Two feet good...
Along with a big brain, walking upright on two feet has often been taken to be a defining feature of the human line. In this week’s New Scientist I have a feature article on some recent ideas about why, and where, bipedality first arose. The ‘where’ question relates not to which part of the globe walking on two feet got going, but whether it was on the ground or in the trees.
What? Walking in the trees? It might sound counter-intuitive, but some researchers have recently been arguing for just this possibility, based on observations of the locomotor behaviour of orangutans. In the wild, orangutans not only move through the branches suspended by their hands, but occasionally ‘walk’ along branches while stabilising themselves by holding onto braches overhead. This ‘hand-assisted bipedalism’, the suggestion goes, could have been the precursor to bipedality in the human line.
It’s a controversial theory. Many other experts in human evolution argue that the fossil record clearly shows that the earliest humans show features of knuckle-walking ancestry. This, the counter-argument goes, points to a knuckle-walking ancestor of humans, chimps and gorillas: while the latter species retained this trait, the human line evolved a commitment to bipedalism as it increasingly abandoned life in, and among, the trees.
As is so often the case in debates about the course of human evolution, more fossils are needed. It would also be good if researchers could arrive at some sort of consensus about what the existing fossils tell us. I suspect that academic rivalries, and prior theoretical commitments, make this prospect unlikely in the short term. But keep your eyes open.
There is an idea even more provocative than ‘tree-walking’ that I was unable to cover in my New Scientist piece because of space constraints. Aaron Filler, a spinal expert at Harvard University with a fascination with human evolution, has recently proposed that the evolution of bipedality has a much older, and much simpler, origin than previous account allow.
By studying the spines of many living and extinct mammals, including apes, Filer claims to have documented a series of changes leading to the upright spine typical of humans. And some of these are astonishingly old. Filler argues that the lumbar vertebrae of Morotopithecus bishopi, an ancient ape that lived more than 20 million years ago (some 7 million years before the split between orangutans and the other great apes), shows tell-tale signs that its owner was an upright biped.
And for Filler, this has little to do with trees or savannahs. Rather, changes to the spine might have arisen by mutations in ‘homeotic’ genes that orchestrate developmental processes. Small changes to such genes can produce big changes by affecting entire developmental cascades. Filler speculates that an ancient mutation may have produced an individual in a single generation with a lumbar region causing an upright posture – the first bipedal ape. And so orangutan tree-walking is derivative, not innovative. “Bipedalism in the arboreal orangutans is a vestige of their ancestry and not so much a harbinger of the human locomotor style,” says Filler. (Filler has a website based on his book expounding this theory at www.uprightape.net. Filler also has a video describing various forms of primate locomotion online here).
While I’m at it, here’s a cool video of gibbons showing off their arboreal parkour antics (this really needs to be watched with sound, as the mixed in music (Welcome To The Jungle, by Guns'n'Roses) really adds to the film).
What? Walking in the trees? It might sound counter-intuitive, but some researchers have recently been arguing for just this possibility, based on observations of the locomotor behaviour of orangutans. In the wild, orangutans not only move through the branches suspended by their hands, but occasionally ‘walk’ along branches while stabilising themselves by holding onto braches overhead. This ‘hand-assisted bipedalism’, the suggestion goes, could have been the precursor to bipedality in the human line.
It’s a controversial theory. Many other experts in human evolution argue that the fossil record clearly shows that the earliest humans show features of knuckle-walking ancestry. This, the counter-argument goes, points to a knuckle-walking ancestor of humans, chimps and gorillas: while the latter species retained this trait, the human line evolved a commitment to bipedalism as it increasingly abandoned life in, and among, the trees.
As is so often the case in debates about the course of human evolution, more fossils are needed. It would also be good if researchers could arrive at some sort of consensus about what the existing fossils tell us. I suspect that academic rivalries, and prior theoretical commitments, make this prospect unlikely in the short term. But keep your eyes open.
There is an idea even more provocative than ‘tree-walking’ that I was unable to cover in my New Scientist piece because of space constraints. Aaron Filler, a spinal expert at Harvard University with a fascination with human evolution, has recently proposed that the evolution of bipedality has a much older, and much simpler, origin than previous account allow.
By studying the spines of many living and extinct mammals, including apes, Filer claims to have documented a series of changes leading to the upright spine typical of humans. And some of these are astonishingly old. Filler argues that the lumbar vertebrae of Morotopithecus bishopi, an ancient ape that lived more than 20 million years ago (some 7 million years before the split between orangutans and the other great apes), shows tell-tale signs that its owner was an upright biped.
And for Filler, this has little to do with trees or savannahs. Rather, changes to the spine might have arisen by mutations in ‘homeotic’ genes that orchestrate developmental processes. Small changes to such genes can produce big changes by affecting entire developmental cascades. Filler speculates that an ancient mutation may have produced an individual in a single generation with a lumbar region causing an upright posture – the first bipedal ape. And so orangutan tree-walking is derivative, not innovative. “Bipedalism in the arboreal orangutans is a vestige of their ancestry and not so much a harbinger of the human locomotor style,” says Filler. (Filler has a website based on his book expounding this theory at www.uprightape.net. Filler also has a video describing various forms of primate locomotion online here).
While I’m at it, here’s a cool video of gibbons showing off their arboreal parkour antics (this really needs to be watched with sound, as the mixed in music (Welcome To The Jungle, by Guns'n'Roses) really adds to the film).
posted by Dan Jones at 1:51 pm
1 Comments:
Good to see your article in New Scientist, Dan. This is one of many areas in evolutionary science where the process of finding out what happened is just as interesting as the prehistory itself.
Are you the first to mention, or almost mention, the “chimps’ ancestors were bipedal” theory in New Sci? Any properly run forums, including scientific journals, should include consideration of this theory any time they consider new evidence in this field. If only they realised evidence was those observations better explained by one theory than another, they would have stopped saying they needed more fossil evidence years ago. I think it’s generally accepted there have been no African tail-less quadrupedals found between chimps and “...Morotopithecus bishopi, an ancient ape that lived more than 20 million years ago...”, so for the old theory to be true, we have an apparently irrelevant lineage, often a bit sparse admittedly, of 13 million years or more of bipedal human/chimp ancestors in that gap, and we also must accept a ghost lineage in that time for which no quadrupedal human ancestors are known. This lineage extends to about 18 million years for chimps. That evidence alone is much better explained by the “chimps’ ancestors were bipedal” theory (which includes the australopithecine ancestry of chimps/gorillas).
You feel obliged to say “It’s a controversial theory”, but that only helps disparage it. The controversy implies the alternative theory is just as controversial. And when one considers that all new theories have to pass from having just one supporter and only a very few immediately after that, the fact that only a minority support a theory means nothing. We should remember that evolution is a minority view.
“As is so often the case in debates about the course of human evolution, more fossils are needed.” As I suggested above, that’s not necessarily true. Truer is the need for better scientific thinking, especially amongst the scientific media. I think we have ample evidence by now. Filler’s news that chimps and gorillas have solved the slanting/horizontal back posture in different ways whereas modern humans have a relatively similar upright spine structure to something 20 million years ago, combined with the “ghost lineage/parallel upright evolution” points I made above, clinch it. I was interested to hear you say:
“There is an idea even more provocative than ‘tree-walking’ that I was unable to cover in my New Scientist piece because of space constraints. Aaron Filler, ...”
Was that space constraint imposed by you, I wonder, or the editors? Still “no space” for that hugely significant article/theory to enjoy its debut in NS? You are yet another person who thinks the theory has legs, but has been put off by the editors, as when the shop assistant says:
“We get people asking for that all the time but there’s just no demand for it.”
Throughout all my net-twitterings over the years, I still think my best insight was that the “reasons of space” mentioned by editors all too often applied to the space between their ears! All right, NS has allowed something this time but they should have been at this stage twenty years ago.
Just discovered you were an editor at Nature, and seen your comments:
"I take issue with practically everything Gee says, ... Gee’s piece is short and my response long because I think a number of confusions get run together in a very short space in Gee’s column, and it takes a while to unpack what I see as the errors."
Oh boy - I've been there
! Just never got paid for it!
Strange..truth..er.
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