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Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans

Nature Human Behaviour (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Humans have two features rare in mammals: our locomotor muscles are dominated by fatigue-resistant fibres and we effectively dissipate through sweating the metabolic heat generated through prolonged, elevated activity. A promising evolutionary explanation of these features is the endurance pursuit (EP) hypothesis, which argues that both traits evolved to facilitate running down game by persistence. However, this hypothesis has faced two challenges: running is energetically costly and accounts of EPs among late twentieth century foragers are rare. While both observations appear to suggest that EPs would be ineffective, we use foraging theory to demonstrate that EPs can be quite efficient. We likewise analyse an ethnohistoric and ethnographic database of nearly 400 EP cases representing 272 globally distributed locations. We provide estimates for return rates of EPs and argue that these are comparable to other pre-modern hunting methods in specified contexts. EP hunting as a method of food procurement would have probably been available and attractive to Plio/Pleistocene hominins.

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Fig. 1: Modelled pursuit net acquisition rate for Oryx gazella as a function of hunter velocity and gait for 4–32 km pursuit distances.
Fig. 2: Societal locations (n = 158) with ethnohistorical or ethnographic evidence of hunting using an EP tactic and locations.
Fig. 3: Estimated pursuit or pursuit and handling return rates for three types of hunt.

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All data presented in the paper are available in Supplementary Data 1, along with citations to their sources.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for this research was provided by a Trent internal SSHRC grant (no. 53-51637). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. This study greatly benefited from discussions with and/or comments from the following people: A. Best, D. Bird, R. B. Bird, D. Bramble, D. Carrier, S. Gerety, M. Grote, M. Hora, J. C. Jackson, J. Koster, D. Lieberman, J. F. O’Connell, J. Speth, F. M. and A. Stein, M. Vidal-Cordasco and C. Wall-Scheffler. C. Wall-Scheffler generously provided the regression formula used in Fig. 1 and Supplementary Information.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

    Eugène Morin

  2. PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac, France

    Eugène Morin

  3. Anthropology and Graduate Group in Ecology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Bruce Winterhalder

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E.M. and B.W. designed the study, collected the data and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Eugène Morin.

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Morin, E., Winterhalder, B. Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans. Nat Hum Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01876-x

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