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

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.

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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

Hate Working Out? Blame Evolution
by Daniel LIeberman at The New York Times

The Aging of Wolff’s “Law”: Ontogeny and Responses to Mechanical Loading in Cortical Bone
by Osbjorn Pearson & DanielL Lieberman

Effects of footwear cushioning on leg and longitudinal arch stiffness during running
by Nicholas B.Holowkaab, Stephen M.Gillinovac, EmmanuelVirot, Daniel E.Lieberman