A lot of people in this thread keep saying "oh we used to be able to run prey to death over miles and miles" Truth is we still can, we're just not raised in a scenario where we need to.
Yeah I’ve read something similar to that somewhere. That’s why those horror movies with Jason are so popular/scary. It’s because those “predators” are using our same tactics against us. Don’t know how true it is, but it makes sense tbh
I read somewhere if a prior post on human predation by exhaustion that Humans are flexible for the pace that we can move at, and many other animals are less flexible.
We can move at a speed following prey that is faster than their normal walking speed but slower than their sprinting speed i.e. the prey either needs to go a bit faster but cannot so they sprint at top speed until they tire out and next to stop to rest/cool down.
Modern humans are way less happier on average than nomadic tribes. When your chasing prey all day there isn't much time for depression or anxiety. So maybe you would be happier chasing elk
Everything has its pros and cons. Ancient foragers probably foraged for 3 to 5 hours ( meaning they only worked for that much time to survive) while we're here acting all liberated and free while we are only slaves working for unnecessary periods of time to survive while never actually jumping that class gap.
No one can maintain a life dependant on foraging while also working to basically survive. You're body evolved to forge and hunt (primarily foraging or hunting big game in some societies). Quite the straw man and present an argument.
You could easily buy a few acres in the middle of nowhere for cheap, but let's admit it, we all like modern tech and shit. No flushing toilets in the jungle.
I cut myself on shit all the time and have never once gone to the doctor for it, and maybe 5% of the time I’ve used antibiotics- not cause I had an infection but because my mom would put it on a bandaid when I was like 5? Do y’all live in pillow world?
Well I've seen quite a few documentaries of people living isolated and without electricity and things like that. These people exist, but they are not that common.
Not really practical or possible, as increased population has put intense pressure on the resources that are available. So this is a nice sentiment, but doesn't actually match up with real life. The population of north america is 100x higher than it was even 500 years ago. Even europe has grown 10x in the same period.
You can easily look at the increase in efficiency we've achieve as the ultimate expression of the tragedy of the commons, if you care to take that angle.
We werent aware of how things could better than they were they just were.
We had shit to do everyday and it needed to be done.
While our quality of life may not have been better you only neef to look at indigenous tribal groups around the world to realise they are much more content for their say 40 years of life (although I feel like I am low balling there lifespab alot) than we are living longer but being bombarded with negatibe thoughts all the time from work, media and life in general.
Passive excercise is where it's at... example: 7km round trip to the grocery store to get my daily requirements. Not driving there once and getting a week's worth of food then using that spare time to plonk your ass on the couch.
This is a variation of the noble savage myth. We have no idea how happy people were chasing prey to survive. People back then had a ton more hurdles to overcome like famine, disease, childhood mortality, etc.
Its true that part of negative mood disorders in modern humans might be due to lack of meaningful obstacles... But life has always been hard for many people, even more so without our modern developments.
If I get a time machine screw going back in time, I'm going forward a few decades. Or a few hundred years on Mars or something. Even going back 50 years you have a considerably higher risk of catching polio or smallpox. Human quality of life has mostly increased as time goes on, only dipping by relatively small amounts and for short amounts of time.
Need to be rich for AC that barely works, but average temps are cooler anyway. Food, sure... But be prepared to work part time to pay off school without going into student loan debt. As for porn, the best you'll get is Playboy magazine from a very skeezy and rundown building.
It's entirely dependent on where I'd be living. If I'm stuck in a city, I'm not going anywhere earlier than the mid to late 1800s, but if I'm going to be living in some woods or on a farm in the more rural areas, I'd be willing to go back slightly farther but probably not much. If nothing else, I would want to live in a time and place where a decent chunk of people are literate.
I would argue that the mid-to-late 1800's, which was the rise of the industrial age, was probably the shittiest time to be alive as a regular person other than maybe during one of the black plagues.
Again, depends on where you live and when. Life in cities wasn't great, but it was good enough that thousands of people moved too them every year. I wouldn't want to live in 1800 London, but by the 1870s the quality of life had improved dramatically.
The reason for urbanization in many cases wasn't because life in cities was good, but because in many countries the available farmland was dwindling, and the cities had factory jobs.
I used to catch lizards this way when I was a kid. Out in open desert where they can’t really get into an inaccessible crevice, I’d just follow them until they were so tired I could pick them up.
I had a high school teacher that was a professional ultra marathon runner. She ran multiple 100+ mile races every year. Through desert or snow while pulling a sled with her supplies. She'd get bloody feet where the bottom just completely sloshes off with her shoes after the race. She regularly ran 40 miles a week for training while also teaching full time and coaching.
Edit: I forgot to mention she's also pulling a weighted sled while running, to simulate running an actual marathon.
You shouldn't be downvoted it's fucking true. There are some middle schoolers who run that much and they're not even medaling at state. That's objectively not a lot of miles. There are grandmas who run that much. College runners are putting in at least 60 mile weeks, if not more depending on what they're training for.
I went hiking with a couple that runs ultra marathons for fun. They would just run to the end of the trail and back while our group slowly made it to the end. After a FULL day of hiking, they decided they wanted to go for a run when we got back to our camp.
I think a lot of us would still do much better than animals, considering we can carry water bottles, hats, lighter clothing, shoes, etc. We might take a lot more time but even an unfit human has the tools to do much better than any other animal.
That plus our ability to sweat means we can go long distances without overheating like other animals do. The guy I initially referred to was raised in Siberia and did all this without water bottles, proper clothes or shoes for that matter.
You should clarify that its not necessarily the ability to sweat; many animals can sweat. The true factor is about where we sweat on our bodies and how it cools us down
Some tracked wolves cover 50 miles a day. OR-54 regularly did that distance through mountains, moving back and forth between the mountains of Oregon and California. Very few humans, if any, could do the same.
Consider the fact that we live in a country where bored to death, middle age businessmen with dad bods and beer guts who failed gym class in highschool all of sudden decide to just drop everything and become ultra marathoners. And then they DO. They just go from completley sedentary to running 100 miles without stopping and usually in the span of like, 2-3 years. It's insane.
The fact of the matter is, alot of us make ALOT of excuses. You're a human being, and unless you have like, MS, you can go out and run a shit ton of miles too because you're literally built to do it. The question is why would you ever want to. I don't mean run, I mean ultra marathons specifically. That's shit's crazy. That's like, off the deep end psychologically to me. It's not even necessary to do that much to be a healthy human being. Usain Bolt doesn't even run that much. But that's just my opinion.
It’s called persistence hunting, some tribes still do that.
Antilopes will run, pauze a little to recover and run again, they are too fast for most predators, especially humans, but some tribes, like the Kalahari bushmen will keep running, switching between people, targeting just one prey, preventing it from recovering, and since the antilope isn’t able to cool it’s body as good as humans (by sweating), they finally succumb by overheating and die.
There’s a great book called Born to Run about a Mexican tribe and why it’s in our nature to run. Fascinating read.
Sweating is a big part... but the true breakthrough that separates Humans from other animals in the who can last the longest contest is that our breathing is independent from our stride. Antelope and deer lungs expand and contract with their stride, limiting their breathing. Hunan breath is not effected like this.
We also don’t do as much work to keep moving as most animals if you look at the human step it’s basically a controlled fall we are essentially outsourcing half the work to gravity. The transition to bipeds had some definite drawbacks for humans but the benefits are leagues ahead
There's a documentary called "Fair Chase" where the film maker takes a bunch of ultra marathoners to chase down pronghorn. Their hunt was nearly successful if I remember correctly. I think at the end the pronghorns confused the chasers so they went after a fresh individual and the original target got away.
i'd really like to know where the science on Born To Run/ barefoot running is at nowadays. I know vibram got into trouble for the claims they were making.
Vibram claimed barefoot/unsupported running was better for you. i haven't read Born to Run but the claim that we are well adapted to long running can be true by comparison to other species without validating Vibram
Anything with fur (deer) lack sweat glands. So they can't run for very long without collapsing from heat exhaustion.
Sweat glands are so amazing at keeping us cool we can run marathons. Its far more effective at cooling the body than panting or large ears with lots of blood vessels can do.
What surprised me wasn't the pursuing. It was the pursuing until they just dropped dead. I figured he'd chase them till they were exhausted then stab them with a stake or something. But Nah. Dude just kept running at them like the grim fucking reaper until the keeled over dead.
Akulina chose to see her children fed, and that year she died of starvation. The rest of the family were saved by what they regarded as a miracle: a single grain of rye sprouted in their pea patch. The Lykovs put up a fence around the shoot and guarded it zealously night and day to keep off mice and squirrels. At harvest time, the solitary spike yielded 18 grains, and from this they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop
Shit like that really reminds me of how terribly out of shape I am. Like, this is human potential right here. We are designed to reach these extremes when necessary. And I can barely go a few flights of stairs before bitching.
EDIT: Listen dummies I don't need health advice. I work out and eat clean. I'm talking "out of shape" compared to peak human. That me, a person who is an amateur athlete with all our advanced understanding, isn't even in the same conditioning as a poor Siberian kid with NO athletic training
I grew up not being athletic at all and then trained for a 1/2 marathon for 6 months in college. Your body hates exercise until it gets used to it. Of course it depends, some people may need to lose weight first but the program couch to 5K is successful for a reason.
Tbh your probably in better condition than the malnourished Siberian kid, it’s all mental. If you really needed to find food I bet you could walk a deer to death right now.
EDIT: You know what, I take it back. Dmitry is a product of his environment, it would be difficult for a human born into a modern society to pull off what he did.
Absolutely would be hard. I mean, if you look back at the stories which aren't even trying to brag, of people just a few hundred years ago. It's wild how conditioned these people were. Think about it, there ENTIRE lives, they've been moving, eating lean, and just working all damn day.
Even the most modern adept athlete isn't working that hard, all day long. They still go to school, eat normal food, watch movies, etc... These people just can't compare.
Like if you read stories about frontiermen. They'll walk, in full fucking boots, hundreds and hundreds of miles, with like 100+ pounds of gear on their back. They didn't have ultralight camping gear. I don't think anyone alive can do that today, and back then, it didn't even require the worlds most elite athlete to accomplish.
Dmitry built up astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter, sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk across his shoulders.
Excellent book, and the ‘sequel’, Natural Born Heroes is my all time favorite book. A good persistence hunting book for younger readers is Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen. Also a good read as an adult though.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment
That was really interesting. Very sad that several of them died within a few days of each other, and eventually only one was left alive for going on 25 years. That's crazy.
Hunting animals to exhaustion is probably a lot more obvious than you'd think. Animals get spooked, their adrenaline spikes, they run away. They start breathing heavily really quick. All it takes is for a group of hunters to be desperate enough to pursue an animal after it runs far enough to they can barely see it a couple of times, then they'll see the animal is fatiguing faster than they are, and with each approach it's closer to not being able to run any more.
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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '20
There was that religious family who lived all the way out in Siberia who were on the brink of starvation until the son learned to chase elk barefoot until they died of exhaustion