The future of the human posture is in the spotlight. The 200-year-old locomotion paradigm can no longer resist the advancement of knowledge, yet 2,500 years of thinking on the place of verticalized human anatomy and its reflexive consciousness in the natural history of life and the Earth, is more relevant than ever. This book retraces these reflections from pre-Socratic philosophers, focusing on the link between verticality and the most complex and consciously reflexive nervous system on the top rung of the ladder of living beings. The origin of animated forms, or animals, was considered metaphysical until the 19th century but reflection on their inception, from fertilization, paved the way for mathematics of infinitesimal geometry and dynamics. The simian filiation was inconceivable until Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck bridged the gap in 1802 with the locomotion postulate to explain the transition from quadrupedal to bipedal posture, sustained by the hypothesis of inheritance of acquired characteristics. This doctrine was overturned in 1987 by the discovery of the embryonic origins of the straightening – specific dynamics linked to neurogenesis – confirming the natural place of human verticality and nervous system complexity with its psychomotor and cognitive consequences. Sapiens find themselves at the physical limit of the straightening while mechanisms of gametogenesis have never ceased in making neurogenesis exponentially more complex. Is the future exclusively terrestrial or does intrauterine hominization open up new perspectives for space exploration? Posturologists, occlusodontics, osteopaths, cognisciences – all anthropological sciences exposed to human verticality are concerned with this discovery, which allows Sapiens to face their natural destiny.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. The 20th Century. A New Science: Human Paleontology 1 1.1. Introduction 1 1.2. Human paleontology, a nascent science 2 1.2.1. The Java erect ape-man, or the missing link, Pithecanthropus 3 1.2.2. Human paleontology and secularism 6 1.2.3. The first Neanderthal Man in French territory and his ancestor in Germanic lands 9 1.2.4. The Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, a foundation of Prince Albert 1st of Monaco 11 1.3. Presuppositions 13 1.3.1. The Neanderthal Man, a stooped posture? 13 1.3.2. Embryologists, geneticists and paleontology at the beginning of the 20th century 13 Chapter 2. Asia, The Cradle of Humanity 17 2.1. Teilhard de Chardin, a destiny from Piltdown to the Muséum 17 2.2. The primate ancestor of the human lineage in Montauban 20 2.3. Teilhard de Chardin sets out the main phylogenetic principles 21 2.4. Human paleontology is a branch of planetology 25 2.5. China, the promise of very ancient mammalian and human species 29 2.6. Peking Man: a small brain but well-cut tools 32 2.7. The first study of the internal basis of a Hominidae fossil 36 2.8. A new paradigm: telencephalization 38 Chapter 3. South and East Africa: The New Cradle 43 3.1. Gracile, robust Australopithecines and Humans 43 3.2. “A systematic research plan for Early Man in South Africa” 46 3.3. The Princeton synthetic theory (neo-Darwinism) and the Sorbonne replica (neo-Lamarckism) 50 3.4. Hominization, “background orthogenesis” 53 3.5. First synthesis: Man and the third axis of cosmic evolution of increasing complexity–consciousness 56 Chapter 4. The Body, Arboricolism and Adaptation: The Years 1950–1980 65 4.1. Under the brain, a body 65 4.2. Hominization of the skull and posture, French schools 69 4.2.1. The École de Paris, The Sorbonne Museum of Natural History 69 Chapter 5. The Embryonic and Phylogenetic Origins of Human Posture 79 5.1. A reversal of perspectives 79 5.1.1. The origins of Man: the first doctoral school of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle 79 5.2. Evidence of craniofacial contraction 87 5.2.1. Materials, method and objectives 87 5.2.2. Protocol and results for current species 90 5.2.3. Comparison of mandibular growth trajectories 98 5.3. The embryonic origin of the sphenoidal angle and cranio-spinal straightening 105 5.3.1. Chondrocranium rotation according to Levi (1900) 105 5.3.2. A marker for embryonic trajectories: the dorsal cord 109 5.3.3. Morphogenesis of Meckel’s cartilage 114 5.3.4. The organization of intra-sphenoidal synchondrosis: a convection cell 115 5.3.5. The planum basale of other primates and mammals 117 5.3.6. Sphenoid rotation and semi-circular channels 123 5.3.7. The base of a human fetus without straightening: the semi-circular canals are still human 128 5.4. Craniofacial contraction 130 5.4.1. The double craniofacial pantograph 130 5.4.2. Internal and external craniofacial contraction angles 132 5.5. Conclusion: developmental heterochronies and dynamic trajectories 140 Chapter 6. Fossil Species: From the First Primates to the First Hominids 143 6.1. Mandibles, witnesses of straightening 143 6.1.1. The first primates 144 6.1.2. The first simians or monkeys 145 6.1.3. Great apes 146 6.2. The great ape-Hominidae transition: an acceleration in the complexity of embryogenesis 156 6.2.1. Ardipithecus: 5.8 to 3.8 Ma, Ethiopia 156 6.2.2. Where to find their origins: trees, tall grasses or the placenta? 159 6.2.3. Australopithecus and the oldest species that defines it: anamensis or afarensis? 160 6.2.4. Australopithecus and Homo contemporaries at 4 million years? 161 6.3. Axial straightening, cranio-palatal balance and occlusion of Hominids sensu stricto 164 6.3.1. The Pliocene and Lower Pleistocene African Hominids 164 6.3.2. Basi-cranial straightening, cerebellization and encephalization 185 6.3.3. Conclusion: Australopithecus, Paranthropus and prae-Homo, three thresholds of embryonic verticality 186 6.3.4. Humanity’s territory of otherness 188 Chapter 7. Homo and Sapiens Embryogenesis 191 7.1. Fossil taxa of the genus Homo 191 7.2. Fossil mandibles from Homo sapiens 195 7.3. The Neanderthal is not a Sapiens 197 7.4. The cerebellum position of extinct Homo species 198 7.5. What is the relationship between the Neanderthals and the Sapiens? 205 7.5.1. Skhul in Israel (Near East): the oldest Sapiens burial but with a young Neanderthal too 205 7.5.2. Jebel Irhoud in Morocco (North Africa) is not a Homo sapiens 206 7.5.3. Homo floresiensis, the Asian Hobbit, parent of Homo habilis 210 7.5.4. Conclusion: the embryonic threshold between Homo and Sapiens 210 7.6. The collapse of a paradigm: Man was present in Asia before the end of the Tertiary Era 212 7.7. Gracilization, cerebellization, anticipation and emotion 214 7.8. The new Rubicon: brain stem verticality and cerebellar instability 216 7.8.1. The body axis and Earth’s gravity field 216 7.8.2. Tools or utensils? 217 7.8.3. From the reflection of the image to the symbolic creation of its meaning 219 7.9. New sciences for an emerging evolutionary problem 221 7.10. The future of Sapiens, a dialog between the cerebellum and the brain? 223 Conclusion. Irreversibility, Responsibility, Otherness 227 References 231 Index 247