How running made us human

The cover story of the November 17 issue of Nature magazine (above) was devoted to exploring the thesis that the emergence of modern man was a result of an evolved gift for running.

Said University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble, one of the study's co-authors, "If you are out in the African savannah and see a column of vultures on the horizon, the chance of there being a fresh carcass underneath the vultures is about 100%. If you are going to hunt down something in the heat, that's a lot more work and the payoffs are less reliable because the animal you are hunting often is faster than you are."

Dead animals don't run.

I'm reminded of an old Cajun saying, to wit: "You never see a dead animal on the road in Cajun country."

Think about it.

The conventional wisdom holds that running simply was a byproduct of the ability to walk upright.

However, fossil evidence indicates bipedalism evolved at least 4.5 million years ago, yet 3 million years passed during which bipedal walking by the ape-like Australopithecus continued without any change in body habitus.

Then, out of nowhere came an early human species, homo erectus, with a skeletal frame far more suited for long-distance running.

Bramble and his co-author, Harvard University anthropologist Daniel Lieberman, state that if natural selection had not favored running, "we would still look a lot like apes."

Here's the University of Utah press release about the article; it's got a lot more of the background and reasoning that led the scientists to posit that homo sapiens truly is "the running man."