritage, is as sensible as she is clever and known not to suffer fools gladly. This is dangerous territory. “I know it’s been well and truly debunked,” I add hurriedly. “But it just makes me so happy.” And it’s true. I’m fascinated by old science and not-quite science – the naturalists and paleontologists of yesteryear (giants upon whose shoulders we stand), undeterred cryptozoologists, and unqualified but enthusiastic armchair historians. One of my cherished possessions is a vintage book on dinosaurs complete with dated reconstructions and horribly hyperbolic language, which I read when I need a laugh. Here’s a few of my top favourites.
The Aquatic Ape
Imagine if you will a troupe of ancient hominids meandering along a sandy shore. They pick through the washed up detritus, hunt for shellfish in rockpools, and frolic amongst the breakers. The theory goes that many of our features – bipedalism, hairlessness, etc, are adaptive features for an aquatic or semi aquatic lifestyle. It’s widely debunked amongst the scientific community but nevertheless persists, I expect because of it’s novelty value.
Honestly it’s just here for me because it’s super cute. Any time I need a serotonin hit I just imagine the little dudes splashing about in the shallows – maybe they get dunked by a wave, maybe they find a crab. They’re living their best lives. Aquatic Ape theory is sweet, silly and wholesome. Aquatic Ape theory just makes me smile from ear to ear and it can do no wrong.
The Tasmanian Tiger is still out there!
Thylacine hunters have always struck me as a beautifully optimistic bunch. They appear to be driven as much by the desire to discover as the desire to undo past wrongs – as if finding this beautiful creature alive and well after its untimely supposed extinction would somehow count as a point in our favour on some cosmic scoreboard. So far of course, they’ve been unsuccessful at producing more than alleged droppings and spoor, plus blurry footage of various animals which are not tigers.
Nevertheless our enterprising hunters persist, and every year the good people of Tasmania play host to expeditions into the bush. To be clear I am unabashedly and unequivocally rooting for the tiger hunters here. Maybe 2021 will be your year, so keep your boots laced tight, your water bottle full and your camera charged, and go out and make history.
Neanderthal Super Predator “theory”
Trigger warning for this paragraph – mentions of r*pe
Admittedly this isn’t old science, and I don’t even consider it pseudoscience. This utter lunacy is what happens when you experiment with recreational drugs while binge watching The Time Machine. The author of this drivel, a man named Danny Vendramini, has no scientific credentials to speak of and styles himself as a visionary who stands as a radical David against the Goliath of Big Anthropology. He maintains that our closest relative Homo neanderthalensis was not just a competitor for resources, but a voracious carnivore who not only hunted our ancestors for meat, but also raped them with staggering frequency. He also thinks they looked like this:
Apparently we were so traumatised by the widespread depredations of this monstrosity that our racial memory literally invented the bogeyman. There is a lot to unpack about the author’s fascination with linking predation and sexual assault, so lets just throw away the entire suitcase. We won’t even touch on the connotations of dehumanising a sentient species to further vilify them. I won’t drop a link to his website here because I don’t want to divert traffic to him, but I can’t stop you from a quick Google search if you’re overcome with morbid fascination and want to dive deeper into his “work”. I’ll be honest, when I started writing this I didn’t expect to end with such a dim view, but it’s left a sour taste in my mouth.
Well that was a bit of a ramble, wasn’t it? There’s honestly no overarching point to make here so I’ll leave you with a link to one if my favourite blogs for more amusing paleohistorical goodness, Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs: https://chasmosaurs.com/. If I’ve attacked your most cherished pseudoscience and you’d like to tell me off, or if you want to tell me about your favourites, please leave a comment below.
Adventures of a Nerdy Dad 