Which Evolved First, Our Hands or Feet?

I was going to guess feet, because our hands can perform more sophisticated tasks so it would make sense for them to have evolved and refined afterwards.

Also, if you look at all the other four-limbed species considered to be more primitive than us, they either walk on all fours or have hands that resemble their feet.

BUT then I remembered the last question you asked about the color of the sun and felt like this must be a trick question.

So I did a little more research and this is what I discovered.

What came first, hands or feet?

The answer is in our brains:

When scientists analysed neural activity in monkeys as a result of stimulus from their hands, they noticed that the signals were interpreted in several different parts of the brain.

This is the same for humans.

They then ran the same test on feet.

When scientists stimulated the monkey's foot, all the different signals were received in the same general area of the brain.

But when scientists examined human feet, they noticed that the brain dealt with two very distinct signals: One from the foot in general, and the other from our big toe.

This suggests that the big toe developed later in our evolutionary progress to help us walk up-right and remain balanced, while the hand had already evolved to its current capabilities way back when we were still monkeys.