It’s long been thought that when our human ancestors decided to walk around on the ground instead of climbing trees the shape of their foot change. Looking at the ankle our ancestor Lucy, it looks like she had long left climbing behind because her foot was shaped like ours.
Researchers have long been interested in when early humans came down from trees and committed to life on the ground. They thought that when the human foot as we know it was adapted, early humans forfeited any ability to live in the trees.
But new research from a group of scholars at Dartmouth College shows that might not have been the case.
Vivek Venkataraman is a research graduate student at Darmouth College and he collaborated with Dr. Nathaniel Dominy on this research.
Click listen to hear the interview.