We were never knuckle draggers
- From: "MClark" <men@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 17:50:19 -0500
/Upright walking may not have been uniquely human/
Ann Mcllroy, Toronto Globe and Mail
Early humans didn't start out walking on all fours like gorillas and
then slowly straighten up, a team of British researchers says. Instead,
our ancestors became two-footed while nimbly traversing tree branches
in search of fruit. When ancient rain forests began to thin out, they jumped
down from the trees and started walking on the ground.
"They stayed doing what they were doing in the first place," says Robin
Crompton, with the Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology at
the University of Liverpool.
His work, published in the latest edition of the journal Science, is based
on the fossil records and observations of orangutans. It challenges the
widely held notion that upright walking is uniquely human, something that
distinguishes us from our closest relatives, the great apes.
Orangutans do it all the time, Crompton says. They navigate skinny branches
on two feet, grabbing higher branches with their hands to help with their
balance.
They can also walk two-footed on the ground.
Early humans didn't start walking upright so they could wade into water to
find
food, more easily carry their babies or travel more quickly and efficiently
on the
savannah, Crompton says, dismissing competing theories about the evolution
of bipedalism.
Instead, they learned how to walk in trees, and eventually did the same on
the
ground. "Bipedalism is nothing new. It is not the dramatic change that
people
portray it as," he says.
Studying orangutans offered a chance to gather evidence for an alternative
explanation.
Crompton's colleague Susannah Thorpe at the University of Birmingham spent
a year in the Sumatran rain forest observing orangutans. The team concluded
that
two-footed walking helps orangutans survive because it allows them better
access to fruit.
They argue that ancient apes - including our ancestors - probably did the
same
thing and that upright walking offered an advantage once they climbed down
from the trees.
The ancestors of chimps and gorillas, on the other hand, became more
specialized
at going up and down trees - holding on with both their hands and feet. They
kept
that same posture on the ground, which is why they often knuckle-walk,
supporting
their weight with their hands and feet.
While the new research offers an explanation for why ancient apes could
walk upright, it also complicates the work of paleontologists, who have
used evidence of two-footed walking as key criteria for distinguishing early
human fossils from those of other apes.
"It turns it all on its head, and reopens the debate," said Paul O'Higgins,
a researcher at the University of York in Britain.
/end article/
And a poo-poo to you, too, Peanut Gallery. (You know who you are)
________________________
"For whosoever quoteth scripture endlessly
hath neither job nor hobby." II Mumbleonians 4:19
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: We were never knuckle draggers
- From: KLM
- Re: We were never knuckle draggers
- From: claudiusdenk
- Re: We were never knuckle draggers
- From: Marc Verhaegen
- Re: We were never knuckle draggers
- Prev by Date: Re: human ancestors never passed through a knuckle-walking phase
- Next by Date: Re: Guns, Germs, Steel and Comets?
- Previous by thread: Human occupation or natural processes?
- Next by thread: Re: We were never knuckle draggers
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
