Bipedalism Research Paper

It has long been believed that humankind owes its survival to bipedalism, which is the ability to walk on two legs. This is the first human characteristic to distinguish human from other primates. It is habitual, meaning that it is the primary form of transportation. This characteristic thrived in a time where forests were shrinking and the environment consisted of grasslands. The feature bipedal locomotion leads humans to manipulate their surroundings, bypassing their biological features and being given to the ability to live anywhere, and in any environment. Although developing into bipedal organisms hominids were taking a big gamble. With all the benefits of bipedalism, there are also many disadvantages. In some cases these disadvantages

And would a human has better benefited if their early ancestors followed the way of the modern chimp and stayed quadrupedal. Bipedalism, as an evolutionary advancement, poses new advantages and disadvantages to the survival of mankind.

The greatest benefit to bipedalism is that it leaves the hands open to carry “objects such as food, tools, offspring, and weapons” (Jablonski and Chaplin 113). This is quite prominent considering advances in tool-making and weaponry gave hominids an advantage over other predators that just depended on their own body to hunt. This is an advantage, because when it come to certain tasks humans can invent a new tool that is better suited to accomplish that task. For example, if a predator was ripping meat off the bones of its prey it wouldn't be able to successfully remove all the meat from the animal. A human, with the use of their tools, can

Human babies are helpless at birth compared to other primates and depend on their mother for a long duration of time. This is because they are born at an earlier “stage of neurological and cognitive development,” a result of having only 30% the brain size at birth compared to Chimpanzees with 40% (Roberts and Thorpe 283). The pelvis of a bipedal walker does not allow for the birth canal to be wide enough for a bigger brained baby to go through. Later humans have gone through adoption such as “absolute increase in coronal width, and a relative increase in sagittal depth” in order to give birth to big-brained babies (Roberts and Thorpe 284). This would have been big problems for early hominids as it would mean that giving birth to a baby would be a lot harder because of this compared to other primates with a larger birth canal. Without proper help the rate of both mother and child dying at birth was high. Also, because the child was so dependent on the mother in created a handicap for her, she herself would need some sort of extra protection from another hominid. This can be thought to be essentially early forming of a basic family unit. Finally, anything was to happen to the mother, the chances of the baby surviving on its one would be little to none. Unless another member of the community was to take over and care for the