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Human Origins 201: Human feet [1]

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Date: 2025-04-19

Can feet tell us anything about human origins? Since chimpanzees are closely related to humans, one starting point is to compare human feet and chimpanzee feet.

When we look at the foot of a chimpanzee, we see that it resembles the chimpanzee hand in that the big toe splays out from the other digits. The chimpanzee foot is prehensile, that is, it can grasp things, and it can be used in climbing. While chimpanzees spend a lot of time in trees, humans do not. In her book Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind, British forensic anthropologist Sue Black reports:

“The modern foot has two principal functions: to support the weight of our body while we are standing upright and to act as a mechanism of propulsion when we want to move.”

In his book The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson puts it this way:

“The foot has to be three different things: shock absorber, platform, and pushing organ.”

In comparing the human foot with the chimpanzee foot, Daniel Fairbanks, in his book Evolving: The Human Effect and Why it Matters, writes:

“The human foot, by contrast, is shorter and narrower, and it has highly derived adaptations for bipedalism.”

Daniel Fairbanks also writes:

“The parallel, forward-pointing conformation of our toes also enhances our bipedalism. Among all living primates, we are the only ones whose large toe is parallel with the other toe, and our toes are relatively short.”

Compared to ape toes, human toes are also relatively short, a feature which stabilizes the foot for walking.

In addition, the chimpanzee foot does not have an arch: when apes stand, the whole length of the foot is on the ground. The foot of the chimpanzee is designed for climbing, not walking. In his chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology, Jonathan Marks report:

“We see many similarities between the chimpanzee’s foot and the human foot, for they are built of roughly the same parts, in roughly the same relations. Yet the chimp foot is a grasping structure and the human foot is a weight-bearing structure.”

In comparing the feet of humans with those of chimpanzees and other apes, Robert Winston and Don Wilson, in their book Human, report:

“Our feet are arched so that the heel and the ball of the foot carry our weight as we move. In contrast, apes stand with the whole length of the foot on the ground.”

The arch in the human foot functions as a kind of spring to absorb shocks. In his book The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease, Daniel Lieberman explains:

“Since running uses the legs like springs, some of the most important adaptations for running are literally springs. One key spring is the dome-shaped arch of the foot, which develops from the way ligaments and muscles bind together the foot’s bones as children start to walk and run.”

With regard to how the human foot works when walking, Daniel Lieberman reports:

“Walking humans usually land first on the heel and then, as the rest of the foot makes contact with the ground, we stiffen the foot’s arch, enabling us to push the body upward and forward at the end of the stance, mostly with the big toe.”

Daniel Lieberman also reports:

“The feet of chimps and other apes lack an arch, preventing them from pushing off against a stiffened foot, and their toes are unable to extend as much as humans.”

For paleoanthropologists and others studying human evolution, fossil footprints and foot bones can show the presence or absence of bipedalism, one of the important human anatomical characteristics. For example, we are now fairly sure that Australopithecus afarensis was bipedal and may have been one of our ancient ancestors. With regard to Australopithecus afarensis specimen AL 333-160, Sue Black writes:

“This specimen is a left fourth metatarsal and it is arched—a feature that is unique to modern humans.”

More Human Origins

Note: The designation 201 indicates a revision of an earlier essay.

Human Origins 201: Human Teeth

Human Origins 201: The human hand

Human Origins: The Large Brain

Human Origins: Bipedalism

Human Origins: Fossil Evidence

Human Origins: Pseudo-Archaeology

Human Origins: Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin

Human Origins: Sexual Selection

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