Homo sapiens as Long-Distance Runners

As a child, I was a master at chasing the ice cream man. I remember one time when that big white truck got a good four-block lead on me before I leapt outside in a pavlovian response to its musical tunes (I still salivate when I hear them). That time, the ice cream man let me chase him over a mile, clear into another neighborhood, before stopping to sell me $0.35 worth of sweet tarts. Although I was too young to care at the time, as an adult I look back on that experience and realize how degrading it was.

But no longer! The 2006 Discover article Born To Run explores the hypothesis that human beings evolved to be long-distance runners, allowing us to chase down big game, which could only flee across short distances at high bursts of speed.

I wasn’t some addict kid needing a sugar-fix, chasing after the ice cream truck!!! I was a lean, mean predator, following my primal instincts and running down my prey!!!