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Dr Tim Wood, chief medical officer at the Australian Open :-

"We evolved on the high plains of Africa chasing antelope for eight hours under these conditions," he told BBC Radio 5 Live
"There will be some players who complain and no-one is saying it is terribly comfortable to play out there, but, from a medical perspective, we know that man is well adapted to exercising in the heat. Whether it is humane or not is a whole other issue."

Thank you doctor, for your reassurance.

Just to prove that being a doctor doesn't mean you can't say something stupid.

We did indeed evolve chasing antelope in the heat for 8 hours back then... back then we also died... A LOT.

Have never seen anyone chase an antelope for eight hours. Not least in the sun... 7000 feet above sea level. Best I've seen is the Namibian Khoi hunting game down, but there's an art to it, it's not mindless chasing which ends in exhaustion

I hope all the players have packed their winter woolies otherwise they will "freeze" at the weekend.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2158177

Obviously Tim Wood hasn't seen the famous footage of Tony Simpson cycling uphill in the 1967 Tour De France only to die from heart failure brought on by severe dehydration and heat exhaustion. Chump.

They need to move AO to March...

JuliusHMarx wrote:Dr Tim Wood, chief medical officer at the Australian Open :-

"We evolved on the high plains of Africa chasing antelope for eight hours under these conditions," he told BBC Radio 5 Live
"There will be some players who complain and no-one is saying it is terribly comfortable to play out there, but, from a medical perspective, we know that man is well adapted to exercising in the heat. Whether it is humane or not is a whole other issue."

Thank you doctor, for your reassurance.

He is a medic and he is commenting on a subject outside of his specialist field, namely anthropology.  Many so called experts feel the need to make "authoritative" comments on subjects outside of their field.  Dicky Dorkins is an example.

Now where is the evidence that "we" evolved chasing antelope for "eight" hours under "these conditions".  You need to be a specialist in anthropology, paleoclimatology & geology just to begin to contemplate the statement.  Vague terms are "chasing" and "we" which need to be specified more clearly.  [Note: more likely - traps were set and a group of ancestral humans then ambushed the prey, driving them into the trap.  Also likely they chose a convenient time of day for long shadows etc.].  And I haven't really got started but that would be the beginning of my criticism of Woodies statement.  

Anyway it is clearly a political statement in order to provide an authoritative voice in defence of the AO management. Meh.

It was precisely because of this type of practice - making politically motivated statements on faulty or plain erroneous scientific authority that led to a number of Italian scientists being jailed after they agreed to a public safety announcement that resulted in people dying that wouldn't have died if the announcement hadn't have been made:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022

NS - I too was irked by his foray into anthropology and history. I began typing my own rant but deleted it (and I'm pleased I did because yours was more eloquent!).

I can't stand these definitive statements about what happened thousands/millions of years ago when even being certain about events 200 yeas ago is incredibly difficult.

My mate ran for eight hours in the African sun, through the rolling hills... He wasnt chasing antelopes or anything, merely running in the 90km Comrades ultra-marathon.... Primitive idiot.

90km?!!! For fun?!

The fool bought into the marketing hype.. Comrades Marathon: "The Race Every South African must run at least once." or something to that effect.

kingraf wrote:My mate ran for eight hours in the African sun, through the rolling hills... He wasnt chasing antelopes or anything, merely running in the 90km Comrades ultra-marathon.... Primitive idiot.

Big buttocks.  There was an interesting paper a while back that suggested ancestral humans evolved big buttocks as an ergonometric solution (energy efficient) for long distance running.  Of course long distance running is not tennis (which uses so called fast twitch muscles etc - tennis relies a lot on power and explosive power to finish a point).

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041115/full/news041115-9.html
"In fact, running seems to be the only reason that we have prominent buttocks, says Lieberman. He has measured the activity of the gluteus maximus muscle in volunteers during a walk and a jog. "When they walk their glutes barely fire up," he says. "But when they run it goes like billy-o.""

... I haven't a clue what he means by "billi-o"

Don't know how if i buy that Nore. I've always been under the impression that it's the other way round. The same two Russians have been winning the female Comrades since I can remember, they are pretty lithe ladies... and until this year when so where the male winners. Alternatively - guys like Powell and Blake got back...

Interesting article... but it contains not a shred of evidence for its assertions.

Does getting a paper published require anything more than looking at a physical feature on our body and speculating what caused it?

Sorry NS, that's not intended as dig at you.

Even lithe ladies have proportionately larger buttock muscles when compared to most other animals. As far as I can tell ancestral humans were a pretty feeble species compared to others - their advantage was a large brain enabling them to outsmart other animals and to develop tools (spears = flying teeth or claw).  But true, running may not be the sole reason or perhaps even the main reason why ancestral humans developed proportionately large buttock muscles compared to other muscles and overall weight.

HM Murdoch wrote:Interesting article... but it contains not a shred of evidence for its assertions.

Does getting a paper published require anything more than looking at a physical feature on our body and speculating what caused it?

Sorry NS, that's not intended as dig at you.

You need to access the actual paper to see the evidence.  It is part of the scientific method - the journal "Nature" has something like 7 reviewers while most other scientific journals have two reviewers.  The chosen reviewers vary in quality but they would have to be considered "experts" in their field and in fields relevant to the submitted article.

What most people see are summaries and journalistic spin in popular magazines and or in sections of newspapers.  When you read scientific papers  it is normally written in careful language with supporting evidence - rather than the assertive language you see in newspapers etc.  Most things in life are various shades of grey rather than the black and white you see in the popular media and also to a certain degree in student textbooks.

HM Murdoch wrote:90km?!!! For fun?!

Definitely! Ultras are great fun. Good company and aside from the inevitable weariness, very satisfying to complete. Comrades is tough though, especially the uphill course (they alternate each year, I believe). Maybe some day... 

On topic, terrible comments from an expert on a tangentially relevant field. It's this sort of thing that leads to public perception becoming skewed and making a negative long-term difference. A real shame.

I can't offer any alternate reasoning as to why we have large backsides, I'm just not sure I buy the one given.

I heard the whole interview on Radio 5. He came across as very defensive which was a shame as some of what he had to say was informative. He would probably have been better just saying that humans are more heat resistant than given credit for rather than the talk about chasing antelopes.

you run ultras silver? can't see the attraction. I thought about running the comrades when I was 15-16, but I was 70-odd kilos then, 95kg now, and my body would simply consume too much energy even attempting it.

kingraf wrote:Have never seen anyone chase an antelope for eight hours. Not least in the sun... 7000 feet above sea level. Best I've seen is the  Namibian Khoi hunting game down, but there's an art to it, it's not mindless chasing which ends in exhaustion

Yeah I have seen that as well were a bunch of dudes run after and antelope like a relay team until the poor sod drops dead of exhaustion most amazing thing I ever seen. Apparently, antelope are sprinters and not built for endurance. But really this guy says some pretty ridiculous crap. Playing high level tennis in 107 heat and 80-90 percent humidity is the equivalent of playing in steam room especially with the heat that radiates off the surface. Still these guys are world class athletes and its always hot at the AO maybe not this hot they should train to these conditions. That being said they need to cut the players slack if they start overheating you can die from it. In this heat as umpire i would not enforce the time rule and let the players slow down and take a bit longer in the changes as well.

Wasn't that after he had poisoned it first from an arrow, then he and a few mates tracked it for two days while it slowly weakened ? I think that was a BBC programme. But sounds different to what you saw though.

Oh no, that was Ray Mears bushcraft, I remember it now.

No Jubba these guys use nothing, no arrows, no darts, no weapons at all. They just keep chasing the antelope in a pack like dogs or hyennas, if one guy gets tired another guy runs in to keep the pressure on and the antelope drops dead as it is a sprinter an not built to maintain it for long distances. Then as the antelope is laying their exhausted the guy takes out a little knife cuts its throat as it is laying their says a little prayer and starts cutting up the choice cuts right there in the bush.

Must note there are separate groups of indigenous hunters lads - The Khoi san, Okavangos, San, Khoi Khoi - They tend to get umbrella'd together, causing such confusion to arise.

Apparently Dr Tim Woodies has volunteered to be the first man to land on the sun. He says he will acclimatise himself by entering a furnace for 8 hours.

Okay this might be the youtube clip.  It involves a lot of walking. It lasts 8 hours so Doc Woodie has been watching Dave Attenborough. Get that hunter a tennis racket and lets see how he does at AO 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

Just two so far kingraf, one more planned later this year. It's my main sport with tennis, so it justifies the time. Tough to get the physical balance right between the two though, so I know what you mean.

When did you get the chance to see indigenous hunters? Sounds fascinating.

Nore Staat wrote:Okay this might be the youtube clip.  It involves a lot of walking.  It lasts 8 hours so Doc Woodie has been watching Dave Attenborough.  Get that hunter a tennis racket and lets see how he does at AO 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

According to tenez if you found the guy who ran the antelope gave him one of these new racquets with cheatalon strings and sent him to tennis camp for a few months in current conditions he would soon be world number 1 in the world

Ultras always sound like too much work - Almost like willful torture. Lots of respect to anyone who tries their hand at it. I've got fast-twitch fibres and over 200lbs to drag so I top out at around 10 miles... I can windmill dunk a basketball though, so I'm not too bothered.

My girlfriend is German-Namibian, so a year or so ago, we drove past a hunt on our way to visit her family. I caught sight of them at the Okavango, on a hot air ride during a stop over. I assume they were hunting big game, as they didn't seem especially rushed. The language barrier also meant I couldn't hope to know what was actually going on, so they may have just been browsing, so to speak.... Still a fantastic, if slightly voyeuristic experience. These weren't the khoisan of the Kalahari desert, however... And they are by all accounts the most impressive, drinking elephant faeces, chronologically dating dung, Judging the direction an animal went by becoming one with the prey... Pretty cool, maybe one day.

kingraf wrote:... These weren't the khoisan of the Kalahari desert, however... And they are by all accounts the most impressive, drinking elephant faeces, chronologically dating dung, Judging the direction an animal went by becoming one with the prey... Pretty cool, maybe one day.

Well they will be all swept away by "progress", "development" and globalisation ... unless they occupy a tourist niche perhaps ... or if the land is left alone to them (unlikely?).

Honestly I don't know but eating elephant sheet doesn't sound cool to me. But the again it can't be much worse than McDonald's

NS - yeah, they have land left to them... but the younger generations have begun demanding housing, and modern comforts from governments... fair enough I suppose - African geopolitics is a difficult matter, and "we came here first" is as good a reason as any to be granted housing electricity and some sneakers.

Tourism-wise the San present a bit of a chicken-egg situation for governments - Their presence is the reason anyone visits the Kalahari, but they arent going to stay there if you modernise it enough to take advantage of them.

SoCal - I must admit, drinking Ellie Poo doesn't quite leave me chomping at the bit, but with them it's part of the mystique I suppose.

I listened to this while driving to work and frankly, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. How the interviewer didn't just laugh at him I do not know.

Comparing hunter gatherer activities which are born out of necessity to a fully avoidable games of tennis, played for the enjoyment of the masses is beyond belief.

To suggest that evolution acts in time scales of a couple of thousand years is also stretching the point somewhat. Any longer than that as well and we are moving back into the last Ice Age which departed approximately 12,000 years ago. During that period you'd have done very well to have found temperatures exceeding 40 degrees anywhere on the planet.

So to summmarise, humans-beings are in no way shape or form evolved to spend 4 hours of the day in 45 degrees running around playing tennis or doing anything else for that matter.

If temperatures like that had been around long enough for us to have 'evolved' to adjust to it, I strongly suspect we'd look a lot different than we do now as would the Earth in general.

Ask yourself why you don't see people living in the middle of deserts?! Or in any areas of Earth where there are extreme temperatures. Most living things have a very small 'climate envelope' that we can tolerate. Outside of that and we simply move and follow that 'envelope'. I could go on but I won't bore you all.

Simply to say..that the one tennis player was right. They'll push them to someone dies.

socal1976 wrote:Honestly I don't know but eating elephant sheet doesn't sound cool to me. But the again it can't be much worse than McDonald's

LOL!

Nore Staat wrote:

kingraf wrote:My mate ran for eight hours in the African sun, through the rolling hills... He wasnt chasing antelopes or anything, merely running in the 90km Comrades ultra-marathon.... Primitive idiot.

Big buttocks.  There was an interesting paper a while back that suggested ancestral humans evolved big buttocks as an ergonometric solution (energy efficient) for long distance running.  Of course long distance running is not tennis (which uses so called fast twitch muscles etc - tennis relies a lot on power and explosive power to finish a point).

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041115/full/news041115-9.html
"In fact, running seems to be the only reason that we have prominent buttocks, says Lieberman. He has measured the activity of the gluteus maximus muscle in volunteers during a walk and a jog. "When they walk their glutes barely fire up," he says. "But when they run it goes like billy-o.""

... I haven't a clue what he means by "billi-o"

Thank god for evolution, I mean how would we film rap videos without the use of the prodigious backside?