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The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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I think there are two sets of claims in the article. The first set - women hunt - is blindingly obvious and it was stupid to ever think anything different. The second set - women are better suited for endurance activities is dubious and weakly argued.
Timothy Noakes is as good a scholar as we have in endurance exercise, and he points out that all of the ultramarathon evidence is a bit dubious because the sport does not attract the best runners. So East African runners dominate the marathon scene (especially the Kalenjins) but are virtually absent from the ultramarathon world. Why? No prize money or sponsorship. So the fact that European ancestry dominates the longer distance is more a function of who's running than it is a difference in physiology.
So looking at the role of estrogen in race times requires some deeper understanding of who's running and what their overall potential is. I'll note that the ultra scene is generally populated by an older crowd who are following the " if I can't go faster I'll go longer" approach. So maybe men maintain competitive marathon times later into life so are slower to join the ultra scene?
Noakes also points out that a smaller body size works for women in several ways - smaller bodies use less energy to move, generate less heat, and shed heat more effectively. So without correcting body size, sex based comparisons are not deeply informative.
I looked for a study on this and found this here. It still says that men are faster than women, but if you compensate for that woman are over all more enduring in a Marathon.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263585668_Men_Are_More_Likely_than_Women_to_Slow_in_the_Marathon
The optimal pacing strategy is even splits. You want to leave everything on the course and finish with nothing in the tank (this is the "drop dead" pacing strategy Daniels wrote about in... "Oxygen Power"?). Negative splits means you went out too slow and positive splits means you went out too fast.
What the article shows is that men have larger positive splits which means they had worse performance against a theoretical optimum (even with that they're still faster). Women were closer to optimal pacing strategy. The article says they don't know if that's physiological or tied to strategy and decision making.
Maybe women are just more realistic about their performance and pace appropriately?
and that's why old women are always cold, while their husbands are boiling and turning down the thermostat.