[HN Gopher] Scientists Retrace 30k-Year-Old Sea Voyage, in a Hol...
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Scientists Retrace 30k-Year-Old Sea Voyage, in a Hollowed-Out Log
Author : benbreen
Score : 38 points
Date : 2025-06-25 22:29 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| raincom wrote:
| https://archive.is/TzZZB
| flowmerchant wrote:
| Some might think why have the females in a physically exhausting
| endurance effort? In a canoe, females lower center of gravity
| helps tremendously. And for many hours of continuous paddling,
| often males will have mental break down before the females. The
| Texas Water Safari is an endurance canoe race starting in San
| Marcos, similar to this crossing with regards to duration, effort
| required. The winning boat this year had two females. Ask any
| racer in that comparator, they will agree with regards to the
| anatomy and mental differences with regards to men and women.
| rob_c wrote:
| I'm not denying your chosen cherry picked example, but at what
| level is that biased by looking to support an argument?
|
| Most triathlons are probably won by men and global exploratory
| voyages were first accomplished by men...
|
| Not saying your wrong I'm asking what I'm missing?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > global exploratory voyages were first accomplished by
| men...
|
| This assumption seems strange. How do you think polynesians
| spread without both men and women?
|
| If you're referring to the european age of exploration, they
| weren't rowing much at that point, rendering sex mostly
| irrelevant.
| bluGill wrote:
| once they get there they go back and return with women
| would be a reasonable guess. All a guess though as AFAIK we
| have no idea why they left or who was on the initial trips,
| only that eventually they made it
| abeppu wrote:
| The actual article from the researchers discusses their
| choices:
|
| > The boat was paddled by a mixed team consisting of four men
| (paddlers) and one woman (steerer), without replacement by
| other paddlers on the way. The inclusion of both men and women
| is essential because our focus is ancient migration, not men's
| adventure. An unstable, round-bottomed dugout required skilled
| paddlers to control it on the open sea. Furthermore, because
| this type of boat does not travel in a straight direction but
| instead snakes its way, the skill of the steerer is crucial for
| optimizing its performance. Considering these factors, we
| invited professional and semi-professional sea kayakers as the
| paddlers and steerer.
|
| And ... this wasn't a race? Perhaps 5 women could have gotten
| there faster, but speed wasn't the primary goal.
|
| I don't know anything about paddle sports specifically, but I
| have seen a discussion about sex differences in performance in
| other endurance sports, and one important distinction is that
| women as a group can have average pace times that are faster
| than men as a group, even when most of the outright winners are
| men.
|
| https://archive.is/5nx7X#selection-4259.0-4259.255
|
| https://trainright.com/women-faster-than-men-ultramarathon/
| lostlogin wrote:
| If you look at longer distances, women seem to perform better
| than men. Ultra endurance sports is where you see this.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/30/the-
| lon...
| abeppu wrote:
| That's literally not what that soecific article says:
|
| > While men still hold the edge, women's rapid progress
| suggests a future where they may outperform men in extreme
| endurance events.
| yzydserd wrote:
| This claim, and study which underpins the claims, was
| covered on the BBC More or Less Podcast last year. One of
| the main problems with the stat is that in ultramarathons
| there are very few women, but those that do enter are
| typically professional ultra-athletes, not "have a go"
| females. Whereas the field contains many "have a go" men
| who are less professional and less fit than the
| professional ultra-athlete men.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hg2764 (9 minute
| episode).
| jeffrallen wrote:
| [delayed]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I have seen a discussion about sex differences in
| performance in other endurance sports, and one important
| distinction is that women as a group can have average pace
| times that are faster than men as a group, even when most of
| the outright winners are men.
|
| Why is that important? Unless the runners are conscripted
| into the race, it's not telling you anything about women or
| men.
|
| Your second link notes this explicitly:
|
| >> What the data actually means is that after 195 miles the
| average pace of all women competing is better than the
| average pace of all the men competing. Why is this the case?
| Math and demographics (not physiology and toughness). In any
| athletic user group, the early adopters are also higher
| performers. Take the people who pioneered skateboarding, or
| adventure racing as an example. Those early adopters were
| good at the sport they were trying to push the boundaries. As
| a sport becomes more and more popular, the number of non-
| elites grows much faster than the number of elites.
| Therefore, even though the best times and performances
| improve (by way of a course or world record) the average
| times get worse. Ultrarunning is no different.
| abeppu wrote:
| > Why is that important? Unless the runners are conscripted
| into the race, it's not telling you anything about women or
| men
|
| It's not saying something about _all_ men or women. If you
| did try to work with a random sample wouldn't you mainly
| find that almost all people of both sexes can't run an
| ultra marathon?
|
| But in making comparative statements even about people who
| choose to participate in such races, I think a critical
| distinction made in that article is that there's a
| difference between "E(Pace_W) < E(Pace_M)" vs
| "Min(TotalTime_W) <? Min(TotalTime_M)".
|
| The earlier anecdote was making a statement about who won a
| canoe race and using it as evidence of a group level
| difference ... But race winners are the extreme end of the
| distribution and are poor information about the overall
| behavior.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| If you know the extreme values, the shape of the
| distribution ["normal"], and the number of samples [for a
| competitive task, generally taken to be the entire
| population; not so much for e.g. quilting bees], you know
| the overall behavior. The extreme end of the distribution
| _is_ evidence of a group-level difference, and very high-
| quality evidence.
|
| Compare http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/dogrun.htm :
|
| >> How, for example, do we determine a distribution of
| running ability within an entire population? Can we find
| a representative sample of tribesmen, provide each with
| motivation and training, and finally measure their times
| for some event? Not very likely. There is, however, a way
| out. In Aggressiveness, Criminality and Sex Drive by
| Race, Gender and Ethnicity, we introduced the method of
| thresholds. It applies nicely to this problem. The
| proportion of each tribe meeting or exceeding some
| threshold of performance is the only input it requires.
| When all is said and done, the precise definition of
| "ability" will still be fuzzy, a characteristic of the
| method of thresholds. That aside, we will have
| established running ability distributions in tribes
| relative to one another.
|
| >> Some of the data we need are available from
| chroniclers of track and field. All-time-best lists are
| particularly useful. For a given event, such a list might
| contain 100, 500, 1500 or any number of the best times
| ever run. The slowest time on a list serves as the
| threshold of performance required by the method of
| thresholds.
|
| > If you did try to work with a random sample wouldn't
| you mainly find that almost all people of both sexes
| can't run an ultra marathon?
|
| No, you'd find that people managed to go different
| distances before failing. You would have to be
| intentionally avoiding the result you expected to find to
| binarize your outcome data like that. The data you're
| appealing to right now isn't binarized.
|
| > But in making comparative statements even about people
| who choose to participate in such races, I think a
| critical distinction made in that article is that there's
| a difference between "E(Pace_W) < E(Pace_M)" vs
| "Min(TotalTime_W) <? Min(TotalTime_M)".
|
| The article itself provides the explanation: there are
| very, very few women running. What lesson do you feel we
| should draw? To me it looks like the lesson is "men are a
| lot more interested in distance running than women are".
| notfed wrote:
| From where to where exactly did this experimental voyage take
| place?
|
| > Dr. Kaifu noted that the islands could be spied from the top of
| one of Taiwan's coastal mountains, indicating intentional travel
|
| Image?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I couldn't find one from Taiwan looking out, but here's the
| opposite view, looking at the mountains of Taiwan:
|
| http://english.ryukyushimpo.jp/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Yo...
| Luc wrote:
| Here you go, figure 6:
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00438243.2022.2...
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