Just like in Hollywood films, new findings suggest that early humans were accustomed to swinging. The study focuses on the long-standing debate on whether the ancient man had an affinity for brachiation.
The ability to use dextrous hands to swing from trees, or brachiation, has split the scientific community and is on the verge of debunking evolutionary theories.
Hominids: How Dextrous Human Hands Prove Brachiation
The research published in the journal Science Advances on February 24 suggests that hominids, including great apes such as humans, orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, climbed and swung in trees.
Thomas Prang, lead author and assistant professor at A&M University, says in an interview with Inverse, "Our findings support the view that humans and chimpanzees evolved from an ancestor that had similarities to modern apes in their locomotor adaptation."
Scientists recognize the difference between the form of highly dextrous human hands and the primate hands used to swing from trees.
On the other hand, new evidence has shed light on a disputed hypothesis that humans evolved from quadrupedal ancestors (used all four limbs) but rather bipedal ancestors suspended from trees.
Debunking Evolution: Studying 4-Million-Year-Old Fossil
Researchers analyzed more than 400 specimens of both ancient hominoid fossils and living primates.
The team first analyzed ancient hand bones of Ardipithecus ramidus, often used as proof debunking evolutionary theories on quadrupedal ancestors. The Ardipithecus is a human ancestor that lived roughly 4.4 million years in the past. Understanding of modern human link with the Ardipithecus came from a partial skeleton unearthed in 2009.
Initial interpretations of the Ardipithecus hand suggested that the last common ancestors between chimpanzees and humans used locomotion described by Prang as "above-branch clambering," or brachiation.
The Results
Findings suggest that the Ardiphitecus was more similar to orangutans, bonobos, and chimpanzees than non-suspensory monkeys.
These samples showed that Ar. ramidus had suspensory traits that enabled the species to swing from tree branches debunking the evolutionary belief that man and chimpanzees evolved from quadrupedal species. It is important to note that this was before a major evolutionary shift where the lineages of Homo and Australopithecus, ancient hominins, diverged.
Prang says, "The hand of Ardipithecus suggests that the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was adapted to climbing trees and suspending the body beneath branches."
Prang says that their analysis is consistent with early theories from Thomas Henry Huxley and Sir Arthur Keith, who in the late 19th and early 20th century proposed anatomical comparisons between great apes and humans.
The most renowned historical scholar, Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, connects Prang's work to the findings on bipedalism in ancient specimens, which better explains the evolution of man.
RELATED ARTICLE : Is There Any Difference Between Today's Humans, the Neanderthals, and the Denisovans?
Check out more news and information on Human Evolution on Science Times.
