A body built for running
Long legs, short toes, spring tendons and sweat glands make a mediocre sprinter into a superb distance runner.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 400 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 100 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Homo erectus acquires a suite of features that only make sense together for endurance running: an Achilles tendon and arched foot that store and return energy, a nuchal ligament to stabilise the head, decoupled shoulders for counter-rotation, short toes, and a large gluteus maximus. Combined with sweat cooling and hairlessness, this allows a hominin to run a quadruped to heat exhaustion over hours — persistence hunting, still practised in a few places. Whether running drove the changes or came with them is argued.