The Legendary History of the Two-Footed Earthrunners

By Sam Bosworth

The Legendary History of the Two-Footed Earth Runners (LH) took root as an art project about human’s original hunting weapon: running. An impulse by the author to paint a picture of primitive humans conducting a persistence hunt, as described in the bestseller Born to Run. As an artist rarely paints just one canvas, running has been told in many stories about the history and development of humanity, both good and bad, both individual and collective. More canvases of runners began filling the walls of the garage, with written descriptions of what was happening underneath them. Was all this for an art show? A book?

Human beings have been meat eaters for 2 million years. This is despite the fact our oldest weapons are 500,000 years old. How on earth did we get meat for 1.5 million years without weapons? In a nutshell,

humans lost their chimp fur, developed the ability to sweat, started growing snappy Achilles tendons,

and began jogging about, is how it happened. The fur-covered, non-sweating herd animals that covered the Savanna instinctively ran away from these running bipeds, but soon ran into a problem. These erect, furless chimpanzees just didn’t stop running! As the spooked antelope overheated and died, our ancestors took notice and started eating their carcasses. When we ate meat, our species grew bigger brains, more muscle, and got taller. We ran to get which made us better. In other words, human beings evolved to run.

As we perfected our ability to track animals’ habits in order to hunt them, human beings learned to recognize cause and effect, and developed the scientific method. Humans evolved to run, and through running, evolved their thought process. LH examines the role running has played in the development of humanity during primitive times, during antiquity, and how since the beginning of the industrial revolution up to present day, most adult human beings have lost any real ability to run.

Look at what happens to an animal over time when it was created to do something and it does not do it anymore. What happens when this unfulfilled creature is still on top of the world? Is this why humanity has had a barrage of new ailments unleashed on what was supposed to be a relaxing twenty-first century (anxiety, depression, heart disease, diabetes), as well as harming the human perspective with regards to things like technology and war.

The Legendary History of the Two-Footed Earth Runners was written under the notion that humans can remove most of their maladies and extend the life of the earth with a return to running. Knowledge about where we came from delivered by art can inspire humans to do better.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649522719

Book preview

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The Legendary History of the Two-Footed Earthrunners

Sam Bosworth

Copyright © 2020 Sam Bosworth

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books, Inc.

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2020

ISBN 978-1-64952-270-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63710-159-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64952-271-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

No Human Is Limited

Winter of the Earth Home

Wrung-Out, Shaken, and Drop-Kicked into Space

The End of or the Escape from Babylon

Instinct

Zeus and Hera playing Paleo Pinball

Early Inventors

Golden Age

Sports

Sunday Funday at the Olympics

A Brief Evolution of War as It Relates to Running

American Revolution

Ancient Modern Run Conundrums

Stress/Muscle Tension Connection

Thermoregulation

Sedentary Fireplace

Perimeter Maintenance = Mother Nature’s Xanax

Running as Teacher

Recalibrate the Fight/Flight Mechanism

Parenting an Achilles

School Shooting Scenario

Logical Inferences

Preface

The Legendary History of the Two-Footed Earth Runners sprang out of my educated, focused imagination. This brook of ideas and images bubbled out of my running, reading, watching videos, and drawing pictures about other people’s running; and having discussions about how everybody’s running connects various aspects of human history and development. My artistic/literary inspirations for this book came from Homer, Herodotus, William Blake, Sunzi, J. R. Tolkien, Vincent Van Gogh, Dr. Seuss, and the Joe Rogan podcast.

Toward the beginning of my running career (using the term loosely), Christopher McDougal wrote a book called Born to Run. Among many delightful topics and anecdotes, this book cast widespread light on the research done by a team of evolutionary biologists that essentially stated human beings evolved as running animals—using their furless, sweating bodies to literally run furry, non-sweating animals to death for the purpose of eating them. This practice, while nearly obsolete, bankrolled early man for over a million years. We ran and ate the meat that started dying before our feet. As we did, we got smarter, stronger, did and are doing many spectacular things as a species.

Within the model of evolution, all creatures have a (1) beginning/rise, (2) a prime/climax, and (3) a decline/end. So humans evolved to run. Cool theory with a clear upside and a clear downside. Upside—it’s within our natural-born abilities to run. Downside—most people can’t do it anymore. What happens when the dominant animal in an ecosystem doesn’t do what it’s designed to? Look around… This does.

The human species began to take shape six million years ago, when a drought hit the African Savanah, killing many trees and forcing the creatures that dwelt in them to attempt life on the ground. Among these were a band of chimpanzees. The formation of humans occurred when these creatures developed running as a consistent hunting tool and spread across Africa, into Greece, Europe, and Asia. The climax of human development is symbolized by various times and places—ancient Egypt, Greece, China, Japan, and the European renaissance, as well as various long-standing indigenous cultures. The physical decline of the two-footed earthrunner took root during the industrial revolution and was punctuated by two events: the ongoing destruction of said indigenous cultures, and the double-demonstration the atomic bomb.

Introduction

On October 12, 2019, Eliud Kipchoge became the first human being to run a marathon (26.2 miles) in under two hours. Humans began the work and specialized training to run this remarkable time prior to the 1896 London Olympics, with the marathon itself being held to commemorate the historic run of Pheidippides. Really though, it began much, much further back in time.

No human is limited. Together when we run, we can make this a beautiful world. It shows the positivity of sport. I want to make an interesting sport whereby all humans can run and we can make this world a beautiful world.

The words of Eliud Kipchoge upon crossing the finish line resonated with me. Half a lifetime ago, I made an abrupt transformation from a painter to runner. The