Industrial forms spotted whilst searching for fossils on the Jurassic coast in Dorset, similar in shape to the fossilized ancient sea creatures that were were hunting for.

Words used in descriptions of both cars and razors in consumer magazines.

I like the idea of the Aquatic Ape. It is not a mainstream one and unpopular with experts in human evolution, on the fringe, unproven and unresearched.

It goes something like this. Our ancestors lived on the shores of warm seas, around 6 to 2 million years ago. They spent long amounts of time in the water. They learnt to walk on two feet as they waded through water, supported until they got their strength and balance. Their brains grew larger as they ate shell fish which could provide enough vitamins and minerals to allow for expansion. Humans are mostly hair less and smooth skinned, like dolphins and other sea mammals; other smooth skinned creatures such as elephants are proven to have evolved from aquatic animals.  We are streamline, have hooded noses, insulating fat and we can hold our breath, all useful for an aquatic life.

If I were to try to empathise with these ancestors, I would prefer the seaside lifestyle to the tough animal hunting existence on the Savannah. Maybe that is the appeal of the theory.

Link to BBC radio programme >>

We visited the coast of Suffolk and saw its wild seas and exposed coastline. This is a story the sea brought forth in the medieval era, when Orford was a major town.

AN INCIDENT REPORTED IN ORFORD, SUFFOLK, IN 1176

The fishermen pulled in their nets from the sea and found they had caught a wild man.

‘He was naked and was like a man in all his members. He was covered in hair and had a long shaggy beard. The knight kept him in custody many days and nights, lest he should return to the sea. He eagerly ate whatever was brought to him, whether raw or cooked, but the raw he pressed between his hands until all the juice was expelled. Whether he would not or could not, he did not talk, although oft times hung up by his feet and harshly tortured. Brought into the church, he showed no signs of reverence or belief…. He sought his bed at sunset and always remained there until sunrise.
‘It happened that once they brought him to the harbour and suffered him to go into the sea, strongly guarding him with three lines of nets; but he dived under the nets out into the deep sea, and came up again and again as if in derision of the spectators on the shore. After thus playing about for a long while, he came back of his own free will. But later on, being negligently guarded, he secretly fled back to the sea and was never afterward seen.’

Sir Bartholomew de Glanville, Constable of the castle of Orford or Ralph of Coggeshall, a chronicler.

Nearby Suffolk coast.

Click here >>

Posted as we are all fascinated by the ‘giants’.

Crumbling, unstable Jurassic cliffs.

The bed rock of the Peak District was formed 300 million years ago, close to the equator where the Carribbean is now. Imagine the clear water of a shallow warm sea, teeming with starfish and shellfish like creatures. In vast numbers and over 20 millions years, the remains of these creatures and microorganisms settled on the sea bed and slowly hardened to become the thick bed of limestone. The bed of limestone was shifted by the deep movements of the earth to where it is now.

The tors are sandstone, created as the sea and rivers met at a delta and deposited sand and mud, on top of the limestone. This rock was used to make millstones.

The mill in the photos is the Cromford Cotton Mill of Richard Arkwright. As we toured the mill, I was struck with the way Arkwright worked things out. He worked out how to process cotton using a machine; he designed the mill as a fortress, with good defences as the machinery was unpopular with some;  he built the workers cottages with room for a pig and with light coming in at the top floors so the men could use them as workshops (most of his employees were women). The Peak district water would freeze in the winter, but he located the mill so the  warm water of the thermal spa could keep the mill working all the year round.