Posted on 01/16/2006 10:13:24 AM PST by furball4paws
Stone age human footprints have been found near an ancient lake in Australia. The prints date from 19,000-23,000 years and include children and several adults. Kangaroo prints are also among the finds.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Or maybe they were going to the Walmart.
Any footprint left in soft sand or mud generally has the heel and metetarsal areas dug in a little deeper because of the initial contact and then pushing off during the stride.
Maybe people walked a lot differently back then. LOL
Prediction: Aboriginal activists (or more likely, leftist whites who like to think of themselves as advocates for native peoples) will issue angry statements over not enough equal time to the "Dreamtime" theory of human origins in news reports of the finding, and demand that the footprints be rightfully returned to the original owners.
Granted the article did not mention marathons.
However, it did mention "distance runners"
I guess it all depends on the meaning of "distance"
In any case, I've done a lot of running in my life, competively as well as recreational, and a 5 minute mile is not a recreational time at even a very short definition of distance.
Come again?
Here is what was stated:
Whatever these Stone Age folk were doing, the largest of them achieved a running speed of perhaps 12 miles per hour, comparable to that of a fit recreational runner today, Cupper says. The researchers made that calculation by comparing the stride lengths of the prehistoric adult with comparable data from modern distance runners of similar height.
If they were referring to sprinting/short distance, the mph figure would be much higher!
Umm...replaced "shocked" with "Sent into paroxysms of laughter".
They've all been convincingly debunked or shown to be actual carved fakes.
Not without unzipping their genes.
Looks to me like they buried 38 people upside down and the wind blew the sand off the bottoms of their feet.
Perhaps they realized they were in the wrong hemisphere and were just trying to get right-side up.
They have six little feet.
Mungo No Go
Splendid.
Mungo no mo.
If I recall, Mungo's initially spectacular age has been revised down quite a bit.
Whatever these Stone Age folk were doing, the largest of them achieved a running speed of perhaps 12 miles per hour, comparable to that of a fit recreational runner today, Cupper says. The researchers made that calculation by comparing the stride lengths of the prehistoric adult with comparable data from modern distance runners of similar height.
If they were referring to sprinting/short distance, the mph figure would be much higher!
Respectfully disagree.It seems to me that they were using the stride length to determine speed of the prints they found. The 12 mph is probably based (correctly or incorrectly) on a ratio of the ancient stride with modern distance strides. The researchers are comparing this ratio to the known average speed of a distance runner. How else would you make an estimate for how fast they could go? Comparing it with walking steps would be no work. This provides a speed ratio, but really says nothing about how long this speed is maintained.
I do see your point.
The piece of information (I need) is what is longer, the stride of a distance runner or the stride of a sprinting/short distance runner.
My guess is that the long distance runner has a longer stride. Short distance requires quick acceleration and power which (to me) would require shorter, harder steps. If the researchers were to assume that the ancient prints were of someone sprinting, would it suggest that they were going amazingly fast?
Funny thing is, they really don't know what these ancients were doing at the time they left the prints. For all they know, the ancients were having a competition to see who could leave the longest strides!!
Just try sprinting very hard. You'll find it's the longest stride you have. Long strides are your tallest gear. They eat energy but are good for speed. Short strides are good for going up steep hills that would otherwise burn up your legs. In other words, they're your low gear.
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