The reason for this: The best sprinters in the world come from West Africa. Say what you want, this is simply true. I'm going to go through a series of logical steps, and I would like you to see if I can get you to agree with my conclusion<p>The biggest time survival of the fittest comes into play is during a war. When a war happens, the people unfit to fight in the war get pruned out of the gene pool.<p>West Africa has a landscape that is different from most of the world - the bush. The bush is what happens when humans live near a jungle - they trim down the trees, and low vegetation tends to grow. In East Africa, you tend to have savannah and grasslands which can be walked through. You cannot walk through a bush.<p>West African wars have tradditionally been fought with machetes. Not with spears, not with guns, not with swords, but with Machetes. A machete is a proximity instrument, and the best way to defeat someone in a machete fight is to be the one to strike first.<p>A west African war looks this way - all the men paint themselves in black, and walk at night through the bushes till they are near a village. A village is usually cleared of grass and bush, so there is no cover. When a whistle is sounded, the men burst out of the bush and run at high speed towards the village, winning the war by force.<p>The men in the village have a few seconds to prepare, and they do so by grabbing their machetes and running as quick as possible away, then circling back.<p>Traditional west African wars are high speed dashes with heavy instruments, in the night, and with lots of fire. It's the perfect enviroment to have gene pool selection for dashes.<p>Contrast this with East Africa, where the savannag lead to Bows & Arrows and Spears being used as war weapons.