Posted on 09/11/2007 7:51:26 AM PDT by blam
Ancient humans walked but 'struggled to run'
By Roger Highfield and Nic Fleming
Last Updated: 12:01pm BST 11/09/2007
Ancient humans almost certainly walked upright on two legs millions of years ago but may have struggled to run at even half the speed of modern man, according to computer simulations.
A University of Manchester study - presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival of Science in York- proposes that if early humans lacked an Achilles tendon, as modern chimps and gorillas do, then their ability to run would have been severely compromised.
Our early ancestors preferred to walk a little slower than we do
"How we evolved from our common ancestor with chimpanzees six million years ago is a fundamental question," said Dr Bill Sellers.
"Walking upright seems to be the very first thing that distinguishes our ancestors from other apes, so finding out about this should help us map the evolutionary pathway to modern humans."
"The key findings are that by 3.5 million years ago we would predict fully upright, efficient walking", he said.
His research also showed that our early ancestors preferred to walk a little slower than we do but only because they were much smaller and had quite short legs.
"Our research supports the belief that the earliest humans used efficient bipedal walking rather than chimp-like 'Groucho' walking," said Dr Sellers, who led the study.
"But if, as seems likely, early humans lacked an Achilles tendon then whilst their ability to walk would be largely unaffected our work suggests running effectiveness would be greatly reduced with top speeds halved and energy costs more than doubled.
The Achilles tendon acts like a big spring to store energy during running; when the tendon was removed from the model the top running speed was greatly reduced.
"Efficient running would have been essential to allow our ancestors to move from a largely herbivorous diet to the much more familiar hunting activities associated with later humans. What we need to discover now is when in our evolution did we develop an Achilles tendon as knowing this will help unravel the mystery of our origins."
Dr Sellers, who recently published research on the running speeds of meat-eating dinosaurs, used the same computer software to generate a walking virtual human using data from a hominid fossil skeleton called 'Lucy' and hominid footprints preserved in ash at Laetoli in Tanzania.
"The skeletons and footprints from some of the earliest members of the human lineage - the early hominids," said Dr Sellers. "We have borrowed techniques from other scientific disciplines - robotics, computer science and biomechanics - in an attempt to 'reverse engineer' fossil skeletons; we use what we know about skeletons and the muscles to build a computer model of the fossil species we are interested in.
"This model is a virtual robot where we can activate muscles and get it to move its legs in a physically realistic fashion; the tricky bit is getting it to actually walk or run without falling over.
"However, if we use big enough computers and let the model fall over enough times it is possible for the simulation to learn which muscles to fire and when in order to get the model to walk properly. Even better we can ask the computer to find ways of minimising fuel cost and maximising top speed since that is what we think animals have to do."
The studies show that "whilst these very early fossils could walk well, our initial findings suggest that efficient running came about quite a bit later in the fossil record," he said, adding "we have only just started to look at running and so there are still plenty of questions to answer."
"The next really interesting question is to look in more detail at running. It has been suggested that our ability to run for long distances took a lot longer to evolve than our ability to walk. Our techniques should let us get to the bottom of this question because it will let us measure the running abilities of our fossil ancestors directly."
"What we need to discover now is when in our evolution did we develop an Achilles tendon as knowing this will help unravel the mystery of our origins."
He suggested that the tendon was probably developed some time between two and three and a half million years ago.
Dr Sellers said his work on "making dead men walk" is also relevant to athletics, where amputee athletes, such as South African 400m runner Oscar Pistorius, have been accused of gaining an unfair advantage by running on carbon fibre blades, providing more of a spring than a conventional Achilles tendon.
LOL!
The Scars of Evolution:"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"
What Our Bodies Tell Us
About Human Origins
by Elaine Morgan
YEC INTREP - The first man, Adam, was created perfectly. I find it hard to believe he couldn’t run when he wanted to.
I just shake my head at all these theories we come up with - so creative, so detailed - when God told us plainly in His word where we came from. He knows we want to know, He knows we are curious, He’s told us very explicitly - it’s just not good enough for us, is it?
no relative of mine was a f’n chimpanzee.
speak for yourselves!
...though there might be just HINT of sheep from some time waaaaayy back there.
naaa...prolly not
Fixed your typo:
..though there might be just HINT of sheep from some time way bah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahck there.
thaaaanks
BAAAAAA, Humbug!
The first man, Adam, was created perfectly.
And most important.. “In the image of God”
The Bible says so, I believe it, and so be it.
There was no monkey involved...Period!
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Posted on 05/29/2002 5:11:46 PM EDT by Salman
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/691468/posts
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Eureka Alert - ASU | 2-16-2006 | Garu Schwartz - Skip Derra
Posted on 02/16/2006 1:14:54 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1579810/posts
Early Humans Walked Peculiarly
Discovery News | 2-28-2006 | Jennifer Viegas
Posted on 02/28/2006 2:27:44 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1587166/posts
Ape To Human: Walking Upright May Have Protected Heavy Human Babies
Science Daily | 12-17-2007 | Springer.
Posted on 12/17/2007 4:50:35 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1940836/posts
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