A Human Evolutionary Gift - Distance Running
Hey folks,
I've been reading lately about our early evolutionary history, as in the two million years before we started using tools. It appears we won the lottery on more than a few of our design features, opposable thumbs and big brains getting most of the press, but what may have given us the winning edge in the beginning could have been our ability to run long distances in hot weather.
How do you take down a Kudu (a large antelope) with no fangs or claws? Turns out that if you can keep it moving for eight hours in the heat of midday on the plains of Africa it will fall over from heat exhaustion, at which point you can walk up to it and easily kill it.
Our ability to sweat, our bipedal gait, our long arched energy returning foot, our leg muscle and tendon design, everything about us is put together in such a way as to give us an advantage no other animal on this planet has...given time (and our being in shape) we can run any animal out there to death. We did this for millions of years before modern running shoes were introduced in the 1970's.
One thing that gives evidence to our being an endurance running pack animal is that while men perform much faster at short sprints, women are very close at the marathon distance, but it's a toss up whether a man or woman will win a 100 mile race.
Interesting stuff for sure. I'll post some links as I come across them.
Murray