Athletes have been steadily setting new records for a century, as the talent pool has grown in numbers — and the individuals in that pool have grown more literally in height and weight:
Specifically, while the average human has gained about 1.9 inches in height since 1900, Charles’ research showed that the fastest swimmers have grown 4.5 inches and the swiftest runners have grown 6.4 inches.
The theoretical rules of animal locomotion generally state that larger animals should move faster than smaller animals. In his contructal theory, Bejan linked all three forms of animal locomotion — running, swimming and flying. Bejan argues that the three forms of locomotion involve two basic forces: lifting weight vertically and overcoming drag horizontally. Therefore, they can be described by the same mathematical formulas.
Using these insights, the researchers can predict running speeds during the Greek or Roman empires, for example. In those days, obviously, time was not kept.
If we try to predict ancient running times from modern data, we might be ignoring all sorts of things that have changed over the centuries.
For instance, we have fossil-footprint evidence that prehistoric man might have run incredibly fast:
An analysis of the footsteps of [an Australian aboriginal from 20,000 years ago], dubbed T8, shows he reached speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. [World record holder Usain] Bolt, by comparison, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his then world 100 meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year’s Beijing Olympics. With modern training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 45 kph.
Peter McAllister’s Manthropology cites a number of examples of our athletic decline:
- Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.
- Athens employed 30,000 rowers who could all exceed the achievements of modern oarsmen.
- Australian aboriginals threw a hardwood spear 110 meters or more (the current world javelin record is 98.48).
In this video, McAllister presents his ideas:
Modern humans do not live athletic lives, and even modern athletes tend to spend more of their youth sitting at a desk in school than running, jumping, climbing, and throwing.
I have a problem with the idea that old hunter-gatherers had better-than-Olympic standard performance. My problem is… the modern world has had direct contact with hunter-gatherers.
Australia had multiple aborigine tribes still living traditional lives into the 1950s and 60s. At this time, Australia would have been overjoyed to have one or more of these people bringing home gold medals (there were a handful of aboriginal athletes who were heavily promoted at the time, but didn’t do anything amazing by world standards.)
Even today, countries like New Guinea, many African nations, and even much of South and Central America still have traditional tribes to draw upon to make up world beating sports teams. And millions, tens of millions of dollars await the promoter who ventures into the tribal areas and brings back Usain Bolt-crushing superstars. So where are they?