Becoming human: The evalution of walking upright.

Discovering the skull approximately three-million-year-old has a head structure more human-like than an apes and therefore likely walked upright

Further fossil discoveries of bipedal apes that predated Neanderthals and H. erectus (collectively called australopithecines) helped convince anthropologists that walking upright came before big brains in the evolution of humans. This was demonstrated with the finding of Lucy, a nearly complete australopithecine skeleton. Although Lucy was small, she had the anatomy of hip and legs which creates stability while walking.

Although the earliest human race with the most extensive evidence for bipedalism is the 4.4-million-year-old. However they probably didn’t get exactly as we do today. They retained primitive features—such as long, curved fingers and toes as well as longer arms and shorter legs—that indicate they spent time in trees. It’s not until the emergence of H. erectus 1.89 million years ago that human grew tall, evolved long legs and became completely terrestrial creatures.

One problem with this idea is that the earliest stone tools don’t show up until 2.5 million years ago, about 4.5 million years after bipedalism’s origin.

Even if an anthropologists had discovered completely bipedal around 1.89 million years ago but they erewhile find some evidence that shown earliest stone tools had shown up 2.5 million years ago. The question is, does the way they use the stone tools as a habitual could help them to become walking upright?

The author said “Charles Darwin offered an explanation in his book The Descent of Man: Hominids needed to walk on two legs to free up their hands. He wrote that “…the hands and arms could hardly have become perfect enough to have manufactured weapons, or to have hurled stones and spears with a true aim, as long as they were habitually used for locomotion.”

In my opinion, I think the brain is created what we need and think about the way we use the tools to make our life easier and then the body will adapt into it until we are getting used to it. That is we called evolution.


Three new vocabulary words.

1.      Demonstrated : to show, to prove

Who can works all day long might not demonstrate a good performance. 

2.      Convince : to persuade

Peoples is persuaded by good advertisement.

3.      Primitive : ancient, antique, fossil

There are a lot of primitive stuff in the museum.