February 7, 2011

Homo sapiens: marathon runners

I recently mentioned some research that suggested that Neanderthals were good at sprinting. Well, now it seems that our kin was (is) instead much better than Neanderthals at long distance running. However our European aboriginal cousins were good at walking and at strength-demanding exercises.

All this based on the proportions of the heel bone, the calcaneus.


Neanderthal heel was taller than ours and would hence have been quite worse for the spring action that is critical in running performance.

Source: PhysOrg, via AiE.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please, be reasonably respectful when making comments. I do not tolerate in particular sexism, racism nor homophobia. Personal attacks, manipulation and trolling are also very much unwelcome here.The author reserves the right to delete any abusive comment.

Preliminary comment moderation is... ON (your comment may take some time, maybe days or weeks to appear).