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The topography explains it all. https://geology.com/articles/east-africa-rift.shtml
tl;dr The people of that area in East Africa naturally live close to sea level, however there are easily accessible elevations changes that distance runners have trained on for probably centuries. It turns out that training at high altitudes and recovering at low altitudes provides a tangible and demonstrable advantage compared to just single elevation training.
This can't be the whole story, otherwise we'd see places like Chile, Peru, and India competing too
India? the sea and the himalayas are too far apart to compare.
India's Deccan Plateau is about as elevated as most of Kenya's highlands and takes up basically the entire land area of India that sticks out into the ocean
The air sucks in India too
No idea about the other two, but India's sports administration is corrupt to the core. Funds are stolen by those on top, and athletes who complain - even about obviously criminal things like sexual assault - are pushed out. Some sports bodies (chess, for example) are better, but the big ones (cricket, wrestling, football) are mostly bad.
Yeah like the other commenter said this isn’t it, nobody is commuting up and down 10,000’ on a regular basis, especially in antiquity. Just because different elevations “look close” on a map means nothing.
Far more likely is this is a concentrated population of folks with highly desirable traits for distance running.
The school of thought has generally changed.
Live high, train low is now the prevailing methodology.
That’s good. I thought the map was being racist
The map is being racist by labelling Canada, Morocco and USA but not the super-relevant African countries. I'm baffled by that...
Like, I don't think it's intentional but how does that happen?
I didn’t really notice that. Oh shit, am I racist?
You're better off than many if you already know which countries those are without the labels
Maps aren't racist. Map owners are racist. Map creators are just filling demand.
(replace "maps" with "dogs" and "racist" with "at fault for dog eugenics")