This bodes poorly for modern man's STHF chances ...

[xsquidgator]

Just saw this story on Drudge.  If the lights went out for loong time after some disaster, as a society our bodies seem poorly-prepared for the rigors of a pre-industrial lifestyle!  (I resemble that remark).

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59D0BR20091014?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11604&sp=true

Modern man a wimp says anthropologist


By John Mehaffey

LONDON (Reuters) - Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 meters record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.

Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.

Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.

These and other eye-catching claims are detailed in a book by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister entitled "Manthropology" and provocatively sub-titled "The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male."

McAllister sets out his stall in the opening sentence of the prologue.

"If you're reading this then you -- or the male you have bought it for -- are the worst man in history.

"No ifs, no buts -- the worst man, period...As a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet."

Delving into a wide range of source material McAllister finds evidence he believes proves that modern man is inferior to his predecessors in, among other fields, the basic Olympic athletics disciplines of running and jumping.

His conclusions about the speed of Australian aboriginals 20,000 years ago are based on a set of footprints, preserved in a fossilized claypan lake bed, of six men chasing prey.

FLEET-FOOTED ABORIGINALS

An analysis of the footsteps of one of the men, dubbed T8, shows he reached speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. Bolt, by comparison, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his then world 100 meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year's Beijing Olympics.

In an interview in the English university town of Cambridge where he was temporarily resident, McAllister said that, with modern training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 45 kph.

"We can assume they are running close to their maximum if they are chasing an animal," he said.

"But if they can do that speed of 37 kph on very soft ground I suspect there is a strong chance they would have outdone Usain Bolt if they had all the advantages that he does.

"We can tell that T8 is accelerating toward the end of his tracks."

McAllister said it was probable that any number of T8's contemporaries could have run as fast.

"We have to remember too how incredibly rare these fossilizations are," he said. "What are the odds that you would get the fastest runner in Australia at that particular time in that particular place in such a way that was going to be preserved?"

Turning to the high jump, McAllister said photographs taken by a German anthropologist showed young men jumping heights of up to 2.52 meters in the early years of last century.

STARK DECLINE

"It was an initiation ritual, everybody had to do it. They had to be able to jump their own height to progress to manhood," he said.

"It was something they did all the time and they lived very active lives from a very early age. They developed very phenomenal abilities in jumping. They were jumping from boyhood onwards to prove themselves."

McAllister said a Neanderthal woman had 10 percent more muscle bulk than modern European man. Trained to capacity she would have reached 90 percent of Schwarzenegger's bulk at his peak in the 1970s.

"But because of the quirk of her physiology, with a much shorter lower arm, she would slam him to the table without a problem," he said.

Manthropology abounds with other examples:

* Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.

* Athens employed 30,000 rowers who could all exceed the achievements of modern oarsmen.

* Australian aboriginals threw a hardwood spear 110 meters or more (the current world javelin record is 98.48).

McAllister said it was difficult to equate the ancient spear with the modern javelin but added: "Given other evidence of Aboriginal man's superb athleticism you'd have to wonder whether they couldn't have taken out every modern javelin event they entered."

Why the decline?

"We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. "These people were much more robust than we were.

"We don't see that because we convert to what things were like about 30 years ago. There's been such a stark improvement in times, technique has improved out of sight, times and heights have all improved vastly since then but if you go back further it's a different story.

"At the start of the industrial revolution there are statistics about how much harder people worked then.

"The human body is very plastic and it responds to stress. We have lost 40 percent of the shafts of our long bones because we have much less of a muscular load placed upon them these days.

"We are simply not exposed to the same loads or challenges that people were in the ancient past and even in the recent past so our bodies haven't developed. Even the level of training that we do, our elite athletes, doesn't come close to replicating that.

"We wouldn't want to go back to the brutality of those days but there are some things we would do well to profit from."

[WeTheArmed.com]

[RevDisk]

LONDON (Reuters) - Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 meters record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.

Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.

Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.

Ok, and a broken arm or leg meant death or a crippled limb to all three of those.  How high can you jump when you are friggin dead?

Man has always been at a physical disadvantage to nature.  So what?  In combat, one modern soldier could probably take out a few dozen prehistoric Australian aboriginals, Tutsi men, or Neanderthal women.  Why?  Because we play to OUR advantage.  Intelligence.   Physical ability is not everything.

[Feud]

Even if I can't out arm wrestle a neanderthal woman or out race a prehistoric aborigine, I'd still much rather be a modern man.

Why?  Cause modern man's brain has gone through thousands of years of conditioning to be able to learn, adapt, and create.  I might not be able to throw a spear as far or row a boat as fast as ancestors.  But I know how to make and use a bow and arrows, and even if I can't fix a boat's engine I don't think that I'll need to help sail a trimaran against the Persians anytime soon.

The article is interesting, but the thesis is silly.  Modern man inherently sissies any more than ancient man was inherently retarded.  We are just adapted to our situations and the tools and knowledge available.

[Irwin]

What he hasnt taken into account is they may be supperiour specimens well at least in his eyes, that we invented the gun for a reason, to kill the natives and take their stuff. Seriously though who gives 2 hoots if you can jump twice your hight? They make ladders for a reason, also chassing a animal probably means they are hungry and thats as good a motivation as any, also how far did they run for?

So much for only the strongest survive, those with the gun do 

[Coronach]

OK, so neanderthals, aboriginals, and tribesmen in africa could kick our arses.

They're still extinct or living in mud huts. There are reasons for that.

Sure, they're better at living a primitive lifestyle than we are. That's an advantage if you're living a primitive lifestyle. However, unlike them, we have the capability to NOT live a primitive lifestyle. That's tremendously better. This is not a racial comment, btw. The differences in intelligence between different races is basically inconsequential. The differences are in education and social development.

What's worth noting is that this is not universal. "Advanced people" like the western societies don't magically know everything they need to survive. Witness the occasional idiot that uses GPS and gets off the beaten path and dies. Some western people live like savages in our midst. however, on the whole, my money would be on modern western man in a pinch.

Mike

[Harm]

Sorry I could care less about that stuff.  Yeah it's cool they were tough, but no matter how tough they were they still died from a LOT of things we just shrug off today. 

Additionally the assumption that if we have a SHTF event we'll immediately revert back to primitive lifestyles.  Thats the beauty of intelligence.  As soon as we learn something we can build, and rebuild and continue to develop.  So the world ends tommorow.  Within 4 years man is rebuilding in some semblance of what the pre-existing order was.  Maybe not the same extent but...

Great example is the Romans.  The roman empire fell.  But many of their basic skills such as roads and buildings were maintained, just look to the British Isles.  No one empire after Rome had need of so large an expanse of roadways but internally withing their country yes. 

[Khorne]

In a true SHTF scenario, anarchy wouldn't last that long at all.  The thing about anarchy is, it falls apart too easily.  Yes, there will be a short time of very terrible conditions, but man will quickly reorganize back to a livable level.  That level may well be far below what they had before, but we'd come up with something.

[Plebian]

This guy is a damn retard. There has a been a trade off of more brain capacity to lessened physical ability since Hominids first started. It is apparently a pretty good evolutionary adaptation since we rule the damn planet now. You do not have to run fast or throw a spear far once you make a bow and arrow or start farming.

[sarge712]

LIke most science of the anthropological or archaeological stripe, most is pure conjecture and is contrived at best. If they had to take this crap to a court of law, it would be thrown out for lack of evidence.

[ZeroTA]

* Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.


..............

"We are simply not exposed to the same loads or challenges that people were in the ancient past and even in the recent past so our bodies haven't developed. Even the level of training that we do, our elite athletes, doesn't come close to replicating that.

"We wouldn't want to go back to the brutality of those days but there are some things we would do well to profit from."

Yeah, that's called progress. We have a massive technological advantage now. So I can't run like the wind or throw a spear. I have thousands of rounds of ammo handy and a pickup truck that goes 100 mph. Outrun that. Again, progress.

It's also been shown that the average IQ is higher now, although after the last election I have my doubts.

[FMJ]

Why?  Because we play to OUR advantage.  Intelligence.

Exactly the first thought to reach my mind after reading the introduction.

[Buckeye Redneck]

Primitive man might have been a muscle bound badass, but he also had a life expectancy of about 30...

[Deer Hunter]

This really did stir up a few of the he-men here. 

It's true, they could kick our ass backwards sideways up the wall.  But, "modern" men are not the most athletically fit these days anyway. 

[ZeroTA]

No, because survival of the fittest is not in effect. In America, Europe, and most of the industrialized world, everyone survives. That's not a bad thing though...with a surplus of production, this clears the way for those who didn't climb out of the ass-kicking end of the gene pool to do something productive and still pass on their (not as badass) genes, rather than just survive day to day. Although with enough surplus, you reach a point where you also carry the mentally and physically handicapped, weakening the herd/tribe. Back in the day, such people wouldn't have found a mate, or likely not even lived long enough to try to find one.