Features
Anthropology of the human foot – the past, present and future Kartik Hariharan
From single cell amoeba to the human species
L Kartik Hariharan is a Consultant Foot and Ankle surgeon at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. He is Past President of BOFAS and delivered the Naughton Dunn lecture in 2015 on which this article is based.
ocomotion more than any other single factor is, in my eyes, the most important attribute for the successful survival of a species. Locomotion allows the species to find sources of nutrition when one area is depleted, allows rapid movement from one area to another in times of adversity, allows for successful reproduction and the propagation of species DNA in areas of plenty. Perhaps most important of all, it allows preferential mutations to accumulate by the cross transfer of genetic material thereby avoiding inbreeding and its attendant genetic degradation. From a single celled amoeba to a vast collective tribe of wildebeest, every species has to move to survive and flourish.
Figure 1: Primitive tetrapod limb showing three tarsal rows.
30 | JTO | Volume 09 | Issue 04 | December 2021 | boa.ac.uk
This incredible attribute was not bestowed upon us nor was it a single event or sequence of events. It is one that went through many millions of years of subtle, sudden, random but serendipitous changes, often going down dead ends and failed transformations and eventually to where we are today. We are not the only species to have this attribute, but perhaps, are one of the few species to exploit it, to dramatically alter the functions of other aspects of our body: the ability to use our hands, transform our brains to think and to transform the very environment, which in itself is the most potent driver of evolution. Therefore in essence this article is a bird’s eye view of human bipedalism: a process that took several million years of change and refinement to reach the stage we are in today.
