Re: Help me settle an argument...

On 11 Apr, 07:38, "Paul Crowley"
<slkwuoiutiuytciu...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Vend" <ven...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:ev3d6d$128$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
OlegP wrote:
I believe that in the Neolithic, thicker skulls were probably a
survival advantage against things like rocks and wooden clubs.

Yep. Dead-on. It's also why male skulls are so
much thicker than female ones, and why male
heads have so much more tissue generally.
And much the same applies to brow-ridges
-- also very much greater in males, both now
and at all times since we were chimps.

I think that it's more due to accidents during hunting rather than
intra-species fights,

That's plain silly. Did males need much
heavier jaws than females because they
sometimes fell on them?

Did you have tried running across the trees on a rough terrain?

anyway we were never chimps.

Chimps and gorillas are often morphologically
near-indistinguishable.

What do you mean? They seem easly distinguishable.

Yet they split around
8 mya -- a couple of million years before
hominids split off. How could either species
have changed significantly since?

Yet we were never chimps.

One guide here IMHO is the thinness of
Asiatic skulls in and on the 'far' -- i.e. eastern
side of the 'bamboo belt'. Bamboo readily
makes sharp knives. So Chinese, etc., have
long had relatively little need for thick skulls
-- or eye-brow ridges. Also they show much
less sexual dimorphism than most humans.

Is that so? It doesn't seem so on a casual observation,

My casual observation is different from
yours. I have not found data -- even if you
might think it would be readily available.

There is little benefit to large size when both
combatants have sharp knives.

I doubt that. The availability of sharp weapons would, in my opinion,
select for longer limbs:

More plain silliness. The world heavy-
weight boxing champ would (in the boxing
ring) beat the world-lightweight almost
every time. But if they were to fight with
knives (or swords) the odds would be
closer to even.

It may be silly to point it out, but the heavy-weight boxing champ
weights more than the light-weight one.
You may also notice that usually heavy-weight boxers are taller than
the average but not a lot, because longer limbs give more reach but
less strength (for the same mass).

In a fight with knives, a tall and slim fighter would have better odds
than an heavy and short one.

you don't have to hit with much force, so
reaching your opponent from farther than he can reach you is
paramount.

This is not a theoretical issue.

Why?

Fighting
with knives is (and used to be) common
in many societies resulting in high death
rates. Sicilians (for example) are not known
for their long arms.

Do Sicilians have a knife fighting tradition?

The lightness of beards among Chinese
(and other far-easterns) can be explained
in much the same way.

Can you be more specific?

I could have referred to the relative smallness
of Asiatic chins or male hands -- all of which
have the same basic cause. When bamboo
knives are cheap and available, the death rate
(i.e. the selective effect) resulting from damage
to bones (in the skull, chin, or hands) is much
lower. Beards protect chins, but were needed
less in the Far-East.

Can a beard protect the chin against a kinetic impact (punch, kick or
blunt weapon)? I don't think so.
At most a long beard migth offer minimal protection to the throat
against sharp weapons, since human hair is difficult to cut (that's
why razor blades need to be, well, razor-sharp).

Another related question in this field is the
extraordinary weakness of human bones
(and human muscles) -- by comparison with
(a) almost all other comparable species, and
(b) with our own ancestors.

Maybe lighter bones and muscles make us better runners.

Quite unlikely. They certainly don't help in the
hundred-yard dash -- which is what is usually
needed for hunting or for escape from predators.

Actually we hunted manly using endurance running.

Another animal with weak bones and muscles
is the sloth -- probably a better model for
human ancestry than most.

F = ma, thus lighter bones with the same muscles imply more
acceleration, and also less power consumption (important in endurance
running).

Moreover, muscle strength is proportional to cross-section while mass
is proportional with volume, meaning that for the same body layout, a
smaller animal will be genrally capable of higher accelerations
(compare a domestic cat and a tiger). And smaller muscles also reduce
power consumption.



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