Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I am
Speaker 1: Christian Sager. Hey, Robert, I want you to hit me
Speaker 1: as hard as you can. All right, here it goes.
Speaker 1: You hit me in the ear. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, No,
Speaker 1: that was perfect. Are you okay? Hit me again? Now?
Speaker 1: Maybe later. Man, We've got an episode to record, so,
Speaker 1: as you may guess from our little uh little fight
Speaker 1: club homage there, this episode is about the evolution of punching,
Speaker 1: in particular fists and human beings and how we evolved
Speaker 1: in the theory that our hands specifically evolved so that
Speaker 1: we could fight each other. Yeah, in particular, this is
Speaker 1: the theory that's been put forth by by all just
Speaker 1: David Carrier from the University of Utah, and he's done
Speaker 1: a number of different studies and published a number of
Speaker 1: different papers um supporting this theory. And whether you agree
Speaker 1: with it or not, he makes some He just makes
Speaker 1: a wonderful case for it, and he's committed to this theory. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to say he has like what five academic
Speaker 1: papers published all about different parts of the body, but
Speaker 1: all around this theory. Yes, the most recent of which
Speaker 1: just came out in the last couple of months. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, we have done how Stuff works video
Speaker 1: about it that you wrote and started in and there's
Speaker 1: a little like article accompanying it. Yeah. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the real stars of that video. But we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: So see if you want, If you want something a
Speaker 1: little little creepy fun, this will deliver. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, we're talking about basic human evolution here, the
Speaker 1: evolution of the human form and really the human function
Speaker 1: as well, the humanity's shadows self. Yeah. Well, before we
Speaker 1: get into the meat of the episode, I just want
Speaker 1: to remind our listeners that we have a couple of
Speaker 1: things going on with social media right now. We've just
Speaker 1: started periscoping and we're doing that every Friday at noon.
Speaker 1: We did our first one last week and it went
Speaker 1: really well, so we're gonna try it again. We're gonna
Speaker 1: try to keep going with it, uh, and we'd love
Speaker 1: to see you there. So if you have time, you
Speaker 1: have periscope on your phone or your computer or whatever,
Speaker 1: check it out and uh talk to us. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: have links about it on Facebook and Twitter and Tumbler
Speaker 1: as well. Uh, and we'll be reminding you right before
Speaker 1: it happened. Yeah. Absolutely, and we're blow the mind on
Speaker 1: all of those social media platforms. One other thing too,
Speaker 1: we were thinking we've heard that apparently it helps your
Speaker 1: iTunes rankings if you get reviews. I'm assuming positive reviews
Speaker 1: from your listeners. Uh, and we checked in. There haven't
Speaker 1: been that many reviews in a while, especially since Joe
Speaker 1: and I joined the show. So we're hoping that if
Speaker 1: you could please go in and you know, if you
Speaker 1: have time, provider review you for us over in iTunes.
Speaker 1: And I just found out yesterday too. Did you know
Speaker 1: we're available on Google Play now as well. Apparently they
Speaker 1: have a podcast streaming service as well. Yeah that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, how about the algorithm dropped by iTunes of
Speaker 1: your an iTunes listener give us a positive review. Uh,
Speaker 1: it helps us out because some of those reviews are
Speaker 1: old like that, years and years back to when the
Speaker 1: podcast was still in diapers, right, all right, so let's
Speaker 1: get into it. Fists Punching Fight Club. Yes, so, um,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen Stanley Kubrick's sci fi classic two
Speaker 1: thousand one of Space Odyssey and I hope you have,
Speaker 1: because it's it's really the stuff to blow your mind movie,
Speaker 1: and many of us um it paints a wonderful picture
Speaker 1: of humanity's violent evolutionary ascension, right this wonderful Dawn of
Speaker 1: Man segment in which these early hominids, some of the
Speaker 1: best men in monkey suits ever in eight suits if
Speaker 1: you rather, just sort of mucking about and then eventually
Speaker 1: just discovering a was technology, the technology to pick up
Speaker 1: a tool specifically, I think like a taper of job
Speaker 1: and just start wailing on animals and each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's this band that I like called Oxes and they
Speaker 1: performed itself by Southwest one year and they just did
Speaker 1: that entire scene verbatim at the end of their show.
Speaker 1: It's like, like, I think they played the music that
Speaker 1: was going on in it and then like they acted out.
Speaker 1: They acted out, they showed the members of the band
Speaker 1: acted it out. Yeah, it was pretty amusing. But yes,
Speaker 1: so this brings us to the real like I think,
Speaker 1: academic heart of this episode is a guy named David Carrier,
Speaker 1: and he is uh if you, by the way, if
Speaker 1: you google David Carrier, it turns out that there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of other guys with that name who get higher
Speaker 1: rankings Google than him. So you might want to add
Speaker 1: like evolutionary or a biologist or something like that, this
Speaker 1: would work. Yeah. He's at the University of Utah, uh,
Speaker 1: and he has published multiple papers, like we said, and
Speaker 1: really just has this overall theory that humanity, especially male humans,
Speaker 1: have physically evolved over time, uh, to be fighting machines basically,
Speaker 1: and that that is something that's inherent in us. And
Speaker 1: I think what he's getting out overall is that we
Speaker 1: now live in a society where there aren't that many
Speaker 1: reasons for melee combat. Uh. Actually the episode that we're
Speaker 1: kind of record after this one is about another form
Speaker 1: of combat. But in terms of fist fighting, there aren't
Speaker 1: that many reasons, right, not like they're there used to
Speaker 1: be back in the good days, back back when we
Speaker 1: used to and you know, jokingly, I think that this
Speaker 1: is kind of the philosophical heart of Fight Club as well, right,
Speaker 1: the the idea that that like we're made to be
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer physical fighting machines and our primordial fisticuff roots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in modern society doesn't allow us to do that.
Speaker 1: So where do we how do we you know, burn
Speaker 1: off that inherent I don't know, uh, evolutionary aesthetic. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: it's it's important to note here that an in carrier
Speaker 1: will be the first to stay this as well. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there are a number of different factors going on in
Speaker 1: human evolution and the ascent of man um you have.
Speaker 1: You know, our oversized brains are our diet um some
Speaker 1: of the just environmental scenarios that enabled us to get
Speaker 1: to where we are now. Uh, and so his you
Speaker 1: often encounter the idea that comes down to our tool use. Right.
Speaker 1: A tool use, of course, is an important aspect of
Speaker 1: a humanity. Humanities of center, our ability to to like
Speaker 1: that guy in an eight costume in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: to pick up a tool and start using it, um
Speaker 1: to to overpower more sophisticated predators, to overpower each other.
Speaker 1: And certainly we have the manual dexterity to make tools,
Speaker 1: to wield to tools. We have the brain that can
Speaker 1: allow us to update our body schema to incorporate this
Speaker 1: tool into our image of ourself and utilize it properly.
Speaker 1: But UH Carrier is ultimately making the case that that
Speaker 1: the real violent aspect of humanity enters the picture along
Speaker 1: with if not earlier than our tool using hands like
Speaker 1: that when you look at the human hand, yes, manual
Speaker 1: dexterity is a big part of the form, but also
Speaker 1: the ability to punch right right. Yeah, And so from
Speaker 1: the research that we looked at for this, most anthropologists
Speaker 1: up until Carriers research have been saying just that that
Speaker 1: the dexterity is the important part, and it's so that
Speaker 1: we can pick up things and maybe throw things, but
Speaker 1: especially to help us use those tools, have you know,
Speaker 1: made us the powerful species that we are, right, But
Speaker 1: one of the this is an important fact to throw
Speaker 1: out there too, is that when you when it comes
Speaker 1: to punching, no matter what you've seen and Disney is
Speaker 1: the Jungle Book, humans are the only creatures that can
Speaker 1: throw a punch. Yeah, you know what. I had never
Speaker 1: thought about that before until reading Carriers research, and of
Speaker 1: course it makes sense. But not even primates can do it, right.
Speaker 1: We we alone, even among the primates, are the only
Speaker 1: ones who can curl that that that hand up into
Speaker 1: a fully buttressed fist and uh, you know, socket to them.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that in our current form, this
Speaker 1: evolved form, you can just look at your hand right
Speaker 1: now and try this out. The closed fists, the fully
Speaker 1: buttressed fist with the generally with the thumb on top.
Speaker 1: According to the schematics we're looking at, Um, what what's
Speaker 1: occurring here is that the closed fist protects the hands,
Speaker 1: delicate bones, the muscles, ligaments during impacts. So Carrier's theory
Speaker 1: says that we've we've evolved to be able to throw
Speaker 1: that punch. There's a there's an evolutionary advantage in being
Speaker 1: able to throw that punch in such a way to
Speaker 1: where you can get maximum force without damaging those delicate
Speaker 1: manual dexterity tools that that are your hands. So that
Speaker 1: right there leads me to think that this isn't like
Speaker 1: such a black and white issue within evolutionary biology and
Speaker 1: anthropology that it's either a fist or it's manual dexterity.
Speaker 1: I think it's both, right. I think ultimately that's the
Speaker 1: argument he's trying to make. Otherwise he wouldn't be saying, well,
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of a buttressed fist is to protect
Speaker 1: the hand from getting damaged so that it can subsequently
Speaker 1: later on go and use manual dexterity. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: imagine kind of a prehistart dating game, right, and in
Speaker 1: which you have the the lovely young woman and then
Speaker 1: the three potential suitors. One one one of them could
Speaker 1: throw a really hard punch, but he can only do
Speaker 1: it every every so often because it shatters all the
Speaker 1: all the fingers in his hands, and it's such his
Speaker 1: his hands are garbled, a garbled mess. He can't build anything.
Speaker 1: He's not he's not good for anything else around. He
Speaker 1: just gets into like one fight every like two or
Speaker 1: three months and nails it, but then he's useless. And
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, you have an end of
Speaker 1: jewel who's who's wonderful around the camp for manual dexterity. Uh,
Speaker 1: but all I can do is kind of slap and paw.
Speaker 1: But in the middle, the sweet spot is you have
Speaker 1: an individual who can who can buttress that fist, who
Speaker 1: can who can punch hard, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, can still do all the other things around
Speaker 1: the camp in the tribal community that are important and
Speaker 1: essential to passing on his jeans. Right. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: one thing that I think is important to distinguish here too,
Speaker 1: if I think I have this right, is that carriers fists.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, like maybe make a fist. Right, now,
Speaker 1: go along with me. Here is that your four interior
Speaker 1: fingers are folded in and your thumb is over your
Speaker 1: second and third finger, right or sorry, rather your third,
Speaker 1: your middle finger and your ring finger. Yes, that's how
Speaker 1: it's depicted in the study. Is the best way to
Speaker 1: get accomplished. This I've been fighting wrong my whole life,
Speaker 1: I think, because I don't. I think I've been doing
Speaker 1: it the wrong way. I think my thumb Not that
Speaker 1: I get into fights that often, but the thumb over
Speaker 1: I've been doing it with my thumb over my forefinger
Speaker 1: and my middle finger. Yeah. Well, I mean I've only
Speaker 1: been pretend punching. Yeah, I try to, you know. Go,
Speaker 1: I mean, just go down to the parking lot and
Speaker 1: get a couple of swings in every once a month
Speaker 1: or something, just to stay fresh. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: into the research here, going back to two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: UH carriers paper dealing with the legs of our early ancestors.
Speaker 1: In particular, all his studies are really revolving around the
Speaker 1: austral epits. UH. And these are creatures in the genus
Speaker 1: austro Lepipocus, immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo. They
Speaker 1: had heights around three ft nine inches for females and
Speaker 1: four ft six inches for males, and they lived from
Speaker 1: four million to two million years ago, And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of information on this and like I read basically
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia Britannica entry last night about these guys, and uh,
Speaker 1: there are there's a lot about them. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of subspecies, but the basic gist that I found is
Speaker 1: that most of the fossils for this species were found
Speaker 1: in Africa. They had small canine teeth, but they had
Speaker 1: large cheek teeth, so you can kind of imagine that
Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, um caveman kind of look
Speaker 1: I think would probably be appropriate. I didn't know this,
Speaker 1: but Lucy, that famous preserved fossilized skeleton was an australopith,
Speaker 1: So that that if you've pictured that before, you've seen
Speaker 1: that before. That's what we're talking about here. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: if the remains are older than six million years, they're
Speaker 1: actually considered to be fossilized apes. So that I think
Speaker 1: there's like an age difference there, uh between the six
Speaker 1: million and the four million gap, But there's there's definitely
Speaker 1: some evolution between the two. And the last thing, and
Speaker 1: this is going to be important for when we're talking
Speaker 1: about Carrier's research, is that they had these curved hands
Speaker 1: if you can picture kind of I would imagine like
Speaker 1: apes do today, uh, and really long toes and short thighs.
Speaker 1: And this is important because we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: the legs in particular right now. So okay, the assumption
Speaker 1: that most anthropologists have had about australapiths up until now
Speaker 1: is that they had short legs because they probably lived
Speaker 1: like a treetop type culture. Their legs were used primarily
Speaker 1: for climbing and balancing. Carrier argues, though, that he thinks
Speaker 1: there's another reason, and this is kind of you're going
Speaker 1: to find that with most of Carrier's research that it
Speaker 1: it works like this, there's a presumption with an anthropology
Speaker 1: he adds something onto it, and it's usually around fighting.
Speaker 1: In this case, it is Uh. He says that the
Speaker 1: reason why they have short legs is that it's advantageous
Speaker 1: for them to be short because it gives them an
Speaker 1: edge and grappling, which is the kind of fighting they
Speaker 1: would probably do. Also, they have like a lower, more
Speaker 1: stable center of gravity I'm thinking of I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: Wolverine like in the comics, Like he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: like short and stubby, right, and that makes him a
Speaker 1: great fight the topple. Yeah, exactly. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: specifically uh in a in a paper that he wrote
Speaker 1: for Evolution, which is called the Short Legs of Great
Speaker 1: Apes colon Evidence for Aggressive Behavior in austro Lepith the Scenes,
Speaker 1: and this came out in two thousand and seven, but
Speaker 1: one of the key papers comes to us from two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. This is where a carrier really rolled out
Speaker 1: the the the idea that that the the human fist
Speaker 1: has evolved to this form because it is designed to
Speaker 1: punch other humans face other and and other ancestors in
Speaker 1: the pace face. So again it comes down to the
Speaker 1: idea of the proportions of the human hand allow us
Speaker 1: to make a fist that protects all those delicate bones,
Speaker 1: muscles and ligaments during a you know, a josh shattering punch.
Speaker 1: And again, no other primates or any animal for that matter,
Speaker 1: can throw a punch. And meanwhile, our earliest ancestors may
Speaker 1: have benefited from an evolutionary advantage and that they could
Speaker 1: punch hard without entering Uh. These five fingered murder weapons,
Speaker 1: so of us, your winning mates, resources, tribal honor, uh
Speaker 1: and uh. In this particular study, Carrier also proved out
Speaker 1: just the impact value of the punch, showing that the
Speaker 1: punch is actually always better than a swap or a
Speaker 1: chop because and it all comes down to the peak
Speaker 1: strike force. The peak strike force is always the same
Speaker 1: no matter what manner of handblow you're using, Okay, be
Speaker 1: it a slap, a chop, a three stooges fingerpope, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever you're you're throwing, the peak four strike force is
Speaker 1: always the same. But the fist delivers all this force
Speaker 1: to a smaller area. So according to carry, the force
Speaker 1: per area is up to three times greater with a
Speaker 1: punch versus a good old swap. Okay. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about this, this first study that he did
Speaker 1: on fists, that I guess I didn't know even though,
Speaker 1: like I've studied anatomy for drawing purposes, especially like hand drawing.
Speaker 1: But male index fingers are always shorter than our ring fingers,
Speaker 1: and that's part of being He argues that that's part
Speaker 1: of being able to form this ideal fist, right, But
Speaker 1: in women they're typically the same length, which I guess
Speaker 1: I hadn't even really realized before. And maybe that's why
Speaker 1: my drawings of women's hands have been terrible in the past.
Speaker 1: But I mean, when I look at my hands right now,
Speaker 1: that's certainly true. I thought of look like means you're
Speaker 1: a wearewolf? Right, it could be that it could be
Speaker 1: that it might be tied to the wolf, something about
Speaker 1: like the different But yeah, so that's something I didn't realize.
Speaker 1: And then so this gets into the his evolutionary argument
Speaker 1: split along gender lines to that I guess he wasn't
Speaker 1: considering Rhonda Roussi when he was thinking about fist formation. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that's certainly Some of the criticism that has been leveled
Speaker 1: at him is that that this is a very male centric,
Speaker 1: or even bro centric view of human evolution. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think that maybe this is a good time for
Speaker 1: us to touch on I wish Joe is here because
Speaker 1: he has a specific disdain for what is called bro science. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and in fact, when I was doing the research
Speaker 1: for this article, I ran into a couple of quote
Speaker 1: bro science articles. Uh. I guess the best way to
Speaker 1: explain this is kind of a pseudo science repurposing scientific
Speaker 1: principles to to to just like geek out about like
Speaker 1: guy stuff like sports and fighting and and and uh
Speaker 1: lifting weights and things like that. That's what I've seen mainly.
Speaker 1: The article that I decided that I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: the science was strong enough to include it in this
Speaker 1: episode was from a site called Boxing Science, and it
Speaker 1: was all about the science of boxing, and I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this might be interesting and a good uh you know,
Speaker 1: compliment to carriers research. And it really didn't have a
Speaker 1: whole lot of a weight to it and wasn't wasn't
Speaker 1: very well connected, especially in regards to anatomy. But there
Speaker 1: was a lot of talk about um uh martial science
Speaker 1: in other research, and this was academically published, so I
Speaker 1: did think I should bring this up. There was apparently
Speaker 1: a study published in the Journal of Cerebral Cortex, and
Speaker 1: the suggestion there was that punches actually start with our
Speaker 1: brain structure. So yeah, the fist might be important, as
Speaker 1: Carrier argues, but brains are also really important to this.
Speaker 1: So what they did was they did brain scans of
Speaker 1: active martial artists versus people with similar builds but with
Speaker 1: no martial arts training, and they looked to see if
Speaker 1: there was a correlation between the karate punchers, and they
Speaker 1: found that there was. That the people who were trained
Speaker 1: punchers actually had denser white matter in the supplementary motor
Speaker 1: cortex of their brains, and that that's a section that
Speaker 1: controls coordination between all of our different muscle groups. Right.
Speaker 1: So you pair this together the ideas that multiple muscle
Speaker 1: groups working together, they are doing this thing that we
Speaker 1: refer to as or science referred to as kinetic linking.
Speaker 1: You see this in combat, but you also see it
Speaker 1: in stuff like golf for baseball. Right, multiple muscles all
Speaker 1: working together so that we can accomplish these these great feats. Um.
Speaker 1: But coordination and timing are also essential to all this
Speaker 1: as well, which is where the brain comes in. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is really that, yes, the fist may
Speaker 1: be important in this research came out before uh Carrier's
Speaker 1: most recent piece on fists, so I'd be curious with
Speaker 1: their what the what the authors of that piece would
Speaker 1: say about carriers research how fists are connected to brains
Speaker 1: and vice versa, and the whole body working together. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of articles online that took this and
Speaker 1: then extrapolated out of it like there was a nerdous
Speaker 1: piece and then I think that piece was linked to
Speaker 1: a popular mechanics piece that was all about Bruce Lee's
Speaker 1: one inch punch and the like physics behind that. And
Speaker 1: I wait, what's the deal with a one inch punch?
Speaker 1: It's just like a specific like Bruce Lee martial arts move.
Speaker 1: Does that mean like there's one inch between, like it's
Speaker 1: just a very rapid short punch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely right. Um and if you kind of right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you have to do that. There's good. That's the study
Speaker 1: that's coming out in sixteen is the WAW contribution that
Speaker 1: I think it's worth worth Both of these studies that
Speaker 1: we've we've touched on here, I feel like they are
Speaker 1: pretty solidly outside of any growth science area. But it's
Speaker 1: it's picks it up and then runs with it and
Speaker 1: starts rewriting the study and extrapolating it and uh and
Speaker 1: and pushing a certain picture of humanity. Yeah. And even
Speaker 1: like the press release that went out about carriers study
Speaker 1: that came out just a couple what was it two
Speaker 1: weeks ago? Uh stated specifically, here's our retorts to brow
Speaker 1: science claims before before anybody even made them because they
Speaker 1: knew that there was going to be there. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: David Carrier is an accomplished biologist. Yeah. Absolutely, look at
Speaker 1: picture of him. He looks like an accomplished biologist, right,
Speaker 1: he doesn't. He's not like a CrossFit Jim who's trying
Speaker 1: to use like a physics book to justify uh, you
Speaker 1: know whatever. Alright, So two thousand fourteen, Carrier publishes a
Speaker 1: new study and Biological Reviews and he worked with this
Speaker 1: one on this one with physician Michael H. Morgan, and
Speaker 1: they the key argument here is that it goes beyond fists,
Speaker 1: that human faces also evolved to minimize injury from punches
Speaker 1: of the face during fights between males. Uh, that's where
Speaker 1: we tend to punch people. And I've often wondered this,
Speaker 1: where do we Where do we first get that idea
Speaker 1: about punching people in the face, Because even in children's films,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned Jungle Book earlier, because when I let
Speaker 1: my son watch it for the first time, I was
Speaker 1: kind of a pall that all the fisticuffs. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of punching bears, punching tigers, humans punching bears, human
Speaker 1: bears punching human I wonder if the new c g
Speaker 1: I version is going to have all these punching, especially
Speaker 1: because they're like c G I, actual animals rather than
Speaker 1: like a cartoon Blue the Bear. Yeah, it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to see how that goes. But but yeah, that we
Speaker 1: just have this idea of punching and groined in us
Speaker 1: early on. But yeah, and but but the face, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there must be a connection there because like,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this on previous episodes that like,
Speaker 1: we think of the face and the head as being
Speaker 1: the center of identity, right at least we do in
Speaker 1: modern culture. We've talked previously about how Egyptians did not
Speaker 1: actually they thought that the heart was the center of
Speaker 1: the soul. But in our case, we have that is
Speaker 1: sort of like a cultural belief, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: that's where it stems from. It's like, you got to
Speaker 1: hit them right right right where it's all going on. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it is very Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: very strategic place to strike because you have some major
Speaker 1: since organs there. And of course the nose is a
Speaker 1: key um key target with any kind of because it's
Speaker 1: you can be broken easily to at least throw your
Speaker 1: opponent off. You have not actually killed, right, A concussion
Speaker 1: will certainly end the fight. But the thing so again,
Speaker 1: like I didn't feel comfortable citing this research in the episode,
Speaker 1: but when I was reading these boxing sites and they
Speaker 1: were talking about, uh that some of them actually were
Speaker 1: like consulted on Carrier's research, And basically what it came
Speaker 1: down to was them saying, well, yeah, that sounds interesting,
Speaker 1: but like the best place to punch somebody is actually
Speaker 1: like in the groin, Like it's you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like from their point of view, I think, in like
Speaker 1: a martial arts or boxing contest or whatever, that's going
Speaker 1: to maximize your efforts, right yeah, yeah, but the refs watching,
Speaker 1: so you can't. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta have
Speaker 1: your manager distract the ref then you do the low
Speaker 1: blow exactly, and then you roll up for the three count. Um.
Speaker 1: This particular study about about the faces, it is important
Speaker 1: because I mentioned the nose weakness, and that's this is
Speaker 1: them here. This often leveled. But this research is basically
Speaker 1: looking back again four or five million years at those
Speaker 1: australopith ancestors, and here we find increased robustness in the
Speaker 1: particular facial bones that are most likely to suffer fracture
Speaker 1: during a pummeling. And these are also the areas where
Speaker 1: we find the greatest differences between male and female facial
Speaker 1: structures boast, both in the australopiths and in humans, because
Speaker 1: again the structures may have evolved, according to Carrier, in
Speaker 1: response to male on male violence. And it's these Australopiths.
Speaker 1: Also they had a stubbier nose, so they didn't have
Speaker 1: the clear target punched me in the center of my
Speaker 1: face and send blood flying everywhere. That's the argument against Carrier, right,
Speaker 1: is that the Australopith face would actually be better suited
Speaker 1: for combat. Yeah. And the idea here too is that
Speaker 1: that post auster epath we became we we still love
Speaker 1: to punch each other in the face, clearly, but it
Speaker 1: becomes less of an evolutionary driving force. Yeah. I loved
Speaker 1: how the methodology of this research went about. So these
Speaker 1: two guys looked at emergency room statistics from Western societies
Speaker 1: and they found that all of the fights between quote
Speaker 1: untrained combatants. I wonder how they got that information from
Speaker 1: the emergency room files. Uh, most frequently resulted in injuries
Speaker 1: to the face, which you know, like we're talking earlier,
Speaker 1: we usually go for the face, right, So the jaw,
Speaker 1: the cheek, bones, the nose, and in particular the bones
Speaker 1: around our eyes are the areas that they're looking at here.
Speaker 1: These are the areas that they're saying, why didn't our
Speaker 1: bones evolve to be sturdier at these stress points like
Speaker 1: early humans? Yeah? Absolutely so. This study in particular has
Speaker 1: one major critic. I'm sure there's lots of anthropologists out there,
Speaker 1: but the one that I found that was cited that
Speaker 1: most was a guy named Owen Lovejoy, who at the
Speaker 1: time worked at a Kent State university. He's a he's
Speaker 1: a lover, not a fighter. Didn't even apply exactly, so
Speaker 1: he's as uh. The hypothesis behind Carrier's research is what
Speaker 1: he calls adaptation ism, and he says, essentially, what he's
Speaker 1: doing here is assigning evolutionary purpose to a particular trait
Speaker 1: when no such relationship actually exists. So, okay, we've got
Speaker 1: a little bit of an academic fight here. We see
Speaker 1: this all the time, people trying to you know, stand
Speaker 1: their ground, make their mark, point their flag. I love
Speaker 1: Joy says that the shape of our faces are what
Speaker 1: I guess this is a term that's used in this
Speaker 1: kind of biological evolution study a spandrel, and that means
Speaker 1: that they evolved as a byproduct of other traits. So
Speaker 1: for example, brain size or the muscles and bones that
Speaker 1: are in our jaws that are needed for chewing. Uh,
Speaker 1: these are why our faces are shaped the way that
Speaker 1: they are. Not the punching thing. Yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: is the one of the problems you get into when
Speaker 1: you start pulling apart these definitely different evolutionary theories. Is
Speaker 1: there are just so many factors that are involved the
Speaker 1: face punching sure, but yeah, also the ability to to
Speaker 1: crunch and grind up your food. Uh, this this swelling
Speaker 1: size of the human brain, etcetera. He also says this
Speaker 1: goes back to our earlier sort of scene that we
Speaker 1: were setting, where like the human female would be, the
Speaker 1: early human female would choose for mates. He said that
Speaker 1: early human females actually did not prize aggression in their mates. Uh.
Speaker 1: They and subsequently they chose partners that had smaller canine teeth.
Speaker 1: So that was a thing because you know, I think
Speaker 1: that these early human ancestors were biting as well as
Speaker 1: slapping and punching. Well, that's clearly an ingrained right instinct, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so subsequently, the smaller canines lead to males that
Speaker 1: cooperated with one another more and this led to the
Speaker 1: success of the human species, or one of the things
Speaker 1: that led to success. So he's arguing completely against the
Speaker 1: whole fist face thing. Okay, Now, I always think to
Speaker 1: cut off fish when when discussions like this come up,
Speaker 1: and and I'm I'm not making a direct comparison and
Speaker 1: cuttle fish and humans because obviously the very alien creatures
Speaker 1: compared to one another, they're totally different environments. But when
Speaker 1: the couple fish, you see the survival of both the
Speaker 1: robust fighter male and the sneaky, smaller male who even
Speaker 1: pretends to be a female in order to to mate.
Speaker 1: And uh, it always reminds me that, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're looking at a complex mating relationship with the creature,
Speaker 1: there there is the potential for more than one model
Speaker 1: that's effective. Yeah. I mean, I think that this gets
Speaker 1: back to what we're you know, talking about from the
Speaker 1: very beginning of Carrier's research here, that I think that
Speaker 1: it's more than just one thing. Right. You can't just
Speaker 1: say like, oh, we just evolved because of fists or
Speaker 1: we just evolved because of manual dexterity. There's so many
Speaker 1: factors that are going on there, right, And yeah, it
Speaker 1: works really well to get published in an academic journal
Speaker 1: if you have some kind of amazing insight with research
Speaker 1: to back it up that says, well, hey, look at
Speaker 1: this one thing that we haven't thought about yet. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that it's exclusive right now. Of course,
Speaker 1: Carrier again is devoted to this research, and the latest
Speaker 1: study is pretty pretty incredible. Whether you agree with him
Speaker 1: or not, this is just yeah, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: this is why we wanted to do this. This is crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been blogging about his work for for years, but
Speaker 1: this is the one where they came around and actual
Speaker 1: said this on our Facebook site. The the actual study,
Speaker 1: I want to say, like the week it came out,
Speaker 1: and then immediately after you were like, oh, we've got
Speaker 1: to do a video on this. So in this latest study,
Speaker 1: this is a two fifteen published in Journal of Experimental Biology,
Speaker 1: he attempts to level some more purely experimental data at
Speaker 1: the theory. A theory you know again, continues to generate
Speaker 1: some controversy and and needs some proving out, so what
Speaker 1: do you do? Well, care and his team collected cadaver
Speaker 1: arms from nine different individuals. They ended up being able
Speaker 1: to actually use eight, so they have a bunch of
Speaker 1: dead human arms. Okay, So so I'm already like this
Speaker 1: is you had me at hello? Like like, so I
Speaker 1: actually went and tried to access the article itself, not
Speaker 1: the press releases surrounding it, and unfortunately it's behind a
Speaker 1: paid firewall, so I was not able to read the
Speaker 1: article itself. So if you are David Carrier, or you
Speaker 1: know David Carrier, or you helped on this research, what
Speaker 1: I want to know is where do you get eight
Speaker 1: cadaver arms? Like where do you just go and say
Speaker 1: I need eight human arms? And they go, well why?
Speaker 1: And I well, there's actually an interesting chapter in Mary
Speaker 1: roaches um stuff. The deal deals just not only for
Speaker 1: medical purposes, but even like like purely medical purpose purposes
Speaker 1: or research purposes, but also for just like cosmetic surgery trains. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously like people donate their bodies to science
Speaker 1: and such, but how what I'm fascinated with is that process.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a great article article, the research
Speaker 1: is interesting, but like you start off, and you say,
Speaker 1: all right, to pull this off, I need eight human arms,
Speaker 1: and I need them severed from their bodies. There's got
Speaker 1: to be a place you go and fill out that paperwork.
Speaker 1: I want to know where that is. What the paperwork
Speaker 1: looks like? This is we've we've got to find out
Speaker 1: and do it. Well. It does write the question did
Speaker 1: they get them on once? So they have to wait
Speaker 1: for the movie? Yeah? Are these specific? Like? Like I
Speaker 1: wonder if if he was looking for specific body types
Speaker 1: to write, like, we know that they're their mail arms,
Speaker 1: but like was one a lifter and the other one
Speaker 1: was like more built like me and scrawny. You know, well,
Speaker 1: we have his email address, we can we can just
Speaker 1: shoot the carrier and I want to find out. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so he got the arms eight eight to nine arms, right,
Speaker 1: But that's that's not quite enough. You can't just start
Speaker 1: slinging these around like they're dead fish and a slaps battle, right,
Speaker 1: So what you have to do is dissect them to
Speaker 1: expose the muscles, essentially flaying these arms and then attaching
Speaker 1: fishing line to all the tendons so that you're essentially
Speaker 1: making a corpse arm puppet. So you can you can
Speaker 1: make that open hand slap. You can pull another some
Speaker 1: more strings and make a very like rough unbuttressed fist,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like imagine the weakest punch possible,
Speaker 1: and that's what you have. And then the buttress fist,
Speaker 1: the sweet spot that we've been discussing the core here
Speaker 1: to to carryers research does all of that, and then
Speaker 1: you still need a way to drive that puppy home,
Speaker 1: So enter the pendulum. This pendulum device. They load the
Speaker 1: arms into this pendulum like apparatus. And there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: schematic for this uh in the paper. Maybe we'll end
Speaker 1: up using that as the as the art for this episode.
Speaker 1: At the very least, I'll link out to it so
Speaker 1: you can see it. They have that. We don't have
Speaker 1: a picture of it, but you have some wonderful drawings
Speaker 1: of what it would look like. And use this pendulum
Speaker 1: to then launch that does mbie arm straight into a
Speaker 1: padded forth detecting dumb back. That's the best part too,
Speaker 1: that it's a dumb balance, like, like, I get it.
Speaker 1: Because they wanted to detect the force, they had to
Speaker 1: use the technology and everything, but it's just like these
Speaker 1: poor arms are just and and the other thing too,
Speaker 1: Like again, you know, if if you do this kind
Speaker 1: of research, please let us know. But how do you
Speaker 1: keep a cadaver arm from rotting? Because I reading the research,
Speaker 1: it said that it took a week of study for
Speaker 1: each arm. So how do you keep this arm that
Speaker 1: you've just flayed and you have hooked up to this
Speaker 1: pendulum thing from stinking the joint up and falling apart? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they had problems with one of the arms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right because like arthritis. Yeah, I believe it was
Speaker 1: too Yeah, that you weren't able to actually manipulate it properly. Uh.
Speaker 1: One other thing that I would add to is that
Speaker 1: so from the other research that mentioned in particular at
Speaker 1: punching has a lot to do not just with our fists,
Speaker 1: but also with our brains, and that it's a full
Speaker 1: body action, right that I need the whole body to
Speaker 1: be able to throw the force and to you know,
Speaker 1: execute the move precisely right, So it's not a perfect
Speaker 1: recreation exactly like I see where he was going with this,
Speaker 1: But I can imagine that their results would be lower
Speaker 1: than they would be if you which you know, you
Speaker 1: would never get the approval to do this from the university.
Speaker 1: But if you had people just punching dumbbells, right, because
Speaker 1: he was specifically interested here is like how much protection
Speaker 1: is the fist versus the slap or the unbuttress fist.
Speaker 1: How much protection is there for the metacarpal bones and
Speaker 1: the underlying tissue. And he they found him and his
Speaker 1: team did find that a clinched, fully buttressed fist did
Speaker 1: provide significant protection for the metacarpal bones. So his findings
Speaker 1: suggested that fully buttress fist can safely strike with fifty
Speaker 1: more force than an unbuttressed fist and more for been
Speaker 1: an open handed slap. So and again that's safely without
Speaker 1: damaging things. That's how much more punching. How much more
Speaker 1: impact power you have with the with the buttressed fist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again method methodologically, the way that they did this
Speaker 1: was each arm, like I said, took a week. They
Speaker 1: they tested the buttressed fist, then the unbuttressed fist, then
Speaker 1: the open palm slap. So that's where they got these
Speaker 1: figures from. So remember the next time that you get
Speaker 1: into a fight, listeners, remember the buttressed fist because it's
Speaker 1: going to you know, help you out. Yeah, yeah, if
Speaker 1: if if you have anything, look second to think should
Speaker 1: I should I? Should I curl it up into the
Speaker 1: fist or should I slap Exactly? Yeah, and not only
Speaker 1: will it do more damage, but it will also protect
Speaker 1: your fingers so that you can type of your keyboard
Speaker 1: the next day. Yeah, and keep that stat you role
Speaker 1: players out there, if scenario where you get to use that,
Speaker 1: throw that info at your d M because you love
Speaker 1: it when the players bring a real science, say hey,
Speaker 1: I should actually get a little boost on this attack,
Speaker 1: and here's the science to prove it. So as we're
Speaker 1: thinking about all this, I do want to throw out
Speaker 1: a great quote from Carrier in the most recent two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen study that that that gets to some of
Speaker 1: the more underlying kind of philosophical aspects of this research.
Speaker 1: He says, our research is about peace. We seek to explore, understand,
Speaker 1: and confront human kinds violent and aggressive tendencies. Peace begins
Speaker 1: with ourselves and is ultimately achieved through discipline, self analysis,
Speaker 1: and an understanding of where we've come from as a species.
Speaker 1: Through our through our research, we hope to look ourselves
Speaker 1: in the mirror and begin the difficult work of changing
Speaker 1: ourselves for the better. As an alternative, We suggest that
Speaker 1: the hand proportions that allow the formation of a fist
Speaker 1: may tell us something important about our evolutionary history and
Speaker 1: who we are as a species. If our anatomy is
Speaker 1: adapted for fighting, we need to be aware we always
Speaker 1: may be haunted by basic emotions and reflective behaviors that
Speaker 1: often don't make stance and are very dangerous in the
Speaker 1: modern world. So this is essentially like what we're talking
Speaker 1: about at the beginning that I think that this is
Speaker 1: that no pun intended. The meat of his research is
Speaker 1: that he's looking for evidence to show why human behavior
Speaker 1: now is sort of haunted by the past. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we end up in this situation, Yeah, where an individual
Speaker 1: who is not trained in martial arts will curl up
Speaker 1: a fist and throw a punch. Why. To what extent
Speaker 1: is that watching Jungle Book as a kid, To what
Speaker 1: extent is that something that's just ingrained in a ship.
Speaker 1: That's the part I was wondering about, is the ingrained thing,
Speaker 1: Because I've been around a lot of babies lately. A
Speaker 1: lot of my friends have had kids, and they've well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that that kind of instinctively do, is
Speaker 1: like they don't even uh consciously do it, but they
Speaker 1: form a fist and then just kind of wail that
Speaker 1: arm out there, and you occasionally get clocked in the face. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's just you know, inherent
Speaker 1: genetic thing that they're just get used to their dexterity
Speaker 1: that way, or or what you know. I have to admit,
Speaker 1: even though I've never taken a punch to the face
Speaker 1: from an adult, I have taken a number of really
Speaker 1: jaws shattering We're not josh shattering, but certainly jaw rocking
Speaker 1: impacts from saying a toddler's head oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They throw a lot of fourth around, and they do
Speaker 1: so indiscriminately. Like hundreds of years from now, hundreds thousand,
Speaker 1: millions of years from now, podcasters are going to be
Speaker 1: looking back at how our faces evolved to deal all
Speaker 1: these toddlers that are beating the hell out of us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all these head like head butt upper cuts, and then
Speaker 1: I don't know how many times have been poked in
Speaker 1: the eye at this point. It's crazy, half of them
Speaker 1: by my wife from living in the same house, whether
Speaker 1: or like It'll be like fumbling around in the morning
Speaker 1: and then I end up taking up finger in the eye.
Speaker 1: So even when we're not fighting each other, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's humans. We we can't help but damnage each
Speaker 1: other's faces exactly. Yeah, it's it's our cur and our gift,
Speaker 1: all right. So there you have it, a little look
Speaker 1: into the work of David Carrier and this uh fist
Speaker 1: punch theory of evolution. Be sure to check out the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode because we'll have links out
Speaker 1: to related content. It's some blog content I've done in
Speaker 1: the past that now video as well as where you
Speaker 1: can find the actual studies. Yeah, and of course you're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to find this episode if you're listening
Speaker 1: to it already, you've probably downloaded it from our RSS feed.
Speaker 1: But go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: You'll find that we have all kinds of related links.
Speaker 1: But also there's blog posts there, videos there, including our
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Speaker 1: And of course follow us on social media because we
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