Archaeology

1405 Submissions

[1] viXra:1405.0029 [pdf] submitted on 2014-05-05 20:20:11

'Lucy' and the Arc of Visual Perception

Authors: Roger Munday
Comments: 22 Pages.

This paper questions the currently and generally held hypothesis that the species Australopithecus Afarensis was a fully upright hominid over three million years ago. It considers the importance of the visual field in human co-ordination and locomotion and compares the capabilities of modern homo sapiens with the capabilities generally attributed to A. Afarensis. It shows that, if A. Afarensis walked, ran and hunted in the manner and the posture suggested its visual field would have been restricted so that it was unsuitable for fully upright movement. The inference is then drawn that the progression to an upright stance would logically coincide with the observed increase in hominid cranial capacity, the development of tools and other evidence of mental progression. Thus it is concluded that A.Afarensis was not fully bipedal in the manner of man today and, if it was our ancestor, it was still at the stage of progressing to an upright stance when in motion.
Category: Archaeology