The theory that human endurance evolved out of our need to outrun our prey has intrigued runners for four decades. After all, the idea of “persistence hunting” presents a much more romantic explanation for our otherwise pathological obsession with slogging through the Trial of Miles. According to the original endurance hunting theory laid out in a 1984 paper by David Carrier, modern runners are actually expressing the essential spirit of our species. It is running that, as the cliché goes, made us human—and that’s why so many of us still run.
It’s such a lovely theory that, in the running world at least, we mostly tried not to probe it too closely. In the scientific world, though, there have long been doubters. In particular, the hypothesis has two main weak points. One is that running incinerates calories, which is great if you’re trying to lose weight but highly problematic if you’re trying to eke out a precarious living on the savanna. The other is that, among the hunter-gatherer societies that maintained their traditions into the 20th century and beyond, persistence hunts seem to be rare novelties…
