Our ability to experience exercise-induced euphoria is linked to our earliest ancestors’ lives as hunters, scavengers, and foragers. As biologist Dennis Bramble and paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman write, “Today, endurance running is primarily a form of exercise and recreation, but its roots may be as ancient as the origin of the human genus.” The neurochemical state that makes running gratifying may have originally served as a reward to keep early humans hunting and gathering. What we call the runner’s high may even have encouraged our ancestors to cooperate and share the spoils of a
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