We are hunter runners

This observation comes not from medical or biological researchers, but from two anthropologists. in Their studiespublished on May 13 in the magazine nature of human behavior, They write that hunting by endurance and running “may have been an accessible and attractive method for hominins in the Pleistocene,” that is, in the past two million years.

They still start from a biological premise: humans may not be the fastest animals in the world, but they are built to last. On the one hand, they have fibers in their motor muscles that contribute to resistance to fatigue; On the other hand, they have the ability to dissipate excess heat through their sweat. These traits, say Eugene Morin of Trent University (Ontario) and Bruce Winterhalder of the University of California, have their advantages in the context of long-distance running –The range would be long enough to exhaust the prey.

They're not the first to talk about it in these terms: in biology, the idea is also known as the long-distance runner's theory (or Endurance hypothesis) She assumes it will be a trait Which would distinguish the lineage of humans Of those great apes.

Added by Morin and Winterhalderit is a review of the literature produced by anthropologists and missionaries, since the sixteenth century, on the hunting methods of various peoples: throughout the world, including the Beothuks of Newfoundland, they found 400 descriptions of “power hunting,” most of them before 1850. And each time The observation is one: hunters are able to pursue their prey until it is exhausted.