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Laetoli Foot Prints Analysis

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When looking at the Laetoli tracks, it is interesting to know that anthropologists derived many inferences and conclusions from them. It seems somewhat farfetched and random, until you try it out yourself, or delve more into the science behind it. By recreating my own foot prints along with a partner, and with the aid of some research, I was able to analyze and gain a stronger understanding of them.
The Laetoli tracks in the photo below have two sets of tracks. The left set which were made by smaller feet, and the right set which were made by larger feet. The distance between foot prints – the stride – is practically the same between the two sets of prints. Humans with larger feet tend to have larger legs and will naturally take longer strides. This could imply that the two Australopithecus afarensis who made these tracks could have been walking together side by side because the tracks with larger feet had a shorter stride equal to that of the smaller feet. Assuming that the two Australopithecus afarensis were walking side by side, they would have been very close, practically shoulder to shoulder. Where the feet plant …show more content…

The picture of the Laetoli tracks were taken at an angle which skew the perception of them, but the distance between their strides can still be estimated. The strides my friend and I took have a distance between foot prints similar to those of the Laetoli tracks. The distance between the two sets of tracks in the Laetoli prints coincide with the experimental tracks created by us. Our tracks were created by walking side by side at the same pace to create our foot prints. Therefore, we can hypothesize that the two Australopithecus afarensis were walking in a similar – if not the same – manner as the experimental

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