14 DAY TRIAL // A study recently published in the scientific journal Antiquity details a new hypothesis concerning our early ancestors' transition from walking on all fours to an upright gait.
This hypothesis boils down to the following: climate change had nothing to do with the early man's decision to change his way of getting about.
Quite the contrary: it was the rocky terrain that the Hominins were inhabiting that compelled them to learn how to use just their feet when walking.
Daily Mail says that, back in the days of the Hominins, East and South Africa's landscape was a rather rocky one.
This was because erupting volcanoes and shifting tectonic plates had taken care of transforming virtually all local landscapes into rugged ones.
As unappealing to the eye as these regions might have been, the Hominins liked them because they offered shelter and loads of opportunities to hunt.
Still, navigating these lands was not an easy thing to do, and our early ancestors soon learned (probably the hard way) that their upper body limbs were better used for upright scrambling and climbing.
“Our research shows that bipedalism may have developed as a response to the terrain, rather than a response to climatically-driven vegetation changes,” Dr. Isabelle Winder of the University of York says.
“The varied terrain may also have contributed to improved cognitive skills such as navigation and communication abilities, accounting for the continued evolution of our brains and social functions such as co-operation and team work,” the researcher believes.
Although they spent many hours hunting and hiding in such rocky areas, our ancestors also took the time to explore nearby plains.
By the looks of it, we owe our ability to run to these excursions carried out by the Hominins.
When asked to comment on the importance of this study, Dr. Isabelle Winder made a case of how, “Our hypothesis offers a new, viable alternative to traditional vegetation or climate change hypotheses.”
“It explains all the key processes in hominin evolution and offers a more convincing scenario than traditional hypotheses.”