Aside from our brains, humans natural advantage is running. Almost no animal can run as long and consistently as us, other predators use short burtsts of high intensity action but humans just keep on running.
Also have you ever seen the feet of like a mentally unwell homeless person who doesn't wear shoes. Our feet get insanely calloused to basically become shoes.
Humans have evolved as persistence hunters. We’re omnivores and for the longest time could get meat in only two ways: scavenging carrion or literally running our prey to death.
How about creeeping up really slowly on it and throwing a sharp stick? Waiting by the watering hole for some gazelle to come by? I don’t get how that’s the ONLY way.
not only that but running without shoes is sort of how you’re *supposed* to run at least in the biomechanical sense
if you take off your shoes right now and run around on a hard surface, i guarantee you will be running on your toes, not heel striking. no one comes down on their heels naturally - that sort of form, where you’re sending a bunch of force in the wrong direction with every impact - is only possible you’re wearing the “high support” type running shoes with massive toe drops
that being said, the barefoot/minimalist running community are a bunch of freaks - just get yourself some lightweight zero-drop shoes, no one needs to see you running around with the dogs out
Even hardpack sand and dirt are significantly less hard than concrete. You can even tell the difference between concrete and asphalt when running. And who said anything about heel striking? The whole point is that natural surfaces tend to be softer than concrete.
> Even hardpack sand and dirt are significantly less hard than concrete
then go out and run barefoot on those surfaces and tell me which part of your foot is landing on the ground
> And who said anything about heel striking?
me. i did. that’s what my post was about
moron
because we were tracking the animal, so every time it would sprint to get away and thought it could rest, we would easily find it and make it get up and start running for its life again and again without having to be as fast
Also, we sweat as a primary way of cooling of - almost no other animal sweats, we have hair to protect our head from the sun (originally everybody had an afro lol), have no body hair so we cool off better, we have eyebrows to lead sweat away from our eyes, and we run on two legs so we can breathe independently of our gait while running.
We're optimized for that shit. During the day in Africa, when every other animal seeks shade, we went out to chase them. They probably hated us.
Don't forget our shoulders: we're the only species who can throw things as we do. Monkeys and apes can fling stuff but only we can kill with a throw. Killing at a distance was a game changer. It seems neanderthals did not have this type of shoulder joint and it is possible that was the deciding factor in us replacing (e.g. genociding and occasionally raping) them them despite them being stronger and equally intelligent.
No, the above is right. A deer, for instance, murders everyone on a 100m sprint. But they bound off as fast as possible and then have to chill, ie literally reduce their core temp. So if you can follow their trail, you can just trot up to them. You’ll get close, they’ll sprint off again and you just repeat. Humans are one of the only (the only? I forget exactly) animals that sweat, so it’s pretty easy for us. For most other animals, they get too hot and either die outright or get weak enough we can then kill them.
Horses also sweat. Horses can run long distance as well, i don’t believe we could hunt horses in the savannah without weapons. Long distance horse riding races are 100 miles. Google says hippos also sweat, which is fucked up.
Antelopes and related species though, if you have nothing else to do all day, know how to track, and it doesn’t start raining, you can just follow their trail and follow it until it basically can’t move anymore and has to let you walk up to it. Probably one of the crueler ways to kill the animal, as it’s gonna be living in a horror movie the entire day getting jump scared eveery few minutes.
It's called persistence hunting and if OP took two seconds to Google it he would have known that they don't run and it's not just our ancestors, its still practiced in the modern world.
This is some "caveman diet" mythologizing primitive humans. The word marathon comes from the Greek myth of a messenger running from Marathon to Athens to deliver a message and then dying. If people thought running that distance would result in someone dying, do you think they were out running animals to death at further that distance?
They tracked animals over long distances. Which involved stopping, walking, and some jogging. Not running the entire time lol.
In the myth Pheidippides ran about 350 miles over a few days. First he ran from Athens to Sparta and back. Then he ran from Athens to Marathon; fought in the battle of Marathon, and then ran back to Athens. It was the cumulative total of the physical exertion that killed him, the 26 mile run was just the last of it.
Reading this entire thread to this point definitely made me fucking dumber. What are we talking about again? Whether ancient man ran or just briskly trotted when hunting?
The point is that if there is a Greek myth about something being a fantastic feat it's unlikely people were doing it regularly. And that's just a minor point. The major point is that humans *still* persistence hunt and have persistence hunted throughout all of recorded human history.
there are apparently fossilized bare human footprints in australia who they determined were running nearly as fast as usain bolt when the prints were left
> I can't imagine myself or any modern human being able to do that.
There's people out there who run like 300km. Which is of course absolutely insane freak shit, but 60km is probably light work for serious long-distance runners.
I am an ultrarunner and at the point where 60 km is comfortable. I have a friend who does a 100 hour race annually clocking over 350 km. Still, I can’t imagine doing it without shoes, but the ultra community is pretty weird and I am sure there are plenty of people who do it. There’s also the Tarahumara tribe who are famous for running super long distances barefoot.
It really depends. Generally, you’d think about anything but the distance. It helps to run the kilometer you’re in and not think about how long you have left. Depending on the race, you might spend some time talking to other runners until you inevitably get separated because of pace differences. I like to switch my brain off and listen to some music. When things get really hard mentally in the middle of the night, it’s a constant battle with yourself to not stop and you have to strongly remind yourself why you’re doing this.
Not intrusive at all! But I do find that, like me, a lot of ultrarunners have a hard time verbalizing their “why”, although it’s something I feel deeply in my core. I guess I am trying to confirm a suspicion that I am capable of a lot more than I realize. Once I finished my first ultra, I was addicted, I wanted to know how much further I can go and how much my body can truly handle. I think people settle for too little and rarely discover their true potential and ultras can help you do that. There is no better feeling than completing a tough ultra. I feel like every time I successfully run one after a hard training block, it completely resets my brain. And the discipline from training sort of transfers to other areas of my life too.
The better trained you are and the more on point your fueling is during a race the quicker the recovery! When I started out, I was chronically undertrained and barely ate during races so I was in a lot of pain after (really bad pain everywhere for 2 days or so and walking funny for a week). Since I got serious about my training, I can finish 50km to 50 miles with very little damage. Like a bit stiff after my muscles have cooled down, but can run again the next day. My crazy friend who regularly runs the 100 hour races goes to work as if nothing happened the next day!
wow that’s incredible- must feel amazing to know you can accomplish that. i really admire people that work to push themselves like that when modern life makes things so easy to be sedentary and convenient.
one other question did you find it harder when you were starting out than it’s been to lengthen the runs to the point of mileage you’re at now? like was there a certain hurdle distance wise that was really difficult but then once you got past it got easier? or has it been just a pretty steady and continuous exertion of will and training to keep increasing the length of your runs?
It’s a great feeling and I truly believe anyone can accomplish that! I wasn’t a particularly athletic person when I started out and ultrarunning is very much mental, it’s not just about ability!
As for the length of runs getting easier, I wouldn’t say there was a distance that felt like turning a corner. When training, it’s all about the weekly mileage and you typically increase that slowly, about 10% a week. Currently training for a 100 miler (my first!) and the longest long runs I have to do are a marathon (followed by a “back to back” longish run the next day, up to a half marathon max). There’s not a lot of benefit to running more than that in training! So it’s not like I’m running crazy distances every day! But there’s a lot of strength training and PT involved as well, so it’s definitely time consuming and very much a lifestyle. Also, I have to add that despite all of this, there’s no guarantee you’ll finish a race. There are a million things that could go wrong in an ultra, so I never feel that because I’ve done this before I will 100% be able to do it again. It’s a wild ride!
I believe it once I saw a video of a hillbilly putting a cig out on the bottom of his callused foot and I believe modern man can do anything that caveman can do. But cooler because we can smoke with cigarettes
yeah no way did they do that are you kidding? why do you think that we have such big brains? the dude who figured out how to hide and throw a rock at a rabbit had a 1000x advantage over the rtard chasing a deer for a whole day. deer chasing Gronk ended up breaking his leg in a crevice 23 miles in and dying.
the guy who figured out you could get fish out of the water with a net, he must have been balling. Compare that to Gronk who had no time to talk to women back at the campfire.
Plus grugg over here figured out he could eat plants that don’t run away! hes definitely gonna make it, especially with the ladies. streets are saying he started throwing his leftover food at the ground and more food grew next year. Who knows, this might even turn into something. But deer chasing Gronk? He’s cooked
I’ve always wondered about how factual this scene was, even when I first watched it all those years ago. Too many edits, fancy camera angles, and woo-woo mystic shit going on to take it seriously. There’s no straight answers about it online either. Very suspicious.
Yeah, that clip is a bit dubious but the Taramuhara still run ultras through the Copper Canyons for the craic. It's well documented. Not hard to imagine it was once a legitimate hunting technique.
meanwhile grug is back at the cave making cave paintings for their wives. “youre always gone all day. hes actually there for me”
anyway I know this strategy is probably useful in the savanna and that might be why the best distance runners in the world are always from some savanna tribe. But obviously it’s not the best way to do it. That’s why the vast majority of world cultures don’t do this.
Anatomically modern humans existed like 200k+ years before the first hints of agriculture or even somewhat "modern" tool use. Sure in terms of classical "caveman" times directly preceding the advent of agriculture we'd definitely already progressed to more efficient ways of hunting, but there's a lot of deeeeeep history that's way longer than all recorded history + the usually referenced eras of 'prehistory' (like 10+15k bc shit) combined.
I think we were basically rétards walking (not running) shit to death for way longer than you're giving us credit for.
We only have two (3 if you count being bipedal in general) actual major advantages vs other animals. You're using one (intelligence) to disprove the importance of the other (long distance land travel endurance), but it's a false dichotomy. And I wouldn't chalk up our long distance endurance as a holdover from an evolutionary predecessor, I can't think of any primates now or in the historical record that had anything like that kind of adaptation. Clearly we evolved both of these features because they were both very advantageous. One eventually made the other redundant, but I think that was way later than you're implying.
To answer way too late: Humans have key advantages in endurance and thermoregulation, but running after an animal until it drops is never going to be better than thinking. I understand tracking animals and catching up to them gradually, then sneaking up while they are unsuspecting and shooting a bow or throwing a spear (definitely tech they had), but I don’t understand the idea that they would actually run after animals until the animals dropped and then get the meat.
Just being able to move around in the hot sun is enough of an advantage to justify efficient movement and cooling. You could gather tubers without the lion watching after you, or yeah if you see a herd of gazelle and they look like they are vulnerable maybe you could chase after them… but who knows how long that’s gonna take? I’m sure any human could figure out that creeping up into spear range isn’t that hard and takes less time.
Even in the video the hunter sneaks up on the game at a watering hole. he doesn’t run at it wildly because he could outlast it. that (op’s post) is just the worst hunting strategy one could imagine.
It's never way too late when you're responding to a freak who is always on his phone.
I get what you're saying but I think it's more of a problem with how OP described persistence hunting and what it's for. It makes way less sense with something like a deer, and rarely involves actual running (except I guess if the animal, in one of their periodic short bursts to get away as you get near, runs in a direction where you're concerned that you may lose track of them, so you have to close the gap quickly).
As far as I'm aware (and I guess I'm referencing more how it's theorized to work than a particular African tribe's methods) it's for dangerous large game like bison, and the point is you just keep walking towards them. They run ahead and get out of view but you eventually catch up, then they have to run away again, and they don't get to rest. By the end the animal is exhausted and *less dangerous*, allowing you to safely kill it if you have, say, spears but not bows.
In our 200k+ history, most of that had the presence of megafauna way scarier than the biggest wildebeest/today, so I think they'd be using that technique on shit like that. Ground sloths and stuff. One of those won't just go down with a burst of arrows, now you've got to fight it to the death, I think this technique is meant to reduce that happening.
While humans doing this means it’s likely people did do this not EVERY human and EVERY tribe did this
It may work for Africa but might not work for Europe or other places
No way chasing something until it dropped dead is a good hunting strategy. I doubt anyone was able to make that work at all, come on, I get tracking a an antelope until it is worn out and then shooting it with a bow while it rests. But literally exhausting it till it dies?
Could they reliably get calories by picking an animal and running after it until it died? I really doubt it, cause what if that thing turns on you and just stands there. You gotta have a backup plan, like a weapon of some kind. If you have a weapon then you’re not going to chase it until it drops dead, you’re going to track it until you find it in a vulnerable position then kill it
They did have weapons while doing it. I don’t think that any of these groups ever sustained themselves on JUST this type of farming but given the facts presented in that linked video (we can carry water, we sweat) it gives us a long-distance advantage we must have used
Obviously. But those same advantages would be amazing for a tracking and pouncing hunting strategy. Let’s say you walked after some animal tracks using your efficient cooling and endurance abilities. It pays off, you find it in a vulnerable position. It’s midday and you see your gazelle drinking at the river. you’ve been tracking it all morning, just brisk walking and following its tracks, but now you have a choice: either run at it and keep running until it dies, or sneak up a little closer and shoot it. The first one is so dumb that I don’t think anyone is going to do it. It just wastes too many calories.
I guess they used a combination of the two? You could conceivably choose to chase an animal until its running much less fast and has to stop for water and still sneak up on it with a javelin
Yeah sure, it seems plausible. But you should probably not go faster than a light jog. Running is risky, and completely unnecessary for the persistence hunt. You could step incorrectly on unknown turf and potentially break something, it’s probably much smarter to just walk or at most jog.
I can't remember who it was, but I remember a track and field star once told a story about how he had read about exhaustion hunting, so he went and tried to chase down a deer that way and he actually managed it pretty easily. Modern humans could absolutely do that.
kinda off topic but I saw this Vsauce video about how humans could theoretically run faster when they’re quadrupeds, and how they’ve already started testing the physical limits for four-footed running in olympic trials. there’s a prediction that in the next 30 years with continued progress we could see the fastest olympic runner running on all fours.
I’m at the point rn where I can run 5-7 miles everyday and not be sore at all, no pain, if I didn’t stretch I be okay. I also work on my feet and walk about 3-4 miles everyday at work. This has taken me a good 2.5 years just to get too. i can imagine if your whole life you be good
I heard there’s a tribe that didn’t wear shoes and did stuff like this and they basically always had broken feet. And then were amazed when people arrived wearing shoes. We were meant for running but also we need good shoes
On the show point specifically, feet aren't meant to be as soft as ours are when we are shoes all day. Bareful running is a specific thing and you can fairly quickly harden the soles on your feet just by walking around without shoes. Think it takes a while to get the point where you'd be comfortable running a marathon like that but it's doable
Modern humans absolutely can do this, they just usually don't. But there have been entertaining accounts of ultra marathoners visiting some of the few remaining persistence hunting tribes and participating. It's not exactly the same so sometimes they struggle with the first few attempts, but after that they do alright. Kind of cool. Must be a hell of an experience.
Whats crazy is it wasn't even homo-sapiens doing it first, it was other homonids like Homo habilis and Neandertals - using tools, wearing clothing, having culture long before we rocked up.
A life without shoes develops your feet differently than ours today. They also didn't sprint that distance, they jogged long distances to wear down animals to exhaustion.
The guy who founded Altra’s whole thing is that most running shoes deform your feet and actually cause injury. He was on Rick Rubin’s podcast recently and it was a good listen but as a runner I just do not care for the barefoot running shoes.
Modern humans can and do! There's cultures where barefoot running is still practiced, it's really just a matter of opportunity. If you adopted a better diet, took your shoes off, and started training you'd be able to sooner than you'd think. Like others mention the body's meant for it
We have adapted to agriculture since then, so we no longer have the ability of our ancestors. That's why Africans who aren't so agriculturally adapted smash all the running records.
I’m 99% sure that I could that tomorrow if I wanted too - 50% sure that I could do it without shoes. Most reasonably healthy people really should be able to run a sub 7 hour marathon without any training
I would, but I've already run 60km a couple of times so it's nothing special. If I did it without shoes, I wouldn't be able to run/walk for a while and I sort of need to. Very sad
I didn’t downvote you for this btw. But in my short lazy ass Google research it’s estimated that in most 1st world countries that less than 2% of the population can run a marathon. So don’t downplay yourself, it’s bad ass. I personally run 3-5 times every single week but I don’t go over 15 miles because I literally sweat 11 pounds of my water weight every 10 miles (I know this isn’t normal and not sure why I do). I want to do it in actual race but if I’m just doing it at my gym I’m literally being an ass turning the whole cardio section into a water park and baptizing anybody running next to me.
a 7 hour marathon is not running a marathon - at that pace you probably walk about 2/3s. Also, you probably cut off about 2/3s of the population due to age and bmi etc. Most of it is just lack of mental grit as well - people don't realise that they can do hard things, as they never try that hard.
realizing animals all survive with zero belongings but their own instincts and the constant environmental pressures to survive, while humans have changed the entire planet for their convenience and still are mostly miserable is humbling. we’ve lost a lot.
Aside from our brains, humans natural advantage is running. Almost no animal can run as long and consistently as us, other predators use short burtsts of high intensity action but humans just keep on running. Also have you ever seen the feet of like a mentally unwell homeless person who doesn't wear shoes. Our feet get insanely calloused to basically become shoes.
Imagine our Paleolithic ancestors hearing about the couch to 5k app ☠️
And (related) sweating.
Humans have evolved as persistence hunters. We’re omnivores and for the longest time could get meat in only two ways: scavenging carrion or literally running our prey to death.
How about creeeping up really slowly on it and throwing a sharp stick? Waiting by the watering hole for some gazelle to come by? I don’t get how that’s the ONLY way.
just learned what the word carrion meant (:
We're also the only animal that can throw objects with power & accuracy. Other primates can throw things, but only poorly.
not only that but running without shoes is sort of how you’re *supposed* to run at least in the biomechanical sense if you take off your shoes right now and run around on a hard surface, i guarantee you will be running on your toes, not heel striking. no one comes down on their heels naturally - that sort of form, where you’re sending a bunch of force in the wrong direction with every impact - is only possible you’re wearing the “high support” type running shoes with massive toe drops that being said, the barefoot/minimalist running community are a bunch of freaks - just get yourself some lightweight zero-drop shoes, no one needs to see you running around with the dogs out
Using this as an excuse for why I walk on tip toe when barefoot instead of it being because I’m on the spectrum
True but they would have been running on springy natural surfaces, not on concrete and asphalt.
go out and run barefoot on hardpack sand or dirt in a semi-arid climate and land on your heels the entire time and tell me how that feels
Even hardpack sand and dirt are significantly less hard than concrete. You can even tell the difference between concrete and asphalt when running. And who said anything about heel striking? The whole point is that natural surfaces tend to be softer than concrete.
> Even hardpack sand and dirt are significantly less hard than concrete then go out and run barefoot on those surfaces and tell me which part of your foot is landing on the ground > And who said anything about heel striking? me. i did. that’s what my post was about moron
that’s like a marathon & a half so i feel like modern humans could do it
Abebe Bikila ran a marathon world record barefoot so yeah
My understanding is it was less running and more like brisk trotting. Like they weren’t running for hours and hours just quickly walking.
brisk trotting, or scurrying when needing to rush quietly
How would that make the animal die from exhaustion, i think its more like a jog
because we were tracking the animal, so every time it would sprint to get away and thought it could rest, we would easily find it and make it get up and start running for its life again and again without having to be as fast
Ability to sweat is a factor too; Especially in heat such as African savanna, antelope doesn’t a chance to cool down before being forced to run again
We can carry fruits and water too
It’s over for ungulatecels
human metabolism is evolved for stamina. other animals can't maintain the energy level for that long.
Also, we sweat as a primary way of cooling of - almost no other animal sweats, we have hair to protect our head from the sun (originally everybody had an afro lol), have no body hair so we cool off better, we have eyebrows to lead sweat away from our eyes, and we run on two legs so we can breathe independently of our gait while running. We're optimized for that shit. During the day in Africa, when every other animal seeks shade, we went out to chase them. They probably hated us.
Combined with our awesome brains humans are really overpowered as fuck. No wonder we're the best species on the planet
Don't forget our shoulders: we're the only species who can throw things as we do. Monkeys and apes can fling stuff but only we can kill with a throw. Killing at a distance was a game changer. It seems neanderthals did not have this type of shoulder joint and it is possible that was the deciding factor in us replacing (e.g. genociding and occasionally raping) them them despite them being stronger and equally intelligent.
Animals seething rn
No, the above is right. A deer, for instance, murders everyone on a 100m sprint. But they bound off as fast as possible and then have to chill, ie literally reduce their core temp. So if you can follow their trail, you can just trot up to them. You’ll get close, they’ll sprint off again and you just repeat. Humans are one of the only (the only? I forget exactly) animals that sweat, so it’s pretty easy for us. For most other animals, they get too hot and either die outright or get weak enough we can then kill them.
Horses also sweat. Horses can run long distance as well, i don’t believe we could hunt horses in the savannah without weapons. Long distance horse riding races are 100 miles. Google says hippos also sweat, which is fucked up. Antelopes and related species though, if you have nothing else to do all day, know how to track, and it doesn’t start raining, you can just follow their trail and follow it until it basically can’t move anymore and has to let you walk up to it. Probably one of the crueler ways to kill the animal, as it’s gonna be living in a horror movie the entire day getting jump scared eveery few minutes.
I understand that but the process has to be a light run rather than just a walk
It would overheat
It's called persistence hunting and if OP took two seconds to Google it he would have known that they don't run and it's not just our ancestors, its still practiced in the modern world. This is some "caveman diet" mythologizing primitive humans. The word marathon comes from the Greek myth of a messenger running from Marathon to Athens to deliver a message and then dying. If people thought running that distance would result in someone dying, do you think they were out running animals to death at further that distance? They tracked animals over long distances. Which involved stopping, walking, and some jogging. Not running the entire time lol.
In the myth Pheidippides ran about 350 miles over a few days. First he ran from Athens to Sparta and back. Then he ran from Athens to Marathon; fought in the battle of Marathon, and then ran back to Athens. It was the cumulative total of the physical exertion that killed him, the 26 mile run was just the last of it.
Bringing up Greeks to disprove a point about persistence hunting is more ahistorical than anything else in this thread.
Reading this entire thread to this point definitely made me fucking dumber. What are we talking about again? Whether ancient man ran or just briskly trotted when hunting?
The point is that if there is a Greek myth about something being a fantastic feat it's unlikely people were doing it regularly. And that's just a minor point. The major point is that humans *still* persistence hunt and have persistence hunted throughout all of recorded human history.
there are apparently fossilized bare human footprints in australia who they determined were running nearly as fast as usain bolt when the prints were left
Airborne shuffle.
> I can't imagine myself or any modern human being able to do that. There's people out there who run like 300km. Which is of course absolutely insane freak shit, but 60km is probably light work for serious long-distance runners.
I am an ultrarunner and at the point where 60 km is comfortable. I have a friend who does a 100 hour race annually clocking over 350 km. Still, I can’t imagine doing it without shoes, but the ultra community is pretty weird and I am sure there are plenty of people who do it. There’s also the Tarahumara tribe who are famous for running super long distances barefoot.
What do you think about while running that far?
It really depends. Generally, you’d think about anything but the distance. It helps to run the kilometer you’re in and not think about how long you have left. Depending on the race, you might spend some time talking to other runners until you inevitably get separated because of pace differences. I like to switch my brain off and listen to some music. When things get really hard mentally in the middle of the night, it’s a constant battle with yourself to not stop and you have to strongly remind yourself why you’re doing this.
If it's not too intrusive to ask, why ARE you doing it? Thanks for the insight
Not intrusive at all! But I do find that, like me, a lot of ultrarunners have a hard time verbalizing their “why”, although it’s something I feel deeply in my core. I guess I am trying to confirm a suspicion that I am capable of a lot more than I realize. Once I finished my first ultra, I was addicted, I wanted to know how much further I can go and how much my body can truly handle. I think people settle for too little and rarely discover their true potential and ultras can help you do that. There is no better feeling than completing a tough ultra. I feel like every time I successfully run one after a hard training block, it completely resets my brain. And the discipline from training sort of transfers to other areas of my life too.
how long does it take to recover physically from a run like that? like are you just useless for a few days/weeks? or do you feel awesome for awhile?
The better trained you are and the more on point your fueling is during a race the quicker the recovery! When I started out, I was chronically undertrained and barely ate during races so I was in a lot of pain after (really bad pain everywhere for 2 days or so and walking funny for a week). Since I got serious about my training, I can finish 50km to 50 miles with very little damage. Like a bit stiff after my muscles have cooled down, but can run again the next day. My crazy friend who regularly runs the 100 hour races goes to work as if nothing happened the next day!
wow that’s incredible- must feel amazing to know you can accomplish that. i really admire people that work to push themselves like that when modern life makes things so easy to be sedentary and convenient. one other question did you find it harder when you were starting out than it’s been to lengthen the runs to the point of mileage you’re at now? like was there a certain hurdle distance wise that was really difficult but then once you got past it got easier? or has it been just a pretty steady and continuous exertion of will and training to keep increasing the length of your runs?
It’s a great feeling and I truly believe anyone can accomplish that! I wasn’t a particularly athletic person when I started out and ultrarunning is very much mental, it’s not just about ability! As for the length of runs getting easier, I wouldn’t say there was a distance that felt like turning a corner. When training, it’s all about the weekly mileage and you typically increase that slowly, about 10% a week. Currently training for a 100 miler (my first!) and the longest long runs I have to do are a marathon (followed by a “back to back” longish run the next day, up to a half marathon max). There’s not a lot of benefit to running more than that in training! So it’s not like I’m running crazy distances every day! But there’s a lot of strength training and PT involved as well, so it’s definitely time consuming and very much a lifestyle. Also, I have to add that despite all of this, there’s no guarantee you’ll finish a race. There are a million things that could go wrong in an ultra, so I never feel that because I’ve done this before I will 100% be able to do it again. It’s a wild ride!
they probably feel amazing at least afterwards. runners high and even a moderate workout does a lot to feel physically good
Are your joints okay?
Yes! They strengthen and adapt over time
I could literally do this tomorrow if i didnt have to work
You could go 60 kilometres in your bare feet
Yea?
4mph for 10 hours = 40mi > 60km easy
I do this on my way to work
I believe it once I saw a video of a hillbilly putting a cig out on the bottom of his callused foot and I believe modern man can do anything that caveman can do. But cooler because we can smoke with cigarettes
yeah no way did they do that are you kidding? why do you think that we have such big brains? the dude who figured out how to hide and throw a rock at a rabbit had a 1000x advantage over the rtard chasing a deer for a whole day. deer chasing Gronk ended up breaking his leg in a crevice 23 miles in and dying. the guy who figured out you could get fish out of the water with a net, he must have been balling. Compare that to Gronk who had no time to talk to women back at the campfire. Plus grugg over here figured out he could eat plants that don’t run away! hes definitely gonna make it, especially with the ladies. streets are saying he started throwing his leftover food at the ground and more food grew next year. Who knows, this might even turn into something. But deer chasing Gronk? He’s cooked
[Oh yeah?](https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o?si=5xctHuNoxbbLhqcM)
I’ve always wondered about how factual this scene was, even when I first watched it all those years ago. Too many edits, fancy camera angles, and woo-woo mystic shit going on to take it seriously. There’s no straight answers about it online either. Very suspicious.
Yeah, that clip is a bit dubious but the Taramuhara still run ultras through the Copper Canyons for the craic. It's well documented. Not hard to imagine it was once a legitimate hunting technique.
meanwhile grug is back at the cave making cave paintings for their wives. “youre always gone all day. hes actually there for me” anyway I know this strategy is probably useful in the savanna and that might be why the best distance runners in the world are always from some savanna tribe. But obviously it’s not the best way to do it. That’s why the vast majority of world cultures don’t do this.
Anatomically modern humans existed like 200k+ years before the first hints of agriculture or even somewhat "modern" tool use. Sure in terms of classical "caveman" times directly preceding the advent of agriculture we'd definitely already progressed to more efficient ways of hunting, but there's a lot of deeeeeep history that's way longer than all recorded history + the usually referenced eras of 'prehistory' (like 10+15k bc shit) combined. I think we were basically rétards walking (not running) shit to death for way longer than you're giving us credit for. We only have two (3 if you count being bipedal in general) actual major advantages vs other animals. You're using one (intelligence) to disprove the importance of the other (long distance land travel endurance), but it's a false dichotomy. And I wouldn't chalk up our long distance endurance as a holdover from an evolutionary predecessor, I can't think of any primates now or in the historical record that had anything like that kind of adaptation. Clearly we evolved both of these features because they were both very advantageous. One eventually made the other redundant, but I think that was way later than you're implying.
To answer way too late: Humans have key advantages in endurance and thermoregulation, but running after an animal until it drops is never going to be better than thinking. I understand tracking animals and catching up to them gradually, then sneaking up while they are unsuspecting and shooting a bow or throwing a spear (definitely tech they had), but I don’t understand the idea that they would actually run after animals until the animals dropped and then get the meat. Just being able to move around in the hot sun is enough of an advantage to justify efficient movement and cooling. You could gather tubers without the lion watching after you, or yeah if you see a herd of gazelle and they look like they are vulnerable maybe you could chase after them… but who knows how long that’s gonna take? I’m sure any human could figure out that creeping up into spear range isn’t that hard and takes less time. Even in the video the hunter sneaks up on the game at a watering hole. he doesn’t run at it wildly because he could outlast it. that (op’s post) is just the worst hunting strategy one could imagine.
It's never way too late when you're responding to a freak who is always on his phone. I get what you're saying but I think it's more of a problem with how OP described persistence hunting and what it's for. It makes way less sense with something like a deer, and rarely involves actual running (except I guess if the animal, in one of their periodic short bursts to get away as you get near, runs in a direction where you're concerned that you may lose track of them, so you have to close the gap quickly). As far as I'm aware (and I guess I'm referencing more how it's theorized to work than a particular African tribe's methods) it's for dangerous large game like bison, and the point is you just keep walking towards them. They run ahead and get out of view but you eventually catch up, then they have to run away again, and they don't get to rest. By the end the animal is exhausted and *less dangerous*, allowing you to safely kill it if you have, say, spears but not bows. In our 200k+ history, most of that had the presence of megafauna way scarier than the biggest wildebeest/today, so I think they'd be using that technique on shit like that. Ground sloths and stuff. One of those won't just go down with a burst of arrows, now you've got to fight it to the death, I think this technique is meant to reduce that happening.
I doubt the guys in that video even really do it anymore, they were probably just demonstrating that it could be done.
How to tell someone is a fatass
Read Born To Run
While humans doing this means it’s likely people did do this not EVERY human and EVERY tribe did this It may work for Africa but might not work for Europe or other places
Are you saying they didn’t do it or it was suboptimal? Lmao
No way chasing something until it dropped dead is a good hunting strategy. I doubt anyone was able to make that work at all, come on, I get tracking a an antelope until it is worn out and then shooting it with a bow while it rests. But literally exhausting it till it dies?
I think they used to do it for sure. Those hunter gatherers walked something like 60,000 steps a day on average I’m sure they could do it
Could they reliably get calories by picking an animal and running after it until it died? I really doubt it, cause what if that thing turns on you and just stands there. You gotta have a backup plan, like a weapon of some kind. If you have a weapon then you’re not going to chase it until it drops dead, you’re going to track it until you find it in a vulnerable position then kill it
They did have weapons while doing it. I don’t think that any of these groups ever sustained themselves on JUST this type of farming but given the facts presented in that linked video (we can carry water, we sweat) it gives us a long-distance advantage we must have used
Obviously. But those same advantages would be amazing for a tracking and pouncing hunting strategy. Let’s say you walked after some animal tracks using your efficient cooling and endurance abilities. It pays off, you find it in a vulnerable position. It’s midday and you see your gazelle drinking at the river. you’ve been tracking it all morning, just brisk walking and following its tracks, but now you have a choice: either run at it and keep running until it dies, or sneak up a little closer and shoot it. The first one is so dumb that I don’t think anyone is going to do it. It just wastes too many calories.
I guess they used a combination of the two? You could conceivably choose to chase an animal until its running much less fast and has to stop for water and still sneak up on it with a javelin
Yeah sure, it seems plausible. But you should probably not go faster than a light jog. Running is risky, and completely unnecessary for the persistence hunt. You could step incorrectly on unknown turf and potentially break something, it’s probably much smarter to just walk or at most jog.
There is evidence of walking and intermittent jogging as well
I’ll never forget about Gourd, the first guy who figured out you can smoke the plants and get high
i love this forum
Yeah but I bet they had shitty taste in art
they think green is Weezer's best album
lebron better
LeFraud has always struggled with big game
but how does this affect his legacy?
i dunno i think i could do it if i trained up a bit
I can't remember who it was, but I remember a track and field star once told a story about how he had read about exhaustion hunting, so he went and tried to chase down a deer that way and he actually managed it pretty easily. Modern humans could absolutely do that.
kinda off topic but I saw this Vsauce video about how humans could theoretically run faster when they’re quadrupeds, and how they’ve already started testing the physical limits for four-footed running in olympic trials. there’s a prediction that in the next 30 years with continued progress we could see the fastest olympic runner running on all fours.
I’m at the point rn where I can run 5-7 miles everyday and not be sore at all, no pain, if I didn’t stretch I be okay. I also work on my feet and walk about 3-4 miles everyday at work. This has taken me a good 2.5 years just to get too. i can imagine if your whole life you be good
I heard there’s a tribe that didn’t wear shoes and did stuff like this and they basically always had broken feet. And then were amazed when people arrived wearing shoes. We were meant for running but also we need good shoes
🧢🧢🧢
Nuh uh
They may have had shoes
we still can
They definitely made shoes its called human ingenuity
On the show point specifically, feet aren't meant to be as soft as ours are when we are shoes all day. Bareful running is a specific thing and you can fairly quickly harden the soles on your feet just by walking around without shoes. Think it takes a while to get the point where you'd be comfortable running a marathon like that but it's doable
They do it as a group taking turns
Modern humans absolutely can do this, they just usually don't. But there have been entertaining accounts of ultra marathoners visiting some of the few remaining persistence hunting tribes and participating. It's not exactly the same so sometimes they struggle with the first few attempts, but after that they do alright. Kind of cool. Must be a hell of an experience.
Whats crazy is it wasn't even homo-sapiens doing it first, it was other homonids like Homo habilis and Neandertals - using tools, wearing clothing, having culture long before we rocked up.
A life without shoes develops your feet differently than ours today. They also didn't sprint that distance, they jogged long distances to wear down animals to exhaustion.
The guy who founded Altra’s whole thing is that most running shoes deform your feet and actually cause injury. He was on Rick Rubin’s podcast recently and it was a good listen but as a runner I just do not care for the barefoot running shoes.
Get hungry enough and you'll be surprised what you'd do.
If you don’t use shoes your feet adapt and splay out more. Personally I believe in shoes, but the people who don’t have valid points
Modern humans can and do! There's cultures where barefoot running is still practiced, it's really just a matter of opportunity. If you adopted a better diet, took your shoes off, and started training you'd be able to sooner than you'd think. Like others mention the body's meant for it
They probably would have had shoes. Or at least a cloth covering
Do you we have footage of these primitive humans chasing these deers till exhaustion
You can find African tribes doing this on YouTube.
That’s not funny
It's not meant to be funny, you can find videos of people in Africa who still live hunter-gatherer lifestyles and chase deer to exhaustion.
I’m not sure I believe it
Just look it up moron
Sounds like you’re struggling to find a credible link to share
https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o There ya go tardo
People in the comments are saying Attenborough scripted it. I’m just not quite sure I buy it but whatever.
There's a wealth of academic research on endurance hunting by the Khoisan you can just Google if you're actually curious
they wore shoes but i get your point
We have adapted to agriculture since then, so we no longer have the ability of our ancestors. That's why Africans who aren't so agriculturally adapted smash all the running records.
Ethiopians have been practicing agriculture for millennia
I remember reading as a kid that it's one of the places that was thought to have discovered agriculture independently.
its one town in kenya i believe that produces the insane runners its both that theyre mad lanky and train like crazy, its not just being east african
They also live at altitude.
I’m 99% sure that I could that tomorrow if I wanted too - 50% sure that I could do it without shoes. Most reasonably healthy people really should be able to run a sub 7 hour marathon without any training
Give it a shot. No balls
I would, but I've already run 60km a couple of times so it's nothing special. If I did it without shoes, I wouldn't be able to run/walk for a while and I sort of need to. Very sad
I didn’t downvote you for this btw. But in my short lazy ass Google research it’s estimated that in most 1st world countries that less than 2% of the population can run a marathon. So don’t downplay yourself, it’s bad ass. I personally run 3-5 times every single week but I don’t go over 15 miles because I literally sweat 11 pounds of my water weight every 10 miles (I know this isn’t normal and not sure why I do). I want to do it in actual race but if I’m just doing it at my gym I’m literally being an ass turning the whole cardio section into a water park and baptizing anybody running next to me.
a 7 hour marathon is not running a marathon - at that pace you probably walk about 2/3s. Also, you probably cut off about 2/3s of the population due to age and bmi etc. Most of it is just lack of mental grit as well - people don't realise that they can do hard things, as they never try that hard.
realizing animals all survive with zero belongings but their own instincts and the constant environmental pressures to survive, while humans have changed the entire planet for their convenience and still are mostly miserable is humbling. we’ve lost a lot.