Eli5: how are humans, who are two legged, able to out endure creatures that are four legged?
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What you quoted is called the endurance running hypothesis or persistence hunting and although it caught on in pop-sci and pseudo science circles, there is very little evidence that humans hunted by running down prey animals for many hours at a stretch until it fell exhausted.
First of all, we really arent able to outrun that many animals. You will travel farther in a day on horseback, than jogging. Hence even while carrying your extra weight, the horse is able to out endure you. You will also travel farther using a dog sled than on foot. Huskeys dragging you and all your stuff cover more miles per day than you could even on skis, hence are more endurant than you as well.
Second, running at high volumes burns an absolute assload of calories. At 3 lifting sessions and 5 runs per week (totalling 40 miles per week, which probably isnt even enough to be a persistance hunter) I maintain bodyweight at about 4000 to 4200 calories per day. Where are you going to reliably get that many calories without the comforts and efficiency of modern civilization and industrialized farming? You just wont. Foraging and hunting wont cut it.
Third. Running makes you sweat. A lot. If you are a hunter gatherer, you do not have a convenient way to carry on you any significant amounts of water. You dont have a 2 liter camelbak on you and even 2 liters is not that much water if you are running for 4 hours or more. And then you need even more water to get back to where you ran from while dragging your prey. And you needed water to walk to where you first sighted prey. And you need water to walk from there to your actual camp. Taking of running away from your camp for multiple hours chasing after a prey animal would put you at a huge risk of dehydration, heat stroke and death.
Fourth. It just doesnt make any sense to hunt that way. Humans are creative, able to think ahead and able to learn from past experiences. We dont bet our lives on a straight test of physical capability in anything else we do. We use weapons, we stalk prey, we ambush and trap and sneak up and attack from too close a distance to leave time to react, we set up fake attacks to chase prey into an ambush or into a dead end… Hell, that is how we kill each other even today, by looking for the most advantageous way in which we can possibly do it. That is true whether is a criminal murderer or a large scale war between nations. But somehow we would not do that to hunt? Why?
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