The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

its South African cousins Africanus also appear to have been well-adapted to climbing. 25
Their knees did not lock as ours do, so that walking with slightly bent legs would have
required considerable muscle strain and corresponding energy demands.
Furthermore, the early australopithecines or their predecessors, such as
Ardipithecus, had heads that were not balanced on top of their spinal columns but hung
forward on strong neck muscles, in a position somewhere between a chimpanzee and
a human (according to the evidence of the location of the foramen magnum, the hole in
the base of the skull, which shows the position of the head in relation to the neck).
Nevertheless, as the famous footprints from Laetoli (dated at around 317
mya) impressively show, some australopithecines, or perhaps the recently discovered
Kenyanthropos (though almost certainly not Lucy-like hominids, despite Donald
Johanson’s protestations), could walk as well as we can, but their anatomy was by no
means the same as ours. The recent rediscovery by Ron Clarke and Phillip Tobias of the
University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (rediscovery because the fossils had
been misidentified and stored away, then later discovered and correctly identified) of a
collection of foot bones has complicated the picture of Australopithecus bipedalism. 26
Tobias believes that the fossil known as “Little Foot” shows that the big toe was so
articulated that it could swing to the side and be used to grip in ape-like manner as well
as being oriented forwards as in the human foot. The interpretation is controversial but
certainly opens the possibility that early hominids “experimented” with different forms
of bipedalism. It appears that early hominids were adapted to bipedal locomotion yet
retained primitive traits that enabled them to be effective tree climbers (though not as
good as apes). They seem to have retained some of these features even after a more
terrestrial lifestyle seems to have established itself.
Next we find a habiline (the adjective used to describe species related to Homo
habilis) mode of walking which was more terrestrial though still possessing some
climbing ability. But Homo habilis did not have the striding gait typical of Homo erectus.
Erectus anatomy suggests a heavy body build and more barrel-shaped trunk and thus
an emphasis on other parts of the body related to bipedalism.
According to the anatomist and hominid expert Professor Alan Walker, the
Nariokotome Boy, the most complete erectus fossil skeleton ever found “was a more
efficient walker and runner than any modern human.” 27 Robust bones, narrow hips,
long-necked femurs and muscles stronger than any Olympic sprinter made erectus a
formidable mover.
Neanderthals also had different limb proportions and pelvic shape though there
is no evidence that their bipedalism was any less efficient than that of modern humans
with their, on the whole, more linear body-build and full-striding gait. Neanderthal limb
proportions and their estimated bio-mechanics show that these people were more suited
to short, powerful bursts of sprinting. 28
We must also remember that each of the above named hominid grades overlaps
and that the phylogenetic relationships within the various clades are often far from clear.
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25
Henry M. McHenry and Lee Berger, 1988, “Body proportions in A. afarensis and A. africanus
and the origin of the genus Homo,” in Journal of Human Evolution, 35, pp1–22.
26
Reported in National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 2, February 1997, Walker and Shipman, 1996, p177.
27
Stringer and Gamble, 1993, p92–93.
28
Foley, R., 1997, Humans Before Humanity, an Evolutionary Perspective, Blackwells Scientific
publications.
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