[lbo-talk] Bush and Foucault - Note on Emerson

[Les Schaffer]

Charles Brown wrote:
>
> Humans are bipedal. But, of course, don't want to reduce us to our genes, or
> rigidly define our species,  so as we know , actually, people could walk on
> their hands all the time, "overcoming" or "transcending" bipedalism. In
> fact, we could probably come up with technology for walking on our heads.
> (Just a little joke on the nature/culture thing I've been thinking of for a
> while)

Hey Charles:

There was an article on the origins of bi-pedalism in last week's Science:

Science 1 June 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5829, pp. 1328 - 1331

Reports

Origin of Human Bipedalism As an Adaptation for Locomotion on Flexible
Branches
S. K. S. Thorpe,1* R. L. Holder,2 R. H. Crompton3*{dagger}

Human bipedalism is commonly thought to have evolved from a quadrupedal
terrestrial precursor, yet some recent paleontological evidence suggests
that adaptations for bipedalism arose in an arboreal context. However,
the adaptive benefit of arboreal bipedalism has been unknown. Here we
show that it allows the most arboreal great ape, the orangutan, to
access supports too flexible to be negotiated otherwise. Orangutans
react to branch flexibility like humans running on springy tracks, by
increasing knee and hip extension, whereas all other primates do the
reverse. Human bipedalism is thus less an innovation than an
exploitation of a locomotor behavior retained from the common great ape
ancestor.

i have the PDF if you wanna see the whole thing, write me offlist.

Les

p.s. let me know if you are coming to NYC again this summer. food and
beer on me.