After an adrenaline rush, why do humans experience a sudden severe drop in energy? Would this not be disadvantageous for primitive survival?
In: Biology
That depends.
Adrenaline is used by the body in an emergency situation, to boost reaction times, apparent strength or access to muscle power, speed of that access, and dull pain responses for a limited time. The mechanism is deployed in such a way as to make it possible, or more possible for a human being to end a threat, or evade it in the moment. For longer duration exertion, only prowess and training can get you through, but if its a case of having to be able to bring that spear tip around, get it elevated right, and ram it into the leaping lions belly, or having to save yourself or someone else from falling off that cliff, right this second, it does a bloody spectacular job at it. Sure, you might have to rest afterward, and there may be situations in which that isn’t very practical, but that is why hunting parties used to be hunting parties, rather than just lone dudes trudging off into the wilderness.
Humans used to do an awful lot of endurance hunting. It wasn’t a case of standing on a cliff, dropping Bison and Elk from range with a bow. You had to get a spear into them, then chase them mile after mile, as their blood ran out and their energy drained. To do this effectively, and indeed to ensure safety for the group, this was done as a group activity. The reason for this is that say one guy used his adrenaline to spear the prey, and then the group gets attacked by a predator, the others can use THEIR adrenaline to counter the lion, then everyone makes off as well as they can, after the prey animal, tracking it by blood and hoof prints, and running along as best as they can, despite their adrenaline already having spiked. You also need to understand that having a modern perspective on adrenaline and how it operates on the generally weak people of today, can cloud your understanding of just what kind of people the ancient humans were.
They lived wild lives, and had endurance beyond the best runners we have on Earth today, as well as the capacity to run much faster over long distances than the world record holders on our planet currently. Now, not all of that is directly related to the adrenaline response, but… That greater hardihood and general physical capacity, was probably coupled with a very different, far more frequent adrenaline trigger, and a far smaller crash period afterward. Its very likely that the constant threat involved in living the wild lives our ancestors did, simply made it more like turning something on, then turning it off, several times a day, and thinking nothing of it.
The human being as a structure has changed enormously since those days, so its entirely probable that our ancestors could go on adrenaline spikes that would put modern man to shame, without much by way of crash consequence.
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