Most folks can’t run 5k, let alone run for 24 hours.
It is actually remarkable how quickly we can go from “untrained, can barely go down to the shop on foot without a racing heart” to running being barely a problem (unfortunately to many — it really is hard to burn more energy than what you normally eat with even quite long runs, we are that energy efficient at that).
But the actual point is that people before the agricultural revolution was more than fit enough for that, and evolutionarily speaking that is no time at all, so.. yes, not even being trained from childhood, just deciding to train for that hard, most people could definitely do that.
In death marches, such as in WWII, even many starving prisoners, walking from dawn to dusk, with beatings, lasted for days on the trail.
The Americans and Filipinos on the Bataan Deathmarch are one example:
>The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to various camps was 65 miles long.
For the British there was The Burma Rail: >Camp Nong Pladuk was initially used as a transit camp from where the prisoners were transported or had to walk to work camps along the Burma Railway.
And of course, the Jews and other victims of the Nazis were often force marched.
My great great grandmother returned to her Volga German village in Russia after the rise of the Soviets, was arrested, sent to Siberia, where she worked in a camp for 7 years until her death from malnutrition and other neglects. And she was a grandmother at the time.
I'm not disputing this, but the response was that humans can't generally outrun a horse. Which is true. The average human will not be able to outrun the average horse.
The average human can't fix a toilet.
Because we specialise so much, average human can't do anything, but a trained human cam do everything.
Whereas a horse is mostly always a horse.
> How long does it take to train for marathon? Most marathon training plans range from 12 to 20 weeks. Beginning marathoners should aim to build their weekly mileage up to 50 miles over the four months leading up to race day.
So even untrained couch potatoes could learn in 4 month to run a marathon. (And indeed many do and test themselves that way.)
Training plans do last that long but jumping into a marathon training block from nothing is a very quick path to being injured.