Elaine Morgan (writer)

Elaine Morgan (born Elaine Floyd 1920) is a Welsh feminist writer, best known for her television work, including screenwriting most of the episodes of "Dr. Finlay's Casebook". She is also the author of several books about the aquatic ape hypothesis, among them "The Descent of Woman", "The Aquatic Ape", "The Scars of Evolution", "The Descent of the Child", "The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" and her latest "The Naked Darwinist" which discussed the reasons why there is so little discussion of aquatic scenarios in the academic literature. She also authored "Falling Apart" and "Pinker's List". Morgan is generally described as more of a popularizer of science than a scientist.

Personal life

Morgan born and brought up in Hopkinstown, near Pontypridd. She has lived for many years in Mountain Ash, near Aberdare. She graduated from Lady Margaret Hall Oxford University with a degree in English. She married Morien Morgan (d.1997) and she has three sons.

Writing

Morgan has written for many television series since 1955. The 32 credits for her work on IMDB include:
* 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)

She has won two BAFTAs and two Writers' Guild awards. She also wrote the script for the Horizon documentary about Joey Deacon, the disabled fund-raiser. This won the Prix Italia in 1975. She was honoured with the Writer of the Year Award from the Royal Television Society for her series of "Testament of Youth" [ [http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/graduation/fellows/2007/index.html Citation for her honorary degree at Cardiff University in 2007 - accessed 2008-08-07] ] .

In 2003 she started to write a weekly column for the Welsh National Daily, "The Western Mail".

She was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Glamorgan University in December 2006 [ [http://news.glam.ac.uk/news/en/2006/dec/18/glamorgan-honours-wales-finest Glamorgan Honours Wales' Finest] ] and an honorary fellow of the University of Cardiff in 2007.

Aquatic ape hypothesis

Morgan first became drawn into scientific writing when reading popularizers of the savannah hypothesis of human evolution such as Desmond Morris. She described her reaction as one of irritation because the explanations were largely male-centered. For instance, if humans lost their hair because they needed to sweat while chasing game on the savannah that did not explain why women should also lose their hair as, according to the savannah hypothesis, they would be looking after the children. On re-reading Desmond Morris's "The Naked Ape" she encountered a reference to a hypothesis that humans had for a time gone through a water phase, the so-called aquatic ape hypothesis. She contacted Morris on this and he pointed her to Alister Hardy. Her first book "The Descent of Woman" (1972) was originally planned to pave the way for Hardy's more academic book, but Hardy was never to publish his book. In her later books she tried to write on more scientific basis or more "po-faced" as she herself described it. As an outsider and a non-scientist she claims to have encountered hostility from academics. Many of her books seem to be written as much to counter the many arguments put forth against the Aquatic Ape Theory as to advance its merits. Her position is summarised in her website [http://www.elainemorgan.me.uk] .

Morgan has been accused of using sloppy and unscientific methods in her scientific writing - for instance, systematically distorting quotes to support her position [http://www.aquaticape.org/quotes.html] . Nevertheless, her opinions are being received by a broader audience. The 1998 BBC documentary "The Aquatic Ape" chronicled the story of Morgan's quest to have the aquatic ape hypothesis taken seriously.

Her hypotheses have reached academia and achieved some acceptance. In 1999, for example, Morgan was invited to speak at Tufts University, Harvard University, and the University of Ghent, Belgium, at the "Symposium of Water and Human Evolution." In 2004 Colin Groves, Professor of Biological Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia with co-author David W. Cameron stated that

"..nor can we exclude the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH). Elaine Morgan has long argued that many aspects of human anatomy are best explained as a legacy of a semiaquatic phase in the proto-human trajectory, and this includes upright posture to cope with increased water depth as our ancestors foraged farther and further from the lake or seashore. At first, this idea was simply ignored as grotesque, and perhaps as unworthy of discussion because proposed by an amateur. But Morgan's latest arguments have reached a sophistication that simply demands to be taken seriously (Morgan 1990, 1997). And although the authors shy away from more speculative reconstructions in favour of phylogenetic scenarios, we insist that the AAH take its place in the battery of possible functional scenarios for hominin divergence." [cite book | last = Groves| first = Colin (with David W.Cameron) | title = Bones, Stones and Molecules | year = 2004 | pages = 400 | publisher = Elsevier Academic Press | id = ISBN 0 121 56933 0]

According to the website "world-science.net" in an article bylined October 18, 2007 [http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071017_humans-beach.htm] , newly found "evidence of the earliest known people with cultural trappings of modern human species" dating to about 164,000 years ago has been found at the edge of the Indian Ocean in southernmost South Africa. This finding moves behaviorally modern humans back about 70,000 years in time. More significantly to Elaine Morgan and the theories she has defended in her writings, this behavior includes features strongly tied to the oceanic environment, very early in human history. The report of the findings appears in the October 18, 2007 issue of the journal "Nature".

Her most recent book, "Pinker's List", is a response to Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate", in which she rejects his claim to objectivity and argues that the "blank-slate" beliefs he caricatures have long been extinct.

Morgan's later books on the aquatic ape hypothesis are:
* "The Aquatic Ape", 1982, Stein & Day Pub, ISBN 0-285-62509-8
* "The Scars of Evolution", 1990, Souvenir Press, ISBN 0-285-62996-4
* "The Descent of the Child", 1995, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-509895-1
* "The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis", 1997, Souvenir Press, ISBN 0-285-63377-5
* "The Naked Darwinist", 2008, Eildon Press, ISBN 0-9525620-30

Books on other topics:
* "Falling Apart: The Rise and Decline of Urban Civilisation", 1976, Souvenir Press Ltd. ISBN 0-285-62234-X
* "Pinker's List", 2005, Eildon Press, ISBN 0-9525620-2-2

References

External links

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/scarsofevolution.shtml "Scars of Evolution", a BBC Radio 4 programme featuring Morgan.] David Attenborough hosts the series that chronicles the rising evidence in support of an aquatic environment in human evolution.
* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604634/ Elaine Morgan] at the Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A5316860 BBC Biography]