From gods to monsters: how did we come to fear the shark?

Sharks have preyed on humans – and vice versa – for millennia. Can we rebalance our relationship with the last of the great living predators before it’s too late?

The most haunting of our imagined monsters remain hidden as they stalk us, striking when we least suspect it, while we are relaxing, or at play. The now-extinct megalodon roams the ocean unseen and unseeable, except in our imaginations. And it often surfaces in our consciousness when we are at rest or play by the seaside. The reason that the great shark holds such a chilling grip on us must be sought in the very long history of the interaction of sharks with people. Is there anything more spine-chilling than the thought of being eaten alive?

There is a contentious theory that our species went through an aquatic phase during its evolution, according to which the long periods our ancestors spent in the sea foraging for marine life account for our hairlessness, our thick layer of subcutaneous fat, and our abilities to swim and hold our breath. If the theory is true, then perhaps this primeval foray into the water has something to do with our deep fear of submerged predators.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/nEsZSjf

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two years after Buffalo mass shooting, an art exhibit focuses on the victims

A few months after 14 May 2022, a curator sought out three local artists. The resulting exhibition, Before and After Again, is thought to be the first of its kind Two years ago, a white supremacist drove 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, and opened fire in a grocery store in the city’s predominantly Black East Side neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring three. Though the Tops Friendly Markets where the racist mass shooting took place has been remodeled, and most of the country has forgotten about the violence that occurred on 14 May 2022, Buffalo’s East Side is forever changed. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/mqu1LFv
Read more

£1 Thursdays review – nightclubbing, sex talk and big decisions

Finborough theatre, London A mix of sweet observations about female friendship and cheeky brazenness about sex, Kat Rose-Martin’s play finds two young women at a crossroads in their lives In the cold air outside a sticky nightclub in Bradford, 17-year-olds Stacey and Jen are at a crossroads. In one direction lies the world they know: the family stress, the looming exams, the pumping pop beats at the club where they’ll reliably pull boys from school. In the other direction lies an uncertain path, and questions of who they are apart from one another, whether they could be the first in their families to go to university, and how to afford it if they do. Constantly on their minds, while they’re drunkenly dancing the nights away, is where they’ll end up, and what to do if they are the ones left behind. Thoughtful if not revelatory, £1 Thursdays covers an uneasy period of big decisions in these characters’ lives, as the gap between them widens. Monique Ashe-Palmer (Six) is ebullient as St
Read more