They would, however, have gained endurance and become better adapted to persistence hunting.

Over the past 20 years, however, one of the only places where persistence hunting still occurs is in central Kalahari.

Persistence hunting must be performed during the day when it is hot, so that the animal will overheat.

Similarly, a Russian family that lived in isolation for 40 years also seems to have used persistence hunting due to a lack of weapons.

This causes problems for the hypothesis of persistence hunting and running to aid scavenging.

Persistence hunting is the use of running and tracking to pursue the prey to exhaustion.

In particular, these two tribes maximize the efficiency of persistence hunting by targeting specific species during different seasons.

Persistence hunting requires endurance running - running many miles for extended periods of time.

Pre-tool humans may have used persistence hunting universally to hunt prey.

Many question persistence hunting's plausibility when bow and arrow and other technology were so much more efficient.

Persistence hunting makes killing an animal easier by first bringing it to exhaustion, so that it can no longer retaliate violently.

Due to the complexity of following a fleeing animal, tracking methods must have been a prerequisite for the use of endurance running in persistence hunting.

The rare groups of hunters who do occasionally participate in persistence hunting are able to do so because of the extremely hot and open environments.

Bere is now one of the few places in the Central Kalahari where Persistence hunting is still practised.

Researchers have proposed that endurance running began for the purpose of scavenging and later evolved for the purpose of persistence hunting.

It is thought that the Tarahumara natives of northwestern Mexico in the Copper Canyon area may have also practiced persistence hunting.

This advanced method of tracking allowed for the exploitation of prey in a variety of terrains, making endurance running for persistence hunting more plausible.

To date it is unclear whether these activity cycles universally included prolonged endurance activity (e.g. persistence hunting) and/or shorter, higher intensity activity.

Although exact dates and methods of persistence hunting are difficult to study, several recent accounts of persistence hunting have been recorded.

Hunting hartebeests for survival is an ancient practice: persistence hunting in the hottest part of the day was most common, when hunters could catch the animal at its weakest point.

Persistence hunting is "a form of pursuit hunting in which humans use endurance running during the midday heat to drive animals into hyperthermia and exhaustion so they can easily be killed".

Due to the increased availability of weapons, nutrition, tracking devices, and motor vehicles, one may argue that persistence hunting is no longer an effective method of hunting animals for food.

The endurance running hypothesis suggests that bipedalism and running endurance in the Homo genus arose because travelling over large areas improved scavenging opportunities and allowed persistence hunting.

Among primates, endurance running is only seen in humans, and persistence hunting is thought to have been one of the earliest forms of human hunting, having evolved 2 million years ago.

It has been suggested that modern hunters in Africa do not use persistence hunting as a foraging method, and most often give up a chase where the trail they were following ends in vegetation.