
First Steps
How Upright Walking Made Us Human
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Narrated by:
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Kaleo Griffith
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By:
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Jeremy DeSilva
Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species.
Humans are the only mammals to walk on two, rather than four legs - a locomotion known as bipedalism. We strive to be upstanding citizens, honor those who stand tall and proud, and take a stand against injustices. We follow in each other’s footsteps and celebrate a child’s beginning to walk. But why, and how, exactly, did we take our first steps? And at what cost? Bipedalism has its drawbacks: Giving birth is more difficult and dangerous; our running speed is much slower than other animals; and we suffer a variety of ailments, from hernias to sinus problems.
In First Steps, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explores how unusual and extraordinary this seemingly ordinary ability is. A seven-million-year journey to the very origins of the human lineage, First Steps shows how upright walking was a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human - from our technological abilities, our thirst for exploration, our use of language - and may have laid the foundation for our species’ traits of compassion, empathy, and altruism. Moving from developmental psychology labs to ancient fossil sites throughout Africa and Eurasia, DeSilva brings to life our adventure walking on two legs.
Delving deeply into the story of our past and the new discoveries rewriting our understanding of human evolution, First Steps examines how walking upright helped us rise above all over species on this planet.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
©2021 Jeremy DeSilva (P)2021 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...




















Featured Article: The Best Audiobooks to Listen to While Walking
Whether you walk for your health, a form of transportation, or to exercise a pet, you can get some mental mileage with your steps when you take a great audiobook along. These listens make the perfect walking companions. They can teach you about any topic that catches your fancy, or transport you to ancient and fantastical worlds. Whether you're on a treadmill, touring the neighborhood, or going to work, these are the best audiobooks for walking.
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I appreciate DeSilva showing in the first few chapters how walking in hominid fossils has varied over time and that even our ancestors and other hominids didn't walk the same way. The search for fossil records to fill in more blanks in bipedal understanding continues, but our muscles and bones have also visibly changed thanks to what we have found so that it's becoming clearer when primates and human ancestors began to diverge in terms of movement. And the advantages and disadvantages of two-legged versus four-legged walking are very obvious when studying our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos.
The most interesting parts of this book for me were the discussions of birth effecting walking in humans and why we're so prone to movement-injuries not seen in other animals. I've never understood entirely why human childbirth is so laborious and potentially deadly compared to animals; a narrower pelvis and babies having to change positions to exit explains it some. So does why bone health is such a concern for older people and how muscles that we use (or don't use) for movement can be easily torn or dislocated.
I picked this book out of curiosity, but I am very pleased with how the read went and am more interested in the topic than before. I recommend getting this!
Mammalian Bipedalism's Many Layers
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Fascinating read
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Excellent journey through human evolution
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The master of the hominid ankle speaks
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Excellent listening
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The audiobook narrator was perfect for this.
Fun and interesting
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Fantastic!
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First steps rocks out
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Loved this book.
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Fantastic
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