I doubt there was much evolutionary selection for the ability to run more than 50 miles at once (my understanding is that the female advantage in ultra endurance has to do with muscle/fat composition and lower total skeletal mass, which is a major tradeoff to make for other areas).

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toss1 a day ago | parent [-]

The evolutionary adaption to running ultra-distances is persistence hunting, and it was one of the keys to human survival and evolution.

In persistence hunting, over great distances, humans can outrun game animals as long as they pick one animal and track it. Deer, antelope, etc. all run faster in short bursts, but overheat and reach exhaustion after long distances whereas humans can just keep going. Eventually, the human can just walk up to it and make the kill with a knife or rock.

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ksymph 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Persistence hunting likely wasn't a major driver of those evolutionary changes.

The hypothesis is really only supported by the fact that we have adaptations that make it theoretically possible, but the times and places those adaptations came about doesn't really match up with the times and places it would have been effective (i.e. woodland where the ground would be too hard for effective tracking [0]).

There are some other things that point away from it, too; it's worth doing some googling.

It's certainly possible that persistence hunting happened to some degree, and it's a fun idea so it really caught on in popular consciousness, but the actual evidence is limited.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

	▲	antisthenes 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Consider this: Persistence hunting isn't just running 25km to catch 1 deer. It may also involve multiple scout runs (perhaps 50km or longer) to find where the deer are after the current local deer supply is exhausted. It may also involve moving the entire tribe unit to a location 100-200km away from the current one, which would involve people less fit than tribe hunters. > It's certainly possible that persistence hunting happened to some degree, and it's a fun idea so it really caught on in popular consciousness, but the actual evidence is limited. Well, the problem is that evidence for just about everything related to our existence from before the glacial period ended is very limited due to a population bottleneck. But there's no reason to assume that our ancestors did not use every tool available at their disposal to survive, one of the tools being persistence hunting, which we are still very good at, despite there not being evolutionary pressure to be selected for for the last 7-8 thousand years.

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bryanlarsen a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Persistence hunting a deer takes 20-25 km, according to wikipedia.

	▲	cma a day ago \| parent [-]
		So an ultramarathoner could hunt three back to back instead of one, or maybe two without being an elite athlete with modern hydrocarbon gels. Or get through part of a failed hunt midway and pursue another, etc.