Ancient steps: An analysis of ancient footprints embedded in fine sands suggest that one of our ancestors had developed a modern-like stride by at least 1.5 million years ago
Credit: Matthew Bennett/Bournemouth University
WASHINGTON: Anthropologists have uncovered ancient fossil footprints in Kenya dating back 1.5 million years, the oldest evidence yet that our ancestors walked like present-day humans.
The footprints were discovered in two sedimentary layers near Ileret in northern Kenya and revealed an essentially modern human-like foot anatomy, according to study published today in the U.S. journal Science.
Tissue structure
The impressions are likely to have come from the Homo ergaster, or early Homo erectus, the first hominid whose longer legs and shorter arms corresponded to the body proportions of the modern Homo sapiens, the authors said.
The footprints provided information on the soft tissue form and structure that are not usually available in fossilised bones, explained Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in England, the lead author.
Bennett scanned and digitized the footprint to make sure that comparisons with modern human and other fossil hominid footprints were objective.
The upper sediment layer contained three footprint trails: two trails of two prints each, a trail of seven prints and several isolated prints. The other sediment layer, five metres deeper, preserved a trail of two prints and a smaller isolated print that the authors said probably was that of a child.
Human-like
In all specimens, the big toe was parallel to the other toes, unlike apes, whose big toes are separated to help grasping tree branches. The Ileret footprints also show a pronounced arch and short toes that are human-like and are usually associated with the ability to walk on two feet.
Several Homo ergaster and Homo erectus fossils dating from the same era as the Ileret prints have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.
In 1978, British archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey discovered footprints in Laetoli, Tanzania that dated back 3.6 million years. But those prints were attributed to a less advanced creature, Australopithecus afarensis, that showed a shallower arch and a more ape-like separated big toe.
Footprint
Why are there only four toes?
There are five.
You are just misinterpreting the picture. The toe you are visually missing is next to the big toe. It is longer than the other toes. See it?
Homo erectus feet
These are remarkable and exciting new anthropological finds at Ileret, Kenya. Yet, these 1.5 Ma footprints are the footprints of a pre-human hominin, Homo erectus, not our species, Homo sapiens. What is particularly significant is that the 1.5 Ma footprints of this prior species are indicative of modern human foot anatomy. Homo erectus was evolved about 2 million years ago in Africa. Even millions of years before that, Australopithecenes also were walking about upright on two feet, though their foot anatomy appears to be quite different from erectus. It is not that people adapted to equatorial climates by becoming tall and slender, or that people adapted to cold climates by becoming short and stocky. Rather, the Force tailors peoples and species to their environments and conditions. Creation: Towards a Theory of All Things by John Umana (amazon). When it came to feet, though, there was no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ from the foot anatomy of Homo erectus in subsequent evolutions of Homo heidelbergensis and Homo sapiens. The feet you are walking around on today are essentially the feet that erectus had 1.5 million years ago. They were designed for long-distance walking and running. Erectus walked upright as we do, communicated with each other but did not have language; they were scavengers. Did we evolve from Homo erectus? No. But we did evolve 200,000 years ago in east Africa from another species that was evolved from erectus. Biological evolution and common ancestry are real and proved by the convergence of the sciences. Darwin and Wallace were correct in theorizing that all species descend from prior species. The question is, what is the causative mechanism for the evolution of a new species from a prior species? Why are we sporting Homo erectus feet?
John Umana