UChicago Anthropologist Russell H. Tuttle explains how some very unique aspects of human evolution, from bipedalism to sharing, make us a distinct and very successful species. The trajectory of human evolution has many markers, including footprints left in moist volcanic ash 3.66 million years ago by three individuals in Laetoli, Tanzania. Anthropologist Mary Leakey’s team found them in 1978. She later called upon physical anthropologist Russell Tuttle to study them. The footprints are the oldest evidence that early hominids came down from trees and began walking upright.
"If you look at the footprints, they are quite similar to the footprints of modern humans," said Tuttle, professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, a leading expert on early humans. People who live in the Amazon region who have never worn shoes have nearly matching footprints, said Tuttle, author of Apes and Human Evolution, published in January by Harvard University Press.
In the book, Tuttle, one of the nation’s leading paleoanthropologists, incorporates his research with a synthesis of a vast amount of research from other scientists who study primate evolution and behavior. The book explains how apes and humans evolved in relation to one another, and why humans became a bipedal, tool-making, culture-inventing species.
Tuttle is Professor of Anthropology, of Evolutionary Biology, of the Biological and Social Sciences in the College, and in the Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine.
human evoLaetoli (Fossil Site)Hominidae (Organism Classification)
