• Question: Is it true that humans used to run double the speed of Usain Bolt

    Asked by 874sprg52 to Stephanie, LauraAnne, Katy, Helen, Emilia, Dan, Andrew on 7 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Helen Hanstock

      Helen Hanstock answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      It is believed that some of our early human ancestors would have excelled at power sports, and that humans have evolved to be better at endurance. However this is only a theory. Its hard to make a direct comparison as we never measured how fast early humans were! It’s also difficult to determine at which part of human evolution to look at e.g. homo sapiens (our species) or earlier species such as Neanderthals or other early humans.

    • Photo: Dan Gordon

      Dan Gordon answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      One of the ideas that has come from history is the idea that ancient man (Neanderthal) were able to cover hgreat distances. The archeological records show that there are skeletal remains all over the world from the arctic tundra to the deserts and even the jungles. It is unlikely that they actually had settlements in all of these regions, so it is speculated that they were able to cover enormous distances to hunt and forage for food. Indeed work from a group here in Cambridge have been looking at the remains of these ancient humans and comparing the to the closest specimens that we have now which are ultra-marathon runners. These ultra-marathon runners can perhaps sustain exercise continually for 24-36 hours, where it is speculated from the bones of these Neanderthals that they could possibly have run for around 6 days without stopping. SO not so much speed but endurance.

    • Photo: LauraAnne Furlong

      LauraAnne Furlong answered on 9 Nov 2016:

      Usain Bolt runs at more than 10 metres per second, so it is unlikely that our ancestors were able to run at more than 20 metres each second assuming they were smaller than us. How fast you can run is dependent on how many steps you take in a second, and how long each of those steps are. Our ancestors were shorter than us and had shorter legs than us and they were designed for endurance rather than , and so they wouldn’t have been able to take lots of steps every second. If we multiply these two smaller numbers which are smaller than those that would get from modern humans, I think it’s unlikely they could have run at those sort of speeds.

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