The Body's Natural Weapons

[Chrisoro]

Also relevant:

Fighting may have shaped evolution of human hand - BBC News

 

[BMhadoken]

Also relevant:

Fighting may have shaped evolution of human hand - BBC News

Covered this already. If by fighting you're talking about the use of tools and weapons, then yes that's exactly what our hands developed to be good at. But to the claim that we evolved our hands and arms specially for straight punching, I'm gonna say evolution really let us down there.

 

[Chrisoro]

BMHadoken

Fighting among homo sapiens would take that form, yes. But as the articles states, fighting among our close ancestors might have been to a large degree unarmed, and formed our hands and faces to be able to effectively take and dish out damage. And as to "evolution letting us down. Well, evolution is an ongoing process, and if you compare the images of the various skulls in the article about facial bones, it appears that as humans increased the use of tools/weapons, it may not have been an evolutionary advantage to be able to take punches anymore, as most damage people would take, would take other forms (or the evolution of the facial bone structure reached a point where individual differences mattered little) and the heavy facial structure of our close ancestors started to be slowly reduced as other traits were selected for instead, leading back to more fragile facial bones again. I suspect the same is the case with the hand, and that it may have been far stronger in the past. However, they have still a structure that supports the transfer of energy trough the knuckles far better than in other apes, which is a heritage from our close ancestors going trough a selection for this trait over countless generations. But as our general bone structure density have been reduced steadily over the past million years, the support is not enough anymore as many people now can now generate more punching power than the hand can absorb in it's natural state. And as we as a species are currently selecting for other traits than ability to take and dish out damage in fighting, I don't see this changing anytime soon.

 

[BMhadoken]

I'm going to regret trying to be intelligent after being awake for 26 hours. Here we go.

I think some very clever people took a look at what we had and searched for ways to maximize the damage dealt with the tools available, but if punching was a natural attack that we evolved to perform, then A. we wouldn't need to be taught how to do it without injuring ourselves, and B. the attack wouldn't have such a high rate of self-injury even amongst the trained.

Something I said earlier in the thread. The human hand is a marvel it's true, we have those superb opposable digits along with a level of manual dexterity and ROM not found in the other apes. Personally I believe that growing fine motor control was both a result of, and helped further facilitate tool use. I don't think we built our hands for punching, I think we built punching with our available hardware in mind.

Moving along, I've certainly read some interesting theories that the male skull evolved over time to be bonier, thicker, and better protect our important facial features, along with some of the other sexually dimorphic traits in our species. It's a reasonable argument. So I'm not saying human bodies didn't evolve a particular approach to threatening or deadly situations. I'm just saying that evolution was primarily in our brains and our ability to move and manipulate the things around us. That's what allowed humans to actually get anywhere. Bare-handed, even a chimpanzee can brutalize the hell out of us.

Also

Also, regarding your last statement, please google "Cassowary attacks".

Every living thing on or around the Australian continent was carefully and lovingly crafted by a malevolent god for the purpose of extinguishing life in increasingly amusing horrifying ways.

 

[PhotonGuy]

Well yes we do have natural weapons and the martial arts is all about how to use them effectively. There are some advantages to using natural weapons, particularly that they wont be considered weapons in court.

 

[Chrisoro]

I'm going to regret trying to be intelligent after being awake for 26 hours. Here we go.


Something I said earlier in the thread. The human hand is a marvel it's true, we have those superb opposable digits along with a level of manual dexterity and ROM not found in the other apes. Personally I believe that growing fine motor control was both a result of, and helped further facilitate tool use. I don't think we built our hands for punching, I think we built punching with our available hardware in mind.

You are of course free to believe that, but personally, I don't think it is an either/or situation. It's completely possible that our hand developed it's current form(or something close to ut), including the ability to form fists, both as a response to evolutionary pressure resulting from our ancestors fighting with their fists (and a lot of individuals breaking them which over time would select for the best structure to support a fist when punching), AND from increasing use of tools, where natural selection would favor those individuals who could use their hands for that application. These are not mutually exclusive, and don't need to have happened during the same time periods either, so in fact, both might be true.

Moving along, I've certainly read some interesting theories that the male skull evolved over time to be bonier, thicker, and better protect our important facial features, along with some of the other sexually dimorphic traits in our species. It's a reasonable argument. So I'm not saying human bodies didn't evolve a particular approach to threatening or deadly situations. I'm just saying that evolution was primarily in our brains and our ability to move and manipulate the things around us.

Evolution is blind and can happen with every part of a species anatomy all the time. Some mutations are very notable, and others are not, but the bottom point is that evolution did not happen primary in our brains. A mutation doesn't have to be benign to be transfered on to the following generations. It just have to not result in a disadvantage that is great enough to have a marked impact on ability to reproduce.

Our whole body is on average different in notable ways from even ancestors from our own species if you go back 30000 years or so. Moving back another couple of hundred thousand years, you will find that close relatives of our species have generally thicker bones all over, larger teeth, etc. Which definitely does not support an argument of how hands did not evolve to sustain punches because our species currently tend to break hands when punching full power into a human head.

That's what allowed humans to actually get anywhere. Bare-handed, even a chimpanzee can brutalize the hell out of us.

Yes. But that doesn't really say anything about how the situation was with our much hardier ancestors, as stated above, nor does it tell us wether or not they fought among themselves using their fists or not.

Also, regarding how current people in the modern world tend to have to learn how to use their fists for punching, and how this was used as an argument against straight punches because they therefore supposedly are not "natural behaviour". What is the likelihood of these same people surviving naked in the woods alone, or even be able to create the kind of tools our ancestors used, without training? And what does that tell us the most about? Of how our ancestors survived and their abilities? Or about the general ability of an average, modern human living in a historically extremely peaceful society with an abundance of technological means for accomplishing stuff? As transmission of culture and skills have been observed even among distant relatives of us, such as chimpanzees, why couldn't the practice of punching with the fists be just another ability that after being discovered, could have been transferred over enough generations to have an evolutionary impact?

Sorry, but I still find the arguments of the researchers quoted earlier in the thread (these and these) more convincing than yours.

 

[Orange Lightning]

Well yes we do have natural weapons and the martial arts is all about how to use them effectively. There are some advantages to using natural weapons, particularly that they wont be considered weapons in court.

So, out of the tools we have, which ones do you think are the most useful? For what purposes? We have all sorts of reflexes, instincts, muscles, body parts like elbows or fists that could be helpful in survival situation. The idea of this thread is to generate discussion on what parts of us would be more helpful than others. The fist is a great example. Is it designed for punch? Why or why not? If it is, what should natural punching look like? Or if we aren't designed to punch, what else?

A point to be made can be as simple as which muscles you think are the most important for whatever task, or as in depth as the current conversation on evolution. The objective is to incorporate the information to make fighting as close to our natural disposition. I think this emulation of our natural instincts and skills could both make your mind healthier and make the skills easier to call upon should they be needed.
Plus, it's quite the subject in martial arts. What our bodies where made to do. It's a huge discussion. I was kind of surprised there wasn't already a thread on it.

 

[pgsmith]

So, out of the tools we have, which ones do you think are the most useful?

Our advanced brain and ability to think is far and away the most useful tool we have. However, judging by popular TV programming, it's also the tool that's being left in the toolbox gathering dust most often.

 

[Orange Lightning]

I'm going to regret trying to be intelligent after being awake for 26 hours. Here we go.


Something I said earlier in the thread. The human hand is a marvel it's true, we have those superb opposable digits along with a level of manual dexterity and ROM not found in the other apes. Personally I believe that growing fine motor control was both a result of, and helped further facilitate tool use. I don't think we built our hands for punching, I think we built punching with our available hardware in mind.

Moving along, I've certainly read some interesting theories that the male skull evolved over time to be bonier, thicker, and better protect our important facial features, along with some of the other sexually dimorphic traits in our species. It's a reasonable argument. So I'm not saying human bodies didn't evolve a particular approach to threatening or deadly situations. I'm just saying that evolution was primarily in our brains and our ability to move and manipulate the things around us. That's what allowed humans to actually get anywhere. Bare-handed, even a chimpanzee can brutalize the hell out of us.

I would agree that, in many ways, we had a lot of evolution in our minds. And at some point or another, our ability to adapt our environment to us instead of vice versa became our greatest strength. Even so, certain traits are going to be favored in more than others. Even having inventions, certain traits are going to be more desired or useful in a situation where those inventions exist. Like the hunters that were posted earlier in this thread that were long distance runners.

" Bare-handed, even a chimpanzee can brutalize the hell out of us." - In addition to Chrisoro's point on this, would a human ever need to fight a chimpanzee barehanded? It could happen I suppose, but it doesn't seem like something that would be common enough to become integrated into our evolution. A lot of animals have very specific traits for incredibly specific tasks. The traits that enable a creature to kill another might spell failure for killing another. Can a bear catch a fox? No. But a wolf can catch a fox. A wolf can't so much fight a bear. And birds having nothing to do with any of them. I doubt our bodies had chimpanzee fighting in mind. If the fist for example is indeed for punching, it could be just for punching other people, and not....bears, wolves, or chimpanzees.

Every living thing on or around the Australian continent was carefully and lovingly crafted by a malevolent god for the purpose of extinguishing life in increasingly amusing horrifying ways.

Indeed. xD

I've heard and read that our intellect evolved from outsmarting each other in war. This article talks about how we evolved aggression.

Tribal war drove human evolution of aggression

However, how war like we were is apparently a bit of a debated topic.

The Psychology of Killing and the Origins of War smellslikescience.com

Peace or War How Early Humans Behaved

 

[Touch Of Death]

You can't evolve the fist, when punching is a learned activity.

 

[Chrisoro]

You can't evolve the fist, when punching is a learned activity.

You most definitely can. You just have to transmit the cultural behavior of punching over enough generations for it to influence the selection of certain traits. If someone broke their hand a million years ago, it was a pretty big deal, and would definitely affect their perceived suitability as a mate, and thus their reproductive success. The result of this happening again and again over time, for example as a result of males fighting, would be a steady increase in the strength of the fists in the population over time, or in other words, an evolution of the fists.

From the research article Protective buttressing of the human fist and the evolution of hominin hands published in the peer reviewed Journal of Experimental Biology:

A third possibility is that the proportions of the human hand are the result of sexual selection for improved striking performance during hand-to-hand combat by males.

Additionally, as would be expected if human hand proportions evolved as a result of sexual selection, there is also dimorphism in
the shape of the hand. The ratio between the lengths of the second and fourth digits is lower in males than in females (Manning et al., 1998). This ratio is negatively correlated with levels of prenatal and adult testosterone (Manning et al., 1998), performance and success in football (soccer) (Manning and Taylor, 2001), and perceived male dominance (Neave et al., 2003). Importantly, among mammals, sexual dimorphism is often greatest in those characters that enhance a male’s capacity to dominate other males (Parker, 1983; Andersson, 1994; Clutton-Brock and Harvey, 1977). Thus, the relatively high levels of sexual dimorphism in the arm and hand are consistent with the hypothesis that the proportions of the human hand have been influenced by sexual selection.

Thus, the proportions of the human hand provide a performance advantage when striking with a fist. We propose that the derived proportions of hominin hands reflect, in part, sexual selection to improve fighting performance.

 

[Orange Lightning]

You can't evolve the fist, when punching is a learned activity.

Do you mean that effective punching not seeming to be an instinctive skill (like walking or jumping) is evidence of our hands not being evolved to punch?

In that case, I would point out that physical attributes and instincts are different things. I don't think a lack of instinct for effective punching is evidence of a lack of fist evolution for punching. I don't see a reason why a physical trait couldn't be gained without the instinct for the skill that made it useful. Physical traits can be passed easily. From one generation to the next, things like hair color, body size, arched or flat feet, etc. are easily passed. Not so much with instincts. They seem to need a lot more...hard wiring.

I would posit that our minds our supposed to be a blank slate so we adapt most effectively to our environment instead of our past ones. Because it's meant to be a learned skill that's useful for the environment you're trying to live in. Only a guess, but I think it might help account for all the different methods of striking with the hands around the world.

 

[Touch Of Death]

Do you mean that effective punching not seeming to be an instinctive skill (like walking or jumping) is evidence of our hands not being evolved to punch?

In that case, I would point out that physical attributes and instincts are different things. I don't think a lack of instinct for effective punching is evidence of a lack of fist evolution for punching. I don't see a reason why a physical trait couldn't be gained without the instinct for the skill that made it useful. Physical traits can be passed easily. From one generation to the next, things like hair color, body size, arched or flat feet, etc. are easily passed. Not so much with instincts. They seem to need a lot more...hard wiring.

I would posit that our minds our supposed to be a blank slate so we adapt most effectively to our environment instead of our past ones. Because it's meant to be a learned skill that's useful for the environment you're trying to live in. Only a guess, but I think it might help account for all the different methods of striking with the hands around the world.

Well, then I would like to point out that women aren't knuckle watchers.

 

[Orange Lightning]

Well, then I would like to point out that women aren't knuckle watchers.

OH. THOSE KNUCKLES.

Not really the point, but it's funny anyway. xD