Elaine MorganOBE, FRSL (7 November 1920 – 12 July 2013),[1] was a Welsh writer for television and the author of several books on evolutionary anthropology. She advocated the aquatic ape hypothesis, which advocated as a corrective to what she saw as theories that purveyed gendered stereotypes and failed to account for women's role in human evolution adequately. The Descent of Woman, published in 1972, became an international bestseller, translated into ten languages. In 2016, she was named one of "the 50 greatest Welsh men and women of all time" in a press survey.[2]
Elaine Floyd was born and brought up in Hopkinstown, near Pontypridd, in Wales. Her father was a coal miner.[3] She lived for many years until her death, in Mountain Ash, near Aberdare. She graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, with a degree in English. She married Morien Morgan, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who died in 1997,[4] and they had three sons, the oldest being Dylan Morgan.[5]
Elaine Morgan began writing in the 1950s after winning a competition in the New Statesman, successfully publishing, then joining the BBC when it began to produce her plays for television.[6] Her works included popular dramas, newspaper columns, and a series of publications on evolutionary anthropology.[1] Her first book, The Descent of Woman, published in 1972, became an international bestseller translated into ten languages. The book drew attention to what she saw as sexism inherent in the prevalent savannah-based "killer ape" theories of human evolution as presented in popular anthropological works by Robert Ardrey, Lionel Tiger and others. She argued that such "Tarzanist" anthropological narratives purveyed gendered stereotypes of women that failed to adequately account for women's role in human evolution. The Aquatic Ape (1982), The Scars of Evolution (1990), The Descent of the Child (1994), The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (1997) and The Naked Darwinist (2008) all explored her alternative account of human evolution in more detail.[7]
She also published Falling Apart: the Rise and Decline of Urban Civilization in 1976, and in 2005 Pinker's List, a critique of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.
In 2003 Morgan started a weekly column for the Welsh daily The Western Mail, which won her the 2011 Columnist of the Year award in the Society of Editors' Regional Press Awards.[9][10]
Although Morgan's aquatic ape hypothesis has been debunked by the anthropology and scientific community, and is classified as a pseudoscience,[17][18][19][20] it has achieved popular appeal since the publication of Descent of Woman in 1972.[21][22]
Morgan's work has received warm comments from several prominent people. Philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote of the criticisms of her:
Many of the counterarguments seem awfully thin and ad hoc. During the last few years when I have found myself in the company of distinguished biologists, evolutionary theorists, paleo-anthropologists, and other experts, I have often asked them just to tell me, please, exactly why Morgan must be wrong about the aquatic ape theory. I haven't yet had a reply worth mentioning, aside from those who admit, with a twinkle in their eyes, that they have often wondered the same thing.[23]
And in a BBC/Discovery Channel Documentary, the South African anthropologist Phillip V. Tobias said:
I see Elaine Morgan, through her series of superbly written books, presenting a challenge to the scientists to take an interest in this thing, to look at the evidence dispassionately. Not to avert your gaze as though it were something you that you hadn't ought to hear about or hadn't ought to see. And those that are honest with themselves are going to dispassionately examine the evidence. We've got to if we are going to be true to our calling as scientists.[24]
In 2000 Morgan was awarded the Letten F Saugstad prize in Oslo for her "contribution to scientific knowledge" and in December 2008 she was admitted as a Fellow of the Linnean Society, following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.[25]
Morgan died at the age of 92 on 12 July 2013. Welsh author Trevor Fishlock described her in an obituary as a writer "who brought out the flavour of Wales."[5]
In 2019, Morgan was one of five women on a shortlist for a Cardiff statue.[8]
In 2020, to commemorate the centenary of her birth, two complementary biographies of her life were published. The Welsh historian Daryl Leeworthy wrote one focusing on her earlier career as a writer[26] and Algis Kuliukas wrote one emphasising more her "aquatic ape" work.[25]
On 18 March 2022 a statue of her by Emma Rodgers was installed outside the Tŷ Calon Lân Medical Centre in Mountain Ash, Rhondda Cynon Taf, as part of the Monumental Welsh Women project.[3][27][28]
The author, Bruce Lindsay, states in his biography of Scottish poet Ivor Cutler that Cutler dedicated one of his poetry books, "Is that your flap, Jack?" to Morgan saying: "With deep gratitude to Elaine Morgan, author of 'The Descent of Woman', for changing my understanding of man".[29]
^ abc"Elaine Morgan". List of Writers (in Welsh and English). The Academi. 2009. Archived from the original on 15 May 2008. Retrieved 29 September 2009.
^Milam, Erika Lorraine (2019). Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America. Princeton University Press. pp. 153–167. ISBN9780691181882.
^Foley R, Lahr MM (2014). "The role of 'the aquatic' in human evolution: Constraining the aquatic ape hypothesis". Evol. Anthropol. 23 (2): 56–59. doi:10.1002/evan.21405. PMID24753345. S2CID849419. Where does this leave us? The AAH has been around for more than 50 years. No significant evidence has accumulated in its favour over that time, and the expansion of the fossil and archaeological record has filled many of the gaps that made Hardy's original idea seem plausible.
^Langdon, J. (1997). "Umbrella hypotheses and parsimony in human evolution: a critique of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis". Journal of Human Evolution. 33 (4): 479–494. doi:10.1006/jhev.1997.0146. PMID9361254.
