Well, it's official:  we're slower, weaker, and flabbier than our ancestors.

That should come as no surprise to anyone who's followed the obesity crisis; however, the ancestors I'm talking about go back a few more generations than our supposedly fit-as-a-fiddle fathers and grandfathers.

Prehistoric man, according to this, was a total badass:

Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 metres record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions. Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 metres 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”.

The article goes on to describe McAllister's support for his claim that “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.”:  fossilized footprints of a group of prehistoric men suggest an average running speed which approaches that of Olympic 100-meter medallist Usain Bolt; more recent photographs from early last century appear to depict young men performing an initiation rite in which they had to high-jump up to more than seven feet; McAllister even argues that the average Neanderthal woman was nearly the equal of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his mid-70's prime. 

The conclusion, as usual, is that we're lazy slobs; we've lost our mojo, we're slow, we're fat, we sit around all day instead of chasing elk and building shelters with our bare hands. 

I wonder, though:  wasn't it partly the huge energy demand that this lump of gray matter between our ears placed on us, 24-7, that really caused our muscles to atrophy?  Then, as we got smarter, our need for super speed and strength became less pronounced:  we could build a snare to catch the rabbit.  We lived in a shelter to protect us from the lion.


What no one has ever been able to explain to me is, if indeed our forebears were so fit because of the demands of their everyday lives, why the fittest modern humans aren't, say, construction workers and housekeepers:  people who, like the old-timers, are on their feet all day, performing physical tasks that vary in intensity from very moderate to extremely challenging? 

Clearly diet is part of the picture--a big part.  But the relative lack of fitness (or at least, the appearance of fitness) in people whose jobs place demands on them similar to those placed on prehistoric man suggests, again, that either prehistoric man wasn't in fact all that fit, or he had something going on genetically which predisposed him towards a higher level of fitness than we see today.

Either way, though it's tempting to think we'd all make out like modern-day Tarzans if thrown back into the wild, it's more likely that most of us have just evolved out of our predilection for big muscles, and that all our strength-training efforts are just a sorry attempt to hang onto the last few remaining strands of functioning muscle tissue that remain in our sad, overbred physiology.

According to McAllister,

“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. 

Humbling.

Thanks to reader Chris Lanterman for the link!