Modern men are wimps, according to new book
October 21, 2009 by Lin Edwards
Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new book claims even modern athletes could not run as fast, jump as high, or have been nearly as strong as our predecessors.
The book, Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male, by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister, describes many examples of the inadequacy of the modern male, calling them as a class, "the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet."
Given spiked running shoes, Indigenous Australians of 20,000 years ago could have beaten today's world record for running 100 and 200 meters. As recently as last century, some Tutsi males in Rwanda could have easily beaten the current high jump world record, and bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been no match in an arm wrestle with a Neanderthal woman.
Twenty thousand years ago six male Australian Aborigines chasing prey left footprints in a muddy lake shore that became fossilized. Analysis of the footprints shows one of them was running at 37 kph (23 mph), only 5 kph slower than Usain Bolt was traveling at when he ran the 100 meters in world record time of 9.69 seconds in Beijing last year. But Bolt had been the recipient of modern training, and had the benefits of spiked running shoes and a rubberized track, whereas the Aboriginal man was running barefoot in soft mud. Given the modern conditions, the man, dubbed T8, could have reached speeds of 45 kph, according to McAllister.
McAllister also presents as evidence of his thesis photographs taken by a German anthropologist early in the twentieth century. The photographs showed Tutsi initiation ceremonies in which young men had to jump their own height in order to be accepted as men. Some of them jumped as high as 2.52 meters, which is higher than the current world record of 2.45 meters.
McAllister, interviewed in his temporary residence in Cambridge, UK, also said women of the extinct hominids such as the Neanderthals carried around 10 percent more muscle than modern European men, and with training could have reached 90 percent of the bulk of Arnold Schwarzenegger at his physical prime. Her shorter lower arm would have given her a great advantage in an arm wrestle, and she could easily have slammed his arm to the table.
Other examples in the book are rowers of the massive trireme warships in ancient Athens who far exceeded the capabilities of modern rowers, Roman soldiers who completed the equivalent of one and a half marathons a day, carrying equipment weighing half their body weight, and Australian Aborigines who could throw a spear over 10 meters further than the current javelin world record.
McAllister attributes the decline to the more sedentary lifestyle humans have lived since the industrial revolution, which has made modern people less robust than before since machines do so much of the work. The fact that we are constantly improving and breaking athletic records is because they are only in comparison to the performances in recent decades. If you compare today's athleticism with that of humans much further back we see a real decline.
According to McAllister humans have lost 40 percent of the shafts of the long bones because they are no longer subjected to the kind of muscular loads that were normal before the industrial revolution. Even our elite athletes are not exposed to anywhere near the challenges and loads that were part of everyday life for pre-industrial people.
The Cro-Magnons, the first anatomically modern Europeans, living around 30-40,000 years ago, were impressively tall (many over 6 feet 6 inches), strong, fit, and with larger brains than humans of today. They had an active lifestyle and an abundant and balanced diet of meats and vegetables.
The advent of agriculture (described by anthropologist Jared Diamond as the worst mistake in history) meant a steady supply of food, but it also meant our diet became lower in quality, less varied and contained fewer nutrients. The result was that we became smaller and weaker, only regaining size and strength in the last century or so after improvements in sanitation and the development of medicines such as antibiotics.
The good news from the findings described in the book is that the human body is plastic, and can change over generations. Each individual body can also change over much shorter periods of time. With a good balanced and varied diet and with plenty of exercise, there is plenty of scope for improvement in almost all of us.
More information: More info about the book can be found here.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
Sep 12, 2005 |
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Anyway on topic, what about tribal people who have had almost no contact with the civilised world? They're not any stronger/faster than we are.
Yeah I was going to mention agriculture but the article beat me to it. After pops exploded, the staple food for most became grass (grains), the last choice before bark and twigs among hunter/gatherers. Those who could subsist on it prevailed over those whose systems needed real food. Plants and animals were routinely selected for quantity over quality and became the bloated, fatty, mushy stuff we season and color and refortify today. We are what we eat. The nephelim- the giants of old- were only those usurpers who waited in the woods to raid our stores and steal our women. We overwhelmed them, drove them to extinction by sheer weight if numbers.
Look up Jared Diamond on wikipedia.org and click on the Articles link. Click on "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" and you'll read about modern Maasai who are in better shape than we are. Also check out the Tarahumara. They are specialized runners, true, but these dudes can out-pace most American runners drunk. Can they assemble a supercollider? Hell no, but why would they want to? It's too bad it seems we have to trade physical prowess for technology since someday technology may not be enough (or around) to help feed us.
For example, the tip of the head of a male Volleyball player easily surpasses the hight 2.43m meters of the net. That is aiming for precision blocking, not merely achieving a great height only.
"the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet."
Why the focus on men specifically? Yes, men are supposed to be physically stronger, but if the diet and lifestyle of modern humans is so inadequate, then surely this affects both genders. There's no cause to single out men specifically as "inadequate" as he puts it. Inadequate in what context? In this era, an inadequate male is one who is scientifically illiterate, not one with small biceps.
I just feel that this author has titled the book to pander to the currently popular man-hating in order to increase his sales. It's bad enough that this form of sexism is generally unrecognized and therefore tolerated; it's even worse that a man would provide people with more bullets to fire. The actual information is very interesting, which makes this all the more disappointing.
This is a good point. This kind of contradicts what they are saying.
The Cro-Magnon term falls outside the usual naming conventions for early humans and is often used in a general sense to describe the oldest modern people in Europe, while remaining, anthropologically speaking, a specific (but very frequent) subtype among the fossil remains. In recent scientific literature the term "European early modern humans" is used instead.
Although I agree with your general view, I believe that, as a race, we've crossed a point beyond which only technology could save us from starvation.
As for technology not being around, that only applies to the network-dependent ones, like the Internet, or transportation. Most of the know-how and some materiel will survive any apocalyptic scenario.
Anyone who knows how to build a generator, a radio, and a gun from scratch is liable to have a bunker ready. Anyone who knows how to build a computer, a laser, or a supercollider from scratch is most likely amongst the first people to know of a coming apocalypse.
Neither of those people will be athletic, even by today's standards. But in a heavily unnatural environment, which is where we're headed, they're the alpha males.
besides there's this beautiful thing called genetic engineering that will be widespread in a few decades
Men of the past were more emotionally unstable and focused towards direct short-term physical actions, many of them violent.
I doubt that it was merely the "Industrial Revolution".
It is more likely to be the advance of tool making since prehistoric times.
Look at paulthebassguys comments about men in the past were more emotionally unstable. Nowaday only the bad guys are tough and unstable, while the good guys are taught at school to be wussies, and faint at the sight of a little blood....
While this is a real question, it is a fact, nonetheless. In fact, Neanderthals were bigger, stronger, and maybe bigger brained than modern homo, and they lived through weather that would freeze us solid, yet they died out, too.
"Survival of the fittest" must be re-evaluated.
BTW, at 6'2" 225#, I can haul more than 5 tons of stone a day, so I guess we're talking about the general population. Some of us can still carry the "male".
Even if they were these walking gods, I still like my modern conveniences like literacy, numeracy, books, science, computers with word processor software, internet, nutrition science, antibiotics and vaccines, human rights, travelling across the Atlantic Ocean in under 24 hours and all that shit my hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't have in their boring, miserable, cold, frightened, painfully short thirty-year-old lives.
Men and women had long been specialized by that time. The size of human heads caused womens' hips to widen in concert to enable birth. Humans were and are born prematurely so their heads can continue to grow after birth. Babies required more maternal care and their mothers were as a result more sedentary with shorter legs and more adipose tissue to store nourishment and produce warmth. Men were busy mostly hunting and fighting over resources while women were busy replacing battle losses. Life was nasty, brutish, and short.
I completely agree - that's my point exactly. It is the author who made this mistake, not myself. The content of his book appears to be interesting and well thought out, but it seems very obvious to me that he caved in to demands from his publisher to create a subtitle which will increase sales. This is very common.
Look at the subtitle again. "The secret science of male inadequacy" (which does not even question whether not it is true). Now reverse the gender and you will see clearly how unpleasant this statement is. The 'reverse the gender trick' is always a very effective way of exposing this prejudice, but it's surprising how few people notice this. Please don't try to defend the indefensible.
The book is about men. I see the title as rather tongue in cheek. Maybe your cognition is askew.
http://www.youtub...=related
-like this maybe??
OOP, forgot to include your quote:-Of which my response was the link above, clearly some very cultured individuals. So in other words we've ALL been indoctrinated in one way or another?
This is the usual excuse making for prejudice, by claiming it is "only a joke". If you think the title being tongue in cheek is a suitable defense, then I ask again, reverse the gender to see how it sounds. It is not acceptable to title a book "the inadequacy of the modern female" and then say "it was only a joke", as if to imply that other people were having a sense of humour malfunction. Do I need to express prejudice towards someone's gender to be viewed as having a sense of humour? Obviously not.
As for your comment about my cognition not working, well it's clearly working better than yours. If my thinking ability is faltering, then yours must be positively non-existent. Finally, your mocking of my username is a form of contempt for which there is no worthy response.
Youre right. It wouldn't be funny. Hey, if you invert Otto you get 'toOt' :-)
Seriously, I believe you may have a problem recognizing sarcasm. I would guess you lost it about ... 1983 or thereabouts?
Neither, in fact. It simply makes me think that the author is presenting a stereotype of the modern male in order to, as with everything else, increase his sales. So ok, fine, I don't find the fat guy particularly funny, but as before this doesn't mean I lack a sense of humour. If it makes you laugh, then I would guess that you probably favour those teen comedies which employ cheap humour, such as people getting accidentally naked or being hit in the face with a basketball. Those things make me positively curl into a ball with painful laughter. By the way, saying 'I rest my case' is no substitute for a soundly formed argument. That phrase is an artificial conversation terminator that I've encountered before.
http://www.physor...088.html
-It would be fair to assume that cro-mag and Neanderthal may have shared a joke or 2, not unlike those between German and Brit in the trenches during the Great War-
He got it from Bullshit Land. Assuming the article isn't leaving out all the details. Like for instance, the book might be trying to be silly.
First where did anyone ever see this happen? Second didn't they notice that the Australian Aborigines used a Woomera also known as Atlatl or in English a spear thrower. Its lever that is held in the hand to act as an arm extension. Its not used by modern athletes. Also the current record is shorter than the old record with the old javelin. When they where tossing the damn thing over 300 yards it was getting bloody dangerous so the javelins were changed to shorten the throws.
http://en.wikiped...i/Atlatl
If the rest of the book is as crap ridden at that its a joke. Possibly intentionally.
Ethelred
So we have yet another anthropological hoax ala casteneda? Maybe anthropologists are like climate experts. Hard to tell from so lean an article, but you seem to have found discrepancies; guess we'll all just have to buy the book to see if he's got substantive supportive evidence. I say we've been sold the WASP = wimp image because we've reached our quota, and this is yet more evidence of husbanding of the species. Is my opinion.
this is a total joke. seriously analyzing speed from fossilized foor prints. please. this is less scientific than gambling on stock market predictions
You forgot to mention that "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" was put by Thomas Hobbes in 1651 and has been challenged since then:
"According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well."
http://en.wikiped...gatherer