Kuliukas Algis V, Milne Nick, Fournier Paul
Exercise Sciences and Anatomy and Human Biology, UWA, Western Australia, 6009 Australia.
Homo. 2009;60(6):479-88. doi: 10.1016/j.jchb.2009.09.002. Epub 2009 Oct 23.
The debate about how early hominids walked may be characterised as two competing hypotheses: They moved with a fully upright (FU) gait, like modern humans, or with a bent-hip, bent-knee (BK) gait, like apes. Both have assumed that this bipedalism was almost exclusively on land, in trees or a combination of the two. Recent findings favoured the FU hypothesis by showing that the BK gait is 50-60% more energetically costly than a FU human gait on land. We confirm these findings but show that in water this cost differential is markedly reduced, especially in deeper water, at slower speeds and with greater knee flexion. These data suggest that the controversy about australopithecine locomotion may be eased if it is assumed that wading was a component of their locomotor repertoire and supports the idea that shallow water might have been an environment favourable to the evolution of early forms of "non-optimal" hominid bipedalism.
他们像现代人类一样以完全直立（FU）的步态行走，或者像猿类一样以屈髋屈膝（BK）的步态行走。两者都假定这种两足行走几乎完全是在陆地、树上或两者结合的环境中进行的。最近的研究结果支持了FU假说，表明在陆地上，BK步态比FU人类步态的能量消耗高出50% - 60%。我们证实了这些发现，但表明在水中，这种能量消耗差异会显著减小，尤其是在较深的水中、较慢的速度下以及膝关节弯曲度更大时。这些数据表明，如果假定涉水是他们运动方式的一部分，那么关于南方古猿运动方式的争议可能会得到缓解，并且支持了浅水可能是有利于早期“非最优”原始人类两足行走形式进化的环境这一观点。
