Procure First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human Prepared By Jeremy DeSilva Displayed In Manuscript

welldone science book, about how humans developed our twolegged stance, Along the way, one learns much about paleontology, anthropology and how these kinds of scientists work, in the field and in the lab, Nice brief depictions of what life may have been like for our longago ancestors, tied together with actual artifacts and other evidence, Easy to read, and he is very generous in his treatment of other scientists, past and present, Not only was this book full of fascinating hypothesis about the origin of bipedal hominids, it also left me with an uplifting feeling, bringing to the foreground that cooperation has played a major part in the way weve evolved, based on many instances of fossils showing evidence of lifethreatening injuries that healed, which couldnt have happened without other individuals in the group taking care of injured party.


I particularly liked that DeSilva definitely has hypothesis he thinks are more likely to be true than others, but he doesnt claim to know for sure, which is the only reasonable thing to do for now, since the fossil record is nowhere near as helpful as we need it to be.
What a wonderful book. Best book Ive read on paleoanthropology, Sounds dull foot bones and bipedalism, but its extremely well told, Rewelacyjna książka, chyba najlepsza o ewolucji i ewolucji człowieka jaką czytałam, Napisana dość prostym językiem, wciągająca i posiadająca dużo ciekawostek, Dużo się z niej dowiedziałam rzeczy, które w innych książkach w tym temacie były pomijane, Polecam! Somehow I had to restart reading this book multiple times before I could actually complete it, The first part built up to why we evolved due to walking and being bipedal and I was hoping that it would offer a more elaborate explanation on the evolution of language and other things due to walking upright apart from breathing maybe it's my simplistic view that development of language and other sophistication in us got to have a more elaborate reason.
But my view cannot effect the quality or the effort behind the book, Jeremy DeSilva gives us a fascinating look at the early evolution of humans, from the, to me, unfamiliar perspective of the human foot and why we walk upright, It's an account that's conversational, clear, empathetic to both early hominins and to fellow researchers, past and present, and careful to present good scientific information, the prevailing understanding of it or his view of it, as well as competing views, with the evidence that supports the competing views.
It's fair to say he's not overburdened with ego, and he has a good sense of humor,

DeSilva specializes in the hominin foot and ankle, and this is unexpectedly fascinating, The human foot, and the feet of our ancestors back to Australopithecus, is very odd compared to most primates, No other primate, indeed no other mammal, walks upright on two feet, It's a more precarious way to walk, with balance more of a challenge, It's more prone to injury, and biped with one leg out of commission, unlike a quadruped, loses mobility and becomes easy prey, For much of the last six million years, the planet was filled with predators for which our early ancestors would have been a tasty meal, Why did our ancestors set out on the road of becoming so vulnerable What advantages were there

I grew up being taught that early protohumans walked out into the widening savannah, and discovered the advantages of standing up on their hind legs to see both food and predators at greater distances.
As they evolved to become more adapted to bipedal locomotion, they could make better use of tools, and we were on our way to world domination,

But now newer evidence suggests we became upright while still among the trees, A life divided between the trees and the ground opened a niche for a species that could gather and carry food more easily, possibly to share with mates, offspring, or other group members.
This may have been the last common ancestor for us and chimpanzees and bonoboswhich then raises the question of why they gave that up to become knucklewalkers, We don't know for sure that's what happened, but it's what the evidence suggests now,

Oue early human ancestors emerged onto the savannah already upright, accustomed to carrying things, and able to see what was happening at a greater distance than quadrupeds.


We get an interesting overview of the early human species, including the growing number we know to have been contemporary with early homo sapiens, Some of them, certainly Neanderthals and Denisovans, and possibly others, we interbred with, Others, we may have wiped out, There's more than I can do justice to in a review,

It seems that walking upright did more than give us access to the savannah and the ability to make and carry tools, It also gave us the breath control that makes complex speech physically possible,

In addition to the hard science and the interesting and complex process of how we make paleoanthropological discoveries and work out what they mean, DeSilva goes on to

the equally fascinating subject of how this evolutionary history interacts with how we live now.
This includes the unexpected importance of just getting out and walking for our physical and mental health,

There's much to learn here, and it's a very enjoyable listen, Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook, This book dovetailed nicely with two other recent books on paleoanthropology that I've read within the last few months: "Fossil Men" and "Ancient Bones, " Some of the people in the first book and the author of the second book were mentioned in this one, but the book really took a different approach and there was surprisingly little redundancy among all three books.


In my opinion, "Fossil Men" was the most interesting of the three but I would put this one in second place since it has so much unique content.
The best option: read all three! Good easy read, Definitely popular science as there weren't any references which wasn't to my taste, An outstanding book by a leading researcher in the field of palaeontology, The author takes us on a journey into our distant past to shed light onto the origin of bipedalism in humans, The evidence is presented in a detailed yet engaging fashion, Many myths about our evolution are debunked, I particularly enjoyed the balance between evidence and lack of opinionism: the author carefully backs his hypotheses by data, All in all, an exciting book that is a must read for anyone looking to understand what it means to be human, When I blaze through a book, it speaks volumes on the quality of the writing, First Steps took me around three hours of focused reading to complete, and I loved every bit of it,

Jeremy DeSilva specializes in the foot and ankle bones of early hominids, Using fossils of our ancient relatives and ancestors, DeSilva weaves a tale of how and why we became bipedal, It doesnt seem too difficult at first blush, being bipedal allows Humans to use tools, Images and movies both show support for something like this happening, However, DeSilva finds the truth to be more complicated than that,

First off, is bipedalism really an improvement Humans are slow compared to quadrupeds and to other bipeds, We are champions at moving for long distances, this is undeniable, The immediate benefits dont crop up from that, though, Not to mention our soft and sensitive feet are easily injured, Granted, if a chimp walks on two legs, it quickly tires itself out because its not built to do that,

So then, DeSilva posits the idea of us coming from the woods rather than the savannah, All of this review is from my memory, written on a phone one hour after I finished the book, Please excuse my inaccuracies or errors, I might return to this review later and edit some of it,

Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time, This book was far more interesting and engaging than it had any right to be, Based on the cover, I thought it would be a book about anatomy: the human skeleton and how it got that way, It's far more than that, It's a book about the evolution of bipedal locomotion, sure, but it's really about what makes us human in the first place, and why walking on two legs was a necessary precondition to and facilitator of our most human traits: our intelligence, sociability, tool use, language, and empathy.
It is equal parts paleoanthropology, philosophy, and humor, You will learn a lot about the evolution of our species, but you will also think deeply about the mysteries of life, why we are here, and what it means to be human.
And you will laugh along the way,

The highest recommendation I could make for this book is that Jeremy DeSilva, in addition to being a firstrate scientist, is also a phenomenal writer, He's smart. He's funny. He's warm. You feel like you're hanging out with a beloved high school teacher who's passionate about his subject and makes everything interesting for his students,

The first half of the book tells the story of human evolution over the lastmillion years, spending a lot of time on various fossils dug up around the world, and the picture of our development that gradually emerged from those old bones.
It's easy to get lost in the details, because there were many different hominid species, and the boundaries between them remain fuzzy and debated, and much of the story is still murky.
But DeSilva lays it out like a detective story, starting with what we thought we knew, then pulling back the curtain by increments as he guides us through the last century of fossil digging until you get to the present day and our current state of knowledge.


Through it all he keeps you engaged by presenting it as a story, rather than a series of dates and facts, and continually references to the broader picture.
He's also great about pointing out the gaps in our knowledge, or the current scientific controversies, which is the mark of integrity in any popular science book, as far as I'm concerned.


The second half veers away from paleoanthropology to sociology and psychology, Walking upright shaped our capacity for language for instance, Part of the reason why dogs and cows can't talk is because the muscular and skeletal system of quadrupeds don't permit it, While walking, their breaths must be timed to their steps, Walking on two legs was a precondition for tool use, It changed the way we give birth, From a physical standpoint, it was disastrous, because walking on two legs made us slower and weaker than other animals, and also predisposed us to back pain, knee injuries, and sore feet.
But we compensated for these physical disadvantages by forming cohesive social groups, and our capacity for empathy, cooperation, and generosity is owed in no small part to our ability to walk.
One touching aspect of the book was the history of fossils that demonstrate care: bones from millions of years ago that show a healed broken leg, or a head wound, indicating that someone cared for this ancestor of ours long enough for them to recover from an injury.


You've probably seen a famous graphic called the sitelinkMarch of Progress, which shows a progression of our evolution starting with a monkey, then a slightly bigger, more upright monkey, finally resulting in an upright man that looks like Charleston Heston.
Turns out that this idea of our evolution is wrong, Our last common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas lived aroundmillion years ago, and that ancestor was almost certainly already walking upright on two legs, Descending from this unknown ancestor, gorillas and chimpanzees responded to evolutionary pressures by stopping to a crouch, while the evolutionary branch that resulted in homo sapiens was a series of species that remained walking upright, on two legs, all along.


It could be, then, that one of the most mysterious aspects of the human conditionour capacity for selflessnessarose out of our vulnerabilities as bipeds in a dangerous world.
Yes, our survival was, and for many continues to be, a struggle, but as descendants of bipedal hominids, our evolutionary journey continues because empathy, cooperation, and generosity evolved in lockstep with our distinctive form of locomotion.


I would argue that the human experiment would not have been possible unless we descended from social apes capable of empathythat bipedalism could have evolved only from a lineage that had developed the capacity for tolerance, cooperation, and caring for one another.
Bipedalism in an overly aggressive ape with purely selfish tendencies and a low tolerance for other group members would have been a recipe for extinction, .