Walking upright for better or worse

THE IDEA that man will destroy himself! That with AI man will overdevelop, even reach for the stars.

You hear some prominent people now talking of living forever. Here we are now millions of years from which we had started. Right now we still have evidence of stages in development where we branched off from other forms of life. Some animals try to walk upright – look at Godzilla in the movies.

We still have evidence of “homo” period, but there was a time many million years ago when perhaps our brain did not classify us as more than another animal. We walked on all fours then. We were of the animal family; in fact we have family of the chimpanzee creatures – we still see it in some people’s features even today. Recently born animals such as babies move on all fours for quite a while, although some animals can actually walk on all fours and not crawl within days of birth.

Millions of years ago “homo” (man) did not walk upright. Then the brain change came with the passing of the millions of years and “homo” (man) gradually took an upright stance so as to do things in a convenient way, but it took ages. In fact, one of the weaknesses of our now body is to revert to the bended body as the back tires of being upright. I am actually feeling it now. Such a thing happens as we get old and the head becomes too heavy for the neck to support standing upright. Upright stance is an unnatural position. The head is a heavy part of the body that places an unusual weight on the neck in order to keep it upright. Thus, keeping the head upright takes a great effort and may make the posture of other animals more comfortable, again differing human beings from other animal species.

Characteristic of our differentiation

The walking upright is the feature in our development as homo that is most characteristic of our differentiation from other animals that form the chain of the development of the brain and our separation from other animals in the animal kingdom. Did you know that somewhere along the development we differed from lions and tigers – perhaps the traits of some of these animals are still in some people that we see nowadays? Look at how a man or even a woman can take a knife and cut up another human. Perhaps the brain reverts to its former state and allows the person to act.

The way that some people behave today may show that there might have been a hiatus period in their development responsible for such acting. Does the cinema have anything to do with strange acting?

It was not only in walking upright that we see homo started to differentiate from other animals.

As our brain changed we started to congregate in manners different from other animals. We see such a stage in some monkeys gathering and communicating. Looked at closely it may seem that there is a language used among them, a stage through which we might have passed.

Process of development

There is no doubt that there is a continuing process of development in the brain as humans continue to exist. Every now and then we see it.

An 11-year-old boy or girl solves equations that are meant for university students; a child prodigy plays the violin or the piano of a music virtuoso. All of this leads to the ability of the human animal to have made the change to improve the way we live including being able to exist in a more efficient way and to walk upright. But walking upright is a stress on the body and this is even more evident when a woman is nine months’ pregnant.

All of this gives us pause in navigating where we may be going. More important for us in Barbados is what the population is going to be like even as we grow old and the older population differs from the younger population in dreams and habits. But walking upright is not a normal development.

Harry Russell is a banker.

Email quijote70@gmail.com

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