Encore: Walking Towards the Human Condition (with Jeremy De Silva)

About this episode

The episode features a discussion with Jeremy De Silva about the significance of bipedalism in human evolution and its implications on various aspects of the human condition.

Something big is coming soon. Stay tuned! Whilst waiting, you can enjoy one of my all-time favourites from the archives. A lot of the recent episodes have mentioned the impact of bipedalism in the human story, but the remarks have hardly done justice to the depth of the matter. Jeremy DeSilva did it justice. Enjoy! ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES Humans are odd in many ways. But perhaps the oddest of our features is our upright posture. We walk on two legs. And we are the only mammal to do so. So why do we walk upright? And why does it matter? Jeremy DeSilva is a fossil expert and a professor of paleoanthropology at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of a remarkable book, aptly titled First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human DeSilva’s treatment of the subject is sweeping: while tracing the journey of human posture, he draws remarkable links between bipedalism and many facets of the human condition, from difficult births to complex language and from lower back pains to the beauty of friendships. In this episode, we talk about questions such as: What Darwin got right and wrong about the role of walking in human evolution When and why did we start walking upright? Why the common…

People in this episode

Host: Ilari Mäkelä

Guest: Jeremy De Silva

Topics covered

• bipedalism
• human evolution
• paleoanthropology
• human condition
• upright posture
• Darwin's theories

Keywords

• bipedalism
• human evolution
• upright walking
• paleoanthropology
• human posture
• myokines
• bone fractures
• difficult births

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Dartmouth College

Books & works: First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human

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