Hands-Free Since Four Million B.C.

Hairy humans hunting, preparing fire and meals in caves, making clothes, tools and even art with their own hands. This is a vivid image in our collective imagination. Yet we often overlook the simple, radical shift that made all this possible: freeing our hands.

As a babywearing consultant and lifelong observer of how humans care for their young, I’m fascinated by both what we do today and what we’ve lost touch with. Why do we carry, or struggle to carry, our babies today? And why did we begin doing it in the first place?

The ability to carry tools, food, infants was not just a side effect of walking on two legs. It may well have been the reason we began walking upright at all.

The why and how it happened that we have two out of four limbs free for other functions than climbing, walking and running has taken many scientists a lot of time and creative thinking.

As a result, there are several theories explaining how some quadrupedal primates became bipedal. All of them agree that this change had to be to the survival advantage of our kin and a breaking point in human evolution. It happened around four million years ago and coincided with other changes in our bodies - the bodies we have and keep reproducing today.

Some theories of the transition from four to two maintains that walking in water made our ancestors stand up, another say carrying meat was the reason, to pick a few. Nancy Tanner and Adrienne Zihlman in 1976 journal Signs maintain that it was carrying infants that drove the change. Being able to carry food, babies and whatever needed to be transported over long distances paid off and helped our predecessors succeed, survive and reproduce. Carrying might have contributed to the evolution of Hominidae and aid the phenomena key for advancing our kind such as dexterity, handedness, language acquisition, and social interactions.

For millions of years before, hominid offspring were carried on the backs of their caregivers in a horizontal position supported by gravity, as we can see in chimpanzees today, for instance. Gradually, human infants evolved a capacity to cling onto an upright caregiver whose body co-evolved to enable offspring carrying (Rose, 2005). As many scientists declare, infants are born with the expectation to be carried and for their primary caregiver to fulfill this role, calling human infants riders (Ross, 2001) and active clinging young (Kirkilionis, 1992). For millions of years, babies are born with motor skills and reflexes that make them capable of actively contributing to staying in physical contact with their caregiver right from birth.

As Tanner suggests, walking upright and freeing hands for carrying and gathering also brought a good opportunity to use carry containers for food first baby carriers, first in arms, later around the body, first ready-made by nature such as piece of bark or large leaves, later maybe inspired by nest weaving (as chimpanzees do), using made of natural materials.

A change in foot anatomy became one more reason to carry a baby in a carrier: our feet adapted to walking and lost the grasping ability they once had. To an upright and moving caregiver using her/his arms for gathering, the baby couldn’t cling to as tight any more. As the organic material of early slings and carriers do not preserve, we have no fossil remains to rely on and have to speculate on the exact nature of the first tools keeping human babies alive, safe and happy.

From bark and leaves to woven cloth and soft structured carriers, carrying has always evolved alongside the needs of caregivers and their communities. Today, it’s time for another shift.

babyloop is a natural continuation of this story. An evolution in line with modern parenting. Designed by a certified babywearing consultant together with the award-winning team at Modyn, it meets today’s needs for ease, adaptability, and style without compromising the instinctive closeness between parent and child. It’s carrying - updated for real life: from mom to dad, newborn to toddler, for everyday parenting freedom at one click.

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Hi, I’m Michaela. Certified babywearing consultant, founder of carry.coach, and mom of 3. After watching parents wrestle with every carrier out there for a decade, I stopped recommending and started designing. Join me at babyloop, where we are redefining babywearing with style, safety and simplicity. Let’s make carrying your little one the easiest - and coolest - part of your day. Ready to loop in? Visit babyloop.com and let’s get started!