That’s basically what I do – run in Vibrams or other minimalist shoes
once or twice a week to work on foot/leg strength and form. I use a
spectrum ranging from the Brooks Launch down to the – seems to work
well for me.

Pete

Thanks for the comment – I appreciate your thoughts. The point that
Lieberman and others are making is not that every single human is going to
be the next champion marathoner, but rather that we possess a number of
adaptations in our bodies that could be best explained as having been
selected for due to their role in distance running. Many of these have no
relation to our ability to walk. So, the logic goes, if we have running
specific adaptations, how did they get there? Because there was selection
for them at some point in our evolutionary history.

I’m not arguing that every modern human is going to be a natural born
runner, but rather that the mark of our running ancestry is still very
present in our bodies. Selection for running prowess has been removed for
quite a long time, and human populations are larger and likely a lot more
variable than they were 200,000 years ago. Even back then it was not
necessary that every individual be a champion runner, but those individuals
that were able to hunt effectively and provide for their families would have
been more likely to reproduce.

Pete

Tuck,

It is odd that Vibrams seem to be selling like crazy, yet I almost
never see people running in them, or even wearing them out and about.
Excellent points!

Pete

Sent from my iPod

Elodie,

I think the more relevant advances were the advent of agriculture and domestication of food animals, which have been around for 1000’s of years. These permitted humans to stay put and relieved the need for activities like persistence hunting and scavenging for food. This in turn means that distance running ability was probably no longer as strongly selected for, but we retain the general anatomical and physiological adaptations that make our species great at endurance running (with lots of variation).

On top of this, some of the factors that make running hard for people nowadays are lifestyle related – years of inactivity weaken our bodies to the point where they are no longer suited to the activity, and a lifetime of wearing shoes acclimates our feet and legs to this condition as well. It takes a long time to reverse this, and some may never succeed in doing so. These latter factors are outside of evolution, but may be just as important, and few would argue that people who grow up in societies where running throughout life is the norm are far better at it than most of us in modern society.

Pete

You make some good points here, and the reality is that because we are
making hypotheses about things that occurred long ago, we may never
know the true answer. I look at the evidence and see a species that is
well adapted for both walking and running, and we possess traits that
make us good at both. There are some that overlap, and some, it seems,
that do not. It’s certainly very interesting to think about.

Couple of points:

1. The gluteus maximus is not inactive during walking, it is just a
lot less active than it is during running. It is also used in other
behaviors, like climbing and getting up from a squat or chair. Even
low level activity during other activity would probably prevent
atrophy even in relatively inactive people. That being said, it is
heavily involved during running, and differs markedly in it’s anatomy
from that in the chimpanzee.

2. You can always find exceptions to any rule. Sure, people die of
heat exhaustion. Humans are also highly intelligent and generally
logical compared to other animals, but we often die or injure
ourselves by doing stupid and/or illogical things (hence why we have
the Darwin Awards!). I doubt anyone would argue that we are far better
at thermoregulating than most other animals out there, just as few
would argue that we are intelligent. Running with my dog reinforces
this belief every time I take him out.

3. The hunting/scavenging hypothesis provides the selective
environment. We know roughly when our ancestors started eating meat,
and it was before we had weapons to kill from a distance. Running them
down is one hypothesis for how this could be done (emphasis on
hypothesis). Few modern tribes do this because they longer need to,
but the fact that some do is evidence that it can and has been done.

4. Your soccer kick example is interesting, but I view that as a
complex, learned behavior. I can’t kick a soccer ball with any degree
of accuracy, and my kids are even worse. However, you go to any
playground and watch kids and you quickly realize that walking and
running are both innate. Almost as soon as a human can stand, they
begin doing both (I say this while holding my 4 month old who is
desperately trying to use his legs to stand!).

I appreciate the discussion – thanks for your detailed response.

Pete

Have you seen this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…. I
think kid style running is probably what our ancestors most likely did on
hunts based on what I see in the persistence hunt. Run for a bit, walk and
track, run a bit more. I suspect our ancestors were rarely running 26.2
miles full out. Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know for sure just what
the case is.

Throwing is definitely a learned behavior if my kids are any indication.
Funny how kids in the US probably learn to throw a ball first, whereas kids
in Europe probably learn to kick a ball first. Sport is a big influence!

Pete

Great!

Did you notice that he’s a heel striker with his right foot and a forefoot striker with his left? (3.13 min)

Thanks for the comment – I agree completely with you here. Your point
about being in tune with your body is an excellent one!

pete

If you are an evolutionary biologist, then maybe you can sort out my concerns, as I have stronger doubts regarding Matt’s dismissal of Lieberman’s theories.

They way I learnt it, for a trait to become universal in a species, it is enough that it provides a sufficient survival advantage to the bearer. Of course if missing that trait condemns you to oblivion, then it will work its way to supremacy much faster. But that’s not a necessary condition.

Why do Europeans have light skins and Africans dark ones? Because there was some advantage to it: maybe vitamin D synthesis for ones, maybe not getting sunburns in the other. Not a vital one, since black people live with no problem whatsoever in Europe, and there are whites living unharmed in the tropics. But if you add up a small advantage over thousands of generations, then you basically get a population which is very much optimized, and the optimal trait becomes universal. Lactose intolerance would be another example: virtually all Zambians are, virtually no Danish is. Is it a vital characteristic for survival? No, but it certainly is an advantage to digest cow milk if it is available. SO where it is, it becomes almost universal.

So I would think that, even if cheetahs were generous souls that shared part of their prey with the Jim Fogartys among them, you’d still expect the vast majority of cheetahs to be blazing fast. Because over the millenia, the slow runners would be the first to go when there was scarcity, so their genes would eventually be washed out of the population.

Same thing applies to humans: if persistence hunting was the main source of food for our antecessors, even if they took care of the weak, you’d expect the vast majority of humans to be good runners. Maybe not Bikilas, but definitely not Jim Fogartys.

And then we come to the end of the selective pressure, with modern civilization. So there may not have been any incentive to be a good runner over the past 10,000 years, but does that mean we, as a species have deconditioned for running? I greatly doubt so. Again, take lactose intolerance. Virtually all Zambians are lactose intolerant. Does digesting cow milk put you in any way at disadvantage if you live in Zambia? Doesn’t seem likely. Are the Danes more likely to get mutations than the Zambians? Not likely either. Why then hasn’t the lactose tolerance gene spread over a considerable proportion of the Zambian population? Because there’s no selective pressure for it either, and deleterious mutations come and go, without ever becoming predominant.

So even if running is not an advantage nowadays, unless not being able to run has turned into an advantage, it is extremely unlikely that the majority of us will lose that ability, unless we let evolution work for several hundred thousand years, when it is very likely to have turned us into a different species, where other abilities may have taken over the preceding ones.

Oh, and dogs are a very bad example: there is a very strong selective pressure on chihuahas to be small. The large chihuahas are simply not allowed to breed by their owners. So traits become predominant much, much faster. If a mad eugenicist allowed only the Jim Fogartys to breed, then humans would likely turn into non-runners in only a couple of centuries…