Project description
How walking on two legs made us human
Walking on two legs sets humans apart from every other animal. It freed our hands, changed how we interacted with our surroundings, and ultimately shaped our evolution. How did this way of moving first develop? Why did it make our ancestors so successful? The ERC-funded STEPS project aims to answer these questions. It will study how early humans moved through complex, changing landscapes. Using digital reconstructions of seven extinct hominin species, researchers will simulate how different body types handled rough terrain. By connecting anatomy, movement, and environment, STEPS aims to uncover how walking upright helped our ancestors survive and spread across the world.
Objective
Human bipedalism is a rare and distinct form of locomotion, unlike that of any other animal. Despite its uniqueness, its evolutionary origins and ecological significance remain elusive. By walking on two legs, early hominins not only freed their hands to hold, manufacture, and use stone tools, but also gained the ability to interact with the environment in new ways, driving innovations in social structure, diet, and survival strategies. This ultimately led to the success of Homo, our genus, which expanded into diverse habitats, including those beyond Africa, while other hominins were more limited in their geographic distribution. Understanding how and why bipedalism became Homo’s primary adaptive strategy is key to explaining our species' evolutionary success in occupying diverse habitats. STEPS focuses on movement across complex, realistic landscapes similar to those likely traversed by hominins, which exerted selective pressures on their skeletons, driving anatomical and functional changes for efficient locomotion. It will investigate how hominins navigated such terrains bipedally despite their anatomical differences that likely affected their efficiency in doing so. Musculoskeletal models of seven hominin species spanning the last four million years will be constructed and their movement across complex terrains simulated. The predictive simulations will be guided by an empirical framework of human movements across experimentally-constructed substrates. STEPS will determine whether the Homo body plan offered greater efficiency compared to other hominins. Only by tackling such a project can scientists understand why the Homo genus was so successful at occupying diverse habitats, whilst other groups (australopiths) were not. STEPS will thus enhance our understanding of how anatomical features influenced locomotor strategy and dispersals, focusing on the role of the foot-ground interface as a driving force that shaped human evolution.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences health sciences nutrition
- social sciences sociology anthropology physical anthropology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
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