YOU are the worst man in history!

[ckn]

Link to The Register

A very interesting article from a fitness perspective!

[tidalwave]

That is very interesting. Quite contrary to the belief that we have used our scientific achievements to push human performance to its physical limits. Certainly that has been the case for modern history. Look at the performance of the winning Olympians of yesteryear.

From an evolutionary standpoint, I don't see how some of these assertions make sense. I'm sure that the proto-humans required speed and strength to survive as hunter gatherers, but the caloric requirements of carrying a lot more muscle mass doesn't seen conducive to pre-agricultural history.

Others make more sense - e.g. being able to run faster in a land where you are not on top of the food chain.

Some of the logic sounds a bit faulty. Regarding the Neanderthal woman beating Ahnold in arm-wrestling at his peak.. "She boasted ten per cent more muscle than modern European men." I don't see how they can use this to make a statement on the most muscular of modern man.. Surely, Arnold had a lot more than 10% LBM over the average at his peak. Maybe the mass was overrated and the statement was more about leverage and differences in appendages, like how a chimpanzee, much smaller than Arnold, would possess significantly more upper body strength.

[Rock36]

I'm with tidalwave here, there seems to be a lot of faulty logic here, and it isn't simply because i don't want to accept that I am inferior to my ancestors.

I will add to tidalwave's comments. Consider modern humans living today who are still very much living in the hunter/gatherer tradition (the Amazon comes to mind). To my knowledge, they live life much the same way the ancient humans did, but I think I would have learned of their extraordinary strength and stamina if it exsisted well beyond expectation...and certainly the authors of this article failed to mention tribes and cultures like them as well to support their claims.

Furthermore, I am interested in exactly how they estimate land speed based on footprints and what is the factor of error there. You can have long or short strides and still be slow.

As far as neanderthals are concerned, well they were a different species than homo sapien after all. I'm not sure how relevant such a comparison can be. Besides from another article the quote about neanderthal women reads "McAllister said a Neanderthal woman had 10 perc ent more muscle bulk than modern European man. Trained to capacity she would have reached 90 per cent of Schwarzenegger's bulk at his peak in the 1970s." What does trained to capacity mean?

Some of the other examples just are off base. For instance, Roman Legions were actually expected to march more like 15-18 miles in 7 hours.... which isn't that far off from modern armies and far from 1.5 marathons that the article claimed.

Interesting read either way.