Seven Million Years Ago, the Oldest Known Early Human Was Already Walking

Smithsonian Magazine ^ | August 24, 2022 | Brian Handwerk

[SunkenCiv]

A blackened, broken leg bone from Earth’s prehistoric past may hold the answer to when early humans diverged from apes and started their own evolutionary path.

The fossilized find, first uncovered two decades ago, suggests that early humans regularly walked on two feet some seven million years ago... Since many consider bipedalism the major milestone that put our own lineage on a different evolutionary path than the apes, Sahelanthropus could be the very oldest known hominin—the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all of our immediate ancestors.

The species could even be our oldest non-ape ancestor, if its lineage led to Homo sapiens instead of dying out. But while the fossil femur appears to have supported the demands of habitual upright walking, Sahelanthropus’s chimp-like forearms show that it still spent plenty of time in the trees. Two surviving arm bones reveal that the species used a grasping climbing technique to support a type of hybrid lifestyle that could have persisted among early hominins for some three million years...

Boisserie and colleagues, some of whom originally described Sahelanthropus in 2002, compared more than 20 traits of the femur and forearm bones with a large sample of living chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, fossil Miocene apes, early hominin bipeds like Orrorin tugenensis and Ardipithecus Ramidus, and remains of prehistoric Homo and Homo sapiens. They compared external shapes, curves, internal structures and thicknesses to learn if the bone had the same characteristics as those known to be well-suited to the demands of force, balance and other requirements of upright walking. The femur of S. tchadensis showed many similarities with other hominin species, while no traits of the femur were also found exclusively in apes.

[Beowulf9]

😵‍💫

[vpintheak]

News for the atheists. Humans have always walked.

[BipolarBob]

Homo sapiens clearly emerged from earlier hominid lines, from which it diverged and became a separate species thousands of years ago...

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. You don't really believe that, do you?

[SunkenCiv]

Really? I'm tired of the false equation that all scientists (no need for quote marks, they are scientists) deny the existence of God, and I'm tired of sectarian turmoil showing up in science, history, and archaeology topics.

[SunkenCiv]

Whatever. You don't know what you're talking about.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks. but that's from the ever-popular Daily Mail, which didn't even get the dating right, and it's from two years ago, superseded by this new research. It's also clear, even from that article, that the primate argument is the minority view.

[SunkenCiv]

I posted the link, not realizing that it was a live version. Starr was still pullin’ it off at that time.

[plain talk]

I’ve studied this a bit and quickly came to the conclusion these creatures are animals and have nothing to do with human “evolution”. In fact they have produced little in the way of evolution for evolution beyond minor tweaking.

[Falconspeed]

“Do you credit as true the theory that humans evolved from apes?” God the Father is 100% responsible for every species of vertebrates. He uses lower species to bring about higher species which, of course, only He can do. Proof? Adam was the first member of a higher species He brought about from a lower species. Mysterious and fun to think about. The Lord knows the location of Adam’s grave.

[Songcraft]

I like the song you had him doing (as well as the other songs other folks posted for him here).   I wanted to add this song, which was another song about him. (This song is 7 million years old too, just like him.)

     "Alley Oop"

---

And here is the first song the Heavenly Choir of Angels (in disguise) sang to that first walking man, when he took his first step.   The heavenly message they gave the first walking man can still apply to us today, in the middle of all this darkness and evil we are going through. (Link and lyrics below.)

"You'll Never Walk Alone"

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Nancy Pelosi?

[SunkenCiv]

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4089072/posts?page=46#46

[DennisR]

Looks more like only 6,999,999 years ago to me. /s

[Signalman]

7M years ago they weren’t human. They were pre-human. More ape than human.

[Alas Babylon!]

Walking in Memphis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgRafRp-P-o

[bgill]

Seven million years later, humans are walking into poles because their noses are stuck in their phones.

[SunkenCiv]

I’ve often wondered why Kleenex hasn’t come out with a line of mobile phones.

[bgill]

A Sahelanthropus chadensis.

[dfwgator]

It wasn’t in Los Angeles, because nobody walks in LA.