Lucy Walks

3:42 minute loop; 2019

Lucy was unearthed in 1974 by Cleveland-based anthropologist, Donald Johanson in Ethiopia. Aged at roughly 3 million years, she was, at the time, the oldest representation of bipedalism known to man. Brought from her home in Africa to Cleveland, Lucy was poked, prodded and subjected to the implied and overt sexism of her examiners hopes of deriving clues to their own existence. Over fifty years male scientists have created theories as to how Lucy’s gender effected her ability to walk and contribute to evolution. Under the cloak of scientific impartiality, the locomotive experts struggled to escape the bias of the era in which they worked. One scientist argued that her wide female hips would have caused her to walk "like a clown" kicking her large feet out with her knees bending out towards the sides, while another argued for a different pelvic structure that, along with the weight of her breasts, would cause her to lean forward sticking her butt out behind her as she walked in a crouched position. Infamously, one is even quoted as stating that females during this time would not have contributed greatly to evolution beyond reproduction as they would have sat in the tree canopy as the males of their species would have ventured out upright into the savannah for food to bring home.