Has the brain evolved to run? Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were, in effect, on a camping trip that lasted a lifetime, and they had to solve many different kinds of problems well to survive and reproduce under those conditions […]— Cosmides and Tooby, 2013 Chris McDougall’s epic book “Born to Run” has been an inspiration to many runners…
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According to evolutionary psychologists, at birth the human mind is neither a blank slate, nor a general-purpose computer, but is instead a set of highly specific, and evolved adaptive programmes (Cosmides & Tooby, 2013). Each mechanism within the brain has been shaped through natural, and sexual, selection, to solve the problems encountered within the environment…
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Based on evidence from evolutionary biology, physiology, and anthropology, it has been hypothesised that endurance running historically is important in the pursuit of prey, with key physiological adaptions evolving over millions of years to benefit long distance running, from early hominins through to modern homo sapiens (Brooks, 2012; Hawley, Hargreaves, Joyner, & Zierath, 2014; Schulkin, 2016).…
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In the long evolutionary history of homo sapiens, we have faced and even embraced many difficult environments. Our success as a species is most likely to be a result of going beyond mere survival in challenging conditions and instead performing well as a result of 1) multiple short term physiological responses and behavioural changes, and…
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