"Country Loon"  wrote in
message news:cl1e3g$2063$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> I have heard that the best long distance runners come from a tribe in
> Ethiopia who could get more wives(and hence more offspring) by buying them
> with livestock which they had to catch by running. The fastest ones had more
> offspring and hence the predominance. I would have though that this favoured
> sprinters more than long distance. Look at any Olympics and you will see 90%
> black runners in the final (or more!). There has to be a reason.Or is this a
> taboo question?

Etiopians are becoming famous for their long and middle distance running
(mainly the long distances in athletics, I think it is).

Having been a nation with plenty of of heardsmen for thousands of years,
running successfully after herded animals could quite possibly have been a
significant selective pressure towards prize-winning performances on the
track.

Sprinting is - I more than surmise - somthing that rather more powerfully
built (than the typical Etiopian long-distance runner) central African type
of people tend to best in the world at. 

The obvious naturally selective pressure behind this unfair advantage of
Afro-americans (mainly), is that the central more densely vegetated parts
of Africa have for many thousand years presented many an opportunity for
the there more plentiful people-eating (whenever given an opportunity)
'species of tooth and claw' to successfully spring locally living human
chaps whose sprinting prowess is not up to scratch (or not always so slow
that their candidature for ancestorhood would always have failed - won't I
spoil my argument by using the loosely lingual construct 'gepardized' ;-) -
by them being more easily _lethally_ or at least castratingly scratched.

I hope that you, Tom, ask a more challenging question next time. ;-) 


P 

-- 
This post of mine was, as my posts almost always are, stingily sponsored by
my own EIMC Internetional Ptd. Lty. It was not just jotted in a
justifiable, though author-image jeopardizing, jester; but also - by Jove!
- with a
smidgeon of serious intent.
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