Run And You'll Only Die Tired, The Logic Part 2

I realize that for most of you, this issue was laid to rest a year ago, as it should have been.  Runners, however, are a wilfully ignorant, backwards bunch, and things like science and anthropology mean about as much to them as they do to the average Midwestern "Christian".  As such, I decided to give you a little more ammunition for the interminable arguments in which you're likely to at some point find yourself engaged with a runner by providing you with a little mathematical backup.  Then, as I love research as much as North Korea's dictators love bad haircuts, Disney, and missiles, I decided to drop a bit more knowledge for you in regards to the hunting methods employed in the paleolithic era.  If you'd like a refresher on the subject, please enjoy the following ridiculously heavily researched (yet still accused of being "broscience", ostensibly because I'm mean to testosterone-deficient runners):

Part 1: The Logic
Part 2: Evidence
Part 3: More Evidence
Part 4: Even More Evidence
Part 5: The Science

Going for the knockout blow.

Here's how persistence hunts go down:  a group of men run after a small animal for an extended period of time.  Rather than use tools, to which hominids have had access for at least two million years, the animal is just run down until it drops dead from exhaustion.  When this is done (extraordinarily infrequently) in the modern era, it's generally done as a ceremonial exercise by tribal Africans, who will chase a deerlike animal for two to five hours over a half marathon or marathon distance, as a general rule.  The temperature at the time of the hunt is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (really fucking hot to those of you who utilize centigrade measurements), which they utilize to hasten the beleaguered creature's demise in the hunt.  These hunts, as you can well imagine, are generally unsuccessful, and even elite athletes with experience conducting these retarded hunts cannot come close to accomplishing such a ridiculous goal.  One such effort was led by elite Kenyan marathoner Andrew Musuva, who's apparently killed a kudu with a softball-sized rock before.  They clocked a 4 minute mile at one point in their day-long chase and never even got fucking close to the pronghorn they were pusuing- instead, the thing mocked them from afar like they were Wile E. Coyote's close personal friends and it was a wildly oversized blue roadrunner.

This picture is a nice allegory for the above story-  the kudu would be the faceless man, and the hunters would be the broad getting fucked hard.

If you're incredulous that humans that had access to a bevy of tools in the last couple of million years would have utilized such a ridiculous method, you're not alone.  On it's face, the persistence hunting method seems wildly inefficient as a method to obtaining calories, so I decided to run some numbers to confirm this.  The following is a fairly quick breakdown of what I calculated as caloric expenditure from the hunt and the calories that would have been obtained with this method.  I assumed, by the length of the hunt and the distance traveled in the sources I found on the subject that the hunters would be running between 5.5 and 13 miles an hour, which corresponds to about a 11 minute mile (barely faster than a walk) and a 4 and a half minute mile (basically, a sprint).  Then, I assumed the average weight of our hunters to be 150 lb based on an anthropological estimate of paleolithic Europeans (Hermanussen).  Though I realize that my scientifically based estimates aren't exactly perfect, they're certainly far better than the scanty evidence on which runners base their nearly religious belief that humans of the recent past were nearly criminally stupid when it came to hunting.

Interestingly, there was no mention in the sources I found about women participating in persistence hunts, but non-retarded sources show that women participated heavily in hunts of big game, as the paleolithic era was pretty progressive in terms of gender equality.  Hopefully, this will inspire the hotties at Lift Big Eat Big to chase down and hang a beating on a runner, misogynistic fucks that they are, this week as a WOD.

Caloric expenditures during running for a 150 lb man (assuming they're carrying nothing whatsoever):
2 hours at 8mph= 1890 kcals burned
5 hours at 5mph= 2715kcals

Our allegedly mildly retarded ancestors reported utilized this method to pursue hooved creatures, as a genral rule, utilizing their superior long-distance speed to run down animals designed for sprinting.  Thus, they would have hunted a creature like a deer, kudu, or antelope.  In Kenya, male tribesmen hunt kudu utilizing this method for certain ceremonies, and male kudu weigh an average of 500 lbs.  Clearly, a bunch of skinny dudes who just ran a marathon probably aren't going to have much left in the tank to haul the fruits of their ridiculousness home to the ball and chain.  Thus, they'd butcher the animal and return with the edible parts.  With cattle, a 400kg liveweight animal will yield about 140kg of edible meat.  Using that as a basis for calculating edible meat, I determined that the aforementioned average kudu will yield about 175 lbs of meat.

Dean Karnazes is about the only distance runner on Earth I'd pit against one of these animals.

Carrying the food back, a group of five men would have 35 lbs per person.  Walking with hand and ankle weights at 4 miles an hour is akin to running at 5 miles per hour, so the caloric expenditure for carrying 35 lbs would be significant.  In fact, "Gross energy cost per mile during weighted walking (120-158 kcal/mile) was comparable to and in some cases exceeded that of running which was independent of speed (120-130 kcal/mile)"(Miller), which means that they'd expend much more in the way of calories on the return than the run itself.  According to a study by army scientists, the energy cost of load carriage for a 15 kg load would be about 225 calories per hour.  Walking 20 miles at 4 miles and hour would burn 2003 calories, plus the 1125 calories from the additional weight, bringing the return trip to 3125 calories.  Thus, you're looking at an expenditure of 5000 to 6000 calories per person, at a minimum.  Given the number of predator animals capable of taking the meat from small, comparatively weak humans, one would think that they would return more quickly than 4 miles per hour, meaning their caloric expenditure would likely rise another 1000 calories per person as they evaded wolves, lions, and other predatory creatures.

Apparently, anthropologists failed to mention to joggers that hyenas are pretty fond of kudu meat.

This means that a hunt consisting of five runners would require at least 25,000 calories to complete, and likely more along the lines of 30,000 calories.  For obvious reasons, the USDA does not track caloric information on kudu, but it does on a close relative of the kudu, the deer.  175 lbs of raw deer meat will yield 95256 calories.  This means that in a best case scenario, one quarter to one third of the calories acquired by this method of hunting would be expended in the hunt itself.  Based on the available data on persistence hunts, only 50% of them are successful (Liebenberg), which means that one half to two thirds of the calories obtained by persistence hunting would be consumed in their acquisition.  Due to the fact that one half to one third of the total calories obtained in this asinine form of hunting would be utilized obtaining the meat, it would stand to reason that this method of hunting could not have been the predominant method of hunting in the last 2 million years, or humanity would have fucking starved to death long ago.

Persistence Hunting Wrapup
Remarkably inefficient?  Yes.  
Stupid?  Yes.  
Preposterous?  Yes.

In case all of the maths and anthropology has bored you, 'ere's some tits.

Sources:
Bethea, Charles.  Fair Chase.  Outdoor Magazine.  19 Apr 2011.  Web.  4 Dec 2012.  http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Fair-Chase.html?page=1

Hermanussen M.  Stature of early Europeans.  Hormones (Athens). 2003 Jul-Sep;2(3):175-8.

Knapik J, Reynolds K.  Loads carried by soldiers: historical, physiological, biomechanical and medical aspects.  ARMY RESEARCH INST OF ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE NATICK MA.  Jun 1989.  http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA212050    

Liebenberg L.  Liebenberg L.  Persistence hunting by modern hunter-gatherers.  Current Anthropology  2006;47(6):1017-25.  http://www.mattmetzgar.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/persistence_hunting.pdf

Miller, JF, Stamford BA.  Intensity and energy cost of weighted walking vs. running for men and women.  J Appl Physiol. 1987 Apr;62(4):1497-501.

Nutrient data for 17164, Game meat, deer, raw.  Nutrient Data Library.  USDA.  Web.  4 Dec 2012.  http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/5133?fg=&man=&lfacet=&count=&max=&qlookup=&offset=&sort=&format=Abridged&_action_show=Apply+Changes&Qv=1&Q9353=1.0&Q9354=175

Scahill, Darren.  Food Science/cow weight/cow meat ratio.  AllExperrts.  12 Nov 2003.  Web.  4 Dec 2012.  http://en.allexperts.com/q/Food-Science-1425/cow-weight-cow-meat.htm