pages on the back of the wave

‘If AAT were true, we would be more streamlined.’ More streamlined than what?’

“Water thus seems to be the only element in which bipedalism for the beginner may have been at the same time compulsory and relatively free of unwelcome physical consequences.” 

“There are two classes of mammals which are liable to accumulate large quantities of adipose tissue -- hibernating mammals and aquatic mammals.” 

“It takes two to make a woman into a sex object.” “The legend of the jungle heritage and the evolution of man as a hunting carnivore has taken root in man’s mind ... He may even believe that equal pay will do something terrible to his gonads.” 

“It’s just as hard for man to break the habit of thinking of himself as central to the species as it was to break the habit of thinking of himself as central to the universe. He sees himself quite unconsciously as the main line of evolution, with a female satellite revolving around him as the moon revolves around the earth. This not only causes him to overlook valuable clues to our ancestry, but sometimes leads him into making statements that are arrant and demonstrable nonsense.” 

“The trouble with specialists is that they tend to think in grooves.” 

“Imagine you are a student revising for an exam on human evolution and wondering what questions you might be asked. It suddenly occurs to you that you cannot remember why human beings lost their body hair. It sounds just the kind of topic on which they might give you a quote and then say: ‘Discuss’ - and the answer has gone right out of your head. You cannot even remember the point being raised, and the exam is tomorrow. What can you do? You can relax. That question will not appear on the exam paper.” “People are still apt to say: ‘Very well, Wegener was right, but for the wrong reasons.’ His method, if I may venture to say so, was the same as mine.” 

“Phillip Tobias observed in a lecture in London: ‘All the former savannah supporters (including myself ) must now swallow our words.”

 “When he (gentleman novelists) describes the involuntary arching of the blonde’s spine, he translates it as: ‘Oh, God, I’m in extremis, I’m dying of rapture. This is my pseudo-strychnine response, the risus sardonicus, the spinal convulsion.’ What it means, at however subterranean a level, is: ‘Ah well, if you can’t adjust the angle of the piston, I guess it’s up to me to adjust the angle of the cylinder.’”