Publication Date:
2013-06-28
Description:
Some primates, including chimpanzees, throw objects occasionally, but only humans regularly throw projectiles with high speed and accuracy. Darwin noted that the unique throwing abilities of humans, which were made possible when bipedalism emancipated the arms, enabled foragers to hunt effectively using projectiles. However, there has been little consideration of the evolution of throwing in the years since Darwin made his observations, in part because of a lack of evidence of when, how and why hominins evolved the ability to generate high-speed throws. Here we use experimental studies of humans throwing projectiles to show that our throwing capabilities largely result from several derived anatomical features that enable elastic energy storage and release at the shoulder. These features first appear together approximately 2 million years ago in the species Homo erectus. Taking into consideration archaeological evidence suggesting that hunting activity intensified around this time, we conclude that selection for throwing as a means to hunt probably had an important role in the evolution of the genus Homo.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785139/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785139/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Roach, Neil T -- Venkadesan, Madhusudhan -- Rainbow, Michael J -- Lieberman, Daniel E -- 500158/Z/09/Z/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- England -- Nature. 2013 Jun 27;498(7455):483-6. doi: 10.1038/nature12267.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. ntroach@email.gwu.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23803849" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Acceleration
;
Animals
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Biomechanical Phenomena
;
*Elasticity
;
Fossils
;
Hominidae/*anatomy & histology/*physiology
;
Humans
;
Kinetics
;
Rotation
;
Shoulder/*anatomy & histology/*physiology
;
Torque
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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