One of the benefits of living in Boston is access to frequent (free!) lectures at the colleges. A few years ago I caught a lecture – conveniently timed to coincide with the Marathon – by a professor of kinesthesiology on the evolution of running.
Turns out running is a uniquely human gait; in the way our legs store energy in the Achilles tendon, the closest equivalent is probably the kangaroo. Combined with another human innovation, sweating, no other animal can cover large amounts of distance at a constant pace like a human being.
I’ve always wondered how humans became such successful predators, given the astounding strength and speed and armament of the rest of the animal kingdom, and the professor’s exaltation of humans’ dominance in slow and moist travel wasn’t doing a lot to convince me, until he got onto persistence hunting.
Every animal in the world can beat a human in a foot race – over their distance of choice. But on the flat grass plains of Africa where our ancestors evolved, daytime temperatures often exceed 110 degrees. Hunters would jog – at what today would be considered an amateur rate – in pursuit of a much larger animal as it sprinted away from them. But soon the animal, with its thick fur coat, would have to stop to cool down. The hunters jog, and the prey flees and rests and flees. Finally, it can’t flee again, and they easily dispatch it.
I loved the phrase as soon as I heard it. Persistence fed us in a hostile environment, and shaped our bodies into their modern form. It literally made us who we are.
