Walking upright is the behavior that defines hominids, and running is usually left out of the story, because humans are poor sprinters next to most four-legged animals. Being slow over a short distance is not the only way to be judged. What happens if you judge us over a long one?
We come out remarkably well. Assessed for sustained long-distance running, humans perform strongly thanks to a diverse array of anatomical and physiological features, many of which leave . The fossil record of those traces suggests is a of the genus Homo, from about 2 million years ago.
is a key derived behavior of hominids, and it possibly originated soon after the chimpanzee and human lineages diverged. Bipedal gaits include walking and running, and running has generally been considered to have played no major role in human evolution.
The reason for that is a fair one. Humans, like apes, are poor sprinters compared with most quadrupeds, and if speed is the measure then there is nothing here to explain.
So the authors change the measure. They assess how well humans perform at sustained long-distance running and review the physiological and anatomical bases of endurance running capabilities in humans and in other mammals.
Judged by several criteria, humans perform remarkably well, thanks to a diverse array of features, many of which leave traces in the skeleton. The fossil evidence suggests endurance running is a derived capability of the genus Homo, originating about 2 million years ago, and may have been instrumental in the evolution of the human body form.
wat. Humans lose the sprint and win the distance, and the skeleton carries the evidence.
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If endurance running shaped the body, then the skeleton of our genus is partly an answer to a question about distance rather than speed.
How do we know?
Bramble and Lieberman assessed human performance at sustained running, reviewed the physiological and anatomical bases of endurance running in humans and other mammals, and traced those features through the fossil record.
What is still unknown
The fossil features are consistent with endurance running without proving what early Homo did with it, and the authors put it no more strongly than may have been instrumental.
Learn something?
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