Humans may have split from chimpanzees at least 7 million years ago and left the trees to become ground-dwellers sometime after that. By 4 million years ago humans had developed bipedalism. Since the 1930’s the prevailing view has been that the evolution of human bipedalism has led to – or has been enabled by – human feet functioning very differently to those of other apes, “due to the development of arches in the mid-foot region and the supposed rigidity of that on the outside edge of the foot“.
But it now appears that human feet are not that unique and not so different to those of our ape cousins.
“Our limbs, however, did not adapt to life on the ground anywhere near as much as those of other ground-dwelling animals such as horses, hares and dogs. Our tests showed that our feet are not as stiff as originally thought and actually form part of a continuum of variation with those of other great apes.”
Karl T. Bates et al, The evolution of compliance in the human lateral mid-foot, Proc. R. Soc. B 22 October 2013 vol. 280, no. 1769, 2013.1818
rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.1818
Abstract:Fossil evidence for longitudinal arches in the foot is frequently used to constrain the origins of terrestrial bipedality in human ancestors. This approach rests on the prevailing concept that human feet are unique in functioning with a relatively stiff lateral mid-foot, lacking the significant flexion and high plantar pressures present in non-human apes. This paradigm has stood for more than 70 years but has yet to be tested objectively with quantitative data. Herein, we show that plantar pressure records with elevated lateral mid-foot pressures occur frequently in healthy, habitually shod humans, with magnitudes in some individuals approaching absolute maxima across the foot. Furthermore, the same astonishing pressure range is present in bonobos and the orangutan (the most arboreal great ape), yielding overlap with human pressures. Thus, while the mean tendency of habitual mechanics of the mid-foot in healthy humans is indeed consistent with the traditional concept of the lateral mid-foot as a relatively rigid or stabilized structure, it is clear that lateral arch stabilization in humans is not obligate and is often transient. These findings suggest a level of detachment between foot stiffness during gait and osteological structure, hence fossilized bone morphology by itself may only provide a crude indication of mid-foot function in extinct hominins. Evidence for thick plantar tissues in Ardipithecus ramidus suggests that a human-like combination of active and passive modulation of foot compliance by soft tissues extends back into an arboreal context, supporting an arboreal origin of hominin bipedalism in compressive orthogrady. We propose that the musculoskeletal conformation of the modern human mid-foot evolved under selection for a functionally tuneable, rather than obligatory stiff structure.
Liverpool University Press Release:
In a study of more than 25,000 human steps made on a pressure-sensitive treadmill at the University’s Gait Laboratory, scientists at Liverpool have shown that despite having abandoned life in the trees long ago, our feet have retained a surprising amount of flexibility, the type seen in the feet of other great apes, such as orang-utans and chimpanzees, that have remained largely tree-dwelling.
Professor Robin Crompton, from the University’s Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, explains: “It has long been assumed that because we possess lateral and medial arches in our feet – the lateral one supposedly being rigid and supported in bone – that our feet differ markedly to those of our nearest relatives, whose mid-foot is fully flexible and makes regular ground contact.
“This supposed ‘uniqueness’, however, has never been quantitatively tested. We found that the range of pressures exerted under the human mid-foot, and thus the internal mechanisms that drive them, were highly variable, so much so that they actually overlapped with those made by the great apes.”
It has previously been thought that humans who make contact with the ground with the mid-foot region are primarily those that suffer from diabetes or arthritis, both of which can impact on the structure of the feet. Research showed, however, that two thirds of normal healthy subjects produced some footfalls where the mid-foot touches the ground, with no indication that this is other than an aspect of normal healthy walking.
Dr Karl Bates, from the University’s Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, said: “Our ancestors probably first developed flexibility in their feet when they were primarily tree-dwelling, and moving on bendy branches, but as time passed and we became more and more ground-dwelling animals, some new features evolved to enable us to move quickly on the ground.
“Our limbs, however, did not adapt to life on the ground anywhere near as much as those of other ground-dwelling animals such as horses, hares and dogs. Our tests showed that our feet are not as stiff as originally thought and actually form part of a continuum of variation with those of other great apes.
“We hypothesise that despite becoming nearly exclusively ground dwelling we have retained flexibility in the feet to allow us to cope effectively with the differences in hard and soft ground surfaces which we encounter in long distance walking and running. The next part of our study will be testing this theory, which could offer a reason why humans can outrun a horse, for example, over long distances on irregular terrain.”
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