Humans evolved as distance runners who can overtake exhausted game.
That's why you have those stubby toes...
[...] a handful of scientists think that these ultra-marathoners are
using their bodies just as our hominid forbears once did, a theory
known as the endurance running hypothesis (ER). ER proponents believe
that being able to run for extended lengths of time is an adapted
trait, most likely for obtaining food, and was the catalyst that
forced Homo erectus to evolve from its apelike ancestors. Over time,
the survival of the swift-footed shaped the anatomy of modern humans,
giving us a body that is difficult to explain absent a marathoning past.
Our toes, for instance, are shorter and stubbier than those of nearly
all other primates, including chimpanzees, a trait that has long been
attributed to our committed bipedalism. But a study published in the
March 1 issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, by
anthropologists Daniel Lieberman and Campbell Rolian, provides
evidence that short toes make human feet exquisitely suited to
substantial amounts of running. In tests where 15 subjects ran and
walked on pressure-sensitive treadmills, Lieberman and Rolian found
that toe length had no effect on walking. Yet when the subjects were
running, an increase in toe length of just 20 percent doubled the
amount of mechanical work, meaning that the longer-toed subjects
required more metabolic energy, and each footfall produced more shock.
<http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/the_running_man_revisited/>Link
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Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/04/humans-are-distance-runners.htm>monochrom
at 4/17/2009 12:38:00 PM
