![]() Some people, even more ambitiously, speculated that humans would find ways of diverting ocean currents to increase food production in arid and frozen regions of the globe.Īlthough evolutionary anthropologists lambasted Hardy’s theory of an ancient aquatic ape, scuba divers and marine engineers were prepared to embrace his ideas. The Carnegie Institution, presided over by the former head of the United States’ war time science research program, Vannevar Bush, championed the idea. In the aftermath of World War II, as the Allied powers struggled to care for thousands of displaced persons in Europe, marine algae attracted attention as a potential miracle food that might solve the problem of global hunger. And he was far from alone in these speculations. ![]() “No one can doubt that history will repeat itself and Man will be forced once again into the sea for a living.” Hardy’s article was accompanied by drawings of scuba divers corralling fish with a “ future submarine tractor trawl.” He claimed humanity’s future hinged on the successful exploitation of marine resources, primarily marine foods. And if such an event had happened in the past, it could, and would, happen again. Some hominids, he claimed, might have been subject to the same evolutionary pressure. As evidence, he cited various con temporary aquatic mammals thought to have terrestrial ancestors such as whales, seals, and manatees. In an article in New Scientist in March 1960, the British marine biologist Sir Alister Hardy suggested that an ancestor of modern hominids had been forced by terrestrial evolutionary competition to adapt once again to life in the sea. Copyright 2019, Harvard University Press. ![]() Courtesy of Harvard University Press SHAREĮxcerpted from Neptune’s Laboratory: Fantasy, Fear, and Science at Sea by Anthony Adler. NOAA Central Library Historical Fisheries Collection/fish/9765. Artist cutaway painting of the Tektite II habitat.
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