Some Early Hominins Evolved to Walk Upright While Still Living in Trees
Learn why our ancient ancestors maintained their climbing abilities once they developed their walking ones, and discover how their bipedalism evolved (possibly in the trees).
By Sam Walters
Jul 29, 2025 5:00 PMJul 29, 2025 5:04 PM
Climbing is for the forest, and walking is for the savannah. That’s the basic premise behind one of the biggest theories of human evolution, which holds that our ancient ancestors transitioned from climbing in the trees to walking on the ground when climate change transformed their environment from a forest to a savannah.
But a new study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution suggests that things may not have been so simple, as many early hominins maintained their arboreal adaptations once they developed their terrestrial ones.
Looking at the chimpanzees in the Issa Valley in Tanzania, the study confirms that chimpanzees climb trees to find food in the savannahs — a behavior that may explain why many early hominins were climbers as well as walkers. The study also suggests that chimpanzees need to make the most of the trees that they climb in the savannahs (since trees are few and far between), encouraging a method of movement that may have encouraged the bipedalism of our ancient ancestors.
“For decades it was assumed that bipedalism arose because we came down from the trees and needed to walk across an open savannah,” said Rhianna Drummond-Clarke, a study author and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, according to a press release. “Here we show that safely and effectively navigating the canopy can remain very important for a large, semi-arboreal ape, even in open habitat. Adaptations to arboreal, rather than terrestrial, living may have been key in shaping the early evolution of the human lineage.”
More:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/some-early-humans-evolved-to-walk-upright-while-still-living-in-trees