Bipedalism

gain advantage over many other species in chance of survival. For centuries we firmly believed in the idea of all creatures were quadrupedal and we had never seen any exception. It was by accident that we discovered a group of species that featured bipedalism named Homo sapiens. This discovery refuted our long-held belief and successfully aroused us interests. The Homo sapiens were in fact similar to us in many aspects of body traits. Therefore, the key to the mystery would most likely lie in…

categories for other animals to fit in, Walker and Shipman reveal that there seems to be something harder for humans to define about ourselves. As is done with any other animal, the logical place to start is with humans’ unique physical traits. Bipedalism is the most easily identifiable human trait. No other living mammal walks habitually upright like people do. In The Wisdom of the Bones, Walker and Shipman recount Raymond Dart’s studies of Australopithecines. They found that…

contributed to the survival of their mates and their offspring, then their own genes would survive into the next generation. Bipedalism would have allowed males to provide their mates and offspring with high-quality food as well as to help protect them from any looming dangers. This explanation makes biological and behavioral sense. Natural selection cannot create a behavior like bipedalism, but it can act to select the behavior once it has arisen. Surely some early hominids were better at…

From both the article and the textbook, some of the unique qualities of humans are its bipedalism, large brain, complex language, and the ability to forge tools. Of all the traits listed above, bipedalism is one of the most vital. Not only was it essential for the survival and expansion of our species, but according to Darwin it is considered a key force for human evolution. (Ironically enough, one of the major health problems that people face today is living a sedentary life style.) Before we…

When looking back on the evolution of man nothing stands out more than the word “bipedalism” this is what kicked us off the ledge to start us on the path of walking upright completely and gave us the dominated figure we all have today. Now let’s take it from the beginning the earliest forms of human beings used to climb tress and would walk on the ground, this use of flexibility allowed early humans to get around in such diverse habitats and also to be able to cope with the many changing…

tools, and have small brains. Darwin further explained that bipedalism aided humans in hunting by allowing freeing their arms to carry weapons to kill animals. As a result, they did not need the help of canines to hunt, but material culture. Rodman’s and McHenry’s hypothesis mirrored Darwin’s a bit because he also agreed that bipedalism aid humans in their environment while quadrupedal was a hinderance. Rodman and McHenry believed that bipedalism allowed humans to pick food and be protected from…

In efforts to answer the enigma of how modern humans have evolved to become the way they are today, countless theories of human evolution have been proposed. Although there is no concrete means of knowing everything about early human development, the suggested theories make both accurate and inaccurate points based off the evidence attainable at this time. Among these proposed theories is the “aquatic ape theory”, which suggests that humans underwent an aquatic stage where they lived…

geographic location, they each represent very different phases of the evolution to what we are today. It would therefore be interesting to see how they differed, based on the physical traits of certain representative fossils, when it comes to body size, bipedalism and other cranio-dental features. Height is one of the most explicit physical differences between the Australopithecines and H. ergaster. The Australopithecines…

Maxwell’s Museum of Anthropology was a rather interesting museum that holds plenty of material culture backed by really interesting information. I recently had the opportunity to visit Maxwell’s Museum of Anthropology on November 26, 2016 and it was quite the wonderful and informative experience. Maxwell’s Museum of Anthropology holds rather interesting material culture, such as preserves from archaeological sites as well as artifacts that primitive individuals had used to hunt and gather as…

2.) In consideration of the relationship between the Intermembral index and the habitual mode of locomotion for the six different primates, the collected data suggests that the lower the index is, the greater the chance for bipedalism as the “default,” or main movement. Versus a higher index which instead suggests the preferred ability of moving with the arms (e.g. swinging). Moreover, primates with an index closer to a total of 100 appear to assume quadrupedalism. This query can be seen when…