Just had this random thought pop up. Do humans intuitively know how to swim?
How many humans could have drowned before someone was finally successful?
Just had this random thought pop up. Do humans intuitively know how to swim?
How many humans could have drowned before someone was finally successful?
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We don’t instinctively know how to swim or anything, but the concept of “push against the water to propel yourself” is fairly intuitive.
As long as your first introduction to water isn’t during a state of panic – like falling in – anyone can figure it out pretty quickly.
I believe this is something that predates humans and was present in earlier species in the homo genus. Kind of like herpes.
Humans are aquatic apes. We had enough nutrients to grow our brains by diving for shellfish. It’s only after we figured out farming that we could move away from the coastline. So before we were human. We became humans because we could swim. We don’t have as much fur as other apes because it makes swimming easier. We are literally born as babies that know how to float and swimming is a skill we forget and relearn not learn.
We’ve been able to swim since before we were human. Monkeys will swim just for the fun of it, and all mammals have a dive reflex.
I really hate all these questions that are “how did humans learn to (things that animals do naturally)”. They didn’t learn.
I never learned, I just did it. I was thrown into a pool and just swam. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I don’t get how some people don’t know how. You just do it.
Probably by not wanting to drown a second time.
Some dick cave man pushed his friend in the pool and didn’t know he couldn’t swim.
Do humans instinctively know to eat thing from trees? Or to kill and eat ?
Lots of animals learn by looking what other animals do.
There are a few pop science books from the 1980s and 1990s promoting the Aquatic Ape hypothesis. This says there was a period of human evolution where people spent a lot of time in water. Supporting evidence includes that humans are one of the few apes that like swimming, the distribution of hair and fat on bodies, how humans give birth, etc. After debate, other hypotheses better explain these characteristics. However a good anthropologist keeps unpopular hypotheses in their toolkit just in case new evidence supports them.
There’s a legitimate scientific theory that we evolved as semi-aquatic apes, losing our fur and walking on our hind legs with the support of the water, so swimming’s probably far older than us as a species
They used inflatable arm bands
If I see food in the water, I’m fuckin’ going after it
Hunger swim
Lots of mammals can swim is that correct? So it must be a common urge for animals to keep their head above water and move lower limbs to keep on surface of water.
Wouldn’t all land animals have this basic survival mode to keep breathing apparatus above water and move limbs to keep afloat.
First in shallow waters, Humans playfully figured to float / swim.
Newborns instinctively know how to swim, it is considered a newborn reflex.
As I recall from a human anthropology class taken over 40 years ago, it is thought at some point our progenitors spent a great deal of time in the water. I was taught that it isn’t know if we were completely aquatic (this knowledge may have changed over the last 40 years) but due to the newborn reflex and humans long hair it is thought we spent a great deal of time in water, perhaps waist deep water, perhaps completely under water. The reason long hair supports this theory is that when long hair is wet a baby or child can grip it and hand from it, it cannot easily be loosened or pulled out and it doesn’t hurt the head. Babies also have a grip reflex, if you brush the palm of their hands they automatically grip. They will do this with chunks of wet long hair but not necessarily with long dry hair. The theory is that parents spent a great part of their time in water and their young had to have a reflex to hang on and hair evolved as something to painlessly be held onto, while the parent was in water, probably while swimming.
They watched what the “first person that tried to swim” did then did the opposite.
If you can hold your breath you can swim. If you think about what humans have invented or managed to accomplish, learning to swim is truly not something to be in awe of.
If I had to guess? Necessity.
I assume they used a piece of driftwood to stay afloat and started peddling. From then on they developed other techniques. Swimming is learned behaviour so only humans who lived near rivers, lakes or seas would learn how to do it. And even then only a small portion because most humans were too busy surviving.
They didn’t.
Don’t little babies know how to swim ? Adults probably copied whatever the little toddlers do in water
We came pre-programmed
Probably by falling into some body of water
I read somewhere that babies actually have natural swimming reflexes for the first few months of life. Pretty wild to think about – like our bodies remember something from way, way back in our evolutionary history.
Evolutional progression in not drowning has produced both witches and swimmers. Anthropologists just can’t seem to agree on which came first.
If they were anything like me, when they were about 6-7 years old their mother grabbed the feet, the father grabbed their hands, begun to swing them to the count of 1, 2, and on 3 in the water they went.