Why did humans get so weak? (And our potential)

[mitchless]

This illusion of "paleo" man being stronger, faster, having a better diet, sleeping 8hrs a day, and generally more moral, is simply myth.

It may be, but this myth traces its roots at least as far back a Homer. There are several references in The Illiad about men of old (in his examples Achilles, Hector, Ajax, etc.) being "not as men are today." He referred to the large rocks they threw that the enfeebled men of Homer's day would be unable to even lift.

Now this may be artistic flourish. Rip mentioned a similar explanation for the ancient statues of these men in "Story Time with Uncle Rip." Perhaps, though, a genotype predisposed to accumulating muscle combined with a life of wealth (well... relative to contemporaries) and strenuous living (they still hunted wild boar with spears and trained for war) would yield men who were quite strong and muscular even without the benefit of the general strength training we have today. It also helps to have the weaker specimens eliminated by periodic warfare. It would be similar to the Bulgarian lifters who get so strong doing only the Olympic lifts or D-1 athletes who get strong in spite of the silly bullshit that passes for training.

As for being more moral, well... Homer covers that, too.

[Pluripotent]

The opposite of eugenics is dysgenics. Which is not desirable.

The issue is one of state compulsion.

People every day voluntarily choose to engage in eugenics.

Parents pass on their traits to their children. In fact, all (or almost all) human traits are heritable. All Human Behavioral Traits are Heritable | JayMan's Blog

Generally speaking, people prefer to be with--and mate with--partners who are healthy, intelligent, good looking, athletic, etc. Also, people with various conditions engage in genetic counseling to avoid passing on genetic diseases to their children.

Most people know this, but many choose not to discuss it because it is not politically correct.

I suppose, but if eugenics is a pseudoscience (and it is) then this is a distinction without a difference. Genetic counseling can have some effect in some cases, but we don't know enough about genetics for it to be very effective in most cases, and I would venture to guess that the existence of genetic counseling hasn't had much effect on the human genome as a whole. The effects of sexual selection are likely measures in thousands of years, if not more, so not really a timeframe that would make it amenable to the evil geniuses who would wish to make eugenics an actual science.

Hey...ask Michael Moore...nothing better than Cuban Health Care.

I did not hear a peep from Professors in MEdical School to that effect. I guess it was the luck of the draw I ended up a Californian , in Nebraska. Actually, I hardly remember a thing that Professors of Medicine said

Now...I am a (part time) but full Professor, and nobody listens to me either.

Unfortunately, I heard more of this garbage than I cared to. A lot of this stuff gets uncritically repeated in WHO studies that make their way into "the literature" and then gets repeated by uncritical pHDs and MDs. A lot of the students are already indoctrinated to the extent that it doesn't even phase them. I had a classmate who said she was a communist and the professor and her were both questioning me about something I said, can't remember how this started, but she said something to the effect of all communism means is that we put smart people in control. So I asked her, do you want a committee of "smart people" telling you what to do and what to be? And she just said "yes," without missing a beat. Of course she is lying, because as soon as they told her to mop the floor she would protest. But where do you go from there? Both her and the professor were looking at me like I was from some other planet.

[torkins]

There was a Star Trek episode about this very thing, can't recall the title off the top of my head.

I thought of the same episode: The Enemy Within

[Tiedemies]

Humans got weak by specializing in growing a huge brain. The thing about the huge brain is, you can then use tools, and it turned out -- by freak accident, perhaps -- that tribes with big heads and pointy sticks was able to kill the tribes with bulging pecs'n'biceps and take their land.

[Gene61]

Humans have a different gene for myostatin than apes, the muscle growth inhibitor protein. But you ask why. Here is an interesting take on the question.

Weak Jaw, Big Brain | Science | AAAS

[Crom]

Crom forgets.

Everyone KNOWS that prohibition was a disaster...right ? I mean, we've all seen the movies!

Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation

Actually, Prohibition Was a Success - The New York Times


The Ancient Titans:

Genesis 6:3-5 New International Version (NIV)
3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.


The Nephilim /ˈnɛfɪˌlɪm/ (Hebrew: נְפִילִים‬, nefilim) were the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" before the Deluge, according to Genesis 6:1-4 of the Bible.

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

— Genesis 6:1–4, New Revised Standard Version
The word is loosely translated as giants in some Bibles and left untranslated in others. The "sons of God" have been interpreted to be fallen angels according to some classical Judaic explanations.

According to Numbers 13:33, they later inhabited Canaan at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan.

The Lord said to Moses, "Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites" ... So they went up and spied out the land ... And they told him: "... Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there." ... So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, "The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. 33 There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."

— Numbers 13:1–2; 21; 27–28; 32–33. New Revised Standard Version.

[Brodie Butland]

It may be, but this myth traces its roots at least as far back a Homer. There are several references in The Illiad about men of old (in his examples Achilles, Hector, Ajax, etc.) being "not as men are today." He referred to the large rocks they threw that the enfeebled men of Homer's day would be unable to even lift.

Also features prominently in the Bible. Abraham apparently lived to 175 and Noah to 950. Many of the patriarchs lived over a millennium. Maybe if our doctors spent some more time with the Good Book, we could get the average lifespan to at least triple digits.

[CarteringKat]

Possibly. But obviously not all alpha males are violent criminals. Might there be another trait we would be selecting against?

Interestingly enough Singapore has some of the highest capital punishment rates in the world according to a cursory glance on the internet has placed in the top 5 for some time in terms of safety and trust in the government in law enforcement and the like.

Capital punishment in Singapore - Wikipedia

That's a list of reasons to be put to death by the Singapore government. It seems fairly reasonable to me and apparently they are fairly strict about all this. If you take this into account maybe killing violent criminals on their first crime curbs the attempts of other violent criminals? Maybe the problem isn't solely on genetics, but leniency in policies and inability to prosecute?

With that in mind, maybe nothing happens by sterilizing three time offenders and forcing consequences and holding people accountable is one of the most effective ways to create results.

[CarteringKat]

I suppose, but if eugenics is a pseudoscience (and it is) then this is a distinction without a difference. Genetic counseling can have some effect in some cases, but we don't know enough about genetics for it to be very effective in most cases, and I would venture to guess that the existence of genetic counseling hasn't had much effect on the human genome as a whole. The effects of sexual selection are likely measures in thousands of years, if not more, so not really a timeframe that would make it amenable to the evil geniuses who would wish to make eugenics an actual science.

Eugenics = the "improvement" of the human species by controlled breeding. Improvement is in quotes because in the past what makes a person's genetics desirable has been perverted by American scientists to include basically not being poor or not a minority and this is obviously a flawed definition of fitness. It is no more a pseudoscience than dog or fish breeding for a specific trait. The morality of eugenics is an entirely different conversation. Making the statement you have about eugenics is shortsighted and lacks a clear understanding of what genetics are, how they work, and how humans have been practicing artificial selection for a very long time.