Interesting video here of one of the San people running down a Kudu which collapses from exhaustion after an 8 hour chase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o. Hard to compare this to Sorokin because the hunter is running in veld, not on a road, and has far less access to refueling points. Also, if he fails to track the prey down on day one, he would probably have a go again on day two, maybe even day three. Interesting claims too, that as an upright runner which sweats from glands all over his body, and as a creature capable of carrying water, man may have had persistence advantages over creatures with less ability to cool themselves and which run on four legs - a less energy efficient mode of running according to Attenborough.
"Rather than being the elite heat-endurance athletes of the animal kingdom, humans are instead using their elite intellect to leverage everything they can from their moderate endurance capabilities, optimising their behaviours during a hunt to bridge the gap between their limited athleticism and that of their more physically capable prey. Our capacity for profuse sweating provides a subtle but essential boost to our endurance capabilities in hot environments. This is a slight but critical advantage that our ingenuity magnifies to achieve the seemingly impossible: the running down of a fleeter-footed quarry."
2020 "Are humans evolved specialists for running in the heat? Man vs. horse races provide empirical insights"
"Over the course of 20 years, only two of the ER hunts observed by Liebenberg were spontaneous. Eight others were prompted by Liebenberg so that they could be filmed for television documentaries."
p436 "The endurance running hypothesis and hunting and scavenging
in savanna-woodlands"
I'm not sure why you're attempting to call out non-existent fallacies and having so much difficulty accepting the hypothesis.
The person in question averaged roughly 40 miles per day. The specific example provided in the wikipedia article - full of citations to supplementary materials - detail a group running up to 35 miles per day.
So it's not at all like persistence hunting - something done by traveling a long distance, usually running, over an extended period of time - because people are running for too far of a distance or for too long a time?
Wow you're so right; I mean, when's the last time you ran anything more than 5km? That's likely some concrete evidence of humans not being able to persistence hunt. Or is that a non-sequitur, too?
Honestly, thanks for sharing - that's some good distance if I'm doing my conversions right :P
Our skin with its vast distribution of sweat glands coupled with our comparative lack of body hair certainly made us well-adapted to pedestrian movement.
"The hunt takes place during the hottest time of the day, with maximum temperatures of about 39–42 C. Before starting, the hunters drink as much water as they can."
"A prerequisite for persistence hunting would have been the invention of water containers. In contrast to horses and camels, humans cannot consume large amounts of water at one time. Human thermoregulation requires considerable water for evaporative cooling, and this would have made it essential to carry water in containers."
2006 "Persistence Hunting by Modern Hunter-Gatherers"
Thanks for giving me an excuse to look at the evidence behind persistence hunting speculation once again.
"… the main hunter, armed only with a digging stick, identified the fresh hoof prints of a duiker and followed its trail at a steady, relentless walk for approximately three hours.
The duiker was thereby pushed from one uncommon shade tree to the next in the hot sun. The bare ground beneath each shade tree was pock-marked with duiker tracks from many different animals, which slowed the hunter, who circled the perimeter of the shaded areas and was able to pick out the tracks of the targeted duiker as it left the location.
Toward the end of the hunt, when the tiring duiker was sighted for the first time approximately 250 m ahead, it was running at a right angle to the direction the hunter was walking along its recent trail. Rather than changing direction and walking or running directly toward the fleeing animal or making any effort to maintain visual contact with it, the hunter continued along the hoof-print trail.
At the end, the duiker was standing, incapacitated, beneath a small cluster of trees, with its head lowered and tongue hanging out. The hunter walked up to it, clubbed it with the digging stick, and then carried it back to camp.
In sum, successful persistence hunting by walking requires truly phenomenal tracking skills, with the added risk of dehydration and heat exhaustion even for the physically fit. On days following a walking hunt, Kua hunters typically spent a recuperative day of inactivity in camp."
