Littoral Man and Waterside Woman: The Crucial Role of Marine and Lacustrine Foods and Environmental Resources in the Origin, Migration and Dominance of Homo sapiens

Abstract

The ability to exploit and thrive on a wide variety of foodstuffs from diverse environments is a hallmark of Homo sapiens. Humans are particularly well adapted to exploit waterside environments, where they can forage in areas offering protection from both terrestrial and aquatic predators. Humans are able to walk, run, climb, wade, swim and dive, and our research indicates that the most parsimonious explanation for this combination of locomotor traits, and for Man's current anatomy, physiology, nutritional requirements and unique intellect is evolution in a littoral environment. This model is consistent with the location and presumed palaeoecologies of all early Homo fossils and artifacts, and could help explain the rapid dispersal of Homo in the early Pleistocene (2.56-0.78 million years ago (Ma)), the colonization of Australia and Indonesia in the middle Pleistocene (0.78-0.13 Ma), and the rapid dispersal of Homo sapiens in the late Pleistocene (0.13-0.012 Ma). Reliance on the aquatic food chain is also a facile method for providing consistently abundant brain-specific nutrition for all members of a group or society, thus facilitating the development of the technology and culture that is uniquely human.

Reply to Sarmiento E. “Australopithecine Taxonomy and Phylogeny and the Savanna Hypothesis; Comment on Vaneechoutte et al. Have We Been Barking up the Wrong Ancestral Tree? Australopithecines Are Probably Not Our Ancestors. Nat. Anthropol. 2023, 2, 10007”

“…We clearly disagree with Sarmiento's statement that the savanna hypothesis is "very robust" [1]. First, there is nothing in human physiology that supports an existence in hot, dry, open conditions [8][9][10][11]. For example, our bodies simply lose too much water and salt in too short a time and our ancestors would have been especially vulnerable as naked, non-cursorial primates if they had spent any significant time in the open savanna.…”

Current evidence indicates a Eurasian origin for the Last Common Ancestor of African apes and humans, and supports a new hypothesis suggesting that the Zanclean Megaflood (5.3 Ma) may have played a role in the ultimate divergence of Pan and Homo.

“…During and after the Vallesian and throughout the MSC, as conditions changed dramatically in Europe, many species disappeared, but there was also a mass exodus of fauna from the region (Agusti 1999, 2007, Böhme et al 2021, Leakey et al 1996, Nargolwalla 2009. Many animals that later became endemic to Africa, such as ancestors of today's giraffes, hippos, bovines, rhinos, horses, zebras, felids, etc., probably migrated away from the Mediterranean region by following the receding forests southward in search of a more constant subtropical environment.…”

“…We suggest that, unlike the ancestors of australopithecines and extant African apes, the proto-human group remained isolated on the Arabian Peninsula. Between 5.6 and 3.3 Ma, the Arabian Peninsula went through a stage of hyperaridity (Böhme 2021), so any species trapped there would have been isolated between the Red Sea and a lifeless desert-an impenetrable barrier. The Arabian coast of the Red Sea, approximately 2000 km in length, would have offered both challenges and opportunities to a small population of littoral foraging hominins during the Pliocene.…”

“…As regards food, the evidence is clear that an aquatic diet, rich in omega 3, long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), arachidonic acid (AA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and other essential brain nutrients such as iodine, selenium and taurine, play an important role in healthy fetal development (Odent 2017), increased longevity (Shibata 2001, Yamori 2009, and overall good health (Venugopal 2017). The same aquatic nutrients may have been pivotal to encephalization in Homo (Broadhurst et al 2011, Crawford et al 1999, IMIM 2021, Tobias 2011. Salt consumption (Messerli et al 2021) and the activity of swimming itself (Chase 2008) have also been shown to be greatly beneficial to human health and longevity.…”