First Steps: How Bipedalism Made Us Human

We, humans, are the only mammals that walk on two legs rather than four, and we take this for granted. We eagerly wait for the first steps of our babies, but how did our ancestors take their first steps? We... strive to hold our heads high, but at what cost did bipedalism come to humans?In the book "First Steps," paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explores how extraordinary this seemingly ordinary ability is. The seven-million-year journey to the very roots of humankind shows how upright walking laid the foundation for the development of those attributes that make us human: the ability to create technologies, the desire to explore the surrounding world, the development and use of speech—and possibly laid the groundwork for such traits of our species as compassion, mutual aid, and altruism.