Early Man Walked Upright 2 Million Years Earlier?

Posted on by

POPULAR SCIENCE– A lot of the debate about when modern humans became modern humans has to do with the head–when our brains evolved into the functional equivalent of that of modern mankind. But while that particular argument continues, a team of UK researchers using a new kind of statistical technique have analyzed ancient footprints at a site in Tanzania and found that if our feet are allowed to tell the tale, our early ancestors were becoming human-like as much as two million years earlier than we previously thought.

The study relies on eleven well-preserved footprints at the Laetoli site in Tanaznia that the researchers subjected to a new statistical technique derived from methods used in functional brain imaging. Using this technique, they created 3-D average of the 11 prints there, comparing them with data obtained from the study of modern humans and living great apes.

The researchers also used computer simulations to model a variety of gaits–and the footprints they would have produced–for the likely maker of the Laetoli prints, a species known as Australopithecus afarensis. It was previously thought that this ancestor walked crouched over, putting pressure on the side of the foot and pushing off from the middle, like a modern ape.

Read more about Early Man Walked Upright 2 Million Years Earlier Than We Thought, Says New Analysis

© 2011 Popular Science

Photo by Flickr user Grabthar

2 thoughts on “Early Man Walked Upright 2 Million Years Earlier?

Leave a Reply

RELATED NEWS

  • Rosa Clemente & Abby Martin – No Savior in 2020
  • Fighting at Standing Rock with AIM Founder Dennis Banks
  • Mumia Abu-Jamal and Cornel West Uncensor Radical Black History
  • Native American Genocide & Resistance with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
  • SCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY

  • Tangentially Speaking: Chris Ryan & Abby Martin
  • Propaganda and the Engineering of Consent for Empire
  • Marxism 101: How Capitalism is Killing Itself with Dr. Richard Wolff
  • Noam Chomsky & Abby Martin: The Empire’s Election Extravaganza
  • Panopticon Fatigue – Life, Sex and Death under the East German Stasi
  • Independent Media and the Cultural Revolution at Zeitgeist Day
  • MLK Jr. – The Uncomfortable Truths History Books Won’t Touch
  • How Words Absolve Pillaging and Mass Murder
  • Journalist Amber Lyon: The War on Drugs is a Human Rights Crisis
  • The Case for Vegetarianism You’ve Never Heard Before
  • Inside the Zeitgeist Revolution with Peter Joseph
  • Modern Money, Public Purpose, and Democracy
  • Can The USA Really Run Out Of Dollars?
  • Turning Pine Sap Into ‘Ever-Green’ Plastics
  • MR Transcript – America’s ‘War On Kids’