Endurance Running May Have Helped Prehistoric Hunters

ONTARIO, CANADA—Science Magazine reports that archaeologist Eugène Morin of Trent University, behavioral ecologist Bruce Winterhalder of University of California, Davis, and their colleagues reviewed historic accounts written by travelers, explorers, and missionaries for information about persistence hunting, the practice of chasing prey at a run over long distances. The researchers found 391 descriptions of persistence hunting in the more than 8,000 texts written between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries in the study. “When it does work, it’s just as good, or maybe better, than other techniques,” Winterhalder said. Walking and stalking prey, he explained, could take several hours, while running after prey may result in a quicker kill. While the running prey sprints, it becomes susceptible to overheating, exhaustion, and collapse, while the modern human can run at a steady pace and keep cool by sweating. This tactic would also give the running hunter an advantage in difficult terrain, the researchers said. Paleolithic hunters may have also employed this technique from time to time, in addition to employing communal hunts, traps, snares, stalking, and ambushing, Morin and Winterhalder suggest. “If you’re stuck to one method, you’re going to starve,” Morin concluded. To read about hunters in Peru some 9,000 years ago, go to "Lady Killer."