Turkish Handwalkers: The Family that Walks on All Fours

Living in the southern parts of Turkey has been a daily nightmare for this Kurdish family as five siblings struggle to stand upright and must walk using there hands and feet just as an animal such as a dog or a cat would. While many scientists have contemplated the reasoning behind such an unfortunate situation none tend to agree as to the actual cause behind it. The closest conclusion that a group of German scientists could come to is that the fact that 5 of the 11 siblings that are restricted to walking in this nature are also handicap as well. This led to the belief that brain damage may have caused this disforming to occur. Uner Tan a Turkish scientist who discovered the family believed that it was a form of human prehistory of sorts. However this was quickly contemplated by other scientists and it was agreed upon that different areas needed to be researched and that this was highly unlikely.

One of the Turkish Handwalkers has been walking on hands and feet for twenty-eight years miles upon miles everyday. Looking as an outcast while he walks the streets stones are thrown at him as a disgrace for his form as children pick on the man daily. There are many other functions or abilities that lack in this family and after doing extensive research the 5 siblings were crowned as having "Unertan syndrome". A disease where lack of vocabulary (only about 300 words), no recollection of time or where they live, signs of mental retardation, and of course walking on all fours as primates do.

This has thrown a complete curve ball into the work on "human evolution" as this tends to be a backwards evolution. Confused, scientists must try and determine what has caused this to take place so years of work on this subject have not been for nothing as this will create many holes in various theories. Scientists have believed for many years that the transition of freeing the hands for working and building has been the biggest event in human evolution itself. However for this family it has been nothing short of a nightmare.

The family was discovered in 2005 and paraded around the news for quite some time, but recently only after a couple years of research physical therapy items were placed in the families home with physical therapists to try and teach their minds and bodies to walk upright. The use of walkers have helped taking a family that can see no higher then a couple feet off the ground and given them hope. In addition a railing system has been placed within their property so they may workout daily. It is amazing to think that people that have only known this to be their way of getting around has a body flexible enough to be able to use things such as walkers and railings to walk upright for the very first time in their lives. Its almost as if they never made it past the crawling stage as a baby.