Extensive locomotor versatility across a global sample of hunter-gatherer societies

Studies of hunter-gatherer locomotion inform a wide range of academic fields, from human behavioural ecology and hominin evolution to sports science and evolutionary health. Despite celebrated ethnographic examples of hunter-gatherer locomotor proficiency in running, climbing, swimming and diving, there has been limited systematic analysis of cross-cultural variation in hunter-gatherer locomotor versatility. We conducted a systematic cross-cultural analysis of hunter-gatherer locomotion, coding locomotor behaviour from over 900 ethnographic documents. Our results indicated that high levels of locomotor versatility are common among hunter-gatherers, and that proficiency of running, climbing, swimming and diving is found in societies across the geographical and ecological breadth of the sample. Each locomotor modality was found to be relevant not only to food acquisition but also in leisure, ritual and violent conflict. Our results also indicated the prevalence of both male and female engagement within each locomotor modality, with climbing being the only modality to possess a notable bias towards male engagement in a substantial proportion of societies. The widespread habituality and functional significance of diverse locomotor proficiency in hunter-gatherers suggests that locomotor versatility represents a dimension of human adaptive lability, playing a major role in the ability of hunter-gatherers to thrive in almost every global ecology.