This last year after watching the Winter Olympics I found out what the performance characteristics of well conditioned skiers were. Seems they can go DOWNHILL on the standard courses at about 65 MPH average speed, and UPHILL on the same courses at about 5 MPH. No doubt there are individuals and hills where the actual results vary from these figures but over 50 kilometers, that's what I derived from the race records.
Now that's pretty good and explains something very important ~ cheetas can go faster for a short distance. Reindeer can actually get up to that speed for a good long time. Wolves are much slower (35 MPH tops), and so on.
Turns out a man on skis on snow can outperform every animal that can run on or in snow! But it's not just "outperform", a man can simply go to the top of a hill and ski down into the midst of a herd of animals in a valley and have his take of the herd ~ most likely without breaking a sweat.
I was looking for a reason why human beings could have moved into subarctic regions dominated by wolves and bears, and there it was ~ clear as day ~ people were the top predators! They could move faster than the wolves or bears AND, best of all, take game at a very high percentage of attempts ~ thereby starving out the bears and wolves and leaving the herds to the people!
BTW, I predict that someday they'll find a Neandertal with skis.
Ridiculous!
Everyone knows Neanderthals were snowboarders...