is it necessary to take showers everyday?

[Billy T]

Because what people were doing 200 years ago has no better claim to what is "natural" than what they are doing right now.

Agreed, but I referred to ALL OF PRIOR human history not just to some brief period 200 years ago when defining what is "natural to mankind."

And I was pointing out that we have reasonable evidence swimming and wading were common activities of humans since before they were humans - let alone a mere 50k years ago. Again - look at your paddle-webbed feet (and fingers), your esophageal tract and nasal/laryngeal morphology, the layer of fat all over your body, the down-turned nose, the strange sweat gland setup, etc.

wading is not swimming. Nose turns down on almost all creatures that have one, including those that never swam in their entire evolutionary history, becuase the rain falls down. The esophageal tract and nasal/laryngeal morphology is so we can talk. It evolved with that ability - a 6 month or less baby still has the same esophageal tract and nasal/laryngeal morphology as an ape (can breath and swallow mothers milk at the same time)

Many apes have learned to communicate via various symbolic means and even understand grammer and do create new words, etc. but none can speak because their esophageal tract and nasal/laryngeal morphology does not change the in the first year of life like ahuman's does. Our ability to sweat over entire body is probably a result of fact we could then run most dog like and others faster small animals into heat exhaustion and then eat them. A "natural human" (one who has run all his life from early child hood - only an Ethiopean now days) can run all day long under the hot sun as humans have the best cooling system of almost all the animals. A horse / zebra can also sweet all over his body, but an Ethiopean in good shape can run after him until the horse/ zebra collapses. None of these features is related to swimming as you seem to think.

And look at where humans live - if you take a map of the world and put a black dot on it for every thousand people, you'll have the oceans and lakes and rivers outlined in black. You'd swear we were mapping seal colonies.

That is because human learned to use boats and rafts and water ways were the only means of travel with cargo where trees can grow prior to the invention of he saw. I have read parts of the contract for US route 40 (also called the national pike as was first road to the west) The road building contract thru Maryland specified that the tree stumps could only stick up one foot, it had to be wide enough for two waggons to pass, etc. Water transport, not swimming desires, located the cities as you describe.

And how human children like to play. At the beach, if possible. Overlooking or near water, second best. If all else fails, get a hose and fill plastic pond in the back yard, or a box of beach-like sand with some buckets of water to make little rivulets. People even construct little ponds of water inside their houses, to sit in and "bathe". Their pets don't use them much - outside of pet ducks, pet beavers or muskrats, pet fish or turtles, or other animals as water-oriented as people are.

all very recent activities comnpared to the evolutionary time scale for for natural things to become part of man's nature.

The first man made boat almost certainly predates agriculture by tens of thousands of years.

Is that only your speculation, or do you have some reason to think that true? Reference please.

 

[Asguard]

billy i hate to refute you sgain but how do you explain the fact that the majority of our brain is a substance we cant make and is only found in abundance in shellfish

 

[Billy T]

billy i hate to refute you sgain but how do you explain the fact that the majority of our brain is a substance we cant make and is only found in abundance in shellfish

I do not know what it is you are "refuting" but no matter what that might be - demanding me to explain something is not a refutation of anything. What statement of mine are you trying to refute?

 

[Asguard]

that there is no evidence for humans being aquatic or subaquatic mamals. There actually is and that evidence is in our brains which are made up of mostly "essential fatty acids". These are things we cant make and a land based diet is very low in them as well so its highly unlikly that our brains would have developed the way they have if the only source of these was land plants and animals.

The most likly source is shellfish which are ritch in these, there for as humans developed they most likly spent a significant amount of time at least wading in rock pools and the shallow oceans looking for these shellfish.

 

[iceaura]

Is that only your speculation, or do you have some reason to think that true? Reference please.

About the boatbuilding - the world was well colonized, including Australia and both North and South America as well as various islands, before agriculture was invented anywhere that we know of. Now it's barely possible to do that without boats, even Australia 40ky ago, but it's hardly the way to bet. And several non-agricultural peoples have boatbuilding traditions of great sophistication and obvious longevity - the Arctic kayaks and umiaks and such are not the product of a couple of generations of screwing around. They are extraordinary craft. (Those people seldom swim, in the ice water they have nearby. But they hang around the water, like most everybody else)

And these ancient people are found, as always with non-agricultural people whether city-dwelling or not, to have been hanging around the shore of some body of water. If ease of transport explains that, we have boats. If proximity to good living conditions explains that, we have a wading, fishing, clam and lobster eating little descendant of chimps with every reason to get up on two flatter feet and grow longer legs.

wading is not swimming.

Wading will do, if you insist on one without the other for some reason

Nose turns down on almost all creatures that have one, including those that never swam in their entire evolutionary history,

So why do humans have noses at all - unlike, say, a dog or a horse - or a chimpanzee.

The esophageal tract and nasal/laryngeal morphology is so we can talk. It evolved with that ability

Chicken and egg problem. The thing has to be up and running much as is to help us talk, and we have to be talking somewhat for any advantage to accrue to the early stages of such a weird modification. Meanwhile, analoguous structural differences are found in comparing seals with dogs - and seals did not acquire theirs from their dog ancestors by learning to talk.

Our ability to sweat over entire body is probably a result of fact we could then run most dog like and others faster small animals into heat exhaustion and then eat them.

I prefer the long range scavenging in the heat hypothesis - if only because it avoids another chicken and egg business, and dovetails better with rock tool adoption - but it's worth noting that this fat layer we carry works against us there.

all very recent activities comnpared to the evolutionary time scale for for natural things to become part of man's nature.

Recent activities that seem to be the latest responses to very old and universal desires. I tend to think ubiquitous childrens' preferences illustrate human nature - or would a preference for playing at the lakeshore, or in the pool, with an entire yard and miles of woods available, for example, be a recent development in children ?

This guy, btw, has a collection of criticisms of the notion of the water-adapted chimp ancestor: http://www.aquaticape.org/index.html I think he's occasionally wrong, but hey -

 

[Challenger78]

Huh ? Do you have a source ?

See cosmic.
I love passing the buck.

But it makes sense. Flies are insects and hence are attracted to any sweet smell whatsoever.

 

[Billy T]

that there is no evidence for humans being aquatic or subaquatic mamals. There actually is and that evidence is in our brains which are made up of mostly "essential fatty acids". These are things we cant make and a land based diet is very low in them as well so its highly unlikly that our brains would have developed the way they have if the only source of these was land plants and animals. ...

Are you speaking of the fatty gila and swan cells that wrap around the axons? I think (almost sure) that strickly herbavors, like wildabeast and zebras have them too to insulate their axons (and speed conduction velocites by lowering the capactance that only the thin cell wall would have.), so I find this hard to believe. - Comments?

Anyway this thread has gotten out of hand. In post 53 I questioned (asked for ref.) iceaura’s post 48 statement:
“I'd bet that a daily swim … is perfectly natural”

I did not question fact that mankind in early evolution went wadding to get food (I know he did.) or say anything about him being (or not) an "aquatic animal” or not eating shell fish, (I know he did and all sorts of bugs and worms.) etc.

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BTW I know from personnel experience that typically you get more food with a stick scratching / digging in the shore line sand than by wadding.* – I was on a Ferry in Puget Sound with my only my back pack when it pulled into a simple dock of a small island. After confirming with crew that this was routine and would occur the next day etc., on an impulse I got off. (I first checked my compact emergency survival kit. – One I had developed in years of wandering around in Europe and found there were still many matches in it so could build fires to attract passing small boats if that proved to be false. It had a wire saw coiled up in it and knife** with about 4 or 5 inch blade (with fish scalar and bottle opener on one edge) and some insect repellent too.)

The ferry did return, but only after three days, in which I lived on berries (it was summer) and hot coals roasted clams. I boiled water from a small pond / large puddle in some beer cans I found so did not need to use my halizone tables. I also boiled the claims. I almost killed a snake, (to eat it) but it got away. I caught nothing with my fish hooks and coil of line.
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*Wadding is good way to catch fish, at least tiny ones, by hand in small clear stream but that island did not have a stream and the shore was too steep. I do not know why there were no crabs of any sort.

** To keep my kit quite compact, the blade could be pulled out of the handle when stored. Even my toothbrush had only a short stub of the handle with end fire polished smooth. I still have that kit, but have not used it for 30 years and the wire saw has been lost or finally broke. – I forget.

 

[PsychoTropicPuppy]

Well, I'm not sure about the effect of washing yourself daily with shower gel.

I mean, there must be a reason as of why grease builds up on the surface of your skin.
I shower every second day, but wash my hair every day. I'm doing fine.