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For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

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Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#61

Post by Florin_Andrei »

georgecmu wrote: post #4

Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. It's interesting that they stumbled on the persistence hunting technique so naturally. Indirect evidence to support the Endurance running hypothesis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis ).

Come to think of it, our legs (including associate muscles like the gluteus) are indeed disproportionately large for our overall body size.

It would be interesting to know how do we measure up against other mammals in terms of... uh... I forgot the technical name, it's the ability to absorb and metabolize oxygen. It's determined by lung size among other things, and it's a strong predictor of endurance.

Add to that a large brain, capable of planning, and driven by purpose and by an understanding of the concept of time in general and future in particular.

Large legs, oxygen metabolism, brain capable of long-term planning - well, that's the perfect trifecta that could produce an excellent endurance runner.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#62

Post by mhurron »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #50
scrapcode wrote: post #29

This is absolutely amazing. This woman is more of a man than any man I know, living in some desolate valley for all of those years now absolutely ALONE? One word: Wow.

This woman is more of a man than any man I know What do you mean?

They mean they have a very narrow definition of what makes a man a man.

For example - I can not do many repairs to my car and so I take it to a mechanic. To a great many people, this makes me less of a man.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#63

Post by shortlived »

jnhasty wrote: post #23

In 2010 Werner Herzog released a documentary about trappers and their families living in the Taiga. It's called "Happy People": http://www.wernerherzog.com/62.html I really recommend it. The people survive their arduous living conditions by continually preparing for the next season. They've done the same things more or less for generations, always working, and pretty much cut off from modern civilization. Makes you r…

FYI - for those trying to find this online: The full docu is about 130 minutes long and has professional English voice overs [1]. There are a few copies on youtube with subtitles, but they are missing about 30-40 minutes.

[1] http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6866374/Happy_People_A_Year_I...

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#64

Post by ahoyhere »

catch23 wrote: post #31

The daughters spoke a language distorted by a lifetime of isolation. "When the sisters talked to each other, it sounded like a slow, blurred cooing." It's interesting how isolation does to a spoken language in only one generation. I'm guessing they had nobody but themselves to talk to, so any mispronunciation would be greatly exaggerated.

My husband & I lived in Vienna and we were the only people who spoke out loud to each other on a daily basis (especially in English), and we understand each other very very well in any case, and we got the point where we often didn't even speak in complete sentences over a mere matter of months. When we traveled abroad for a month in an English-speaking country, it took me several days to feel like I was making sense to strangers again! After that I made sure never to go so long without talking to other people out loud again.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#65

Post by Florin_Andrei »

> Old Karp was usually delighted by the latest innovations that the scientists brought up from their camp, and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when "the stars began to go quickly across the sky," and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: "People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars."

WOW.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#66

Post by smcl »

ddunkin wrote: post #53
pav3l wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever is interested, here are two very good academic articles about persistent hunting (subscription required): http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/508695 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248408... Also, here is a video of a modern persistent hunter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

It also reminded me of this, an old episode of This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/80/ru...

I also recommend the book he wrote by the same title, featuring some of the same essays/articles featured in the broadcast and a good deal more. If you're in the US it should be no bother to find, but if you're abroad it'll take a bit of searching (or ordering from the US)

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#67

Post by tobiasu »

avoutthere wrote: post #52
cdjk wrote: post #39

Dick Proenneke ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke ) did something similar in Alaska. He lived alone, but brought supplies in, had a wood stove, a rifle, and even spent the occasional winter in civilization. He wrote a book about his first couple years: http://www.amazon.com/One-Mans-Wilderness-Alaskan-Odyssey/dp... It suffers a little from some heavy editing, but is very interesting. There's also a vide…

As did a man named Sylvan Hart. In the 1930s escaped the Great Depression by settling in north-central Idaho and lived out his days there alone until his death in 1980. He put his engineering education to good use, mining ore and smelting it to make tools, as well as hunting and farming to sustain himself. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1...

Thanks for linking to that, great story!

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#69

Post by rthomas6 »

loeg wrote: post #33
jusben1369 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other main predator that also hunts in this fashion? Wolves/dogs. There's a theory that it was this overlap in hunting styles that made us natural "partners" and led to the close relationship we have today.

Wolves and dogs can't do this over nearly the same distance humans can — they shed body heat through panting and can only keep up a run for 3-6 miles[0]. Humans can run marathons. [0]: I don't remember my source for this, sorry. But this is interesting for similar reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon Edit: I should say, wolves/dogs can run for long distances too, at a slower gait. But they…

Well, I don't know much about wolves, but I know dogs sometimes naturally track interesting prey over long distances by scent. They don't have to travel fast, they just have to travel on average faster than their pursued prey.

Re: For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact

#70

Post by tjic »

bostonpete wrote: post #68

> having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost I'm no scientist, but I don't believe frost forms until 32 degrees. Maybe this was a mistranslation...?

> I don't believe frost forms until 32 degrees.

Perhaps it was under 10 atmospheres of pressure? ;-)

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