14 DAY TRIAL // A group of experts from the University of Cambridge believes that the earliest humans may have started walking on two feet in order to be able to monopolize resources in their environment. This was achieved by being able to carry a lot more food than other species.
Freeing two of the limbs for transporting cargo is believed to have marked a critically-important moment for our species' evolution. This may have led directly to our ancestors developing a knack for using tools.
Details of the new study were published in the March 20 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Current Biology. In order to arrive at this conclusion, investigators analyzed the behavior of modern chimpanzees, when the primates were placed in a setting that encouraged competition for food.
The group says that this setup allowed them to look at the chimps as proxies for hominins, or human-like species that came before our more modern form. The research showed that the primates tended to switch to bipedal locomotion as well, under specific circumstances.
It all had to do with being able to predict when a certain type of resource would become available again. When the chimps were uncertain as to when they might be able to gain access to a type of food again, they attempted to place a monopoly on available resources. They did so by walking upright.
“Bipedality as the key human adaptation may be an evolutionary product of this strategy persisting over time. Ultimately, it set our ancestors on a separate evolutionary path,” says Wlliam McGrew.
The expert holds an appointment as a professor in the Department of Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He was a part of the research team, which also included PhD student Susana Carvalho and professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa, both at the Kyoto University, in Japan.
In the experiments the team conducted, it was also revealed that uncompetitive settings did not encourage bipedal walking in chimps. Conversely, when scarce resources and competition were involved, they were 400 times more likely to walk on their hind limbs.
Studies such as this may provide researchers with a more insightful look into our kind's history. The fossil record has thus far been uncooperative, in the sense that the missing evolutionary links anthropologists are interested in have yet to be discovered.