Human Strength

[Polar]

(07-17-2016, 01:15 PM)Spalea Wrote: Hello guys ! I really discover this thread only now... Quite new for me these accounts about wrestlers, fighters, powerlifters and so on... When I was young (seventies) teenager I learnt the Bruce Lee's death. Just after I started, unpretentious, to make judo... I have never practiced strength sports as you described.
Now, each day a few physical training in order to stay fit (150-200 pushups in one step), never take the lift, always prefer going on foot rather by bus and so on. Huge animals fascinate me, but I never had a competitor's temperament. I only try to live healthy and it is not always easy.

About the human strength... We cannot compare human strength with wild animals one. Just look at a modern man's skeleton close to an prehistoric man's one. We seem to be very puny, stunted. The occlusal surface of teeth is 3 or 4 times smaller, our bones are so thin. I think the first men' strength was perhaps equal to the big apes of the same weigth but then... Our civilization has done its work. Physically, the modern man is very weak, without natural weapon. Of course he is able to shape his own destiny. He can decide to become the greatest, the strongest one... with his human caracteristics.

@ Polar: Your story about the bulgarian bearman, whom your father met, is fascinating. A sort of european Tarzan. There are some exceptions, some men whose live was, healthy speaking, "completely" allotted to the open air activities. Between Tarzan and the bearman, perhaps the animals are able to make us come back toward the  times of our origins... And doing this we would borrow some animals features. (your bearman was physically strong like a bear, Tarzan moved among the trees like a big ape).

I don't really know what to think now when comparing modern humans to big apes and other animals of equal weight, either their strengths are comparable or they are not. But for now, we'll need to find scientific studies/literature/documentation to prove either point.

Even smallish big cats and bears tend to have much thicker and denser bones than even a heavier and taller man does, and even among modern humans, people of African descent (I am half) tend to have slightly denser bones for the same bone diameter.

Bone composition is a very large indicator of strength, and most animals relative to our size (including the great apes) tend to have this advantage to the extreme. More cortical bone density, more denser cross-section area of a bone, etc...

We simply have to look for science as a way to solve this problem instead of non-scientific visual proof. Reply