Posturegenics

How did the human race start? Did you ever wonder? How we came from a little corner of Africa and took over a planet? It is an amazing story and this is how it happened. I know, I was there. I saw it.
The first animals were marine creatures in a buoyant environment. When animals flopped out of the sea they had to deal with the harsher effects of gravity. They grew in various ways to give them some survival advantage. The ages of massive reptiles came and went. A little warm and hairy creature appeared – that if it could look down its evolutionary lineage would be amazed at its progeny’s success.

To give itself survivability that little warm and hairy creature had to be efficient. In addition to the gravity well, its environment was hot and dry. It had to compete against stronger and faster predators for stronger and faster prey. It needed to minimize water consumption and reduce heat buildup so that it could increase its hunter-gatherer range. How did it do that? The answer was environmentally elegant and evolutionarily profound. It stood up. The vertical answer to the gravity problem was species changing. It was a bigger discovery than fire. It changed a species and required a cascading series of changes to the organism that increased its ability to survive and added to its environmental and evolutionary success.

Being vertical reduced certain effects of gravity compression and added specific benefits that increased its survivability. At first look, the vertical position, the two-legged position, was less efficient than the four-legged for propulsion. However, by standing vertically certain trade-offs became apparent. Front limbs could be used to carry and hold. This modification also allowed the front limbs to develop throwing mechanics - to hurl rocks and spears and eventually baseballs.
As the hand developed in usage, the brain grew to manipulate it. The control system of the brain also had to increase in order to manage the balance of the two legged posture. The bigger the computer, the more heat is produced by its bigger and faster processor. What is true of silicon chips is also true for bio-computers. Excessive heat is a deadly dilemma for computers. The vertical position is ideal to handle the heat exchange problem. By being vertical there is a 60% reduction in sun exposure; that is why you lie down to tan, horizontal orientation increases sun exposure. Vertical orientation also exposes more body surface area to cooling by convection. This means if the organism is vertical, the computer can increase in size and computing power without fatally overheating the organism.

There are other advantages: Vertical position changed the orientation of muscles such as the tongue. Humans are the only mammals that have the root of the tongue out of the mouth cavity descending into the level of the third cervical vertebrae. Other mammals have the tongue entirely in the oral cavity. The descended muscular origin of the tongue is important in sound production. The human vocal chamber is enlarged again by a gift from gravity. Thus, the neurology of communication had the hardware tools to develop from grunts and growls by going vertical –now someone can heckle the guy throwing the baseball. Or sing the National Anthem before the game.

Two-legged standing is harder than four-legged standing. The center of gravity of a bipedal structure has a smaller base than a quadruped. This potential instability requires a complicated system of locomotion and balance that is driven by neurobiomechanical integration. Neurology of posture is complex and interrelated throughout the nervous system. Mechanoreceptors constantly sense position and relay information to the spinal cord, brain and body concerning relative position under gravity. Muscle subsystems of static position and movement interplay to keep the body relatively centered over its base. Efferent mechanoreceptor signals barrage the spinal cord (Lamina VII) and through secondary pathways influence the Cerebellum, Vestibular Nucleus as well as the Thalamus, Hypothalamus and cortical functions. This means that body position under gravity not only can influence pain mechanisms but also visceral functions as well as the immune system.

I think it was no accident that Homo Erectus was the first of the hominids to leave Africa. The structure of that fellow was essentially the same as present day humans. Vertical posture makes for efficient traveling and other survival traits.
So you can see that there were some considerable evolutionary advantages to vertical posture. Our ancestors were environmentally selected by their efficiency to continue their line. Their development was selected by their very efficiency to their environment. Not only did their shape create the ability to survive easier but also allowed them to thrive in a gravity-dependant universe. Vertical posture to oppose gravity was what made this creature and its line the most efficient organism and increased its position up the evolutionary survivability index. I would not have named him Homo Sapiens. I would have called her Homo Verticalis.

You don’t have to be a paleontological anthropologist to ponder the existential truths locked in fossilized remains. The inheritor of the optimized survival traits discussed above is standing right there in your mirror looking back at you. Those survival traits are shouting at you when the descendant of the little furry creature is slumped in front of the computer or hunched over the steering wheel complaining of shoulder and neck pain with pins and needles sensation in their fingers, with a weakened immune system and visceral problems. The blueprint for that person’s correction has a 3 to 7 million-year track record. This concept is the foundation for all the methods for posture correction currently invented and that will be discovered in the future. We can thank a little furry grandfather and grandmother for figuring out one of the secrets of the universe. Standing up to gravity is one of the best survivability traits discovered.