Majosta Elaine Morgan ~ 100 Years Towards Origins

This is my celebration of Elaine's very full and impressive life. It recounts the relatively modest origins of a Welsh heroine in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. It’ll rejoice in how she won her place at Oxford University, knocking ‘em cold with her wit. Whilst pointing out that her degree was accomplished during the Second World War, I’ll note how she got involved in politics along with several famous peers, such as Tony Crossland and Roy Jenkins.Just as the war was coming to a close, she met her life partner Morien, and Elaine Floyd became Elaine Morgan. We’ll trace their journey up to Burnley where they started a family and then back down to the English-Welsh Borders before settling into a cosy refuge near Aberdare to raise three boys.In the days when it was very rare for a woman to “have it all”, I’ll pinpoint how Elaine found a way to begin a writing career without sacrificing any of her motherly dedication. I’ll record how she spotted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get into the brand-new niche of television playwriting. I’ll chart the rise of Elaine’s career as one of the most successful post-war writers of TV dramas and documentaries and list out the sheer breadth and depth of her work.Elaine’s background gave her a bit of a feisty edge and when she read Desmond Morris’ best-seller “The Naked Ape” and its male-centred view of human evolution, it made her livid. We’ll enjoy the timing of her own best seller, “Descent of Woman”, almost exactly 100 years after Darwin’s “Descent of Man” and how it railed against the “tarzanists”.I’ll share the tale of how Elaine’s flirtation with anthropology almost ended there, and how it might have done if it had not been for the letter writing of an American policeman, Chuck Milliken. Thanks to him, Elaine did write that second book, and more. I’ll summarise their arguments and the disappointing response to them from the experts of palaeoanthropology.Throughout the story, you’ll read some amazing adventures of Sir Alister Hardy, the man who was responsible for first planting the meme about some kind of “aquatic ape” in the head of Desmond Morris, the one idea of his Elaine liked. There will also be a few cameo appearances from the “great and good” such as Phillip Tobias and Sir David Attenborough who also contributed to the book with his own tribute, as did Daniel Dennett. Having the privilege of narrator, I’ll also weave in some of my own family history and my research into the wading hypothesis too.As Elaine roared into her 70s, she became prolific on the world wide web. She bravely took on scores of cyber-bullies. “What was wrong with ‘the aquatic ape’”? she asked. It infuriated them, but they couldn’t quite explain what it was.Some of us also read her work, participated on those internet newsgroups, and came to very different conclusions. It seemed to make so much sense to us. We began to see how thin and ad hoc the counter-points were and were determined to do our bit to find out for ourselves. So, I’ll describe some of the contributions of those who have followed in Elaine’s footsteps Sadly, footsteps that stopped in the summer of 2013.The backdrop to Elaine’s century is the consensus view of human origins. I’ll describe the view before she was born and how Darwin and Wallace’s ideas shook the world. Throughout the tale, I’ll point out the fossil finds and their impact on the views of the field. Just after the half-way mark of the story, Elaine herself started chipping into the debate herself. These contributions were at first ignored, and then sneered at by those “in the know”. But a growing band of supporters started to test the predictions of Elaine’s “aquatic ape hypothesis”. I’ll end by giving my own opinion, that Elaine’s ideas, which she promoted so so well for 40 years, need only be tweaked and rephrased a little, to be what may prove to be best idea on human evolution since Darwin’s theory of natural selection. How fitting would that be!