Algis Kuliukas


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Algis Kuliukas is currently a PhD student at University of Western Australia in Perth, studying the evolution of human bipedality. Specifically he is investigating the role that water might have played in the early adoption of facultative bipedalism in hominids in the late Miocene. This apparently rather modest idea is, in fact, loaded with controversy because it supports the so-called aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH) – a model of human evolution which suggests that water acted as an agent of selection in our evolution more than it did in the evolution of our ape cousins. Algis has published ‘Wading for Food: The Driving Force of the Evolution of Bipedalism?’, in Nutrition & Health 16 267-289 (2002), and has put together an enthusiastic web site, River Apes, promoting a version of the aquatic ape hypothesis which is consistent with the most widely accepted hominid fossil record and Out of Africa timescales. He has named his model the Aquatic Hybrid Ape Hypothesis (AHAH).