Lowly Origin: Where, When, and Why Our Ancestors First Stood Up. Questo articolo non è disponibile.Lowly Origin: Where, When, and Why Our Ancestors First Stood Up

The dominant theme of this book is bipedality, or walking upright on two feet, how this came about and what consequences it had for mankind. Written by a zoological artist, an authority on Africa's mammals, an ecologist and writer, this study argues that there are many ways in which the subject could and should be approached. Arguing not only that bipedality was a relatively inefficient response to environmental circumstances, Kingdon also stresses that it would be wrong to perceive standing as the single point at which man became different from apes. Walking upright, Kingdon believes, was but one of a series of evolutionary and adaptive changes in the history of man. Drawing on recent fossil evidence, placed within an ecological and biogeographical context, Kingdon discusses `what it meant - and what it means - to walk on two feet'.

Jonathan Kingdon is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Biological Anthropology and Department of Zoology of Oxford University.