Barrel Strength

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

Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister has published a book entitled “Manthropology” and provocatively sub-titled “The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male.”

The lack of physical stress in modern life has led us to be much slower and weaker than our ancestors of 30,000 years ago, according to his evidence.

How come every advance of ease of life is greeted with derision, yet we all will refuse to haul water up hill if we can get a pump to do the work? North American Indians immediately took to European firearms, as did the rest of the world when they faced a choice.

Human nature, of course, causes us to avoid unnecessary labour. Human ingenuity devises the tools which make labour unnecessary. It also devises the societies in which humans can live together peaceably long enough to invent and use labour saving devices, and even to reward their inventors.

But there is a more subtle objection to Professor McAllister’s argument. The general weakening seems to apply to all of humanity, even those who still hunt for a living, such as Australian aborigines.

Why does the general weakening postulated by McAllister apply as well to those hunters who might be expected to have retained the capacities of their distant forebears?

Are human capacities as plastic as he thinks? Were we once much stronger and faster? There are reasonable grounds to think so.

We know that chimpanzees are much stronger, pound for pound, than humans.  It takes a large  200 pound human male in superb condition to wrestle a chimpanzee, for instance. And even way back then, we were no match for neanderthals. But here we are and neanderthals are in their graves.

Musculature and speed are obviously not decisive for fitness in the Darwinian sense.  Go figure.

Relevant and more important is The Ten Thousand Year Explosion. Evolution is accelerating under the influence of civilization. If we are not the six-foot tall superbly muscled athletes of 15,000 years ago, it is because we have found better ways to live.

The modern man is weak thesis will inform much cocktail party chatter this fall.