Persistence hunting only worked in areas with wide open terrain, like the African or American plains. Prey in the jungle or heavily wooded areas can just disappear into the underbrush and be gone. It doesn’t matter how far you can walk at that point, because you’ll never find that animal again.
homo sapiens evolved in the african plains and lived there for over 130,000 years before the main push out of africa. i think that qualifies as “a large part” of human evolution as the person above said.
You can’t keep a creature moving without rest if you have to stop to track it, and you can’t track over rock, hard soil, through water, and a variety of other terrains.
There will certainly be areas where the trail disappears, but tracking isn’t necessarily about locating every individual footfall.
With an understanding of movement and behavior, one can make inferences about where the animal went to find and follow the next sign.
Even moving over rock or packed soil, sign is left. You may not be able to perceive it yourself, but to someone who spends hours a day reading and studying the ground over the span of years, those subtle differences are perceptible.
An animal will eventually reach a place to stop and rest, but with repeated interruption that rest won’t count for much.
Persistence hunting only worked in areas with wide open terrain, like the African or American plains. Prey in the jungle or heavily wooded areas can just disappear into the underbrush and be gone. It doesn’t matter how far you can walk at that point, because you’ll never find that animal again.
homo sapiens evolved in the african plains and lived there for over 130,000 years before the main push out of africa. i think that qualifies as “a large part” of human evolution as the person above said.
Everything moving through a space leaves tracks or a trace
You can’t keep a creature moving without rest if you have to stop to track it, and you can’t track over rock, hard soil, through water, and a variety of other terrains.
Persistence hunters today do track their prey, and often have to guess where the prey may have gone when the tracks are lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=826HMLoiE_o
There will certainly be areas where the trail disappears, but tracking isn’t necessarily about locating every individual footfall.
With an understanding of movement and behavior, one can make inferences about where the animal went to find and follow the next sign.
Even moving over rock or packed soil, sign is left. You may not be able to perceive it yourself, but to someone who spends hours a day reading and studying the ground over the span of years, those subtle differences are perceptible.
An animal will eventually reach a place to stop and rest, but with repeated interruption that rest won’t count for much.