Kenyans aren't genetically superior?

To say that Kenyans are faster because they "evolved" to live at high altiudes doesn't make sence from a biological prespecive. First, there hasn't been enough time for this to happen, second they are not reproductively isolated from the rest of the population in Africa to have this happen. Third this would be assuming that the faster males and females were more likely to have children than the rest of the population. Which at most highschools, doesn't work out for the XC team so much. (last part was a joke, but the rest was serious)

"First, there hasn't been enough time for this to happen,"

Well you may or may not be right i dont know that.

However i do know that east africans have lived at moderatly high altitude longer than any oner population.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Dec

24;99(26):17215-8. Epub 2002 Dec 05. Related Articles,

Links

An Ethiopian pattern of human adaptation to

high-altitude hypoxia.

Beall CM, Decker MJ, Brittenham GM, Kushner I,

Gebremedhin A, Strohl KP.

Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve

University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.

cmb2@po.cwru.edu

We describe, in Ethiopia, a third successful pattern

of human adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia that

contrasts with both the Andean "classic"

(erythrocytosis with arterial hypoxemia) and the more

recently identified Tibetan (normal venous hemoglobin

concentration with arterial hypoxemia) patterns. A

field survey of 236 Ethiopian native residents at

3,530 m (11,650 feet), 14-86 years of age, without

evidence of iron deficiency, hemoglobinopathy, or

chronic inflammation, found an average hemoglobin

concentration of 15.9 and 15.0 gdl for males and

females, respectively, and an average oxygen

saturation of hemoglobin of 95.3%. Thus, Ethiopian

highlanders maintain venous hemoglobin concentrations

and arterial oxygen saturation within the ranges of

sea level populations, despite the unavoidable,

universal decrease in the ambient oxygen tension at

high altitude.

PMID: 12471159 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

**********

there's lots of data comparing Tibetans and Andes

Indians, but here's the highlights:

This sample of high-altitude native residents from the

Semien Plateau of Ethiopia had hemoglobin

concentrations that differed little from sea level

values. The similar findings of erythropoietin

concentration and oxygen saturation in the normal sea

level range were consistent. The findings would not be

remarkable if this were a sea level sample, but it is

a sample of people exposed to chronic, lifelong

hypobaric hypoxia. Ethiopians must have unique

adaptations of oxygen uptake or delivery that result

in the absence of an hypoxemic stimulus to increase

red blood cell production and hemoglobin concentration

despite their high-altitude residence.

...

The results of this study suggest that Ethiopian

high-altitude natives respond to hypobaric hypoxia

differently than Andean or Tibetan highlanders. This

Ethiopian sample resembles samples from the Tibetan

Plateau in exhibiting little or no elevation of

hemoglobin concentration in this altitude range, but

differs from Tibetans who have very low oxygen

saturation. It differs from Andean high-altitude

natives who exhibited both substantial elevation of

hemoglobin concentration and low oxygen saturation.

These findings suggest there are three patterns of

adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia among indigenous

populations (Table 1). Learning why the three

populations differ will require two lines of future

investigation. One is understanding the biological

mechanisms and the underlying genetics that allow

successful high-altitude adaptation with

quantitatively different suites of traits for oxygen

sensing, response, and delivery. The other is

understanding the evolutionary processes that produced

these patterns to explain how and why several

successful human adaptations to high altitude evolved.

snatch wrote:

If you want a dog to win a race you get a greyhound.

If you want a dog to win a fight you get a Pittbull.

If you want a horse to win a race you get a thoroughbred.

If you want a man to win a marathon you get a Kenyan.

Tell your Bookmaker it's not genetics.

NICE!!!!!

You seem like an angry person with lots of issues. Are you genetically predisposed to being an asshole?

If you had better manners, maybe I could feel sorry for you. As it is, I'm just gonna ignore you.

Why are Brazilians/Argentinians such great footballers?

When I was in high school (the 70's) we used to walk to school, about 1.5 miles. We went to practice and then walked home. We walked a lot and I think people generally lived a healthier lifestyle.

My friends and I were not stars, but, we were better than the average kid today.

Most people on this web site are not fat, lazy slobs. But, we had fewer fat, lazy slobs back then. You never know, the fat, lazy slob eating at McD's and playing video games might be a potential 4:10 high school miler if he was brought up that way. Chances are, his parents are fat, lazy slobs, too.

So, maybe if out nation had a different mindset about life and health, we would have our fair share of 3:50 milers, 12:50 5000 runners and sub 2:20 marathoners.

If the movie "Suoersize Me" couldn't change people's minds then nothing will.

anyone who is denying the genetic superiority of east africans when it comes to running is a moron. snatch is completely right. you will never see a kenyan win a power lifting competition, no matter how much he eats/lifts/eats protein shakes from birth. on the other hand, you will never see a pygmy win the high jump at the olympics. even if all humans are the same species, there has been such developmental diversity over thousands of years (yes, we're talking different lifestyles here) that the evolutionary enhancement of certain physiological traits has become advantageous through natural selection. it just so happens that the east africans have all the characteristics necessary to run long distances in short periods of time without a great deal of training.

Husky, you are DEAD WRONG.

Read trackhead's posting where he shows evidence of different peoples developing differently depending on where they lived and how long their ancestors lived there. If your ancestors have been at altitide for 100,000 years, you WILL be different than someone else whose ancestors have not. And if your ancestors grew up in warm climates as opposed to cold climates, AGAIN......your genetics WILL BE DIFFERENT than peoples whose ancestors gew up in a different climate (people from warmer climates have mitochondria that is very efficient at producing energy, but not at producing heat to stay warm. Hmmm......good at producing energy.......advantage Africans and other people with ancestors from warm climates).

There HAS been enough time for this to have happened.

Stop talking about things you apparently no nothing about.

East Africans have certain genetic differences. Only a few of those differences have been recently documented(which I mention above), but I am sure there are more to be discovered. But this concept of "every country's peoples are exactly the same as every other country's people genetically around the world" is just complete NONSENSE! PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT!!!

People whose ancestors come from West Africa are superior sprinters ON THE AVERAGE (don't even bring up Jeremy Warniner. No one EVER said there are not exceptions to every rule. We are talking about TRENDS and AVERAGES. And the 400 at least is a "middle distance event on some level, as opposed to the 100/200).

And people from EAST AFRICA are, ON THE AVERAGE(again, of course there are exceptions), superior DISTANCE runners. These are absolute, no-doubt-about-it TRENDS and FACTS. To chock both of those facts up to ONLY the CURRENT cultures and environments of the countries that these athletes currently live in, and ignore genetics/natural talent ENTIRELY, is just being extremely ignorant.

Genetics/natural talent play a huge role in running , a supremely NATURAL contest. What do I mean by that?? I mean: learned technique, "skill", and strategy is minimally important at the highest levels of running. Sure those things still matter, but NATURAL TALENT will blow those things away. This is not like basketball, where if you can't jump high, you can practice your shooting 15 hours a day, and free-throw shooting, and learn up-fakes perfectly, ie, where you can compensate for you lack of natural ability through developing learned skills. Now before someone says: "but WAIT.......if you don't have natural running talent, you can train harder, and run 150 miles a week to overcome your natural abilities!" Now that is true, TO A POINT. There is only ONE thing wrong with that train-hard-to-overcome-natural-limiations-theory of running, and it is: one's training threshhold is PART of one's natural/genetically-endowed talent. So......if you have no natural ability, and train a ton, it WILL ONLY TAKE YOU SO FAR (this is true in all sports, but there are less "physical threshholds" to developing, say, your Free-throw shooting than there are in distance running. Distance running beats up your body THE MORE YOU DO IT, and not everyone just keeps getting better with more and more training. But...... if you shoot 1000 FT's a day, your body will not, likely, get injured, or sick, or whatever from that heavy load. Sure, there are mental burnouts, but that is another story.)

MY POINT??? Training hard can only take you so far before your natural limitations come into play in running. Part of being a naturally superior runner (genetically advantaged) is being able to pound your body through training, stay healthy, and keep improving. So the more naturally talented you are, the HARDER you can train! (even though you might not need to). Natural talent is the gift that keeps on giving. And the East Africans have TONS of it.

Stop burying your heads in the sand, except facts as facts (science is proving these facts every day), and figure out new training strategies/schemes to beat people more naturally talented than you. Because THAT is the only way to beat people who are more gifted than you and who already training as hard as you can: to train SMARTER than them. It's a longshot, but it's your only shot.

Athens 2004 Gold Medalists

Men

800 METERS: Yuriy Borzakovskiy (Russia)

1500 METERS: Hicham El Guerrouj (Mor)

STEEPLE: Ezekiel Kemboi (Ken)

5000 METERS: Hicham El Guerrouj (Mor)

10000 METERS: Kennenisa Bekele (Eth)

MARATHON: Stefano Baldini (Ita)

Women

800 METERS: Kelly Holmes (GB)

1500 METERS: Kelly Holmes (GB)

5000 METERS: Meseret Defar (Eth)

10000 Meters: Huina Xing (China)

MARATHON: Mizuki Noguchi (Jap)

Eleven events

East African gold medals: 3

Black gold medalists: 5

White gold medalists: 4

Asian gold medalists: 2

Anybody see evidence of genetic superiority here? This isn't the Oshkosh 5 miler, this is our sport at it's highest level. Maybe there's something else at play here besides racial genetics. Why does El Guerrouj (who happens to be Caucasian - yes, Moroccans and Algerians are white. A fact which is conveniently forgotten by the lump all Africans in the same genetic pool crowd) dominate the East Africans. Maybe the something else at play here might be training, attitude, and desire?

tuna wrote:

Anybody see evidence of genetic superiority here?

Include the first 8 finishers in each of those events and the distribution will look quite different.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Kenyans, and east Africans in general, are simply smaller due to thousands of years of evolution. If most runners are small and country A has a higher % of smaller people than country B then country A will produce a higher % of successful runners.

You know what we should do to counteract this advantage? We should start putting barriers in races that you have to jump over. I'm sure that would slow down those short little Africans.

You mean like steeple barriers? Where another Kenyan holds the world record? Is that what you mean?

This really isn't that big of an issue... they may be genetically built to run marathons, or at least to run it better than many other people, but that doesn't mean that no white man from Texas or Italy or Finalnd can ever beat them. Yes, people are different and some are built more soundly for cetain tasks than others. But within those populations there is variation. Every Kenyan isn't necessarily a good runner; I'm sure there are a lot of mediocre runners over there too. But the reason that they get so many good runners coming up is because it is not just a pasttime for them, it is a part of their culture. Its national pride. Its not just another sport to them, it is -the- sport. Kip Keino and Bernard Lagat aren't just good runners, they are heros. I guarantee if people looked at running in the US the same way that they do in Kenya and Ethiopia, we would have a lot more world class runners than we do now. So are Kenyans automatically superior to Americans or Europeans? Maybe. Do they provide the opportunity and the environment to discover and train all of their best runners? You had better believe it.

u mean kenyan's are smaller? have u been to kenya or coz overweight people are rare over there,you have heard of the maasai with an average of 6'4 tall. It is not about poverty that makes them fast, if that was the case then Somalia,Rwanda and Malawi should be the best distant runners.Everyone join sport that they love most and excell best,that is the case with america, they luv football coz of money,to run away of ghettos poverty,also they have nothing else to do coz most of them are failures in school. The point is we all go for what we do best,but money for us all. Remember running is not the only sport kenya are good at, they also do well in crickets,volleyball,rugby,soccer and boxing. It is a sporting country, one boxer won olympic gold,with other several olympic medals,cricket among the best in the world,one of their player did play wembley(sp) tennis. are they superior in running yes,is america superior in basketball yes, coz they have more number of good players than any other country.

dukerdog wrote:

tuna wrote:

Anybody see evidence of genetic superiority here?

Include the first 8 finishers in each of those events and the distribution will look quite different.

Dog, you're right. It looks worse for the Asians.

First 8 finishers for 11 events:

Black: 40

White: 40

Asian: 8

I'll ask again, does anybody see evidence of genetic superiority here?

You're absolutely right. I don't buy the genetic advantage argument. Never have. I think Kenya may produce more people "designed" for distant running than some countries, but the country's success is more attributable to the prestige placed on the sport and commitment the government gives to it.

Come ON, RunDaddy! You post the dumbest stuff EVER on this board!

During their training camp for the 2004 games, the Kenyan team had to go begging in the media for BOTTLED WATER.

How's that for "government committment"?

- the man

p.s. Please don't have this post pulled because someone disagreed with you, as you seem to enjoy doing. That's pathetic.

Sir Lance-alot wrote:

Husky, you are DEAD WRONG.

Read trackhead's posting where he shows evidence of different peoples developing differently depending on where they lived and how long their ancestors lived there. If your ancestors have been at altitide for 100,000 years, you WILL be different than someone else whose ancestors have not. And if your ancestors grew up in warm climates as opposed to cold climates, AGAIN......your genetics WILL BE DIFFERENT than peoples whose ancestors gew up in a different climate (people from warmer climates have mitochondria that is very efficient at producing energy, but not at producing heat to stay warm. Hmmm......good at producing energy.......advantage Africans and other people with ancestors from warm climates).

Sorry to break it to you but of all of the tribes in Kenya that have lived at altitude for '100,000+ years' it's only the Kalenjin tribe, with less than 15% of the population, that produces runners.