A one legged man "running" at 4:26 pace? Hunters faster than Olympic sprinters? Cadence around 300 steps per minute?
Scientists, with the help of expert trackers, drew some rather interesting conclusions from footprints in New South Wales, Australia thought to be over 20,000 years old.
These articles aren't new - published in 2006-2007, but still pretty interesting. Some huge leaps in some of the calculations to be sure (like using constants taken from small sampling (12) of modern day recreational distance runners). I have to be hugely skeptical of some of the numbers, especially that high of cadence or a one legged man managing that high of speed, because of a number of factors I don't understand how they could have taken into considerations (up and down motion of the runners, exaggerated stride length, ie bounding, etc.) I can make prints in the sand that look very similar but are much slower...
However, it does lead you to question if, with a different form, people could run even faster than we're seeing today. These scientists are saying they already have...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060803-footprint.html
http://playthink.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/sdarticle-1.pdf
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