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Millions of years ago, something happened to our ape anscestors which did not happen to the anscestors of the chimpanzees and gorillas - something which made them walk on two legs, lose their fur, develop larger brains, and learn to speak. Can we ever know what it was?
Elaine Morgan maintains that we can, and that the clues lie in the many incongruous flaws in our physiological make-up - our liability to suffer from obesity, lower back pain, acne, varicose veins - which are the legacy of that dramatic event. In these odd 'design defects' she finds pointers to the history of our species, seeing them as relics of an earlier stage of our evolution.
This lively informative and controversial book sets out to solve the fascinating riddle of our origins, to discover the evolutionary path that separated us from the animals. In doing so it demonstrates that the theories currently accepted by many scientists simply cannot be reconciled with our unique features: they leave too many questions unanswered.
Only one theory satisfactorially resolves the mystery of the emergence of human beings, and in The Scars of Evolution the case is presented with the brilliant logic that is the hallmark of the bestselling author of The Descent of Woman. As that earlier book radically challenged society's attitudes, so will this one bring a new enlightenment to our understanding of ourselves.
ELAINE MORGAN is best known as a writer for television. Her work in that field over thirty years has won eleven awards, both national and international. Her first book The Descent of Woman was published in 1972 and became an international bestseller in nine languages. Since then she has become increasingly absorbed in the subject of human evolution and a second book, The Aquatic Ape, published in 1982, has been followed by papers and articles in scientific books and journals.
The Scars of Evolution, based on ten years of research, once again illustrates her ability to present scientific ideas in a style clear and accessible to the general reader.
jacket design by Barfield Associates
ISBN 0 285 62996 4
"For my money, she is more scientific than Genesis, more up to
date than Darwin, more fun than Ardrey, and she writes better
than Desmond Morris."
The Sunday Telegraph
In the first full discussion of a theory propounded by the late Sir Alister Hardy, Elaine Morgan points to the dramatic similarities between ourselves and the aquatic mammals - whales, dolphins, seals, sea otters - and argues that the only theory of evolution which explains these satisfactorily is that we, alone among the primates, have returned to life on land after a period of adaptation to an aquatic environment. Greeted with initial scepticism, support for the theory has been growing since 1982, and in 1987 it was the subject of an international symposium in the Netherlands, attended by scientists from all over the world.
Both books are available in paperback