I can believe it. I’m curious what typical body types were like in the hunter/gather societies human evolved in, and whether those are ideal for longevity and quality of life in modern society.
The kind of hunt that humans are believed to have practiced early on was persistence hunting, which consists of chasing prey over long distances until they are exhausted (the gazelle can outrun any human on a scale of minutes, but not on a scale of hours).
> and whether those are ideal for longevity and quality of life in modern society
This seems like the real question to me; I assume pre-agrarian humans were biologically optimizing to survive famine. Not being an expert on the subject, I wonder what sort of tradeoffs are associated with intense exercise regimes (and how the balance ultimately comes out with respect to modern society).
Lacking in raw physical power by comparison, sure. But what health issues do we avoid? Do new health issues arise? Optimality in a complex environment is inevitably a nontrivial trade off; we aren't forced to hunt animals with primitive weapons or contend with widespread famine in the modern world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
If that is the case then the body type would have been low mass overall, like marathoners.
As for best body type for quality of life today (at least from a health perspective), that seems relatively aligned.