Modern man 'is a wimp', says Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister in a new book, Manthropology -provocatively sub-titled "The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male." Accotrding to McAllister, many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 metres record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions. 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.
And most Neanderthal women could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.
McAllister sets out provocative but limited theory in his opening sentence: "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."
McAllister's 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, who, according to his analysis he dubbs t8 to make it sound possibly plausible, that they 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.
"We can assume they are running close to their maximum if they are chasing an animal," he said in an interview with Reuters. "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 have to remember too how incredibly rare these fossilizations are," McAllister rationalized. "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?"
Moving on to the modern woman 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 presents scores of other examples of modern retrogression (excluding, of course, anything having to do with intellectual or artistic accomplishments):
* 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).
"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."
McAllister's only yardstick appears to physical achievement. He sounds like a he's angry that in the end it wasn't the robust hunters who inherited the Earth, but rather the creative genius in every field of endeavor: the passionate artist recreating his world in the massive caves of prehistoric Europe, the fur-clad woman discovering lifesaving new herbs, the tribal elder relating epic tales of wonder and awe, the lonely geek staring up at the stars and imagining other worlds and the brilliant patterns and mysteries of the cosmos.
Casey Kazan
Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/modern-man-a-wimp-says-anthropologist-1802501.html
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