Lieberman and Bramble, the bumbling duo that brought you the superfantastic shitstorm of ridiculous contentions mentioned in my previous blog of this series, asserted in a number of papers that hominids evolved the ability to sustain lengthy periods of running at a moderate pace two million years ago, and have maintained that ability since.  Perhaps, you might think- Kenyans certainly have the ability to run a long fucking ways, right?  Well, putting aside the fact that their ability is ontogenic, even the most vicious racist wouldn’t contend that Africans are subhuman to the degree that this theory would require- the hominids extant 2M years ago looked like this:

Not even remotely human.  H. Habilis, the creature pictured above, had an “ape-like morphology” to their bodies that disappeared over the course of millennia, and had less than half the cranial capacity of modern humans.(Wiki- Cranial Capacity)  If anyone in history was mentally prepared to do nothing but mindlessly chase an animal until it died of exhaustion, it was h. habilis- not modern humans.  As hominids evolved much larger cranial capacities, they developed the ability to *gasp* wield tools and kill shit with them.  Additionally, hominids got progressively larger and more robust, so that the two primary hominid species extant in the paleolithic were some of the baddest motherfuckers ever to walk the Earth.  Though their morphology differed slightly, both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man were highly skilled tool makers and artists, and (interestingly) shared identical diets.  For those of you who don’t recall the blog where I posted the Neanderthal diet previously consisted of almost nothing but meat, and was comprised of at least twice as many calories as the diet of modern humans.  As it turns out, Cro-Magnon man ate the very same diet, and utilized identical hunting techniques as Neanderthals.(“Bones”, “New study”)

Neanderthals, as you can imagine, were built for nothing more than running.  They fucking loved it.  They’d run all over hell and gone, and then they’d chase a cave bear until it got tired and died.  Oh, wait… that’s completely fucking retarded.  While the Tarahumera purportedly run that much, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons carried heavy weaponry suited to stabbing, rather than throwing, and their skeletons bear damage consistent with close-in fighting with prey.(Richards et al)  This would make sense, given that animal products were the overwhelming source of their calories, and the fact that they evidence suggests they primarily hunted horses, mammoth, beaver, bison, woolly mammoth, mastodon, and saber toothed tigers.(Waguespack et al)  To kill them, Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals would encircle a herd of mastodons or other animals and then drive them off a cliff, or push them into a swamp and slaughter them while their motion was limited.(Big Game, Early Modern)  They were so good at killing these gigantic mammals that they’re credited with the extinction of both cave bears and North American horses, in addition to the megafauna die-off in general.  (Clovis Complex)  That doesn’t sound like a pack of long-distance runners to me- instead, it sounds like a pack of jacked motherfuckers who practically hated their food to death, and that they would have slaughtered the dinosaurs and Transformers if they’d had the opportunity to meet them in the time/space continuum.  They never saw an animal they didn’t want to eat, and it seems they rarely encountered a living thing they felt comfortable letting live another fucking day.

These were not joggers- they were musclebound death machines.

Still unconvinced?  McDougall and his retreat-prone buddies penned their treatises prior to the release of a 2010 study that showed fairly definitively that the human gait was adapted for efficient walking at the cost of efficient running.  According to Professor David Carrier, the human gait is completely dissimilar to that of most mammals, as our feet naturally strike the ground heel-first, rather than landing on the balls of our feet.  Our heels-down foot strike increases the economy of our gait drastically as it “takes 53% more energy to walk on the balls of your feet, and 83% more energy to walk on your toes.  This gait made walking distances very natural for humans, and also “may be advantageous during fighting by increasing stability and applying more torque to the ground to twist, push, and shove” in addition to increasing “agility in rapid turning maneuvers during aggressive encounters.”  Carrier does admit that humans are unusually good distance runners, compared to other primates, but asserts that we “are not efficient runners” and that “we consume more energy to run than the typical mammal our size.”(Human Gait)  That’s pretty much the death knell for the PH theory of human evolution, as we seem far better adapted to sprinting up to a cave bear and thai kicking that motherfucker until its leg breaks, and then following it as it heaves its broken ass through a swamp as a leisurely walk until we dispatch it with a sharp stick, rather than running after it willy-nilly in the often vain hope that the thing we’re chasing won’t outrun us.

Either of these men could thai kick any animal to death, but they’re sure as shit not going to run 300 miles after a duiker.
… and I haven’t even gotten to the fucking indians in Born to Run yet.  More this week on those silly motherfuckers.

Incidentally, McDougall’s buddies make a lot of noise about the size of the human ass and its necessity for running, claiming that’s the reason humans evolved it.  That’s bullshit- the human ass evolved to be large due to the fact that it’s a mating sign to other primates in the wild… and the human female ass is the only posterior that signals “it’s time to fuck” 24/7/365, which means we outbreed other primates like a motherfucker.

Game. Set. Match.

Big Game Hunters.  http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/hunters/index.shtml
Clovis Complex.  http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/clovis.html
Early Modern Human Culture.  http://www.palomar.edu/homo/mod_homo_5.htm
Richards MP, Pettitt PB, Trinkas E, Smith FH, Paunovic M, Karavanic I.  Neanderthal diet at Vindijia and Neanderthal predation: the evidence from stable isotopes.  PNAS (2000) 97: 13 7663-7666.
Waguespack NM, Surovell TA.  Clovis Hunting Strategies or how to make out on plentiful resources.  American Antiquity, Vol
Wikipedia: Cranial Capacity.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranial_capacity
University of Washington (9/23/03) “Bones from French cave show Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon hunted same prey.” Science Daily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030923065212.htm
Science Daily.  (1/19/06) “New study reveals Neanderthals were as good at hunting as early modern humans.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060118210756.htm
Science Daily.  (02/12/10) “Human gait adapted for efficient walking at the cost of efficient running.”

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