When and how was walking invented?

Tennessee (US): Many have a doubt that how walking was invented, this is an important question because many anthropologists see bipedalism – which means walking on two legs – as one of the defining characteristics of “hominins,” or modern humans, and their ancestors. It is difficult to give a simple answer, though, because bipedalism did […]

Tennessee (US): Many have a doubt that how walking was invented, this is an important question because many anthropologists see bipedalism – which means walking on two legs – as one of the defining characteristics of “hominins,” or modern humans, and their ancestors. It is difficult to give a simple answer, though, because bipedalism did not just appear one day. It went through a gradual evolution that began many millions of years ago.

Of course there are no video clips of the first person ever walking upright. So how do scientists try to answer questions about how people moved in the very ancient past? Luckily, the shape of a creature’s bones and the way they fit together can tell the story of how that body moved when it was alive. And anthropologists can find other evidence in the landscape that indicates how ancient people walked.

In 1994, the first fossils of an unknown hominin were found in Ethiopia. The anthropologists who found the remains called the new discovery, an adult female individual, Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed “Ardi.” Over the next 10 years, more than 100 fossils from Ardi’s species were found and dated to between 4.2 million and 4.4 million years old.

When scientists examined this collection of bones, they identified certain characteristics that indicated bipedalism. The foot, for example, had a structure that allowed the kind of toe push-off that we have today, which four-legged apes do not have. The shape of the pelvic bones, how the legs were positioned under the pelvis and how the leg bones fit together all suggested upright walking too. It may be that Ardi did not walk exactly as we do today, but bipedalism as the normal way of movement does seem to be characteristic of these fossils from as early as 4.4 million years ago.

So, as you can see, human walking took a very long time to develop. It appeared in Africa more than 4.4 million years ago, long before tool-making appeared. ANI