r/BeAmazed • u/Dynastyisog • Dec 30 '24

History In 2006, researchers uncovered 20,000-year-old fossilized human footprints in Australia, indicating that the hunter who created them was running at roughly 37 km/h (23 mph)—the pace of a modern Olympic sprinter—while barefoot and traversing sandy terrain.

Post image
33.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

619

u/Red_Icnivad Dec 30 '24

I wonder what the margin of error is on that? Seems like slightly different body shapes could have drastically different effects on things like stride length.

26

u/scheav Dec 30 '24

I’ll bet the margin of error is 50%.

53

u/Appropriate-XBL Dec 30 '24

I’ll bet 25% since we’re just throwing random shit out there without having any idea what we’re talking about.

4

u/halt_spell Dec 30 '24

That doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about prehistoric footprint analysis to dispute it.