http://neurosciencenews.com/evolution-hands-fighting-2917/
"As an alternative, we suggest that the hand proportions that allow the formation of a fist may tell us something important about our evolutionary history and who we are as a species," Carrier adds. "If our anatomy is adapted for fighting, we need to be aware we always may be haunted by basic emotions and reflexive behaviors that often don't make sense – and are very dangerous – in the modern world," says biology Professor David Carrier.
Carrier and his collaborators not only have argued our hands evolved partly for punching but that the faces of human ancestors, the australopiths, evolved to resist punching – and that human faces became more delicate as our violence became less dependent on brute force. The new study sought more experimental evidence for his theory using nine male cadaver arms purchased from the university's body donor program and from a private supply company.
Shoryuken!
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Monday October 26 2015, @02:03PM
Scientists discovered that some people evolved for slapfights while saying "Quiiiit iiiiit".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @02:13PM
Hand bones are no more durable than jawbone. Anyone who had a few bar brawls know this. Boxers gloves protect their hands more than their faces.
Stupid evolutionary hypothesis are stupid, but I guess it's fun because you can't prove/disprove them however goofy they are.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday October 26 2015, @02:18PM
One of the first things they teach students in most martial arts is how to make a fist and align your wrist so you don't break them. If you wrist can bend backwards on impact, it will. Shitty technique is likely the cause of most of those bar brawl injuries you're seeing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday October 26 2015, @03:43PM
Was going to say this, martial arts boils down to the most effective application of simple physics and I think it's fair to say that punching is pretty much a solved problem.
However, I doubt many proto-humans were setting up dojos or studying biomechanics. I mean we're going back to the days before tool-use, aren't we? Surely sticks and stones as weapons were among the first tools. Consider this: If our hands are adapted to punching the way sensei teaches, then why aren't our instincts also adapted to it? In other words, the fact that proper punching has to be taught (and in fact, certain other behaviours have to be UN-taught first, such as tucking one's thumb into the fist) suggests that it isn't what evolution had in mind.
Look at the way other apes fight and consider that in nature, the vast majority of one-on-one animal conflicts within a mammal species (ie two males fighting over a female) are non-lethal. Apply that to our own ancestors and suddenly you can see that Fred and Barney weren't aiming to kill one another with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, they were just inflicting bruises until it was clear who was top dog, then it's a grudging reconciliation and back to business. A social species like ours can't afford to be killing or maiming tribe members over petty disputes. Bear in mind that in primitive times, what we would consider a minor injury (a broken tooth, a cut, a bad concussion) could easily be life-threatening, or prevent someone from contributing to the tribe for a long time.
When you look at conflicts between members of different groups (ie chimp tribes at war) then you can see that it's mostly a lot of shouting and gesticulating unless one group greatly outnumbers the other and actually has an opportunity to catch them. That's the only time it really gets lethal and in that situation, you don't need to be particularly efficient with your fists, ten guys beating on a single victim will finish him off without any special adaptations. If the victim is outnumbered and pinned down then throttling, biting, stomping and kicking become available as well.
Personally I think it's more likely that our ancestors mostly swung their fists in downwards hammer-blows to the head, face and back. Unlikely to be lethal to the recipient (unless you are grasping a rock) but enough to drive somebody away / assert dominance and unlikely to bust up your own hands. Just watch other great apes at work.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday October 26 2015, @04:08PM
It's not just gloves. Boxers and martial artists also wrap their hands to further protect them. Helps support the wrist and keep them straight.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 26 2015, @04:53PM
Right, and runners wear shoes, but that isn't compelling evidence that our feet didn't evolve for running.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @05:27PM
Funny how you are pushing everyone else to prove a negative when ignoring that you need to prove your point as well. So prove it.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday October 26 2015, @08:49PM
Christopher McDougall's Born to Run [wikipedia.org] contains some evidence that barefoot running is the natural way to run. Minimal, light, sandal-type foot wear is the way to go. In fact, McDougall puts forward the hypothesis that running shoes are the cause of running-related injuries even though they're sold as the cure.
Just to see if we can get enough anecdotal evidence in here to amount to data, I'll concur that wrist injuries are the result of bad form, at least when connecting with another squishy human. I wouldn't doubt that an untrained man in a drunken bar fight would be at risk for bad form and thus wrist injuries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @09:03PM
Breaking hand bones and spraining your wrist are rather different things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @05:10PM
You don't bust your hand bones if your wrist goes limp, dumbdumb.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 26 2015, @06:25PM
Yes, you do. Without going into stupidly intricate detail, the angle force is applied to the bones can make a radical difference.
(Score: 2) by jmoschner on Monday October 26 2015, @02:20PM
...we need to be aware we always may be haunted by basic emotions and reflexive behaviors that often don't make sense...
This line bothers me. Shouldn't it be the job of science to make sense of emotions and reflexive behaviors? And the haunted part feels like they are passing judgement instead of objectively studying a subject.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @04:38PM
Well, it's because you did incomplete citing. Here's how the sentence continues:
If we remove the parenthetical "and are very dangerous", we get that fragment in its pure form:
So you see the "don't make sense" is qualified with "in the modern world". In other words, they imply it did make sense back when it evolved, but no longer does.
It is not the scientists' job to invent a sense that doesn't exist. Just as the human appendix probably made sense at some time in the past, but is completely useless and even dangerous (appendicitis!) today, also those emotions made sense back when they evolved (that's why they evolved), but don't make sense in our modern world.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday October 26 2015, @04:55PM
Now you've made me thing of the "Spitting Image" video-clip of Genesis "Land of Confusion", where the big red button for "Nurse" is right next to the button for "Nuke" on the president's bedside cabinet.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Monday October 26 2015, @04:34PM
Hand bones are no more durable than jawbone.
That's without practice and training.
With practice those hand bones can get rather tough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAqnF8GOwl0 [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJ6J4YOjRc [youtube.com]
On a related note:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SHfqn4oGxM [youtube.com]
And if our ancestors that were punching each other (instead of stabbing or clubbing each other like more recent ancestors) walked on their knuckles, I'm pretty sure those hand bones would have toughened up a fair bit.
By the way if this theory is considered plausible, then how about my theory that the main reason humans evolved their long distance running ability was not for persistence hunting but for war? Think about it, war is more selective than hunting. With war the winners breed, the losers often lose their lives AND their children, whereas if you fail with hunting you fallback to fishing or eating berries, nuts and grubs.
Most other animals evolve fast running and other techniques because their prey is a different species - running for hours is a stupidly inefficient time and calorie intensive way to get lunch. Even wild hunting dogs don't run for hours - they use their brains, work together and run for a few minutes.
But War is a different matter. In "old style" wars being able to run for hours till sun-down sure helps more for your survival than being able to run very fast for less than 5 minutes- especially when the predator and prey are the same species and both would thus evolve to achieve a similar ability.
War is far more common in most human tribes than persistence hunting. Even chimpanzees wage war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War [wikipedia.org]
I'm sure a few humans did persistence hunting. Just like a few humans ate only seafood.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 26 2015, @07:56PM
Why would they be? The jaw would evolve parallel to the fist. The jaw would tend to become stronger since a broken jaw would be a bigger survival disadvantage than a broken hand.
To confound things, someone who was too quick to punch might have even greater survival problems due to being exiled (who likes to get punched all the time?). so the negative feedback of continuing pain in the hand would tend to curb that tendency conferring more advantage than disadvantage overall.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 26 2015, @02:18PM
It's obvious that men grew long dongs so that they could win pissing contests, so that they could peacefully determine who got the females.
At the same time, women grew bigger busts and wider hips, because the men were so easily mesmerized by those body parts.
It's kinda funny when "scientists" promote these theories with little to nothing to back them up.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @01:24AM
I remember reading "science" that said that women evolved breasts because when we started to walk upright it was harder to notice their asses.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday October 26 2015, @02:26PM
That human opposable thumbs and hands were evolved to take a firm grip around the neck of a club as one hand strikes his\her's potential mate to submission while the other holds the reins of the raptor one is riding.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Informative) by ilPapa on Monday October 26 2015, @06:49PM
My hands evolved so I can play the piano and touch myself inappropriately.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday October 26 2015, @08:42PM
Well, of course. These skills are very important for Clubbing, Mate Toss, and Dino Race events. How else does a caveman get a rock medal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveman_Ughlympics [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday October 26 2015, @02:36PM
While the research is interesting, the tone of half-surprise that people fight? The suggestion that this is somehow controversial?
Of course fighting is an essential part of human evolution. Men fighting over women, just like so many other species. People fighting over food, or to take over the better cave, or as a proof of fitness in a tribal society. On a societal level, the entirety of recorded history is basically one long story of warfare and conflict. As the saying goes: "Peace is a state that we hypothesize, because there have been occasional pauses between wars". A few societies were, briefly, nonviolent - usually because they had been beaten into submission by their enemies.
Today, we have pulled a thin veneer of civilization over this violence. Remove that veneer and see what's underneath [motherjones.com]: rule by brutality, with beatings, rapes, and murders as the daily routine. Civilization is a good thing, we should try to keep it...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday October 26 2015, @03:11PM
The problem is that humans were using clubs and spears to hunt. So, if it's true that human facial features were evolved to contend with fist blows, then it means that human sexual selection might have had a dominant element of non-lethal competition rather then the ol' "kill him and rape his wife" or the progressive "bring pretty shinny things to her and hunt the biggest pray around" theories that were supported by the multiple wounds inflicted on human skeletons and the abundance of jewelery even for people who were straggling for food.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Monday October 26 2015, @06:44PM
That last sentence wandered so far afield that it needed a club to fight its way back home.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Monday October 26 2015, @08:40PM
And that's just the theatrical release. The original director's cut was a 5 paragraphs extravaganza with a 2 parts thesis statement, citations, counter points and an extended bibliography.
Overall, I say you should consider yourself lucky.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday October 26 2015, @03:40PM
While the research is interesting, the tone of half-surprise that people fight? The suggestion that this is somehow controversial?
The research isn't saying "people fight." It's looking at specific physical traits and how they might have evolved in order to give an advantage during combat.
Carrier and his collaborators not only have argued our hands evolved partly for punching but that the faces of human ancestors, the australopiths, evolved to resist punching – and that human faces became more delicate as our violence became less dependent on brute force.
See, that doesn't seem all that "obvious" to me. In any case, there can be much scientific worth in attempting to prove those things which are "obvious."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday October 26 2015, @04:01PM
What prompted my comment were more the responses to the research, which were also part of the article. Passages like these:
"Critics of the 'aggressive ape' theory of human evolution often argue that humans are by nature empathetic, cooperative and peaceful"
Sure we are... Dunno what dream world those people live in, but they apparently don't read the news.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @04:52PM
Oh, we are very empathetic. Remember, empathy is about understanding the feelings of others; a psychopath who enjoys the suffering of others is also empathetic, or else he would be blind to that suffering and couldn't enjoy it.
We are also very cooperative. Note that war is generally a very cooperative activity; a single soldier can achieve very little.
About peaceful … well, probably they share the definition of peace that also the Nobel peace prize committee uses. ;-)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Monday October 26 2015, @05:17PM
The news is news because it's surprising and unusual. Do you, day to day, get into fights with other people? If so, you're the exception.
Violent crime isn't even a top 10 cause of death in the US: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm [cdc.gov]
Humans certainly can be violent. As with many things, a lot depends on culture. Specifically, humans can get into negative feedback loops where violence continues to cause more violence until something breaks the loop or everyone dies. Hence the proverb, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Which is a very old proverb, indicating people have recognized violence as an undesirable cause of misery for quite a while.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @04:48PM
> "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Which is a very old proverb
In evolutionary terms, nope, it isn't.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @03:09PM
for reals yo