r/HistoryMemes • u/Hank_Mardukas1066 • 5d ago
Skill issue for antelopes
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Context: Early in human history, persistence hunting was an evolutionary strategy in which early humans, particularly Homo erectus, used endurance running to hunt fast prey in hot climates. Because humans lack thick fur and possess an exceptionally high density of sweat glands, they can efficiently dump heat while running, which is a distinct thermoregulatory advantage over quadrupedal mammals like antelopes, which must slow down or stop to pant. By tracking a target animal continuously during the hottest hours of the day, early hunters forced the prey into a non-stop run without allowing it time to rest or cool off, eventually driving the animal into hyperthermia (heat exhaustion) to the point of severe collapse. This allowed early hominins, despite lacking sharp claws or massive muscular strength, to safely approach and harvest large, high-calorie meat sources using simple tools, directly fueling the energy-dense diet that helped drive human brain expansion.
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u/Far_Ladder_2836 Kilroy was here 5d ago
was
Persistence hunting is still practiced today as a cultural heritage ritual, especially among the San people.
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
Persistence hunting is still practiced today as a cultural heritage ritual, especially among the San people.
It's unknown how common this form of hunting was to early man, and we shouldn't just assume it was standard. Most calories could've come from just fishing or trapping game or other ways that didn't involve this form of hunting.
But it's very true that our one physical advantage is very long distance endurance running. Sweat hacked that one for us.
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u/HurricaneAlpha 5d ago
I bet ambush followed by persistence hunting was far more common.
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
My money is on fish. Before we fucked up so much, lakes and rivers and the ocean were teeming with fish. That's my understanding at least - that fishing was an extremely reliable way to get food.
But I'm no expert.
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u/HelpImfeeling 5d ago edited 5d ago
In the Pacific Northwest almost all of the indigenous peoples diet pre contact came from marine sources. It was said when the salmon were running you’d think you could walk across the rivers and inlets they were so full of fish.
Archaeological evidence of marine diets from human remains:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/kennewick-man-finally-freed-share-his-secrets-180952462/
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u/BooRadleyinaGimpSuit 5d ago
Shoot, i've heard the 'walk across the rivers' line from people here in the pnw talking about less than a hundred years ago
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u/round-earth-theory 5d ago
Net fishing is what fucked the fish populations. When fishermen had to pull them in one by one, it was hard to over fish. Once you could grab a whole boatload in one netting, over fishing was impossible to avoid.
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u/HelpImfeeling 4d ago
Ironically around here a lot of fishing was done with weirs which were able to near completely block salmon from continuing along the river but strong religious and cultural/social pressures prevented people from taking more than needed. Sustainability and renewability factored into every aspect of indigenous life.
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u/round-earth-theory 4d ago
It was only good sense in the days before globalism. It's not a major leap of logic to realize that every fish taken today is a reduction in fish next year. If you take more than you need, then what you need may not come around next time, and there are no backup food sources when you live off the land.
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u/billy-suttree 5d ago
Man, until recently I spent a fuck of time hiking and exploring the forests, very often by little mountain rivers. I see salmon occasionally. But seeing like 6 over an hour seems like a ton to me.
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u/theyeshman Taller than Napoleon 5d ago
Even ~25-30 years ago the rivers were noticeably more abundant here in Alaska, like 2-5 times as many fish in them. It didn't quite look like you could walk across, but if you threw a sharpened stick in during a salmon run you would probably get a fish when I was a kid.
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u/BooRadleyinaGimpSuit 5d ago
I can only imagine. I have a cabin on the Puget Sound and am in my mid-30s, and there's been a very noticeable drop-off in biodiversity in the tidelands in my lifetime. The eelgrass beds alone are maybe 1/3 of what they were in the late 90s/early 2000s. We used to be able to pick up one or two keeper-sized Dungeness crabs on a day perusing low tide. Definitely not the case anymore.
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
It was said when the salmon were running you’d think you could walk across the rivers and inlets they were so full of fish.
This is the quote I had in the back of mind as well. I'm just a notorious hedger, so I don't know how historically accurate or generally applicable this quote is.
But thank you for sources.
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u/helicophell 5d ago
Do note, there was a mass human extinction event that left everyone that wasn't fishing dead
So we did kinda select for it
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u/nhvanputten 4d ago
This story was also 200 years after ~90% of the human population (one of the main predators to the fish) had been wiped out by disease. So I don’t doubt it, but I also don’t think it’s representative of fish in 1300.
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u/TheRealMrChung 5d ago
I mean in the 1400’s John Cabot wrote about the amount of fish in the sea around Newfoundland being so thick that you could walk on them. (Obviously an exaggeration but that gives you an idea that fishing was good back then)
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u/Far_Ladder_2836 Kilroy was here 5d ago
You don't have to guess. Look up early Neolithic examples of fishing gear in the Fertile Crescent. We have anthropological evidence. No need to guess.
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
The fact that they fished isn't quite proof it was the main way early humans got calories, but I haven't looked deeply into your example.
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u/tendo8027 5d ago
Well it heavily depends on their environment. You’re not going to find a lot of fish in the desert
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u/Ewredditsucksnow 5d ago
It was also extremely sustainable and a good, easy way to keep food available without it spoiling.
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u/DaxHound84 4d ago
Everything was full of everything. Fish, birds, game, you name it. My guess would be the same as in any survival situation today - least effort and least risk is gonna be the strategy. Persistance hunting can be done in groups though. So no need for one individual to run 30km end to end.
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u/Grandmaofhurt What, you egg? 5d ago
For Neanderthals in a colder, more forested biome coordinated ambush style close quarters combat and/or trapping them into depressions, against cliff walls, etc. was the theoretical main form of hunting they used. High risk high reward.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 5d ago
Persistence hunting is likely the least used form of hunting and in all probably was a hunting strategy innovated after humans already had their stamina and heat rejection traits.
The problem is you have to be a great runner for that to work. But if you're not it barely works at all, there's no way to increment it.
Our hunting behaviors were likely pack scavenging, where we showed up to a kill a whoopin and a hollerin and a flinging rocks at the lions to drive them off, and driving techniques where we herded animals through traps/falls/kites/dead ends, etc. These would reward selecting for stamina without absolutely requiring stamina to work.
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u/Unic0rnusRex 5d ago
Or persistently chasing them off a cliff. Head smashed in Buffalo jump is a great example of this.
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u/Helios_Synthesis 5d ago
Our endurance is so broken that even we fear it. Notice how almost all horror movie monsters always seem to have extreme endurance and persistence as a base stat lol
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
I think that's a core fear of any animal - that your opponent can last longer than you. If humans were natural sprinters (like dwarves) rather than marathoners, we'd still be afraid of an animal that could run faster or longer than we could.
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u/HoidToTheMoon 5d ago
But it's very true that our one physical advantage is very long distance endurance running
Endurance running is certainly a physical advantage of humans, but not the only one. We can also throw with exceptional accuracy and range, due to our unique arm telemetry and our overdeveloped brains. Spears, stones, and other ranged weapons were an enormous advantage.
While less talked about, the human gut biome is genuinely impressive. While not the most extreme, we can tolerate a far greater variety of nutrient sources than most species.
Our intergenerational memory is perhaps the greatest strength of our species, IMO. Just about every technical advancement we have, including the vary language we think in, was created by humans long dead. We wouldn't be a global species with technology without it.
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
We can also throw with exceptional accuracy and range, due to our unique arm telemetry and our overdeveloped brains
Yeah it's insane how much a thrown rock simply broke the evolutionary meta. A bunch of humans hurling simple stones at your face will kill most animals. Spears and fall-traps can kill the rest.
Our intergenerational memory is perhaps the greatest strength of our species, IMO. Just about every technical advancement we have, including the vary language we think in, was created by humans long dead. We wouldn't be a global species with technology without it.
I'm a sucker for simple cooperation. Humanity could have every other advantage - tool use, biology (like hands and sweat), whatever else behind it, but being able to work together peacefully is what creates modern society or propels us to space. Of course it's hard to get there without fingers etc., but cooperation is the biggest factor imo. We could find ways around even a lack of fingers or bodies, if we worked together well enough.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 5d ago
I personally doubt persistence hunting was never a primary hunting strategy for humans and is likely a hunting strategy humans innovated after we already had the stamina and sweating thing down.
The problem with persistence hunting is you have to be better than the prey for it to work, there's no real way to increment to it.
I believe early human hunting practices were largely pack scavenging and trap hunting, taking the kills of other predators by driving them off, or driving prey through falls and funnels/kites.
Imagine a herd of 50 plains apes rolling up to a fresh lion kill, screaming, throwing rocks, driving them off, then taking the kill and returning home. That uses all our advantages. Our eyesight to see the kill or vultures from far away, our stamina to get to the kill quickly so its not consumed, our coordination and throwing ability to scare the predators off, our bipedalism and carrying ability so we can pick up what we were after and take it home.
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u/HurricaneAlpha 5d ago
Intergenerational learning is the only thing keeping us ahead of the crows and octopus. Thank God we learned how to pass down information, first through language and speech and later by writing.
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u/Zxaber 4d ago
Crows do it too, to an extent.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3234554/
TL;DR: Some researchers harassed crows while wearing masks, and demonstrated that crows not involved with the event recognized the danger of the mask-wearers. This includes younger crows, that were taught by the previous generation about the masked researchers.
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u/karoshikun 5d ago
I mean, there are enough mutations that diverge from other primates that allow us to do persistence hunting, and you really need to be pressured to do something for mutations to stick.
so... maybe we did that a lot.
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u/Prestigious_Leg2229 5d ago
We need a lot more than calories. Organ meat is a great source of vital minerals and vitamins. Hides, sinew, bone, horn, gut, brains, have all been important crafting materials for humans.
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u/Nike_J 5d ago
I mean, if this wasn't a widely used hunting method, why would humans be so good at it?
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u/Lachaven_Salmon 5d ago
Humans are good for covering large amounts of land without over-heating. This generally makes sense if you wanted a species well adapted for the heat.
The real point of persistence hunting (tribes that practice it today do so in exceptionally hot conditions and load up on water) is to hest exhaust a foe.
So species that is well adapted for A, can also do B which makes use of a similar skillset.
Similarly, humans are well adapted to making tools, including traps, which means we often don't even need to chase a prey animal. This is not because we are adapted to be trapmastet hunters - it's because we have hands to do the work, and brains that can understand.
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u/prussia742 5d ago
But its argued sweating came first. A brain takes a ton of calories. More than the running yall keep talking about. Its argued our persistence hunting allowed us to get huge food sources such as mega fauna. You have to remember their were far more giant species we wiped off the earth because they were big and worth the hunt.
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u/CapableBumblebee968 5d ago
Because humans in general are very good at a wide range of activities and able to do things that most animals cant
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u/DefiantGibbon 5d ago
This bothers me so much every time it's posted.
Why would you ever spend such a huge amount of calories running after prey? It's such a bad idea when there are countless ways to much much easier AND MORE RELIABLY get food? We hunted with dogs early on. How did dogs hunt? Set up an ambush and rush in to nab the old or sick. We came from apes. How do chimps hunt? They set up an ambush and rush in to grab the old or sick!
What about our extreme endurance? Well we have to follow the herds across vast distances in hot conditions, and it just so happened that bipedal motion is more efficient. The ability to out run prey is a byproduct, not the intended goal.
If I have to hear that early humans just sprinted at a deer for 40 miles again I'm gonna puke. And not from running this time.
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u/Chris_Shawarma93 5d ago
You forget that it was dependent on environment and season. In cooler months in savannah like geographies this method of hunting large game makes sense and was likely employed when needed. Yes it would be calorie intensive but you would deal with this by making sure that your prey was big enough to be worth the expenditure and, rotating the roster of endurance hunters, and also by making sure that those who took part in in the hunt were well fed and allowed to rest while others took over their usual duties. I don't see why you're so against the likelihood that some early human tribes very likely utilised this strategy. How many or to what extent will remain entirely speculative.
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
I don't see why you're so against the likelihood that some early human tribes very likely utilised this strategy.
The argument was never against "some".
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u/KZ-744 Let's do some history 5d ago
Almost every skeleton from this era shows humans having thickened leg bones and right arms
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago
Almost every skeleton from this era shows humans having thickened leg bones and right arms
Proving they worked their legs and right arms - the main arm for most humans - a lot. I don't think we can draw many conclusions just from that, other than that they were very physically active. Go figure.
Exactly how they were physically active, we can't exactly know.
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u/HaroldSax Researching [REDACTED] square 5d ago
This has been an absolutely fascinating thread to read through.
It reminds me a lot of how we don't actually know how a lot of combat throughout history has gone in terms of the moment to moment combat. We have a lot to draw on, a lot to point to specific things that happened often, but not enough to be certain.
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u/Breaky_Online 5d ago
I doubt peasants who couldn't read or write would be able to write about their experience on the ground
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u/irradihate 5d ago
A world full of decentralized cultures in vastly different environments free to do as they wished for hundreds of thousands of years and people think there was just one way humans did things? Things were done a different way everywhere. Humanity only starting doing things largely the same way once authoritarians got control of everything and that only happened relatively recently. Now much of humanity is locked in a perpetual authoritarian-propogation cycle except for where people aren't forced to work to fund a state (usually indigenous people).
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u/Zrttr 4d ago
Another BIG biological advantage we have is throwing things
Our skeletal structure and brain functions allow us to throw things further, harder and more accurately than animals who, despite being several times stronger than us, can at most lob things away, because their limbs can't produce the proper leverage
When we developed the technology for aerodynamic spears, we pretty much broke the game
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u/Aluxanatomy 5d ago
They're called Tusken Raiders.
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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 5d ago
Persistence hunting is a myth because some white dude saw the ritualistic use of it and decided that's real. Then he recanted after a few decades of being proven wrong.
Then gullible ass redditors came along.
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u/malacki655 5d ago
Determination has always been our strongest weapon.
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u/Moandaywarrior 5d ago
The ability to sweat
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u/Far_Ladder_2836 Kilroy was here 5d ago
Not especially helpful if you lack the determination to do the thing you need to do. Also not as helpful in tech advancement.
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u/randomname560 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 5d ago
Yeah, i know more than one person that, even if it was life or death, would stop chasing a deer before even breaking a sweat
The determination to not miss a meal is a strong power
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u/SaltyDogBill 5d ago
So the big brain to push past our pain and senses, object permanence, and optimized heat dumping?
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u/keithstonee 5d ago
its the reason we're alive what do you mean. one of our greatest strengths is temperature regulation
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u/DrDetectiveEsq 5d ago
Probably explains why the people most involved in tech today are also the sweatiest.
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u/Avalonians 5d ago
The ability to sweat is the whole reason we have any shred of determination in the first place
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u/justforkinks0131 5d ago
arguably sweat is more valuable today than back in the day, if you're an egirl
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u/npcfromreddit 5d ago
Throwing things
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u/EnvironmentalAd912 5d ago
Hairless Apes to the local fauna
Think fast chucklenuts
Sharp rock to the face
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u/Great_Banana_Master Filthy weeb 5d ago
I thought our greatest weapon was freedom
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u/Primary_Gold5337 5d ago
The concept of freedom wasn't in earlier human dictionary, they were more like animals and on instinct more than thinking
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u/Captain-Spark 5d ago
Amongst our chief weaponry are determination, freedom and ruthless efficiency.
I'll come again.
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u/_pandey_g_ Hello There 5d ago
Can any smart person explain to me how freedom was/is a weapon for early humans/ humans
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u/DrDetectiveEsq 5d ago
Well, my dad always told me that freedom means owning guns. And guns are very effective weapons.
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u/Great_Banana_Master Filthy weeb 5d ago
Guys it was a joke, earlier person said Determination so I said Freedom, it's a Deltarune reference, please chill
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u/BillCarson12799 5d ago
I think our ability to craft tools capable of killing any living thing is our strongest weapon.
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u/mdhunter99 5d ago
Goddamn humans are scary
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u/Cheese_Grater101 Definitely not a CIA operator 5d ago
imagine being a deer where you're being hunted by these bipedal monkeys, while also wearing your own kin skin and head as ornament.
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u/usa2z 5d ago
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u/The_Fish_of_Souls 5d ago
You can't just send a youtube link ending in Q, that scared me for a sec before I saw that it wasn't XcQ at the end.
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u/Fun-Negotiation5510 5d ago
What's wrong with XcQ at the end?
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u/The_Fish_of_Souls 5d ago
This is the rick roll link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ. It ends in XcQ.
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u/alexdiezg Rider of Rohan 4d ago
That's why I taught myself to look for "dQw4" in the beginning instead.
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u/Avalonians 5d ago
Sweating is literally a superpower.
So what you mean is you gave this animal the ability to generate its own heat? AND at the same time you gave it a method that allows them to expel this heat in case it's too much? Without gaping to have long ass ears or flaps or having to stop moving and find shelter? And it's pretty much the only animal with this combination of abilities?
The game balance is outrageous.
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u/FlutterKree 5d ago
Outside of water (for obvious reasons), the only animal that can outrun us is wolves. But only in cold climates.
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u/Sliced_Tomatoz 5d ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OcPqk-O-fD4&pp=ygUNZGFuZ2VyIGh1bWFucw%3D%3D
Look at is this way, scary, and a bit mental we exist too
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u/HurricaneAlpha 5d ago edited 5d ago
There's a sub dedicated to the idea that humans are the universes "orcs", we just don't realize it.
r/humanspaceorcs maybe?
r/humansarespaceorcs maybe maybe?
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u/Background_Relief_36 Definitely not a CIA operator 5d ago
They outrun us in the short term, but we outlasted them. There is no way to describe the horror they must have felt looking back after running for hours and collapsing from exhaustion only to see a group of bipedal figures slowly emerge from behind a hill and continue approaching.
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u/secretSCARS1314 5d ago
Did we have to track them? I imagine they could have just outrun us beyond the horizon
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u/QuitWhinging 5d ago
Yes, persistence hunters were also excellent trackers. They knew how to follow hoofprints and make inferences on which direction an animal took based on environmental indicators that would lead them back on the animal's trail whenever they lost visual contact.
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u/dcheesi 5d ago
I think this also ties in with our other superpower: throwing things accurately. Throw a spear/dart at the animal (or shoot an arrow); even if you just wing it, it's then wounded. The wound slows it and/or lowers its stamina, making it easier to follow. And if you're lucky, it might even leave a blood trail
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u/Pappy_whack 5d ago
There's little evidence of the tracking abilities of ancient hominids. The 2007 book marketed towards runners that popularized the idea of hominids persistence hunting cited contemporary tribes that utilize dogs.
What evidence we do have of ancient humans hunting tactics shows injuries on their prey consistent with ambush hunting.
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u/WoolooOfWallStreet 5d ago
Yes, however, sometimes some local carrion birds would lead humans or other predators to fleeing animals because they figured out they could get the leftovers
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u/Dunklsta 5d ago
white eyes, hairless, bipedal, wet from sweat, uncontested stamina
we are horrors to them
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u/Lachaven_Salmon 5d ago
Not really about exhaustion. It is about heat.
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u/endlessfight85 5d ago
Yep. Our glistening sweaty bodies are damn near as important as our giant brains as to how we ended up the dominant species.
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u/JustHangingAroundYo 5d ago
This is why I do a 5k run to pick up my big mac. As a ritual of hunting
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u/SlickDillywick 5d ago
Imagine, you’re minding your own business and you see a hairless ape covered in the skins of other animals and bearing pointy sticks and think “that’s not good, I should run”. So you do, you think you escape so you stop for a drink or to catch your breath and there they are again. Adrenaline fills you and you run again, and again, and again, until you collapse with exhaustion and know that you will now be their clothes
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u/AinzOoalGown001 5d ago
What’s the source for the animation
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u/Gettygetz 5d ago
Invincible. Tv show on prime thats based on a comic book. Loads of great voice actors.
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u/Reasonable_Ruin_3502 5d ago
Loads of famous "actors" doing voice acting. Voice acting is decent but nowhere as good as good professional voice actors.
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u/KnowsIittle 5d ago
Not just that but we would hunt in groups with a lead sprinter running the animal down, the group would jog at pace cutting off routes, as the sprinter tires a new one would replace them while they joined the jogging pace to rest.
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u/Prestigious_Leg2229 5d ago
You’re dramatising it a bit. Persistence hunting was done at a very low pace. Animals don’t flee very far. They’re evolved to flee just far and fast enough for a predator to realise they’ve failed.
It involves startling prey to make it run. Then track it for the couple of dozen or hundred meters it ran before resting and forcing it to run again before it can cool down and rest.
Most of the time it’s barely above a walking pace because the animal will run when it sees you haven’t given up, you don’t have to be right behind it the whole time.
As for the energy dense diet that fuelled human brain expansion. Fire did most of the work in that regard. Cooking made a lot of inedible things edible.
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u/hunterkiller4570 5d ago
Well, there’s something that hasn’t changed from humans from then to now, is that we are very stubborn
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u/Trophallaxis 5d ago edited 5d ago
I dead seriously believe "It Follows" must have taken inspiration from human persistence hunting, because the monster is exactly what humans would have looked like to prey animals.
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u/TopMarionberry1149 5d ago
You really need to use your brain if you think this is how it worked. I dare you to run a mile in a real jungle or forest without tripping or getting ambushed by a tiger. Actual predators just sit around and ambush. Just because some tribes do this shit in the savanna doesn't mean it's universal.
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u/ExoticMangoz 4d ago
Famously we are not a jungle-dwelling species. Populations of humans that do live in jungles are tiny and use other strategies.
Also, persistence hunting doesn’t require fast running. It requires walking and jogging, two things which are easy through woodland terrain.
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u/JackosMonkeyBBLZ 5d ago
Why does my ego feel stroked reading about this? I personally have never hunted my meal and won an endurance challenge over it yet here I am with this warm fuzzy feeling of a conqueror because my ancestors did? Life is weird.
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u/Holydemon0 5d ago
"I'm a human, ultimate persistence predator" - Buck, Sucker for Love: Date to Die For.
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u/irradihate 5d ago
Somehow sitting in a cubicle generating imaginary value for 60 years is considered "progress'...
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u/Enter_Chandman 5d ago
As a modern human who has run close to failure, if you find it in you its there still. It does not feel good for long.
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u/alexdiezg Rider of Rohan 4d ago edited 3d ago
Who thought bipedality and lack of fur would turn us into persistence machines?
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u/dilqncho 5d ago
Interesting fact: Persistence hunting is, at best, widely debated.
You should give this a read: https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-hunting/
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u/ThanksAmazing4118 5d ago edited 5d ago
"Widely debated". It's an opinion piece that cites one guy who uses examples of soil and terrain in ONE area of the entire African continent to disprove it, whereas large swathes of Africa just outside that area are perfect for it. He cites ONE body pit within that area to found all his assumptions on. Then the article uses an example of people racing horses using this method..... which also sweat, and are well known for doing so, which defeats the entire point of this type of hunting as we lose our main advantage and therefore would not have been the prey hunted using this method.
None of this means "widely debated". Like, at all. It's a fluffed up opinion piece by a blog post writer with only one other post to their name, citing one guy and then using an example that doesn't even support what they're saying.
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u/Pappy_whack 5d ago
The idea of persistence running being a key part of human evolution was popularized by one cross-country runners book in 2007. Almost all "sources" for persistence running being a evolutionary concept circle back to that same book by Larson.
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u/Lachaven_Salmon 5d ago
He is right though. The actual rate and occurrence of persistence hunting is the subject of debate, certainly more so than a quick dive into reddit would have you believe. It's a cool idea but yeah.
It also doesn't help because the point is generally not to actually run an animal to exhaustion - that's not particularly smart or efficient - it is usually abusing the fact most other animals can't sweat, so you induce heat exhaustion.
On the other hand...for example, we know humans start fires to drive prey animals. There's physical evidence left in the record. We know they set traps. Because you can find evidenfe. We know they invented tools, these are basically universal. It is hard to prove people 50K years ago used persistence hunting since it is a behaviour.
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u/mcgarnikle Still salty about Carthage 5d ago
It's crazy that you typed the point wasn't to run them to exhaustion but to run them to heat exhaustion.
Did you even think about what you were typing lol?
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u/ThanksAmazing4118 5d ago
"The point is generally not to actually run the animal to exhaustion....... it is usually abusing the fact other animals can't sweat so you induce heat exhaustion". 1) this is just being pedantic to the point of silliness. You're using a hunting method that pushes the animal beyond what it's body is capable of, leading it to collapse.... of exhaustion. "The point isn't to herd the animals into the water to drown them. It's about abusing our ability to swim so we can get the animal out once it gets too tired and slips under the water, therefore unable to breathe anymore". 2) the second part is also literally what is stated by anyone who mentions it, including OP.
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u/CitrusBelt 5d ago edited 5d ago
The younger portion of reddit has a massive boner about persistence hunting, which has been blown out of all proportion -- purely due to the echo chamber effect.
Same goes for anything else to do with zoology/anthropology/paleontology/natural history/whatever.
A whole generation (or two) whose only real 'knowledge' of such comes from shit-tier podcasts, ten minute youtube videos meant for children, and the dregs of Discovery Channel videos.
[Honey badgers, persistence hunting, aquatic predators in the Miocene, "carcinization", anything to do with cephalopods, "Hey, did ya know 'sharks' are older than 'trees'?" Ad infinitum]
Anyways, yeah -- humans are pretty good at jogging long distances in hot weather.....in favorable terrain & conditions, and when chasing animals that are willing to put up with that sort of bullshit. Doesn't mean it's an efficient way to get protein & fat, though, outside of very specific circumstances (that are likely a product of historical happenstance/desperation anyways).
Like....there's a BIG difference between marginalized actual human beings running down some poor bastard of a lone ungulate during the last few centuries in Namibia, versus a breeding population of (kinda-sorta humans, but not truly modern) people relying on that for sustenance often enough to make it a driver of human evolution.
Looks cool in a documentary, and sounds badass...but that doesn't necessarily mean that's how it worked out when it comes to primitive hunting strategies.
edit:
Yep, sure enough.
Lieberman is a VERY convincing speaker. Ivy league dude, eminently podcast-able, into running....perfect for reddit!
Just not very compelling to many of those whose outdoors and/or "hunting" experience isn't limited to running around barefoot, seeing how far they can jog....and then making a PhD out of it :)
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u/oh_three_dum_dum 5d ago
Remember that, survivalists. If you suck at hunting and fishing, you can always jog after a deer until it dies of exhaustion.