• TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    480km through mountains in two days

    Lol, my man was running 10 kilometers per hour for 48 hours straight?

    Like with anything in Ancient Greek history, the numbers they quote are typically meaningless. The amount of exaggeration or straight up lying they did back then would make kim jong il blush.

    • deft@lemmy.wtf
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      3 months ago

      I’m sure they’re lying but running an average of 10 kilometers per hour over 48 hours isn’t insane

      Usain Bolt’s top speed is 44 kilometers per hour. Maybe the dude wasn’t that fast or running top speed the whole time but his job was running a lot I’m sure he was fast as fuck.

      So maybe it averaged out and it was only exaggerated a little bit?

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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        3 months ago

        They have ultra marathons where you run for 24 hours straight, and this guy would have smoked the current record holder going over rough terrain.

        People in general are more athletic nowadays, but our top athletes are basically inhuman compared to athletes from 75 years ago, let alone 2000 years.

        It’s most likely a straight up lie, or exaggerated by several multitudes. Ancient “historians” are pretty famous for exaggerating things to make things look more heroic.

        For example Herodotus claimed Xerxes led an invasion force of over 5 million people, in reality it was more like 100k-300k. This was well known even as far back as the Roman, who called Herodotus both the father of history and the father of lies.