持久走と持久ダイビング――どちらが先だったのか？（Endurance running or endurance diving – which came first?）

2026-09-23

2026-09-17 マックス・プランク研究所

マックス・プランク研究所などの研究者は、人類が優れた持久力を獲得した進化過程について、従来の「持久走が先行した」という説に加え、浅海での反復的な息こらえ潜水が重要だった可能性を示す「潜水が先、走行が後」という仮説を提唱した。現代人の潜水能力、比較生理学、解剖学、古生態学、人類化石を総合的に検討し、約300万～200万年前の沿岸環境で水産資源を採取する選択圧が、呼吸・循環機能や骨量の進化に影響した可能性を論じている。重い骨は浅海での浮力制御に有利な一方、走行には不利であるため、初期ホモの骨格差が異なる生態的適応を反映する可能性も指摘する。ただし著者らは持久走仮説を否定せず、今後、化石人類学と生理学を組み合わせた検証が必要としている。

A Sama-Bajau woman hunting for fish at shallow depths. To stay submerged, she exhales air from her lungs to reduce buoyancy. Note that she dives without any freediving equipment, except for home-made wooden goggles. © Erika Schagatay

＜関連情報＞

まず潜水、それから走った？　人類の進化における持久潜水の役割 Dive First, Run Later? The Role of Endurance Diving in Human Evolution

JOSEPHINE JOORDENS,ERIKA SCHAGATAY
PaleoAnthropology Published:17 September 2026

Abstract

Unlike any other primate, humans are characterized by having exceptional physical stamina, as shown by our aptitude for endurance running but also for breath-hold diving underwater. Why are humans so different from other apes? Aerobic endurance and adaptation to a wide range of environments have apparently helped humans to spread globally and thrive from seacoasts to high altitudes, while our closest living relatives are mostly confined to tropical forests. This wide dispersal likely started—or intensified—with early Homo populations around 3 to 2 million years ago (Ma). A long-standing hypothesis to explain our stamina is that an ancestral Homo population evolved as persistence-hunting endurance runners, like todays San and Rarámuri populations, in response to increasingly dry conditions in Africa after ~3–2 Ma. However, this hypothesis does not address the origin of the remarkable breath-hold diving capacity displayed by many human populations today, such as the Sama-Bajau and the Ama divers, or our ability to adapt to different environments. To fill this gap, we use comparative physiology and anatomy, paleoecology, and paleoanthropology to explore how insights in our breath-hold diving ability may help us understand how humans could have developed endurance running and a remarkable tolerance of life at high altitude. Based on these insights, we propose an alternative hypothesis, ‘dive first, run later’: a coastal Homo population expanded its niche to include foraging for aquatic resources by breath-hold diving, thereby evolving ‘heavy bones’ (increased bone mass) to provide neutral buoyancy at foraging depth. The enhanced cardiorespiratory functions that also evolved for efficient underwater foraging could later be co-opted for endurance running by more gracile and light-boned Homo, as well as for life at high-altitude. Testing hypotheses is outside the scope of this paper, but we do provide examples of possible future research approaches by discussing an array of features that leave traces in the skeleton, and have functional implications for endurance diving as well as running. Our more extensive interpretations of their functionality provide nuclei for further research to ultimately allow balanced evaluation of the hypotheses. We conclude that when studying the origin of human endurance and the evolutionary history of the Homo sapiens lineage, it is relevant and imperative to take not only endurance running but also endurance diving into account.