COMPLEXITY

Daniel Lieberman on Evolution and Exercise: The Science of Human Endurace

Aug 3, 2022

52:50

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Quick takeaways

Humans' ability to run long distances has been overlooked as an important aspect of our evolutionary history, contributing to our development as hunter-gatherers and making us unique as human beings.

Humans have specific physiological adaptations that enable long-distance running, including larger joints, long Achilles tendons, unique hip structures, and the ability to sweat for cooling during physical activity.

Physical exercise, especially endurance activities like running and walking, provides numerous health benefits, including preventing diseases, improving cardiovascular health, boosting brain health, and supporting healthy aging.

Deep dives

Humans' Ability to Run Long Distances Played a Role in Evolution

Humans' ability to run long distances has been overlooked as an important aspect of our evolutionary history. Our ancestors, who became hunter-gatherers around two million years ago, relied on hunting and scavenging for meat. Despite lacking the physical characteristics of carnivores, humans have been hunting for two million years. This ability to run long distances has contributed to our development as hunter-gatherers and is part of what makes us unique as human beings.

How to Improve Physical Activity in the Modern World

03:16

Cancer - What Feeds Cancer Cells?

03:14

The Evolution of Human Fatigue Resistance

02:04

Introduction

4min

How Did You Become Interested in Asapi?

2min

What Makes Us Human?

4min

Running Is More Costly Than Most Mammals

2min

How Long Are Your Toes?

2min

Why Are We Running Long Distances?

3min

How to Cope With Higher Stress in Running

2min

Are We Going to Lose a Toe at Some Point?

3min

The Evolution of Human Fatigue Resistance

2min

10.

Are Skunks Durance Affected?

2min

11.

The Endurance Running Hypothesis

4min

12.

Life Expectancy of Chimps in the Wild

2min

13.

The Female Hunter Gatherer, Is in a Deficit?

2min

14.

The Effects of Physical Activity on Neurogenesis

3min

15.

Cancer - What Feeds Cancer Cells?

3min

16.

Is There a Special Selection in Humans?

2min

17.

How to Improve Physical Activity in the Modern World

3min

18.

The Importance of Running

5min

19.

The Mind and the Body Are Part of the Same Integral Systems

2min

Human beings are distinctly weird. We live for a very long time after we stop reproducing, move completely differently than all of our closest relatives, lack the power of chimpanzees and other primates but completely outdo most other terrestrial mammals in a contest of endurance. If we think about bodies as hypotheses about the stable features of their ancestral environments, what do the features of our unusual physiology say about what humans ARE, where we come from, the details of our origin story as a profoundly successful species? And what can we learn by telescoping that story forward to explain some of the most persistent puzzles and paradoxes about our health, the way we age, our need for physical exercise, and our nearly ubiquitous aversion to habits that are good for us?

Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.

This week, we sprint into the paleoanthropology, biomechanics, and physiology of exercise with Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman, author of several books including Exercised, The Story of the Human Body, and The Evolution of the Human Head. In our rapid-fire discussion we explore how millions of years as hunter-gatherers equipped hominids with a unique package of adaptations for endurance running, why exercise is so good for us but so generally undesirable, and how physical activity in old age helped shape us into the strongly intergenerational social apes we are today.

Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. Note that applications are now open for our 2023 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships! Tell a friend. And if you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.

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Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

Mentioned papers and other resources:

SFI Colloquium & Twitter thread on Daniel Lieberman’s “Active Grandparent Hypothesis”

The evolution of human fatigue resistance
by Frank E. Marino, Benjamin E. Sibson, Daniel E. Lieberman

"What beer and running taught me about the scientific process"
Seminar by SFI Journalism Fellow Christie Aschwanden

Endurance running and the evolution of Homo
by Dennis Bramble & Daniel Lieberman in Nature

SFI Professor David Wolpert & the thermodynamics of computation

Complexity 64 - Reconstructing Ancient Superhighways with Stefani Crabtree and Devin White

3100: Run and Become (Documentary Film)

Why run unless something is chasing you?
by Daniel Lieberman at The Harvard Gazette