Why Humanity Has a Deep and Ancient Connection to Water

Widening the lens to living, visiting, or vacationing along larger bodies of water hits the jackpot when it comes to measurable health (physical and mental) benefits.

Image by Port Sundries from Pixabay

“There is something about being in water and swimming which alters my mood, gets my thoughts going, as nothing else can.
“Theories and stories would construct themselves in my mind as I swam to and fro, or round and round...sentences and paragraphs would write themselves in my mind, and at such times I would have to come to shore every so often to discharge them.”
- Oliver Sacks quoted in Blue Mind

It’s summer and people are making vacation plans; you may want to think about spending your break on or near a large body of water: new science shows how it can heal and renew both your body and your mind.

When Louise and I were first married in 1972, we were both big fans of author John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels about a houseboat-living beach bum who occasionally did “favors for friends” that inevitably ended up with him doing battle with bad guys on behalf of a damsel in distress. The idea of houseboat living intrigued us.

Louise grew up around water; her parents lived near Coral Gables, Florida when she was a child and her dad had a sailboat they spent a lot of time in (her brother grew up to become a sea captain). Her mom had a home on Lake Michigan, in Pentwater. And they used to camp during the summers along the dunes on Lake Michigan.

Our first apartment together, in 1971, faced the Grand River in East Lansing, Michigan; we’d try to get a rented canoe into the water every weekend. We had a shared fantasy of one day buying a sailboat and sailing around the world.

Instead, we started a community for abused kids on Stinson Lake in New Hampshire in 1978; then moved to a house on a small lake near Atlanta in the 1980s; then later to a floating home on the Willamette River in Portland in 2005; then lived on board a 46-foot 1986 Chris Craft boat in Washington, DC for seven years; then moved to where we live now on the Columbia River (the Northern Hemisphere’s largest river, just behind the Mississippi). And we almost always vacation on or in the water.

All those years, I thought we just did this because it was a pleasant way to live and vacation (and maybe because Louise is a Pisces). Turns out, though, that there are very real and significant benefits to spending time with bodies of water, from oceans, lakes, and rivers to swimming pools and even an aquarium in the living room or bedroom.

There’s a theory about human evolution which ties into this and that the late neuroscientist, brain surgeon, and author Leonard Schlain shared with me over lunch back in the 1990s when we were both speakers at a neuroscience conference.

“Have you ever wondered why we’re mostly hairless except for the top of our heads?” he asked, as I recall, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Or why the salinity of our blood is identical to seawater? Or why from birth to about six months a baby, when dunked under water, will immediately close his throat and not inhale or swallow water? Or why the fatty acids profile of our brains is nearly identical to fish oil?”

I’d never considered any of them, so he proceeded to lay the “Aquatic Ape” hypothesis on me. That theory suggests that at some point in human evolution we were forced to live along sea- or lake-coasts and spend large amounts of time in the water. As a result, the theory went, we lost hair pretty much everywhere except to protect the top of our head and our genitals.

Len noted with disappointment that the hypothesis had been largely discredited in the early 1990s by anthropologists (there was no clear time when a primary chunk of humanity lived exclusively along a coast) but he was still fascinated by the correlates.

He’d written two books about the cultural power and impact of women, the most astonishing and profound being The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, and wondered aloud if babies had been born in the water at some point in ancient human history, accounting for why human babies are born with what’s referred to as the “diving reflex” and to this day many women choose to give birth in a tub of warm water.

In 2009, the same year Len died, the debate around the Aquatic Ape was reopened with the publication by Richard Wrangham, et al, of a peer-reviewed paper suggesting that historically living in or near water was actually consistent with humanity’s history, even inland in Africa and the Middle East, and that we developed “habitual bipedality” in order to maneuver underwater to get and store food. As Smithsonian Magazine noted three years later in a roundup article about the Aquatic Ape hypothesis:

“Today, chimpanzees and gorillas occasionally venture into shallow bodies of water, and when they do, they wade on two legs. It makes sense. Wading bipedally allows the apes to keep their heads above water. As our earliest ancestors spent longer and longer periods of time wading upright, it became beneficial to evolve specialized anatomy for two-legged walking. …

“So, like most things in human evolution, the debate’s wide open.”

Aquatic apes or not, what science does fully agree on is that being near water — even a home aquarium — has measurable positive effects on human psychology, emotions, and even overall health.

At the smallest scale — a home aquarium — watching fish swim induces an involuntary relaxation response. An aquarium is static (staying in the same place) yet dynamic (filled with motion), much like watching a fireplace or campfire. And there are living things in there who depend on us for their lives, which can forge a deep bond.

One study found a home aquarium can produce as much as a 12 percent reduction in people’s anxiety levels. Another meta-study of 19 previously published studies discovered that, “Preliminary support was found for effects [of a home aquarium] on mood, pain, nutritional intake and body weight...”

Widening the lens to living, visiting, or vacationing along larger bodies of water hits the jackpot when it comes to measurable health (physical and mental) benefits.

Remember the craze a few decades ago of “negative ion generators?” Science long ago found that air that had more negative ions (atoms carrying a charge because they’ve lost or acquired an electron) caused a whole cascade of positive impacts on our bodies and brains, including boosting our immune systems.

Most of those studies, in fact, measured impact of the negative ion levels in air near rivers, lakes, and oceans. Bodies of water produce negative ions by interacting with air through what’s called the Lenard Effect, named after Philipp Lenard who won the Nobel Prize in 1905 for their discovery.

Entrepreneurs jumped into the game in the 1980s, selling little devices that arced a bit of electricity through the air in your home or office, thus charging oxygen atoms, thereby creating negative (extra-electron-containing) ions. A quick Amazon search reveals there are still dozens of brands on the market.

Air that contains negative ions, particularly those naturally created by large bodies of water, can, as WebMD notes:

“[P]roduce biochemical reactions that increase levels of the mood chemical serotonin, helping to alleviate depression, relieve stress, and boost our daytime energy.”

A study from Columbia University found exposure to negative ions reduced anxiety and ameliorated the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder and some other forms of depression. Other studies found positive impacts on immune system health and overall physical and mental wellness.

Some of the most popular vacation destinations in the world are beaches and cruise ships on the sea: both are places rich in naturally produced negative ions, which probably accounts for why their revivifying impact on us is so significant that the “glow” from such trips often lasts months.

Most recently, an entire new field of science and popular literature has emerged around the “Blue Mind Theory,” which suggests our brains and bodies need periodic interaction with or exposure to water, from having aquariums to living or taking vacations near the water.

The famed neuroscientist Dr. Wallace Nichols wrote an entire book about it in 2015 titled, “Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do.” He’s also amassed a huge body of research supporting his hypothesis that you can find here.

The bottom line here is that humanity has a deep and ancient connection to water and sea life, one that we all should revisit as often as possible!