• ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I absolutely agree with the thesis that both men and women hunted, but I think the claims of women’s superior endurance are not represented in reality. The fastest marathon time for men is 2 hours 1 minute and for women it is 2 hours 14 minutes. These were in 2023 and 2019 respectively, so it’s not like it was years ago with drastically different treatment of the sexes. Both runners were Kenyans too, so that limits non-sex based biological differences.

    I don’t buy that it is socialization. For one thing, the difference disappears in sports like shooting and horseback riding where physicality is not the determining factor. On top of that, when children compete at sports there are negligible performance differences until after puberty. The article mentions the record a woman holds for swimming across the English Channel. I think that women’s higher body fat provides buoyancy that massively reduces the energy required to stay afloat for a prolonged time. We don’t see the same supposed superiority in other endurance events.

    This link touches on many of the same topics as the main article and adds some more info.

    https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.netOP
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        3 months ago

        Well, the theory is that persistence hunting was one of the main hunting strategies during a large portion of human evolution before ranged weapons were invented. So it may well have relevance for distribution of labor between men and women during most of human prehistory, and therefore our evolutionary psychology.

        • Hegar@fedia.io
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          3 months ago

          persistence hunting was one of the main hunting strategies during a large portion of human evolution before ranged weapons were invented

          How do ranged weapons invalidate persistence hunting?

          If you’re trying to chase down an animal till it’s exhausted, I think you’d want to be throwing stuff at it to injure or at least to keep it moving.

          Also, was there a time before ranged weapons? As soon as humans have weapons we have ranged weapons because we can throw. Atlatls and slings - tools to help you throw sticks and stones - wouldn’t have been developed if we weren’t already throwing sticks and stones at things.

          • ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            How do ranged weapons invalidate persistence hunting?

            Even with a modern bow it’s still really difficult to sneak close enough to a deer to reliably make a kill shot. You’re not going to sneak close enough to poke it with a spear and with game that size, throwing rocks is not really an option either because that wont kill it. Something like axis deer is quick enough to even dodge a modern arrow.

            The reality is that the animal will notice you and it will out-sprint you as well but it wont outrun a human on a long distance. When the animal is exhausted and no more able to run, then you can then stick your spear in it.

      • Kethal@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The OP article said the same thing, and like this article, it provides no evidence for the statement. I looked for some numbers, and for world bests, men had better performance in every category I found. The study linked below looked at speeds over decades and in every case men had better performance. Both men and women have improved over time, and as a percentage the difference is getting smaller, but in absolute difference it appears the same. It is an admittedly brief search, but I can’t find evidence in the form of measured times (not conjecture about estrogen) indicating at all that women perform better in ultra marathons. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870311

        • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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          3 months ago

          Those are athletes. To really know, you would need to use average people going for the same time/distance at more moderate speeds. While the fastest men are probably faster than the fastest women across most any distance, I doubt we have good data on average men and women going the same distances.

          • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            That is definitely impressive stamina. An Olympic marathoner can average 12mph for around 2 hours and an “average” marathoner does 8mph, but that is on a road or track. Savannah is one of the few terrains where you could approach those speeds. I would believe they could go 50 miles on a hunt. Trying to run far in sand or snow, through heavy vegetation, or up and down mountains drastically increases the energy it takes (and the max distance and speed you are capable of). That’s a whole other thing.

    • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Speed of marathon doesn’t necessarily serve as a benchmark for endurance, does it? Endurance is a metric of how tired you get over time, no? A cheetah can run 1km waaaay faster than a human. Doesn’t mean that it has better endurance than humans.

      • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        What (widely popular) race could possibly be a better metric of endurance than the marathon?

    • dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The fastest marathon time for men is 2 hours 1 minute and for women it is 2 hours 14 minutes.

      “Fastest” does not mean the best endurance. You would be looking at the “longest”.

      • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        There have been several people, men and women who run a marathon every day for months or even years on end. In that sense there is no upper limit, but those people almost certainly all have a genetic mutation which most people don’t that prevents lactic acid buildup.

        • fafferlicious@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Stride length would like a word.

          Strength, speed, and endurance are related. You’re right. But it’s not as clear as faster time == better endurance.

          • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Longer stride length also equals a heavier body weight to move. I’m sure there’s some sort of graph where the vertex represents the most efficient combination of those factors.

    • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      The fastest marathon time for men is 2 hours 1 minute and for women it is 2 hours 14 minutes.

      It’s an unacceptable leap in logic to infer (from that statement) anything about populations of men and women. You’ve picked only a single sample from each population and chosen that highly biased representative.

      • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        That set is inclusive of every official marathon ever ran, so no it is not a single sample. We see consistently that the women’s record always is slower than the men’s record.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Let’s run a marathon where everyone is underfed and has foot injuries as well as painful dental problems. I guarantee you more women will finish the race ;D

      • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Most marathon runners have a lower body fat than is considered medically healthy and their toe nails pop off during the race, so we are already 2/3 of the way there.