How fast could our hunter-gatherer or persistence hunter ancestors run a mile?

mile: 4:40

5k: 16:45

10k: 33:55

half: 1:19:00

marathon: 2:54

However fast we need to run to obtain a meal.

I once chased a rabbit from the river bed to the meadow before the sun reached it's peak in the sky for the day. I still haven't covered as much ground is as little daylight.

We've slowed down quite a bit

mile: 3:40

5k: 12:20

10k: 25:45

half: 55:00

marathon: 1:58

J. Underwood wrote:

mile: 4:40

5k: 16:45

10k: 33:55

half: 1:19:00

marathon: 2:54

Nailed it!

Barney Rubble went 4:18 in high school.

Pretty sure that was on a pebble track, cinders werent invented then .

We didn't invent bows and arrows or even throwing spears until relatively recently. This means we spent hundreds of thousands of years chasing animals around trying to stab them. How the hell did we succeed? All the animals worth eating are much faster than us. Persistence hunting can't account for it as that only works in very hot or snowy conditions.

Clearly there is an undiscovered missing link, an animal that was slightly slower than us which we hunted to extinction. Once it was gone, we had to invent bows, atlatls, domestic dogs and such to survive.

I don't know what this animal was, but the average one probably ran about 15, 65, 4:50 and 2:45. If it were faster, most adult males of hunting age could beat those times, instead of a tiny minority.

Bad Wigins wrote:

We didn't invent bows and arrows or even throwing spears until relatively recently. This means we spent hundreds of thousands of years chasing animals around trying to stab them. How the hell did we succeed? All the animals worth eating are much faster than us. Persistence hunting can't account for it as that only works in very hot or snowy conditions.

Clearly there is an undiscovered missing link, an animal that was slightly slower than us which we hunted to extinction. Once it was gone, we had to invent bows, atlatls, domestic dogs and such to survive.

I don't know what this animal was, but the average one probably ran about 15, 65, 4:50 and 2:45. If it were faster, most adult males of hunting age could beat those times, instead of a tiny minority.

It was the Giant Ground Sloth, you moran.

Bad Wigins wrote:

All the animals worth eating are much faster than us.

Cow. Pig. Boom -- owned you.

Truth is, though, we were very likely eating way more sea/water foods (fish, shellfish, etc.) and plants than land animals. This has been posited with evidence by examination of ratios of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in meals eaten.

So there wasn't quite as much need to be able to run down these animals. So I'm guessing that they weren't running as much as some thought. Therefore, I'd put the average male's mile-time at the same as it is for hobby-joggers at your local 5k today: 6 to 7 minutes.

For a mile not fast, probably like 5:00. Walking jogging for 8 hours won't help a mile very much. It's very unlikely they were doing fast 200-800m repeats.

If hunter gathers were good runners you'd be seeing a lot more kalahari bushmen winning races.

How many complained about achilles tendonitis or shin splits? Something magical about having to find your own food else die.

social networking. Kids just aren't as active.

Jefe in the CO wrote:

We've slowed down quite a bit

mile: 3:40

5k: 12:20

10k: 25:45

half: 55:00

marathon: 1:58

woop, there it is wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

All the animals worth eating are much faster than us.

Cow. Pig. Boom -- owned you.

Actually a wild boar can run about 30-35 mph, which is faster than the top-end of speed of any human being (Usain Bolt over 100m: 23 mph).

And aurochs, the ancestors of today's domestic cattle, were also extremely fast; according to Julius Caesar they were "their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied."

I wrote that knowing full well that today's pigs are raised to an over-fat state compared to wild boars, that even today's wild boars are slippery buggers to catch, and also knowing the capabilities of modern cattle (with the running of the bulls in Barcelona being just one example).

Great job responding seriously to the intended joke within my post, and not responding at all to the serious stuff, nor answering the question of the OP.

Looks like scientists from Cambridge have found that the average farmer of the ancient times had as strong leg bones as a modern cross country runner. Probably skewed more towards endurance than speed, obviously.

Healthy adult human male

Mile: 4:20

5k: 14:00

10k: 28:30

Half: 63:00

Marathon: 2:10

*than towards speed

woop, there it is wrote:

Truth is, though, we were very likely eating way more sea/water foods (fish, shellfish, etc.) and plants than land animals.

How could we catch fish? We swim even slower than we run. And nobody ate disgusting plants back then unless they had to.

Think of Gollum clubbing a fish with a rock as it goes by.

Lol.

Seriously, though, I've really come to appreciate your humor these last 2 months, BW.

woop, there it is wrote:

Great job responding seriously to the intended joke within my post, and not responding at all to the serious stuff, nor answering the question of the OP.

Oh, you wanted me to be serious? Okay.

It's highly unlikely that early human beings depended on seafish, given that our ancestors evolved on the African savanna, most of which is rather distant from the sea.

More likely that our ancestors were scavengers, who devoured the remains of prey caught by bigger and faster animals:

Endurance running might have been useful for scavenging, since it allowed hominids to find the carcasses before other animals:

On the other hand, it seems that the selective advantage of distance running when it comes to scavenging was probably limited to about 30 minutes (or a little under a 10k run):

Happy now?