Upright human gait did not provide a major mechanical challenge for our ancestors

Abstract

Habitual bipedalism is considered as a major breakthrough in human evolution and is the defining feature of hominins. Upright posture is presumably less stable than quadrupedal posture, but when using external support, for example, toddlers assisted by their parents, postural stability becomes less critical. In this study, we show that humans seem to mimic such external support by creating a virtual pivot point (VPP) above their centre of mass. A highly reduced conceptual walking model based on this assumption reveals that such virtual support is sufficient for achieving and maintaining postural stability. The VPP is experimentally observed in walking humans and dogs and in running chickens, suggesting that it might be a convenient emergent behaviour of gait mechanics and not an intentional locomotion behaviour. Hence, it is likely that even the first hominis may have already applied the VPP, a mechanism that would have facilitated the development of habitual bipedalism. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.