Talk:Endurance running hypothesis

Reception?
How is this hypotheses received? Is there more information on how well this is supported? What are the criticisms? SlowJog (talk) 15:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

This article refers to neanderthals as not being in the genus Homo, and the writer seems to think that neanderthals are an ancestral genus to Homo. They are not. They are a member of the genus Homo, i.e. Homo neanderthalensis, and for that matter they are a late emerging member of the genus. Neanderthals first appeared around 300,000 years ago, while the genus Homo itself is over 2 million years old. If neanderthals lack any adaptations to endurance running that Homo sapiens and other members of the genus Homo have, it's because they lost them. They are descended from Homo erectus, and Homo erectus is believed to have hunted using the persistence hunting method, i.e. they were adapted for endurance running. The neanderthals became adapted to a sub-arctic climate and hunted with close range weapons, probably ambushing them rather than chasing them long distances, so the suggestion that they lost some adaptations to endurance running is reasonable; if indeed they do lack these adaptations, this would be the explanation as to why. Unfortunately the writer's lack of knowledge of what is essentially human evolution 101 (i.e. which species are in the genus Homo and when they emerged) spoils the whole article. This needs to be corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.131.65.248 (talk) 13:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you both a) point out where in the article you think the problem is (which sections/paragraphs) and b) provide references? HCA (talk) 13:58, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

It's everywhere that the author mentions neanderthals, so not just one section but several. I have taken this quote from the "skeletal evidence" section as an example: "Many researchers compare the skeletal structures of early hominins such as Australopithecus genus and Neandertals to those of Homo, as they are extinct genera from which a species was thought to have evolved into Homo." Here the author says that neanderthals are an extinct genus of early hominins from which a species was thought to have evolved into Homo... neanderthals are a member of the genus Homo, and a late emerging member at that. There are many other statements like this throughout the article, so I can't really pinpoint any particular section. All the references to neanderthals throughout the article need to be corrected (or removed altogether if neanderthals are not different to other members of the genus Homo in terms of endurance running biomechanics - if they are then it will be because they lost them as they adapted to close range hunting in a sub-arctic climate and the article would need to explain this).

As for providing a reference for this, there is no dispute about the fact that neanderthals are in the genus Homo, it's the kind of well established fact that does not need a reference. You'll find it in any first year university textbook or any other introductory text to human evolution, even all the wikipedia pages on neanderthals. The only dispute about the taxonomic classification of neanderthals is that some researchers classify them as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, because they don't consider them to be different enough to Homo sapiens to be considered a separate species and classify them as a subspecies instead. This really is a very fundamental error, and I'm not nitpicking or saying anything controversial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.131.65.248 (talk) 09:33, 1 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I meant references for Neanderthals being ambush hunters. Obviously they're in genus Homo.  Is the page protected so you can't edit? HCA (talk) 00:49, 2 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Why is it a fundamental error that Neanderthals are considered by some to be a subspecies of Homo sapiens? If they successfully interbred with Homo sapiens, and this seems to be the case, by definition they were of the same species. Skamnelis (talk) 15:12, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not really knowledgeable enough about evolutionary biomechanics to correct the article, other than simply removing references to neanderthals. I don't know to what extent neanderthals lost any adaptations to distance running, so simply removing the references may not be right as if they have lost adaptations to distance running, then this should be explained. I have seen studies suggesting they were not biomechanically well adapted to running, but I don't remember the details. I only commented on this page because it was a very fundamental error (i.e. what genus neanderthals are in) that spoils the whole article. Regards evidence for ambush hunting - I don't have access to any journal articles, but there's a study by Erik Trinkaus that shows they have the same injury patterns as rodeo riders. The abstract is here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0305440395900136 Additionally their stone tools/weapons were not fine enough to be used as projectile weapons, and their spear heads were better suited for use as thrusting spears. I don't have specific references for these, I did a quick search and found this article http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440308002756 Most of this is what I remember from studying this at university, which was a long time ago and I don't currently have access to journals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.131.0.118 (talk) 09:48, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Duplicates "persistence hunting"
"Endurance running and persistence hunting" & "In culture and folklore" & "Against persistence hunting" overlap the article Persistence hunting

Should be moved to / merged with Persistence hunting IsaacGouy (talk) 21:11, 26 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Done. Rewrote the Endurance running hypothesis article. IsaacGouy (talk) 19:54, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Poorly written summary
The introduction portion of this page is very badly written; it needs to be redone. I am not knowledgeable enough on the topic to do so, so can someone else do it? Ideally we'd cover what the hypothesis is,a broad summary of the evidence for said hypothesis, and the status of this hypothesis in the scientific community, without going into history or specific details. Mr. Fat Wiki (talk) 02:54, 22 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Rewritten. IsaacGouy (talk) 19:54, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Acceptability of rewrite?
The entire article has been rewritten and replaced. That seemed the most straightforward way of addressing the Disputed and Primary sources issues. (The previous article largely paraphrased the 2004 Bramble and Lieberman article in Nature). IsaacGouy (talk) 23:11, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Terribly organized article
This whole thing is just awful. The sections "Endurance Running Hypothesis" and "Endurance Running Hypothesis Revisited" say almost the exact same things, with the primary difference being the organization scheme. Additionally, the prior section contains the phrase "(More recent analyses show no statistically significant difference in efficiency to overcome)." no less than three times, usually directly contradicting the preceding sentence. Both "Endurance Running Hypothesis" and "Endurance Running Hypothesis Revisited" have a "Response" subsection that contains evidence against the Hypothesis. Later comes the section "Attracting Publicity", which is dedicated to refuting specific sentences from various sources. It finishes with a section that the author themselves names as their conclusion, something I've never seen in another Wikipedia article. This whole thing reads more like a homework assignment than an article.OrdinaryComix (talk) 04:10, 19 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Agreed; I went ahead and tagged it as needing cleanup. 67.198.30.42 (talk) 22:36, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @OrdinaryComix i'm of the opinion the article needs a full rewrite: this is an encyclopedia, not a persuasive essay. i'll see what i can do when i get home tonight. ~ ~ ~ 209.42.144.193 (talk) 23:06, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Article rewrite rationale
I have recently rewritten the [Endurance Running Hypothesis] article. After attempting to re-work the sections and content of this article for some time now, I must agree with the points raised in this discussion. Firstly, much of the article’s content runs tangential to the core ideas of the Endurance Running Hypothesis. So much so that I would consider perhaps half of the entire article unnecessary content. Second, the formatting of the article is confusing and repetitive. I believe that most of the confusion comes from content redundancy, as does the ineffective formatting. Something I might add, I understand that the two similar topics “Endurance running hypothesis” and “Endurance running hypothesis revisited,” were included to compare differing theories. That said, to have these sections succeed the lead section is no good. It misrepresents the content, as ideas from these two works are but a few components of THE endurance running hypothesis, not vice versa.

I have included the reasoning behind the macroscopic formatting changes. 1. Deletion of the “Endurance running hypothesis” topic: This topic is too specific to properly represent the core ideas of the endurance running hypothesis. Besides, the lead section introduces the hypothesis well. This (now removed) topic introduces information mostly about the energy mass efficiency balance of humans vs. primates, as well as Australopithecus vs. human upright walking adaptation similarities. These points alone are not the defining content of the endurance running hypothesis; instead, they are key points from Dr. David Carrier’s work in the 1980s. I removed this section and relocated all useful information to the new “Evolutionary evidence” topic. 2. Deletion of the “Endurance running hypothesis revisited” topic: This section was based on the more recent (2004) works of Dr. Daniel Lieberman. This topic section was hardly formatted (including stub-like information on hominin biomechanics). I removed this section and evolved much of its contents to newer sections. 3. Preservation of the “Evolutionary evidence” topic: Much of the content of this article involves presenting how our phenotype was selected for on the basis of endurance running. Furthermore, much of the eclectic draft-like evolutionary evidence included in the previous article version were stubs of evidential content lacking discrete sources. I also subdivided this topic. However, any further subdivision or re-organization of this section is welcomed. 4. Consolidation of the “Response” topic -> “Academic Discourse” topic 4. Deletion of “Attracting publicity”: Visually, the section seems alien to Wikipedia. I could find no value in keeping the section as is or even editing what was there. Furthermore, due to the nature of the article’s contents, I do not understand the necessity for such a seemingly sensationalized section. 5. Deletion of “Conclusions” topic. As previously mentioned, this topic simply does not belong in a proper Wikipedia article.

You may notice much of the stub-like pieces of evolutionary evidence content has yet to be reintegrated properly into the article (I left most as is). I intend to continuously update this article with additional evolutionary evidence content expanding on the bulleted list. However, providing adequate, sourced, scientific evidence is time intensive. Therefore, I have elected to get the main changes to the article live while continuing to expand the core scientific evidence into the future. Of course, I welcome any and all help with this mission.

Lastly, I have removed the cleanup tag as I would consider this rewrite sufficient to warrant a reassessment of the article’s quality. For more in-depth edit rationalization, please refer to individual edit comments. Feel free to let me know what more should be done. ~ghosty~. Ghostyseven (talk) 21:52, 17 August 2023 (UTC)