
The entirety of the 'aquatic ape' proposal remains highly controversial, and is more popular with the lay public than with scientists. Efficient function of the human brain requires these nutrients. Scientists supportive of AAH have published research that indicates that at some point in the last five million years humans became dependent on and, which are found in abundance in sea resources. Though much of the relevant mainstream academic community ignored or derided the proposal, a few academics in the last 15 years have conducted research at least in part inspired by AAH.


Her 1990 book Scars of Evolution received some favorable reviews, but the thesis was subject to scathing criticism from the anthropologist John Langdon in 1997 who characterized it as an 'umbrella hypothesis' and argued that the hypothesis is not more than simply. Morgan removed the feminist polemic in several later books, and her ideas were discussed at a 1987 conference devoted to the idea. While her 1972 book The Descent of Woman was very popular with the public, it attracted no attention from scientists, who saw no way of testing assertions about soft body parts and human habits in the distant past. This proposal was noticed by, a scriptwriter, who objected to the male image of the 'mighty hunter' being presented in popular works by and others.

The hypothesis in its present form was proposed by the in 1960 who argued that a branch of was forced by competition from life in the trees to hunt for food such as on the sea shore and that this explained many characteristics such as man's upright posture. The aquatic ape hypothesis ( AAH), also referred to as aquatic ape theory ( AAT) and more recently the waterside model, is the idea that the ancestors of were more like in the past.
