A new study involving researchers from University College London, the University of Kent, and Duke University suggests that human bipedalism - walking on two legs - may have originated in trees, rather than on the ground. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, analyzed the behavior
suggests that human bipedalism – walking on two legs – may have originated in trees, rather than on the ground., analyzed the behaviors of wild chimpanzees living in the Issa Valley of western Tanzania, an area similar to the habitat of early human ancestors and known as “savanna-mosaic” – a mix of dry open land with few trees and patches of dense forest. The researchers aimed to determine if the openness of this type of landscape could have led to bipedalism in early hominins.
Furthermore, although the researchers expected the Issa chimpanzees to walk upright more in open savanna vegetation, where they cannot easily travel via the tree canopy, more than 85% of occurrences of bipedalism took place in the trees. “Our study suggests that the retreat of forests in the late Miocene-Pliocene era around five million years ago and the more open savanna habitats were in fact not a catalyst for the evolution of bipedalism. Instead, trees probably remained essential to its evolution – with the search for food-producing trees a likely a driver of this trait.”
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