system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How much running did early humans actually do?

On a documentary I watched the other day, (origins of us) about human evolution, the woman who presents it went to stay with a tribe in Africa. This tribe hunts wild game for meat, and the men usually go off alone and jog constantly for hours to catch wild game.

On wikiepedia I found this, about 'persistance hunting';

> Persistence hunting is a hunting technique in which hunters use a combination of running and tracking to pursue prey to the point of exhaustion. While humans can sweat to reduce body heat, their quadrupedal prey would need to slow from a gallop in order to pant.

So basically my question is, is would early man see the need in walking as often as we do? If they were going somewhere (like to a local tree to get some berries to eat) would they lightly jog there instead or is there any evidence of them doing this? 

I know it might be open for interpretation, but how much running could they have actually done on a daily basis? 

And if anybody has any information that you think is interesting although not really specifically relevant, I'd be interesting in reading more about what you know too.
gpt
I actually just wrote a term paper on this. The answer is: people probably only ran for purposes of persistence hunting! Chances are meat only comprised a marginal amount of the diet, but considering that the transition from  Australopithecus to Homo involved a suite of anatomical changes that would have facilitated endurance running, we may indeed have evolved into this particular niche. Here's a bibliography on the subject to get you started:

Bobe, R., M.G. Leakey, 2004. Ecology of Plio-Pleistocene mammals in the Omo-Turkana Basin and the emergence of Homo. In: F.E. Grine, J.G. Fleagle, R.E. Leakey (Eds.), The First Humans: Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo, Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer Science+Business Media, New York, pp. 173-184.

Bramble, D.M., Lieberman, D.E., 2004. Endurance running and the evolution of Homo. Nature. 432, 345-352.

Bunn, H.T., 2001. Hunting, power scavenging, and butchering by Hadza foragers and by Plio-Pleistocene Homo. In: C.B. Stanford, H.T. Bunn (Eds.), Meat Eating & Human Evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 199-218.

Carrier, D.R., 1984. The energetic paradox of human running and hominid evolution. Curr. Anthropol. 25, 483-495.

Carrier, D., 2004. The running-fighting dichotomy and the evolution of aggression in hominids. In: D.J. Meldrum, C.E. Hilton (Eds.), From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, pp. 135-162.

Carrier, D.R., C. Anders, N. Schilling, 2011. The musculoskeletal system of humans is not tuned to maximize the economy of locomotion. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 108, 18631–18636.

Cavanagh, P.R., M.L. Pollock, J. Landa, 1977. A biomechanical comparison of elite and good distance runners. Research Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 301, 328-345.

Churchill, S. E., 1993. Weapon technology, prey size selection, and hunting methods in modern hunter-gatherers: implications for hunting in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. In: G. L. Peterkin, H. M. Bricker, P. A. Mellars (Eds.). Hunting and Animal Exploitation in the Later Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of Europe. American Anthropological Association Archaeological Papers, vol. 4, pp. 11–24.

Fung, Y.C., 1990.  Biomechanics: Motion, Flow, Stress, and Growth. Springer, New York.

Hamner, S.R., A. Seth, S.L. Delp, 2010. Muscle contributions to stop propulsion and support during running. Journal of Biomechanics. 43, 2709-2716.

Högberg, G.P., 1952. How do stride length and stride frequency influence the energy-output during running? Arbeitsphysiologie 14, 437-441.

Liebenberg, L., 2006. Persistence hunting by modern hunter-gatherers. Curr. Anthropol. 47, 1017-1026.

Lieberman, D.E., D.A. Raichlen, H. Pontzer, D.M. Bramble, E. Cutright-Smith, 2006. The human gluteus maximus and its role in running. J. Exp. Biol. 209, 2143-2155.

Lieberman, D.E., D.M. Bramble, D.A. Raichlen, J.J. Shea, 2007. The evolution of endurance running and the tyranny of ethnography: a reply to Pickering and Bunn. Journal of Human Evolution 53, 439-442.

Lieberman, D.E., D.M. Bramble, D.A. Raichlen, J.J. Shea, 2009. Brains, brawn, and the evolution of human endurance running capabilities. In: F.E. Grine, J.G. Fleagle, R.E. Leakey (Eds.), The First Humans: Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo, Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer Science+Business Media, New York, pp. 77-92.

Nelson, R.C., R.J. Gregor, 1976. Biomechanics of distance running: a longitudinal study. Research Quarterly 47, 417-428.

O’Connell, J.F., K. Hawkes, N.B. Jones, 1988. Hadza scavenging: implications for Plio/Pleistocene hominid subsistence. Curr. Anthropol. 29, 356-363.

Pickering, T.R., H.T. Bunn, 2007. The endurance running hypothesis and hunting and scavenging in savanna-woodlands. J. Hum. Evol. 53, 434-438.

Raichlen, D.A., H. Armstrong, D.E. Lieberman, 2011. Calcaneus length determines running economy: implications for endurance running performance in modern humans and Neandertals. J. Hum. Evol. 60, 299-308.

Reed, K.E., S.M. Russak, 2004. Tracking ecological change in relation to the emergence of Homo near the Plio-Pleistocene boundary. In: F.E. Grine, J.G. Fleagle, R.E. Leakey (Eds.), The First Humans: Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo, Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer Science+Business Media, New York, pp. 159-173.

Rose, M. D., 1984. A hominin hip bone, KNM-ER 3228, from East Lake Turkana, Kenya. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 63, 371–378.

Ruxton, G.D., D.M. Wilkinson, 2011. Thermoregulation and endurance running in extinct hominins: Wheeler’s models. J. Hum. Evol. 61, 169-175.

Sanders, W. J., 1998. Comparative morphometric study of the australopithecine vertebral series Stw-H8/H41. J. Hum. Evol. 34, 249–302.

Steudel-Numbers, K.L., M.J. Tilkens, 2004.The effect of lower limb length on the energetic cost of locomotion: implications for fossil hominins. J. Hum. Evol. 47, 95-109.

Trinkaus, E., 1986. Bodies, brawn, brains, and noses: human ancestors and human predation. In: M.H. Nitecki, D.V. Nitecki (Eds.), The Evolution of Human Hunting. Plenum Press, New York, pp. 107-145.

Ungar, P.S., R.S. Scott, 2009. Dental evidence for diets of early Homo.  In: F.E. Grine, J.G. Fleagle, R.E. Leakey (Eds.), The First Humans: Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo, Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer Science+Business Media, New York, pp. 121-134.