I once saw Fred Flintstone pick up a side of dinosaur ribs like it was nothing!
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Is it so hard to understand that Homo Neandertal, being a different animal than us, had a way thicker and larger boneframe.
It’s totally sciency to assume he also sported a proportionally musclemass.
To cite a paleontologist I spoke with in the N.museum in Neandertal, “an Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been the norm”.
Of course muscles aren’t only for show.
Animals usually use the fleshmass they grow naturally. And if it’s only to fend off other males.
That’s where the fractures come into play that are all over the paleontological evidence.
So they either hunted their pray with grit and spear OR maybe they bashed their limbs against trees to impress females?
You tell me.
Against that, being “homo sapiens buff” is just …homo.
Not only do we lack the bonemass to withstand being gored by wild Aurochs, other traits like aggression, regeneration and a lot of other hormonal and physiological factors probably come with the whole Neander package.
In other words, even the fittest and buffest T-Nationeer would not be able to hunt together with Neandertals.
p.s. Leopards have been observed to drag prey 3x their bodyweight up a tree. They are pound for pound the strongest cats, along with Jaguars.
[/quote]
You have no idea what you’re talking about lol.
Some random paleontologist has no concept of what it takes to be as big or strong as someone like Arnold. Ancient people weren’t like that rofl. I’m saying a decent, natty strength athlete would have no trouble besting a Neanderthal strength wise. If you’re throwing in people on gear… fucking forget about it man. If you could put a Neanderthal up against someone like Vytautas Lalas the caveman would get his shit pushed in. It’s just biology man. They didn’t have magical Krypton strength.
And no, leopards cannot do that. Possibly a smaller female could drag up a 200lb carcass which would be 3x her size, but a 200lb male leopard is grossly incapable of dragging a 600lb beast up anything. Along the ground I’m sure it could, but you show me anywhere where something larger than 300lbs has been seen or cited as being dragged up a tree by a leopard. This does not occur in nature; you are making it up lol.
I don’t know why you are so quick to believe the wildest exaggerations about these things.[/quote]
You’re flat out ignorant, 1lbs on a chimp will be potententially way more strong than on a human.
I’m not saying the Neandertaler will be stronger than the strongest, roided up humans in a bench press competition. Reread my post.
I’m saying he was genetically build to carry and smash things. While being, relatively much more muscled.
That has some serious implications.
[/quote]
I thought we were talking about cavemen not apes? And again you’ve brought up bench pressing for some reason for the second time (you’re the only one doing that). I feel like you’re grasping at straws dude.
“Neanderthal anatomy differences are extremely minor and can be for the most part explained as a result of a genetically isolated people that lived a rigorous life in a harsh, cold climate.”
“there are minor differences in robusticity (thickness and strength). These differences are trivial and can be found on an individual basis in modern living populations (Lewin, 1998).”
Where are you getting your data? I am interested.
[quote]CLINK wrote:
I once saw Fred Flintstone pick up a side of dinosaur ribs like it was nothing![/quote]
LOL
[quote]CLINK wrote:
I once saw Fred Flintstone pick up a side of dinosaur ribs like it was nothing![/quote]
Heck, think of the waitress who brought them to Fred!
I had a sneaking suspicion that Bam Bam’s mother was not Betty but that waitress.
Keith David is purportedly 1/4 Neanderthal.
[quote]FattyFat wrote:
Keith David is purportedly 1/4 Neanderthal.
[/quote]
and Sebastien Chabal is 100% Neanderthal.
Csulli,
I don’t bother what it is you quoted out of context, it is abundantly clear that the N. has had a different DNA and a different skeleton!
you are telling me this guy on the right
could be your (you’re on the left, btw) neighbour?
Let me quote you:
&
Yes, I argue that in a classic strength contest (a la Bench Press and what have you) the N-word athlete will lose, but that Vytautas will not last long living the Paleo hunter’s life in Neander Valley.
You said it yourself- his genetic makeup is simply not up to the task. Big, roided arms & pecs will not cut it.
.
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Csulli,
I don’t bother what it is you quoted out of context, it is abundantly clear that the N. has had a different DNA and a different skeleton!
you are telling me this guy on the right
could be your (you’re on the left, btw) neighbour?
[/quote]
…no I’m not telling you that. You’re doing this: Irrelevant conclusion - Wikipedia
This is like the fourth time you’ve done it. It’s abundantly clear that Neanderthals had different DNA. No one (including the linked article) was ever arguing otherwise.
The only thing we’ve been trying to discuss this entire time is how strong they were. Not chimpanzees, not bench press, not trying to say they’re direct ancestors, nothing else…
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Let me quote you:
&
Yes, I argue that in a classic strength contest (a la Bench Press and what have you) the N-word athlete will lose, but that Vytautas will not last long living the Paleo hunter’s life in Neander Valley.
You said it yourself- his genetic makeup is simply not up to the task. Big, roided arms & pecs will not cut it.
[/quote]
Again, I’m not sure where you’re coming from here. I was never trying to say Lalas was some kind of paleo survival expert… What I will say is that for any possible expression of strength you can imagine, he would be able to do like double anything a caveman could. Pick up something, carry something, drag something. Whatever you want it to be, he would be able to do it with ridiculously more weight. And I think any strong, natty, modern individual would be able to use more weight than a Neanderthal as well.
They simply weren’t that different. They were just a hardy, stocky people who had to survive under harsh conditions. They biologically would not be capable of building as much strength in any way as someone with the luxury of barbell training in the modern world. The stimulus just isn’t there. They’re relying on genetics, which alone can only take you so far.
They are just as far away from apes and wild, natural predator strength as we are. Take a Chinese person for example. On average these people tend to be shorter and lighter than other ethnicities. Samoans on the other hand are often very stocky and strong. It’s really no bigger difference than something like that. And any well strength trained Chinese dude would end up way stronger than an untrained Samoan. Just like any of us is probably stronger than some Neanderthal would have been.
Ok, perhaps there was a misunderstanding about what constitutes strength or a proper test; let me be crystal clear:
If you took an average Homo Neadertal (HN) and an average HS and tested/trained both in the weightroom, the former would start out stronger and develop way better with almost any lifts or strongman type activities - more muscle and bone + stockier frame for the win.
If you took an average HN and measured him up vs your [quote] “decent, natty strength athlete who would have no trouble besting a Neanderthal strength wise” [/quote], the latter will smoke the former on many typical bodybuilding related lifts - that’s why I mentioned the bench press. I think it would be pretty even on the deadlift, and I’m pessimistic here.
However, will he be able to throw the spear as far? Kill a moose with a handaxe? And carry it back home?
No, developed pecs don’t help much with these strength related tasks that the N. practised often.
Your natty athlete will look better, chisled abs, nice lateral delts, I’ll definitely give you that.
If you took an average HN and measured him up vs an elite strongman, the elite strongman will crush the average N. - save for prelonged strength- endurance type strength. Dragging a carcass for hours is up for grabs.
And the elite strongman would wither in Neander Valley because he relies on a constant supply of food + chemicals.
This is not just about “survival skills” but about physical resilience - a form of strength.
Beyond that, let me repeat a few facts
-HN skeletons are typically covered with small fractures. That is not the case with HS specimen.
-the assumption is that HN engaged more in dangerous close combat hunts (but maybe they had more brutal tribal warfare?) than HS.
-for that reason, HN children were born with a more sturdy skeleton, resulting less smooth births - a direct evolutionary disadv. compared to HS, which means we probably outfucked them more than they could outsmash us.
-given that HS has a CNS that is more geared towards fine manual coordination, HN’s CNS could have been more chimp-like.
The reason why humans can increase their strength by a relative large margin is that we can (re)learn how to optimally coordinate our muscle fibre.
Most animals are hardwired to do this by default, but they cannot hope to acquire our degree of dexterity which involves using LESS high twitch bundles.
It’s pretty reasonably to assume that a close-combat hominid was at least a bit less coordinated but naturally stronger through a comparatively turbocharged CNS.
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Ok, perhaps there was a misunderstanding about what constitutes strength or a proper test; let me be crystal clear:
If you took an average Homo Neadertal (HN) and an average HS and tested/trained both in the weightroom, the former would start out stronger and develop way better with almost any lifts or strongman type activities - more muscle and bone + stockier frame for the win.
If you took an average HN and measured him up vs your [quote] “decent, natty strength athlete who would have no trouble besting a Neanderthal strength wise” [/quote], the latter will smoke the former on many typical bodybuilding related lifts - that’s why I mentioned the bench press. I think it would be pretty even on the deadlift, and I’m pessimistic here.
However, will he be able to throw the spear as far? Kill a moose with a handaxe? And carry it back home?
No, developed pecs don’t help much with these strength related tasks that the N. practised often.
Your natty athlete will look better, chisled abs, nice lateral delts, I’ll definitely give you that.
If you took an average HN and measured him up vs an elite strongman, the elite strongman will crush the average N. - save for prelonged strength- endurance type strength. Dragging a carcass for hours is up for grabs.
And the elite strongman would wither in Neander Valley because he relies on a constant supply of food + chemicals.
This is not just about “survival skills” but about physical resilience - a form of strength.
Beyond that, let me repeat a few facts
-HN skeletons are typically covered with small fractures. That is not the case with HS specimen.
-the assumption is that HN engaged more in dangerous close combat hunts (but maybe they had more brutal tribal warfare?) than HS.
-for that reason, HN children were born with a more sturdy skeleton, resulting less smooth births - a direct evolutionary disadv. compared to HS, which means we probably outfucked them more than they could outsmash us.
-given that HS has a CNS that is more geared towards fine manual coordination, HN’s CNS could have been more chimp-like.
The reason why humans can increase their strength by a relative large margin is that we can (re)learn how to optimally coordinate our muscle fibre.
Most animals are hardwired to do this by default, but they cannot hope to acquire our degree of dexterity which involves using LESS high twitch bundles.
It’s pretty reasonably to assume that a close-combat hominid was at least a bit less coordinated but naturally stronger through a comparatively turbocharged CNS.
[/quote]
Dude I TOTALLY agree with almost all of that.
Test-Bump on that.
With our knuckles.
Definitely the knuckles.
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
Besides the fact that they simply had to do physical labor all the time and most people today in modern nations sit on their ass 10+ hours a day, do you think cavemen or ancient “pre technology” peoples were stronger both because they worked more and because of different genetics? The latter comes from an article I was reading last night (wish I could remember the name) that asserts ancient people may have been so genetically different than us today that they may not have been able to reproduce with us, if we could clone one obviously.
I was also reading on a related subject that a chimp is between 3-5 times stronger than a human, but this is because we have much more motor control and (speculatively) there may exist a “switch” in the human nervous system which limits our maximum strength potential to certain circumstances, citing instances where people do incredible things like lift up SUVs to save someone who is being crushed.
To get to the point: If you were to randomly select an untrained caveman and untrained modern human, and gave them a rigorous training program, do you think they would demonstrate markedly different results after say, 12 weeks, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and 5 years?
Come to think of it, I just considered the effects of diet, sleep, daily schedule, etc (since the introduction of the lightbulb the average sleep duration has dropped from 9 to 7 hours a day).
It’s an interesting concept. What do you think?[/quote]
As for the chimp I read that they got a female to yank one a rope attached to a meter. She did it standing with her non-dominant hand for a banana and registered close to an 800 lb pull. Most animals muscle strength is 5 times that of a humans per gram except felines which are 7 time stronger. There is a reason cats can just jump several times their body height and look bored doing it…
One thought… I do a very old Japanese martial art and we have a conditioning system included in it. The daily life of someone living 300 years ago was vastly harder than today. You might have to haul water for a half mile, chop firewood &c. before breakfast on a daily basis. The training system therefore pre-supposes quite a substantial raw strength component and builds on that. I normally have to work with students for some months before they can start the old stuff since they will probably get injured (one basic exercise is to grab a partner and squat him, e.g., so yeah a bodyweight front squat was apparently considered everyday strength.) So I’d say that whatever the genetics might be, these folks had really rough lives and their daily living requirements vastly exceeded what most gym rats do. I remember when I started in the late 1970’s a lot of those old Asian guys in their 70’s were still way stronger than the 20 somethings they were training.
Neanderthals, from all evidence, were considerably stronger than modern humans and also had much higher caloric needs, up to 5000 a day resting. They hunted by rat packing a large animal or running them off cliffs and most Neanderthal skeletons sport multiple large healed fractures (almost exactly like a modern rodeo rider), so they apparently had the Hell beaten out of them from hunting. One leading theory on why they died out was that they slowly starved in the last Ice Age since their metabolic baseline was so much higher and larger animals got scarce.
Oddball ramblings. Mebbe they are interesting.
– jj
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Some people are under the weird assumption that hunter-gatherers were starving and fighting for their dear lives 24/7 - which couldn’t be further from the facts.
Since he walked upright and tamed fire, man owned nature for the most part.
A healthy, adult male from 100 000 years ago would have little to no problems filling his stomach.
Apart from occasional diseases, once he survived childhood (the biggest threat and the reason people spout nonsense like “they were all dying in their 20s”), his real enemy would be brutal tribal warfare - hardly a factor that favours weak men.
[/quote]
Comment on this that Steve Pinker made more public is that in many primitive tribes the murder rate for males is around 60%. Yes, 60%. murder rate in the US is around 5 per 100,000. Why would this be so high? One evolutionary explanation is this: Human social structures make it very hard to hunt us. Most animals died from a predator, so somewhere around 95% of adult animals get eaten, eventually. Human societies made this impossible, but then food/territory requirements kicked in. 60% is a damn sight better than 95% so this was the winner for survivability.
Interesting theory, I think…
Oh and most of the reason that we think primitive people live placid, idyllic lives is because of Tacitus. He was a Roman historian of the 1st century who wrote a book called “Germania” in which he explained that the Germans, primitive barbarians that they are, embodied Roman virtues far more nobly than the Romans did. Well, no they didn’t (not by a long shot as the Romans realized a few centuries later as Rome was getting sacked) and his writings were mostly wishful thinking to make a morality tale for his fellow Romans. This type of moralizing is, believe it or not, one of the most long-lived literary strains in the West: attributing your virtues to some supposedly backwards group to embarrass your contemporaries. Still pretty standard fodder in a lot of magazines to this day. Margaret Mead did a lot of this, for instance, with Pacific Islanders and their supposed sexual liberation.
– jj
I’m cracking up over here. Never realized so many of you were that qualified to discuss this subject. What’s next? String Theory?
[quote]Waittz wrote:
I’m cracking up over here. Never realized so many of you were that qualified to discuss this subject. What’s next? String Theory? [/quote]
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Csulli,
I don’t bother what it is you quoted out of context, it is abundantly clear that the N. has had a different DNA and a different skeleton!
you are telling me this guy on the right
could be your (you’re on the left, btw) neighbour?
Let me quote you:
&
Yes, I argue that in a classic strength contest (a la Bench Press and what have you) the N-word athlete will lose, but that Vytautas will not last long living the Paleo hunter’s life in Neander Valley.
You said it yourself- his genetic makeup is simply not up to the task. Big, roided arms & pecs will not cut it.
[/quote]
The Neanderthal’s eyebrow bone shape makes me think it had a very very high growth hormone level.
To csulli and Schwarzfahrer: I’m not actually sure the OP is referring to neanderthals - I interpreted it as paleolithic homo sapiens vs modern day homo sapiens. Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick. Either way your conclusions would still stand.
Waittz: I didn’t realise we had to be qualified to discuss this stuff lol. I doubt ninety percent of the guys in PWI are qualified to talk about whatever it is they talk about, and I doubt the majority of the guys in the training forums have training-related qualifications.
[quote]furo wrote:
To csulli and Schwarzfahrer: I’m not actually sure the OP is referring to neanderthals - I interpreted it as paleolithic homo sapiens vs modern day homo sapiens. Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick. Either way your conclusions would still stand.
Waittz: I didn’t realise we had to be qualified to discuss this stuff lol. I doubt ninety percent of the guys in PWI are qualified to talk about whatever it is they talk about, and I doubt the majority of the guys in the training forums have training-related qualifications.[/quote]
you dont, just dont be surprised when i make fun of you for it.
And for the record the strength ratio to end the argument is as follows:
Chimp >14 year old OLY lifting Chinese girl > Neanderthal > Putin > Csulli > Average weight lifter > average Chinese girl