Why Are We Hairless Bipeds?

Lake Manyara National ParkMy recent posts have discussed Donald M. Morrison ’s new bookThe Coevolution of Language, Teaching, and Civil Discourse among Humans. I am continuing with that theme now even though today ’stopic is pretty speculative and not-directly related to language or cultural origins,   but every now and then this kind of investigation encourages other thoughts about human origins, especially the reason we walk on two legs.Bipedalism is so distinctive for the wholeHomo line and yet there is no clear reason to justify it. I mean, it is convenient to free hands for carrying tools and such, but that came well after bipedalism was established, and is not much of a reason to change a body plan, especially one like the quadruped that has been so successful. I mean even bats kept all four legs. They did not get rid of their front legs the way birds did.Morrison makes these remarks without providing much follow-up: “location and habitat must have been coevolutionary. An increasingly efficient bipedal gait, along with other traits, including the ability to swim and dive, gave our ancestors access to an expanding foraging territory, which further shaped our brains and bodies. An increasingly bipedal ape could wade deeper …” (69) so it i not his fault that I'm going on a tangent. His talk about water reminds me if a theory I’ve encountered only once before, 50 years ago when I read a pop science book by Desmond Morris calledThe Naked Ape. Morris made an off-...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Source Type: blogs