Associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. Human biologist, biological anthropologist, feminist human evolution, sports enthusiast.
https://sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/
Cara Ocobock
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New Publication!
The 9+ month marathon: How pregnancy may have shaped human endurance capacities
This was tough to write & a bit terrifying, if I am honest. Fortunately, it is fully open access, so all can read and critique. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
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Anthropology has long considered the evolution of our uniquely human endurance capacities to be the result of selection upon anatomical and physiological features imposed by the demands of thermoregu...
Why am I a bit terrified sharing this? Well, it seems anytime females are centered as a driving force in human evolution there is a vehement backlash. I have girded myself for the coming onslaught.
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Finally, I present how this idea could be tested & some potentially more fruitful routes for inquiry. For example, it is fairly well established, though it could be more thorough, that cardiac, respiratory, and metabolic changes associated with pregnancy are rather consistent across mammals.
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However, what is less well knows is what genes and subsequent physiological pathways/regulation are similar between pregnancy and endurance. There should also be a comparative examination across endurance mammals and endurance birds.
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I then move to how this may have come about evolutionarily. The development of striding bipedalism lead to pregnancy-related physiological processes being co-opted for endurance capacities. I lay out why this would be true for females & males.
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A ton of work is going to need doing to test this hypothesis, & my hope is this paper will inspire people across disciplines to pursue this intriguing line of inquiry.
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In sum, I propose the physiology that fuels our unique endurance capacities as humans is an exaptation of underlying pregnancy physiology. To be completely transparent, this paper presents an idea and not a formal test of that idea.
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Cara Ocobock
Cara Ocobock
Anthropological research on subsistence is offered in the dangerous and authoritarian “report” on the humanities as a key example of supposed ideological weakening of scholarship. This critique begins to show how the key example cited actually proves the opposite. Let’s go into it in some depth 1/
