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When did the knee swap direction and give humans our upright walk? What was the method for the knee moving?

Wikipedia, gooegl! Too bad we don't have a historian here, hehe. Perhaps the wiki articles on Human evolution, Bipedalism or Human skeleton changes due to bipedalism might help.

We do have a historian on the forum

I'm guessing around the same time our feet-hands became feet and our brains expanded.

Humans gained bipedalism _before_ they...or we, started using stones, tools and such.

I believe it has to do with the ecolution if certain mammals that adpated to climbing trees where the backwards facing knee was a disadvantage. The stance likely became more upright as this species then moved to the plains of Africa where the earliest human ancestors are speculated to have arisen.

The knee never swapped direction. All land vertebrates have knees like ours, that bend backwards.

CodeCat, on 4 Mar 2009, 17:16, said:

^ waht he said

Codecat has spoken, the truth has been heard.

Ja, I think pretty much most if not all the land animals now and all the way back to the tetrapods from the Carboniferous period had legs that bent back and not foward. Though I'm no expert.

I'm not sure why one would think our ancestor's knees bent backwards (here is a pic of a Chimpanzee skeleton). Perhaps there's a misunderstanding, did you mean something else?

CodeCat, on 4 Mar 2009, 17:16, said:

By backward facing knees i meant those that bend forward.

Knees...bending...kneecaps...forward...backwards...bah.

Squatting down = Knees bending "going" forward.

Kneecap = "Butt"

Use for Butt = Allow sitting

Transliteration = Knees bend forward because the kneecaps think they're butts and must touch the ground, or something like that

Also, 404 Error ftw.

Scope, on 5 Mar 2009, 4:43, said:

Knees like that don't exist in any Earth land vertebrates.

Nevermind, my brain was in neutral, please ignore this.