Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit
Chapter 3
Rising and Falling: The Theorists of Bipedalism
For my ‘Show and Tell Research Presentation on Walking Topics’ I was assigned to present a physical demonstration in class as well as read chapter three from the novel ‘Wanderlust’. Since I will not be presenting a summary of my reading in class I will use this space to share with everyone what I have learned/discovered from this chapter. Hope you enjoy. I did!
To me, these big spaces mean freedom, freedom for the unconscious activity of the body and the conscious activity of the mind, places where walking hits a steady beat that seems to be the pulse of time itself.
~Rebecca Solnit on walking in a desert lakebed, Southeastern California’s Mojave Desert.
~Rebecca Solnit on walking in a desert lakebed, Southeastern California’s Mojave Desert.
In this chapter of the novel ‘Wanderlust,’ Solnit shares some of the history and theories of bipedalism; the act of using only two legs for walking. Here she explains how scientists have been tracing back to the time when evidence shows the first signs of human habitants to search for how and why walking began.
‘humanity’s true nature could be found in its origins.’
~Rousseau
Before she begins to unravel the findings she answers the questions as too why walking is important.
The Importance of Walking
Question:
Why is walking so important??
Answer:
There are many reasons why walking is important but “upright walking is the first hallmark of what became humanity… it created the spare pair of limbs dangling from the upright body, seeking something to hold or make or destroy, the arms freed to evolve into ever more sophisticated manipulators of the material world.”
“The human body is unlike anything else on Earth…The animal kingdom has nothing else like this column of flesh and bone always in danger of toppling… for the few other two-legged species – birds, kangaroos – have tails and other features to maintain balance and most of these bipeds hop rather than walk.”
An Interesting Observation
John Napier believes that human walking is actually just controlled falling. We can see this best in children whom, in learning to walk, lean forward with their body and then rush with their legs to keep them under their body.
> This may be true with infants, but I do not believe that walking in adults is a form of controlled falling unless they are really on the move, leaning their body far forward.
How History Becomes Skewed
A main point that was made during this chapter was the idea that people will believe and discard anything they want, leaving history skewed and facts questionable. The Piltdown hoax was believed from 1908 to 1950 because British scientists were eager to accept the evidence of a large-brained creature with an animal jaw discovered in England. This would have suggested that humans were evolving from apes and with great intelligence. This discovery would have not only rewritten history but also gratified the scientists by this discovery being made in England. Later however, technology proved that this was a LIE and the supposed evidence was actually a contemporary construction of a modern ape’s jaw and a human skull.
Now in taking this into consideration, it was broadcast that Raymond Dart found a child’s skull (Taung Child) in South Africa in 1924 similar to the Piltdown Man but it was genuine, not cobbled together. This discovery was however discredited as a human ancestor by the British masters so pleased by Piltdown.
>The scientists of the era preferred not to come from Africa and because the skull of the child had a small cranium but evidently walked upright it suggested that our intelligence had come late rather than early in our evolution.
Overall, it looks like walking came before intellect.
Photo of the Piltdown Man
Photo of the Taung Child
Take a look at this link on the Piltdown hoax if you would like to read more.
Here is an interesting article on how the Taung Child met it’s death.
Dart’s hypothesis that walking came before characteristics of thinking and making was later supported by Donald Johanson’s discovery of the ‘Lucy’ skeleton. Remains of another creature that was very similar to his find.
Lucy
Lucy was the given name of the small 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974. She was apelike in many respects; she did not have much of a waist or neck, short legs, longish arms, and the funnel-like rib cage of an ape. Her pelvis was however, wide and shallow which proves she had a stable gait with hip joints far apart tapering to close-together knees like humans and unlike chimps. The key fact here though is that she was able to walk.
Photo's of Lucy's remains and a model of what she may have looked like
Owen Lovejoy
The chapter goes on to talk about other scientists, archeologist and theorists. Owen Lovejoy was a name brought up many times. He believed like Dart that bipedalism had come first and been perfected far earlier than anyone else has assumed. He proposed that in the Miocene era, 5 million and more years ago, the human ancestor changed its behaviour. He believed that Males began to venture out and bring back provisions for the females carrying these in their freed hands while walking on two legs. Females as a result were able to bear more children as the challenge of feeding them and themselves was lessened. However this does not help the history of bipedalism since it’s disregards females.
Dean Falk
Anthropologist Dean Falk attacked Lovejoy’s hypothesis that walking had been a male business and that the males had been full of family virtues. Instead she believed that monogamy between such differently scaled males and females was unlikely. Since behaviour of terrestrial female primates suggests that female ancestral hominids chose multiple partners for reproductive and recreational sex.
Having dismissed his claim she resorted to side with the much simpler theory of Peter Wheeler, that walking upright minimized the amount of direct sun the earliest hominids received as they moved in the open spaces between patches of trees. Thereby freeing them to move farther and farther out of the shade of the forest.
Stern and Sussman
Other individuals who took an argumentative approach at this evolutionary mystery were Jack Stern and Randall Sussman anatomists at the State University of New York. They did not believe that we evolved in the savannah, which is popular opinion as too why we began walking. They believed that afarensis was indeed living in a forest setting but with the capability of both climbing and walking. They argued that we remained climbing trees long after we learned to walk since it’s unlikely that once we learned to walk we would forget about climbing all together. Besides afarensis habitat was forests and open country mosaics.
1991 Current Theories of Walking
Schlepp hypothesis = walking as an adaptation for carrying food, babies and various other things.
The peep-a-boo-hypothesis = standing up to see over the grass of the savannah.
The trench coat hypothesis = connected bipedalism to penile display, only this time to impress females rather than intimidate males.
The all wet hypothesis = wading and swimming during a proposed aquatic phase of evolution.
The tagalong hypothesis = following migratory herds across the savannah.
The hot to trot hypothesis = bipedalism limited solar exposure in the tropical midday sun and thus freed the species up to move into hot, open habitat.
Two feet are better than four hypothesis = bipedalism was more energy-efficient than quadrupedalism, at least for the primates who would become humans.
The Pelvis
Near the end of the chapter, Solnit resorted to talking about how we are constructed; skeletal wise. The pelvis is considered as a secret theater where thinking and walking meet. The pelvis of primates is a long vertical structure that rises nearly to the rib cage and is flattish from front to back (see photo). The hip joints are close together, the birth canal opens backward and the whole bony slab faces down when the ape is in its usual posture, as do the pelvises of most quadrupeds.
The human pelvis has tilted up to cradle the viscera and support the weight of the upright body, becoming a shallow vase from which the stem of the waist rises. Comparatively it is short and broad, with wise set hip joints. The birth canal points downward and the whole pelvis is, from the obstetrical point of view, a kind of funnel through which babies fall.
It is also interesting to note that giving birth for apes, as for most mammals, is a relatively simple process but for humans it is difficult and occasionally fatal for mother and child. As hominids evolved their birth canals became smaller, but as humans evolved their brains have grown larger and larger. This large brain makes for a large head, which strains the pelvis. To ease this strain the body manufactures hormones that soften ligaments, which bind the pelvis together, and towards the end of pregnancy the cartilage of the public bone separates. Often this process makes walking more difficult during and after giving birth. This brought along the insanely outrageous notion that women are worse at walking than men. However this has been argued and there is no scientific research that has elaborated on this theory.
Final Thoughts
This reading was nothing like I expected it to be. I thought it was going to be a somewhat philosophical journal of someone’s thoughts on walking, which I would not have been opposed too. It was interesting however, to think more in depth of how walking might have began. I didn’t once think during this ‘walking based class’ on the origins of walking. I find it amazing and interesting on how far we have come. We no longer, necessarily, need to walk in order to survive. It is not a life or death situation due to our technology and way of life. Walking is something most people do without thinking twice about. Walking has also become a source of entrainment, such as dancing. This boggles my mind now that I understand it was quite possible that it might have taken us millions of years to master the art of walking.
After reading this chapter I search for a documentary that I had once watched on the evolution of man. I surprisingly found it on youtube. It’s called from Ape to Man and there are 10 parts too it. It is very well done and talks about much of what this chapter was all about. Please feel free to take a break and become enlightened. Enjoy.
