The Spearman and the Archer—An Essay on Selection in Body Build

Brues, Austin M.

doi:10.1525/aa.1959.61.3.02a00080

Cited by 43 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…For example, ancestral weapons were powered by the upper body (Brues 1959) whereas casualties caused by hand-to-hand combat are extremely rare in modern war (e.g. one study of casualties in Iraq showed 56% of the dead were killed by gunshots, 27% died to car bombs or other explosives, 13% to airstrikes, 2% to accidents, and only 2% expired from unknown causes which may have included deaths caused by knives, bayonets, or hand-to-hand combat; Burnham et al 2006).…”

Section: Universality Of Warfarementioning

confidence: 99%

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Physically strong men are more militant: A test across four countries

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Sznycer

Cosmides

et al. 2017

Evolution and Human Behavior

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There is substantial evidence from archaeology, anthropology, primatology, and psychology indicating that humans have a long evolutionary history of war. Natural selection, therefore, should have designed mental adaptations for making decisions about war. These adaptations evolved in past environments, and so they may respond to variables that were ancestrally relevant but not relevant in modern war. For example, ancestrally in small-scale combat, a skilled fighter would be more likely to survive a war and bring his side to victory. This ancestral regularity would have left its mark on modern men's intergroup psychology: more formidable men should still be more supportive of war. We test this hypothesis in four countries: Argentina, Denmark, Israel, and Romania. In three, physically strong men (but not strong women) were significantly more supportive of military action. These findings support the hypothesis that modern warfare is influenced by a psychology designed for ancestral war.2

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Section: Universality Of Warfarementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Data collection on each sample was completed and closed before data analysis began on that sample. (Brues 1959). There is also greater sexual dimorphism in upper body strength than lower body strength or body size generally (Lassek & Gaulin 2009).…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physically strong men are more militant: A test across four countries

Sell

Sznycer

Cosmides

et al. 2017

Evolution and Human Behavior

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“…Ruggedly built Neandertals may even have had a tactical advantage over less robust early modern humans in close-quarters confrontational hunting of large, dangerous mammals. [97][98][99] Intensification of settlement and subsistence activities, coupled with an increasingly colder climate to which Neandertals appear to have been physiologically adapted 59,100 may have been sufficient to allow Neandertals to displace early modern humans from the Levant between 80 and 50 Kyr. The presence of well-entrenched Neandertals in the woodlands of the East Mediterranean Levant would have been a formidable obstacle to further dispersals by modern humans.…”

Section: What Happened To the Skhul And Qafzeh Humans After 80 Kyr?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neandertals, competition, and the origin of modern human behavior in the Levant

Shea¹

2003

Evolutionary Anthropology

139

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The East Mediterranean Levant is a small region, but its paleoanthropological record looms large in debates about the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals. For most of the twentieth century, the Levantine paleoanthropological record supported models of continuity and evolutionary transition between Neandertals and early modern humans. Recent advances in radiometric dating have challenged these models by reversing the chronological relationship between Levantine Neandertals and early modern humans. This revised chronostratigraphy for Levantine Middle Paleolithic human fossils raises interesting questions about the evolutionary relationship between Neandertals and early modern humans. A reconsideration of this relationship moves us closer to understanding the long delay between the origin of morphologically modern‐looking humans during the Middle Paleolithic (>130 Kyr) and the adaptive radiation of modern humans into Eurasia around the time of the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic (50 to 30 Kyr).

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“…Men, for example, have approximately 75 per cent more muscle mass than women in the arms, but only 50 per cent more muscle mass in legs. Although ancestral humans were zoologically unusual in their use of tools in some types of aggression, the force driving the weapon remains largely a function of upper-body strength (Brues 1959). Moreover, given the persistence of weapons-free fights (at least within social groups) after the emergence of tool use and continuing into the present, it seems likely that the neurocomputational assessment specializations that evolved during the tens of millions of years prior to tool use would remain useful and be maintained.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human adaptations for the visual assessment of strength and fighting ability from the body and face

et al. 2008

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Selection in species with aggressive social interactions favours the evolution of cognitive mechanisms for assessing physical formidability (fighting ability or resource-holding potential). The ability to accurately assess formidability in conspecifics has been documented in a number of non-human species, but has not been demonstrated in humans. Here, we report tests supporting the hypothesis that the human cognitive architecture includes mechanisms that assess fighting ability-mechanisms that focus on correlates of upper-body strength. Across diverse samples of targets that included US college students, Bolivian horticulturalists and Andean pastoralists, subjects in the US were able to accurately estimate the physical strength of male targets from photos of their bodies and faces. Hierarchical linear modelling shows that subjects were extracting cues of strength that were largely independent of height, weight and age, and that corresponded most strongly to objective measures of upper-body strength-even when the face was all that was available for inspection. Estimates of women's strength were less accurate, but still significant. These studies are the first empirical demonstration that, for humans, judgements of strength and judgements of fighting ability not only track each other, but accurately track actual upper-body strength.

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The Spearman and the Archer—An Essay on Selection in Body Build

Cited by 43 publications

References 7 publications

Physically strong men are more militant: A test across four countries

Physically strong men are more militant: A test across four countries

Neandertals, competition, and the origin of modern human behavior in the Levant

Human adaptations for the visual assessment of strength and fighting ability from the body and face

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