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Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

phenomena.nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#41

Post by Swizec »

baddox wrote: post #13
thefreeman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't their increased strength and size also offset the increased force of the blows to make it about the same as the current situation? In my head I'm comparing it to something like: If a 250 lb NFL linebacker tackled me at full speed I am pretty sure I would break multiple bones. But NFL running backs take that kind of beating 40-50 times a game, 20 games a year.

Not everything scales the same. I suspect that heavyweight boxers, for example, can hurt each other a lot more than featherweight boxers.

In fact, professional heavyweight boxers usually develop parkinson's whereas that's virtually a nonexistent problem in welterweight and lower.

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#42

Post by NAFV_P »

beloch wrote: post #28
surrealize wrote: post #20

There's a point-by-point reply from one of the authors, David Carrier, in the comments: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/10/our-skull...

Carrier's hypothesis is interesting and well argued, but only time will tell if it stands up to further scrutiny. This is the scientific process. Yong, on the other hand, is just defending his own preconceptions. While I agree with him that the established theory of changing diet/changing dentition is very well supported, Carrier's theory doesn't necessarily contradict it. Both of these theories could have shaped the…

> Carrier's hypothesis is interesting and well argued, but only time will tell if it stands up to further scrutiny.

I have experience of martial arts, on and off, for fifteen years. A few months ago I was having a go on a punch bag, which weighed over 100 pounds. The elbow strikes I was swinging at it would make it rise about 4 to 5 feet in the air, almost above the fulcrum. I was afraid that I might rip the rope it was attached to.

If I were to elbow this hypothesis it would never stand up again, and unlike my fist it wouldn't break.

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#43

Post by monochr »

gress wrote: post #29
gambiting wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any person has ever been saved from dying from slipping on a banana peel by the shape of their foot, then the answer is yes.

How would you determine whether the cause of them not dying was 'the shape of their foot', and not any of thousands of other features you could arbitrarily pick, such as 'the balance of their skeleton', or 'their gait', or 'the thickness of their skull' or 'the responsiveness of their reflexes'?

You don't and neither does evolution.

All that the DNA knows is that it got into the next generation and it will keep doing whatever it was doing before plus or minus a few small random mutations.

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#44

Post by monochr »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #6

This is dumb. If a single human survived a punch that otherwise would have killed them before breeding age than Yes, we did "evolve" to handle punches. Evolution is not driven, it is all the little things that worked over a long period of time. The sum of all factors. There will be no smoking gun that says we did this or that for this or that, only our modern form that says "this worked".

I sometimes think even most biologists don't understand how evolution works. Especially when I read about people taking the idea of spandrels seriously.

Legs didn't evolve "for" walking, ancestors with leg like appendages survived better than those who didn't have them in the Savannah. It didn't matter if they did that by walking, swimming, running or kicking threats and opportunities as they came along.

The same is true of fists and skulls. They didn't evolve for punching, but any ancestor who threw a punch - even if by accident - and didn't have their hand broken, and anyone who received one and didn't have their skull broken had a better chance of survival that those who did.

The only question is if this happened often enough to warrant the extra resources that went into strengthening the bones of the hands and skull compared to using those resources into some other area of the body.

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#45

Post by GhotiFish »

thefreeman wrote: post #9
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #2

Interesting. I would think that pre-modern humans would be unlikely to strike each other with very much force, simply because they were so strong that one or two blows would debilitate if not kill the opponent. The Neanderthals are thought to be many times stronger than modern humans, judging by the thickness of their bones and the size of the muscle attachment sites, as well as their likely lifestyles in the brutal…

Wouldn't their increased strength and size also offset the increased force of the blows to make it about the same as the current situation? In my head I'm comparing it to something like: If a 250 lb NFL linebacker tackled me at full speed I am pretty sure I would break multiple bones. But NFL running backs take that kind of beating 40-50 times a game, 20 games a year.

It's the cube square law in action. Elephants can seriously injure themselves from falling over. If I fall over I get a sore butt. Yet if you were to scale me to the kind of weight an elephant has, I'd have a far larger fall, so obviously scale has a real effect.

I think the thing is, NFL running backs are trained to survive that kind of abuse.

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#46

Post by jessaustin »

john_b wrote: post #27
alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Wrestling is a more accurate sports approximation for how humans "naturally" fight (assuming 1-on-1). Disagree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_warfare

The context of the parent was violence in the absence of weaponry.

How is that context relevant? There are rocks and sticks on the savanna. Humans are tool-users, so their most natural fighting techniques use tools.

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#47

Post by Someone »

"Given the very few fossils of the australopith face, I am not optimistic that evidence of…"

That is the primary reason you shouldn't put much faith in anything you read about most early humanoids, especially not the parts that reach general audiences. We simply cannot know much from the samples we have. Yet, scientists feel the pressure of having to publish, and cannot just publish new measurements, so they hypothise away.

This, like many in the field, mostly is a "we cannot rule out that" paper; all evidence is circumstantial. It may be truly insightful or it may not be, but we simply cannot know at the moment.

Can we blame the scientists? No, but I wished we educated fewer in this field and/or told those working in the field "feel free to think, study and experiment for a few decades and publish something when you are certain you have a convincing argument"

On the other hand, it is intriguing to read about the latest ideas in the field, just like it is to read about our new thinking about dinosaurs, even if experience tells us our ideas about both will swing heavily (in a few decades, what color will dinosaurs be? Will they be warm-blooded? Will all of them have feathers?)

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#48

Post by soperj »

Torgo wrote: post #26
batmansbelt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mythbusters did one on that. The demonstrated fairly convincingly that it's not that easy to slip on a banana.

The variety of banana (Gros Michel) that was commonplace when the "slip on a banana peel" comedic device was invented was a different breed than the one that is commonplace today (Cavendish.) The Gros Michel peel was reportedly very slippery.

as an addendum to that, the reason you don't see Gros Michel today is because "Panama disease" (a wilt fungus) wiped out most of the plantations in South America/Africa. You can still find Gros Michels in Thailand today. Someone should write myth busters, maybe they could import a gros michel to test it.

Re: Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

#50

Post by vacri »

gambiting wrote: post #23
pessimizer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did our feet evolve to avoid slipping on banana peels?

If any person has ever been saved from dying from slipping on a banana peel by the shape of their foot, then the answer is yes.

Only if that person had offspring at some point.
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