Across the dense forests of the Congo, the sunlit islands of the Pacific, and the icy reaches of the Arctic, the few remaining hunter-gatherers have thrived thanks to their astonishing athleticism. A new study led by George Brill and colleagues from the University of Cambridge reveals that hunter-gatherer societies worldwide practiced an extraordinary range of locomotory behaviors. These include walking, running, swimming, diving, and climbing.
One of the most intriguing findings was that men and women across these communities possess shared proficiency in running, climbing, swimming, and diving. These findings dismantle the long-standing myth that physical prowess and specific locomotor skills were the domain of one gender over the other.
“High levels of locomotor versatility are not only common but also generally egalitarian,” the researchers noted.
From the Forest Canopies to the Ocean Depths
Across the globe, hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate a breathtaking array of movement strategies. In Southeast Asia, Bajau women spend hours diving for fish, just as their male counterparts do. Among the Mbuti of Central Africa, men and women alike scale towering trees in search of honey. Even in the Arctic, Copper Inuit women take part in long-distance runs for hunting expeditions alongside the men.
The study, which analyzed over 900 ethnographic records, highlights that although slight biases occasionally exist — such as men being more frequently documented as climbers — the overwhelming trend is one of shared engagement. Women often take part in swimming and diving activities, and in some cases, their skills even surpass those of men. For example, in the Yahgan community of Tierra del Fuego, women were the primary swimmers and divers, while men struggled in the water and sometimes required rescue.
Athleticism Beyond Stereotypes
Climbing, running, and swimming also played roles in rituals, leisure, and even courtship. In some societies, footraces determined marriage prospects, with young men competing to win favor. Yet these displays of physical ability often mirrored cooperative engagements between genders rather than competitions to dominate.
“Both male and female individuals were consistently reported to engage in each locomotor modality,” the study notes. Only climbing showed a moderate male bias, largely attributed to cultural taboos around women climbing tall trees in specific societies.
Modern perceptions of gendered athleticism often trace back to historical stereotypes, yet this study reveals a very different story: one of equality and shared physical resilience. It reminds us that the human story has always been one of collective adaptability, where survival depended not on division but on cooperation and mutual capability, regardless of gender.
“The locomotor condition of H. sapiens is set upon the stage of a fundamentally bipedal morphology that has remained largely unchanged for the last two million years. Our results suggest that, far from being the domain of only isolated specialists, habitual non-bipedal locomotion — often to high levels of proficiency and of primary economic importance — and indeed, locomotor versatility across each terrestrial, arboreal and aquatic domains, is widespread among human hunter-gatherers,” the researchers concluded.
The findings appeared in the journal Royal Society B.
