Bajau and Moken kids with Great Underwater Vision
In the end of Decmber we visited Bajau Laut in Davao City, Philippines, where we went fishing and diving at the coast of Samal Island. The Bajau children in Davao learn how to dive in an early age. They have a superb underwater vision and learn how to fish with a harpoon in the age of ten.
The researcher Anna Gislén at Lund University has studied the underwater vision of Moken children at the southern coast of Burma. She found that they have the capacity to maximally constrict their pupils and therefore focus on small objects under water. She has also shown that all children have the potential to see clearly under water – but they will have to practise for weeks. You can find the study here: Superior Underwater Vision in a Human Population of Sea Gypsies
Here you can also see a short BBC-movie about Moken’s ability to see clearly under water:
Article on Indigenous People’s Diving Skills
Swedish scientists have studied the diving skills of Ama in Japan and Bajau Laut in Philippines. The result is fascinating: the divers in both groups stay in general more than 50% of the working time under water while spearfishing or sea harvesting. Erika Schagatay, professor at the department of engineering and sustainable development at Mid Sweden University, has lead the study.
The study gives strong support to the idea that repeated diving has played an important role in the human evolution. Read the article here: Underwater working times in Ama and Bajau. The article was published in March 2011 in Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine.
New Book about the Aquatic Ape Theory
Recently a new book on the Aquatic Ape Theory was published: Was Man more aquatic in the past? – Fifty years after Alister Hardy. A large number of scientists from different fields have contributed to the impressive book. More and more the AAT-proponents seem to agree on that a maritime lifestyle have been shaping our physical and mental characteristics all the way to Homo Sapiens, ant not only at the time of the divorce from the forefather of the chimpanzee.
I hope that this book will make anthropologists as well as other scientists and the general public more at ease with the idea of a great maritime impact on the human evolution.
The Aquatic Ape 