Write your abstract here. Early Man''s Achilles Heel.
Though not mentioned directly in the epic Homer’s Illiad,
the death of
Achilles has brought with it one of the more involved etymological
quips of modern day. It is said that Achilles mother, Thetis, dipped
her baby in to the river Styx to make him invulnerable. His eventual
downfall was as a result of the fact that she had gripped on to him by
his heel, thus providing a fatal weak spot for the arrow that would
later claim his life. It
was Paris who had poisoned and shot the arrow that took Achilles down,
and subsequently provided us with the term for a human’s “only
weakness” as well as for our Achilles tendon, a tendon of the posterior
leg. According to a study from researchers at the University of
Manchester though, man’s first evolutionary steps from an ape may have
been deprived of the ability to run. Modern day chimps and gorillas lack an Achilles tendon, which forces
them in to that four-limbed crouching run, or the “Groucho” walk.
However
research supports the belief that our first evolutionary
ancestors used efficient bipedal walking, rather than the “Groucho”. “But if, as seems likely, early humans lacked an Achilles tendon
then whilst their ability to walk would be largely unaffected our work
suggests
running effectiveness would be greatly reduced with top speeds
halved and energy costs more than doubled,” said Dr Bill Sellers, the
man who led the research in the University’s Faculty of Life Sciences. So what are the real facts behind this? No one is sure, but Sellers
and his team are out to find out, using a multitude of sciences and
skills in the process. Borrowing techniques from robotics, computer science and
biomechanics to reverse engineer fossil skeletons like the hominid
fossil skeleton called ‘Lucy, combined with the computer software that
Sellers used in his research on the running speeds of five meat-eating
dinosaurs, the team have created a computer model that they hope will
eventually provide answers to questions never before asked. “This model is a virtual robot where we can activate muscles and get
it to move its legs in a physically realistic fashion… if we use big
enough computers and let the model fall over enough times it is
possible for the simulation to learn which muscles to fire and when in
order to get the model to walk properly.” This computer model was used
to look at specific parts of the human body, including the Achilles
tendon, which was essentially a giant spring able to store large
amounts of energy during running. When the tendon was removed though,
the running speed was greatly reduced. That we evolved from the chimpanzees some six million years ago is a
question that many scientists are safe in assuming is correct. Our
first steps away from the chimp are, yes, steps! The upright walk!
However the next step in their research is to find out when we began
running, as well as how and when the Achilles tendon came in to play. Galaxy News Reported September 12trh, 2007.