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She's fit. But does she have anything on her ancestors?
She's fit. But does she have anything on her ancestors?

How Far Fitness Has Fallen

You're pathetic. Really. According to the latest research, human fitness has decreased so dramatically in recent years that even the strongest of us would consider ancient men to be, well, monsters.

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She's fit. But does she have anything on her ancestors?

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If you were to cross paths with one of your farming ancestors (circa 7,500 to 2,000 B.C.), he'd shove you to the ground, kick sand in your face, and jog off into the sunset with your mate slung over his shoulder. And even with somebody else鈥檚 partner slung over his other shoulder, you鈥檇 probably never catch up to him. Such has been our musculoskeletal decline in only a handful of millennia.

鈥淓ven our most highly trained athletes pale in comparison to these ancestors of ours,鈥 says Dr. Colin Shaw of Cambridge University鈥檚 Phenotypic Adaptability, Variation and Evolution Research Group. 鈥淲e鈥檙e certainly weaker than we used to be.鈥

Alison Macintosh, one of Shaw鈥檚 PAVE colleagues, thinks so, too. She鈥檚 the one whose recent paper, 鈥溾 claims that, when Central Europeans made the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones, men鈥檚 lower limb strength and overall mobility decreased (even more so than among women).

Macintosh, a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate, compared laser-scanned femurs and tibia of skeletons from around 5300 B.C. to A.D.听850 She then cross-checked her findings with Shaw鈥檚 study of bone rigidity among modern Cambridge undergraduates, and found that the ability among male farmers to move about their environment 7,300 years ago was, on average, at a level near that of today鈥檚 student cross-country runners.

Our overall strength declined because, as technologies improved and men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 tasks diversified, people became less active. The result: today鈥檚 man is not only more sedentary than ever before, but compared to men of yon, we鈥檙e practically enfeebled. 鈥淲e do much, much less than our ancestors,鈥 says Robb Wolf, author of , 鈥渁nd our skeletons reflect this decrease in activity.鈥

This decline in physical activity and bone strength has led to osteoporosis, decrease in fitness, obesity, and myriad other problems and diseases. Ironically, 鈥淲e have an overabundance of nutrition and we train better,鈥 says Shaw, 鈥渂ut we鈥檙e overweight and we鈥檙e not challenging our bodies like we used to.鈥

鈥淭he average U.S. citizen is considerably less fit than the average hunter-gatherer or forager,鈥 says Dr. Loren Cordain, professor emeritus of health and exercise science at Colorado State University and author of . 鈥淭he lesson to be learned is not from early farmers and their dietary and exercise patterns, but rather from our hunter-gatherer ancestors and their dietary and exercise patterns. These examples represent the norms for our species and the environmental experiences which conditioned our genome.鈥

Indeed the hunter-gatherers of 30,000 to 150,00 years ago traveled extremely long distances while hauling all kinds of weight. 鈥淭hey were much stronger than the long-distance runners of today,鈥 says Shaw. he concluded that 鈥渢he people back then were monsters by comparison. What you see today is quite pathetic.鈥

Cordain, for one, thinks we should eat and live like our hunter-gatherer ancestors, whose meat-heavy diets gave them more muscle mass and enhanced their athletic abilities and performance. Wolf would add in weight training, stretching, and, in particular, cross-country running, because it challenges our bodies in the same ways hunter-gatherers had to navigate uneven terrain and the up-and-down of hills鈥攁ll of which increased their physical robustness.

Do all that and you can reclaim your ancient potential, advises Wolff. 鈥淚f folks train hard they can achieve remarkable levels of physical development.鈥 听

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