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Claim: Humans evolved to be marathon runners

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News for couch potatoes: Wake up:

Surprisingly, it turns out that your average fit human can outrun a deer. In fact, a theory claims that we humans evolved the ability to be good endurance runners, so we could chase animals for hours, run them to a standstill, and kill them. The theory continues that their high-density protein and energy helped our brains evolve bigger and bigger.

Back in 1978, Michael Baughman wrote an article in Sports Illustrated about how he outran a deer. The deer is more of a sprinter, than a marathon runner.

But this has been known for centuries, if not millennia. Most animals bust out their energy sources in a stupid fright. But humans conserve them and expend them at need.

It’s more the opposite of what the “evolved” theory claims. You start with the mind, you don’t “evolve” it.

If all you needed to “evolve” a mind was an advantage over other predators, excuse us, but why didn’t all mammals do it?

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution)

Comments
There's an interesting article over at Evolution News and Views: Many of Us Don't Really Get Evolution.
An editor friend of mine asked me the other day to read an activity she's developing for middle school, one of the soon-to-be plethora of activities aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards. This particular one was about evolution, and asked kids to look for variation in a number of human traits and then infer adaptive explanations. For example, they could measure finger lengths and then come up with a reason that longer fingers are more adaptive than shorter ones.
If it was me I'd divide the kids into two groups. One I'd ask to come up with reasons why short stubby fingers would be more adaptive than long skinny fingers. The second group I'd ask to come up with reasons why longer skinnier fingers are more adaptive than shorter fatter ones. Then I would bring them together to discuss their findings and how their explanations could be tested. Perhaps they would learn something of the nature of evolutionary "explanations."Mung
June 5, 2014
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And why didn't WE evolve wings..or echolocation..or the ability to jump hundreds of feet in the air..or yada yada yadaOldArmy94
June 5, 2014
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