Gulf of Tonkin and The Southeast Asia Destiny

Aquatic Ape Theory and The Sea Nomads

Most modern mainstream anthropologists agree with the Savana Theory. However, there are still 4-6 million years gaping holes in evolutionary fossil records to truly explain the evolutionary leap of modern human from tree-climbing chimpanzees to today homo-sapiens. The modern apes seem to have just sprung out of nowhere. What has happened to our ancestor's environment that caused this evolutionary adaption?

According to the Savana Theory, millions of year ago when the Earth’s climate began to shift, grass began to spread. As a result, there were fewer trees in a place like the African Savannah. The disappearing forests meant fewer food sources and more competition for the chimpanzees. This forced chimpanzees to find new food sources on the ground. With their heads above the grass to see predators, it’s believed this is when four-legged mammals adapted to walk on two legs.

However, in order to develop a new bone frame structure to support this new posture would take a lot of gene adaption. Does standing upright provide that much advantage in spotting a predator? How often the apes had to stand upright in order to mope this activity into their gene selection. Does standing upright result in massive locomotion efficiency improvement?

The horse did not need to stand up right but already has much higher locomotion efficiency than human with just its smooth short hair. Today fastest and most fearsome mammal predator like Tiger, Lion, Leopard still have their fur coat on? Probably the hunting activities and long distance travel caused us to take off the fur coat to release heat and reduce air friction while running and tracing our preys but did not necessary result in bipedal bone structure in modern human.

Researchers like Elaine Morgan, Alistair Hardy, Max Westenhöfer, Glenn Isaac, Phillip Tobias, Michael Crawford gives us a unique insight via their research into the Aquatic Ape Theory to provide an alternative explanation. According to the Aquatic Ape Theory, like the Savana Theory, climate change creates less food source and more competition for the chimpanzees. This warming temperature not only causes deforestation and grass widespread but also regular floods and raising sea level.

The pre-human primates were forced to look for food sources from the waterways as well as the ocean coastlines. This semi-aquatic phase of human evolution left the fatty layers on the skin that are typical of dolphins, whales, sea lions, seals, and other marine mammals.

We also start to walk upright in this semi-aquatic phase to get deeper into the water. This daily, continuous upright posture with water floating support provides a perfect environment for pre-human primates to gradually adapt their spine structure to stand up on their two legs. This is very similar to the aquatic therapy stroke patients received to regain their mobility.

Another adaptation we see in modern human through this semi-aquatic phase is hairlessness. Among many thousands of mammal species, only a few like dophins, seals, whale, elephants hippos, rhinos, etc and human have naked skin and they are either living underwater or has an aquatic ancestor. Both African and East Asian experiences hairlessness while people of Europe still have plenty of back and chest hair. So maybe there were regular flooding both in Africa and South East Asia and early human of the Tropical South know how to walk upright first then start to migriate North.

Other aquatic adaptions in modern human being are sweating, crying, holding breath, born fat and ability to swim at birth, respiratory valves, descended larynx, paranasal sinuses, brain motor-function control in the cerebral cortex. We also recently discovered that sealions also have human-like "Vernix Caseosa"rr, the white waxy coating found on newborn human skin is thought to be a uniquely human substance.

Maybe one of our mysterious ancestor, the Denisova, adaption to their extreme enviroment is the first one walking up right on their two legs. Recently, researchers have unvealed that they found higher frequency of the Denisovan originate gene FAM178B in DNA of the Bajau, a modern amphibious aquatic tribe.

Our digestion system also needs to evolve to be able to digest meat. So we probably started eating fish first since it is also as easy to the stomatch as vegetation and fruits. After hunting fishes in shallow water, we became skill hunters and start hunting other larger land animals like chicken, pigs and bulls.

With 21 century global warming and rising sea level, maybe we are destined to come back out to the blue ocean again.

Blue Ocean Navy and Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Whether our ancestors have an aquatic origin or not, the ascent and descent of civilization have always been around major rivers and the blue ocean. Our oldest known civilization, Ancient Egypt, around 3000BC with its famous Pyramids located next to the Nile River.

The Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization. Two million years ago, prehistoric (Peking) man is known to live near the Yellow River. The Yellow River or Hoang Ha in Han Chinese is also the birthplace of Xia (2100 BC - 1600 BC), Shang (1600-1046 BC), Zhou Dynasty (1045-256 BC) - the most enduring dynasty in Chinese history.

The Inca Civilization (1200 AD - 1542 AD) of Peru built the most sophisticated and extensive transportation in pre-Columbian South America. Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, located around the Huatanay river valley.

Athen, the birthplace of democracy as well as cornerstone of Western civilization, locates right next to port Pireas with direct access to the Medditerian. The Athen is famous for its superior Navy in the Ancient Greek. Athen navy and its allies ultimately crushed the Persian Empire invasion at the Battle of Salamis [^fn7] and forever stop any future invasions from Persia to the Ancient Greek

The Island of Great Britain reached its height in 19 century as the British Empire with its superior Royal Navy. British Royal Navy enabled it to dominate the sea, protect trade routes from its vast colonies in India, Asia, and North America. The Royal Navy was crucial in Britain ability to block Germany to ever conduct the Sea Lion campaign [^fn8] and later on defeated Nazi Germany with its America-Britain D-Day amphibious landing.

In modern-day, America is dominating the ocean since the end of World War II, projecting its power via 11 nuclear-powered Aircraft carriers, nuclear-power attack and SLBM submarines. A dominating naval force is very effective at securing trade routes, potentially cripple enemy offensive naval capability via decisive battle or conduct blockade to enforce a favourable term in the negotiation table.

However, during the Vietnam War that started with the Gulf of Tonkin incident Aug 2, 1964, and ended with the full withdrawal of American troop, American navy showed the limit of power projection from naval forces. In a pro-long total war again a land power, the naval force will not ever fully secure a victory and its operations are too expensive and have limited effectiveness. This proves true again during the Afghanistan war.

Will America superior Navy ever be challenged at the open pacific ocean? Probably not anytime soon. However, with China Hainan submarine bases, its long-range carrier-killer missiles and an extensive network of sensors at the ocean seabed of South China sea, American carriers could become vulnerable within Southeast Asia and risk losing in a decisive battle within 900 miles from shore.

Climate Change and The Birth of a Seafaring Civilization

While in America, politicians are still debating about whether global warming and climate change are real, Southeast Asia or ASEAN countries are already experiencing negative consequences of climate change. Rising sea level is causing the shrinking of islands and coastal areas. Extreme weather events are getting worse with more severe droughts inland as well as floods and tropical storms in the deltas, coastal areas, and islands.

ASEAN has mostly countries with coastal and islands so it is probably the area to feel the largest economic impact of climate change around the world. If sea level rises high enough, most of South East Asia would disappear from the map.

With two flanks pressures from China increasing naval assertiveness and worsening climate change, maybe the Denisovan DNA will kick in again and we will see the rise of a new sea fairing civilization in Southeast Asia. Increasing naval assertiveness from China is already causing a Naval built up in Southeast Asia like how a European naval built up happened in 19 centuries among Great Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany.

Shrinking farmland and lower agriculture production from climate change could result in countries to re-allocate its food sources and economies from inland products to the oceans. Aquaculture is currently the fastest-growing food system in the world.

Deep-sea fish farming in the open ocean could be the future for Southeast Asia. In Baja California, Mexico, Steve Page of Ocean Farm Technologies is developing the Aquapod [^fn9], a free-floating, untethered deep ocean fish habitat. Imagine if we can turn 70% and increasing area of the earth surface, the open ocean, into our new permanent food source via fish farming.

Stronger tropical storm could mean the potential to generate limitless energy via ocean wave energy generator like Wave Star [^fn10]. One Wave Star energy generator can turn the free unlimited kinetic energy from ocean waves into 6 Megawatts of energy, enough to power 4000 homes. A seafaring nomad civilization with an extensive network of commercial shipping vessels, sea-based food sources and energy generators as well as naval forces without the need for a long supply line could be dominating the ocean in 21 century.

Weather hazard is still a major obstacle for any large human settlments at sea. However, with latest lazer satellite in orbits and nanobots in the atmosphere, we maybe can finally turn climate change worry into climate energy generator with a satelite switch.