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2024-11-11

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The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong (www.scientificamerican.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15901115

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The OP article said the same thing, and like this article, it provides no evidence for the statement. I looked for some numbers, and for world bests, men had better performance in every category I found. The study linked below looked at speeds over decades and in every case men had better performance. Both men and women have improved over time, and as a percentage the difference is getting smaller, but in absolute difference it appears the same. It is an admittedly brief search, but I can't find evidence in the form of measured times (not conjecture about estrogen) indicating at all that women perform better in ultra marathons. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870311

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Those are athletes. To really know, you would need to use average people going for the same time/distance at more moderate speeds. While the fastest men are probably faster than the fastest women across most any distance, I doubt we have good data on average men and women going the same distances.