9 ms·

Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

118 points by tokenadult 12y ago

blisterpeanuts 12y ago
Interesting. I would think that pre-modern humans would be unlikely to strike each other with very much force, simply because they were so strong that one or two blows would debilitate if not kill the opponent. The Neanderthals are thought to be many times stronger than modern humans, judging by the thickness of their bones and the size of the muscle attachment sites, as well as their likely lifestyles in the brutal Pleistocene era. If one male were to strike another with full force, it would more than likely cause concussion if not death. In those days, you couldn't afford to lose a healthy male from the tribe, even one you're pissed off at for wanting to mate with your woman. Probably ditto for other ancestral variants such as homo erectus. They weren't exactly sophisticated, but you have to logically assume that a population that tolerated high levels of violence would be more likely to die out. A population that tended to resort to symbolic confrontations like shouting and gesturing and jumping would be more successful.
- thefreeman 12y ago
  Wouldn't their increased strength and size also offset the increased force of the blows to make it about the same as the current situation? In my head I'm comparing it to something like: If a 250 lb NFL linebacker tackled me at full speed I am pretty sure I would break multiple bones. But NFL running backs take that kind of beating 40-50 times a game, 20 games a year.
  - baddox 12y ago
    Not everything scales the same. I suspect that heavyweight boxers, for example, can hurt each other a lot more than featherweight boxers.
    - Swizec 12y ago
      In fact, professional heavyweight boxers usually develop parkinson's whereas that's virtually a nonexistent problem in welterweight and lower.
    - aResponder52 12y ago
      Can confirm. Getting hit by a 200+ pounder sucks. Getting hit by a 130lber makes you wonder if they're even trying.
    - gamegoblin 12y ago
      This is actually why I much prefer watching lower weight MMA fights to the bigger guys. The fights tend to go on longer and are more dynamic. With the bigger guys, one solid punch to the head and it's often game over. http://fightnomics.com/blog/ufc-finishes-by-weight-class-2013/ http://fightnomics.com/blog/ufc-finishes-by-weight-class-201...
      - zarify 12y ago
        Interesting stats. I'm not sure it completely explains the higher weight divisions though, since if you look at the rate at which the heavier fighters get tired and start lowering their guard, it's much higher than in the lower weight divisions, leaving them more susceptible to the KO/TKO.
  - wingerlang 12y ago
    Maybe on the body? But wouldn't the head still be (relatively to the strength of the body) fragile?
  - GhotiFish 12y ago
    It's the cube square law in action. Elephants can seriously injure themselves from falling over. If I fall over I get a sore butt. Yet if you were to scale me to the kind of weight an elephant has, I'd have a far larger fall, so obviously scale has a real effect. I think the thing is, NFL running backs are trained to survive that kind of abuse.
    - aResponder52 12y ago
      They're on some painkillers, too, and have short careers.
  - dfc 12y ago
    Do RBs get the ball that many times per game? I am genuinely curious. I rarely/never watch football so that could be a low number.
    - thefreeman 12y ago
      Depends on the back, but feature back's of run heavy offenses definitely get 40-50 touches.
      - Pinatubo 12y ago
        This is an exaggeration -- if they were getting 40-50 touches per game they'd never survive the season. 300 carries per season is regarded as a heavy workload, and that works out to about 20 carries per game. Of course, running backs can also catch passes, but they guys that are the featured backs in a run heavy offense rarely catch more than a pass or two per game. Edit: I found a list of the highest numbers of rushing attempts in an NFL game since 1960. The record is 45. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_att_single_game.htm http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_att_singl...
alexeisadeski3 12y ago
As human ancestors became more adept at tool usage, one would expect any evolved skull defenses to crumble. No amount of skull reinforcement will stand up to a solid strike from a club. And even if it did, it wouldn't matter - our huge brains concuss easily, meaning that even if the bone structure itself remained intact following a club blow, the brain it protects would be quite damaged. Human weapon use has been discussed as one reason why humans are less sexually dominant than many other primate relatives. Beta chimps don't have the ability to easily murder the reigning alpha chimp in his sleep. Humans do.
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  This, along with the fragility of the bones in the human hand and the hardness of the skull, make it pretty clear that we aren't evolved for punching or being punched. Boxing was developed specifically to get around the many problems with punching: protecting the hands from being broken, and developing defensive strategies to avoid blows from even padded fists. Barehanded boxing is worse. If you want to hurt someone with impunity and ensure you win, grab a stick. If anything, the evolution of humans as bipedal creatures should have made the legs into the weapons of choice, since they are not only stronger and larger but can be wielded with momentum for increased force. But the legs make for poor weapons because all the vulnerable targets are up high. While the most direct way to hurt someone is actually a straight movement towards someone, our limbs are designed to swing and swivel, not shoot out forward. If hands were for punching, then the tissues attaching our arms to our bodies would have been designed to issue strikes faster and more powerfully. Currently it's very difficult for humans to issue incredibly rapid strikes with power; we have to use our lats, core, legs, and hips to rotate our bodies to increase momentum in a punch and line up the shoulder with the target, lest you deliver with reduced power. In contrast, kicks can be issued just as fast and with greater power, so one would think that naturally humans would have gravitated to kicking each other rather than punching, but the opposite seems to be the case. IMHO, the most ideal strike a human can give without injuring themselves would be from the shin or heel. If you look at animals that don't have sharp teeth or claws, often they'll use their hind legs in a kicking motion to provide the most powerful hit, while moving their sensitive head/neck/chest away from the target. A few human groups developed fighting styles this way, but for millenia we've still been fighting standing up. I can only assume this is because we got so used to being bipedal that we adapted our fighting to it. I think our evolution probably prompted us to develop new ways of fighting that were comfortable to our bodies, rather than vice versa.
araes 12y ago
Honestly, this article just feels like an overreaction / rant the other direction. That there is No way that fist combat could have affected skull morphology. Like alot of evolution, it mostly comes down to a) does a trait make you more likely to have sex / better or more effective sex? b) does a trait make it more likely you'll survive to have sex? I find it hard with this amount of evidence to say that fistfights could be a driving trait, that would single-handedly shape survival / mating statistics, but I could see it being a contributor, something that helps other factors dominate survival / mating statistics. Perhaps our skull features are mostly for effective eating, but have an ancillary benefit to survival / mating when it comes to fights.
- thefreeman 12y ago
  I don't know, to me he presents at least one pretty compelling point indicating that point. The species which exhibit the exaggerated facial features could not even form a fist with which to fight.
  - mtdewcmu 12y ago
    He said that punches driving facial evolution was fine as a hypothesis, it just needs evidence and he hasn't seen any. His characterization of this as a just-so story, glib and light on evidence, doesn't just accurately describe this one specific claim; there are dozens or hundreds more just like it. On any given day, you can probably find an equally vacuous story about evolutionary psychology in some newspaper. It's a lame excuse for science.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  Note that bighorn sheep ram each other in the head, and there are definite adaptations for it.
- x86_64Ubuntu 12y ago
  The problem is that humans are woefully designed for combat. Our hands break, and our skulls are paper thin. Compare these aspects to animals that actually fight with horns, cushioned brains, fangs and so on, it's clear to see that fighting is a spectator sport for us.
GenerocUsername 12y ago
This is dumb. If a single human survived a punch that otherwise would have killed them before breeding age than Yes, we did "evolve" to handle punches. Evolution is not driven, it is all the little things that worked over a long period of time. The sum of all factors. There will be no smoking gun that says we did this or that for this or that, only our modern form that says "this worked".
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Did our feet evolve to avoid slipping on banana peels?
  - batmansbelt 12y ago
    Mythbusters did one on that. The demonstrated fairly convincingly that it's not that easy to slip on a banana.
    - Torgo 12y ago
      The variety of banana (Gros Michel) that was commonplace when the "slip on a banana peel" comedic device was invented was a different breed than the one that is commonplace today (Cavendish.) The Gros Michel peel was reportedly very slippery.
      - soperj 12y ago
        as an addendum to that, the reason you don't see Gros Michel today is because "Panama disease" (a wilt fungus) wiped out most of the plantations in South America/Africa. You can still find Gros Michels in Thailand today. Someone should write myth busters, maybe they could import a gros michel to test it.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    If any person has ever been saved from dying from slipping on a banana peel by the shape of their foot, then the answer is yes.
nautical 12y ago
Or the aliens didnt allow it to evolve so that they can come one day and crush it ... x( ...
femtards885 12y ago
Having lived up north in t'UK, I would say some peoples bodies have evolved in interesting ways. Drunken fights seem common here, and seems evolution has provided enough protection. Also, evolution seems to have made them quite supple, evidenced with the "T'Northern Yoga", which is basically the awkward body poses they pull off when passed out drunk in the Town Square.
khaki54 12y ago
Interesting article, but better for reddit than hackernews
- batmansbelt 12y ago
  The same content is always on both sites. Why are you making a distinction?
  - khaki54 12y ago
    I know you're probably joking, but on hacker news I usually don't have to sort though a bunch of "interesting" articles to find relevant news. Another distinction is that I read hackernews on the clock, but not reddit.
hcrisp 12y ago
My dad often said, "Fits like a fist in an eye". So he was right or wrong depending on your point of view.
surrealize 12y ago
There's a point-by-point reply from one of the authors, David Carrier, in the comments: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/10/our-skulls-didnt-evolve-to-be-punched/#comment-96986 http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/10/our-skull...
- beloch 12y ago
  Carrier's hypothesis is interesting and well argued, but only time will tell if it stands up to further scrutiny. This is the scientific process. Yong, on the other hand, is just defending his own preconceptions. While I agree with him that the established theory of changing diet/changing dentition is very well supported, Carrier's theory doesn't necessarily contradict it. Both of these theories could have shaped the faces of our ancestors and, eventually, us. I would love to see models testing how well the skulls of different human ancestors and humans themselves stand up to blunt blows, both head-on and oblique ones. It's possible that the skulls of modern humans, despite being more gracile, might perform surprisingly well thanks to the force-spreading properties of our parabolic dental arcades. i.e. If you hit a human in the side of the jaw you're hitting a self-buttressing arc of bone and teeth. If you hit the U-shaped jaw of an australopithecine on the side, you're hitting a straight wall.
  - tokenadult 12y ago
    Yong, on the other hand, is just defending his own preconceptions. When I take into account that the author of the submitted article is science writer on evolution topics Brian Switek and not general science writer Ed Yong, I wonder what defending of preconceptions is going on in your comment. AFTER EDIT: After I first posted this, I looked up how the first attested use of stone tools by early hominins compares in time with the hypothesized change in facial features discussed in the article, and I see there is some dispute about the very earliest regular use of stone tools, but that definitely precedes the emergence of Homo sapiens by far, and may go back to the time of some of the later australopithecines. Using stone tools as weapons (even just picking up and throwing rocks) was surely a game-changer in fights.
  - NAFV_P 12y ago
ultimatedelman 12y ago
What's silly to me about the original argument is that the authors think that our ancestors fought in a kind of "put your dukes up" kind of fighting where only punches are thrown. While not an expert in the subject, I feel it's safe to assume that fights for mates and territory where the loser dies would not be fist fights but rather full-on fights to the death using every biological weapon available, including feet and teeth.
- azakai 12y ago
  Such duels are often heavily ritualized, they aren't necessarily lacking in rules. The victor doesn't want to kill the opponent, they want to prove their social standing. For example wolves have a submissive signal they can show, that stops a fight in the middle, avoiding serious injury or death. If every such duel ended in a death, the population would quickly shrink.
  - Theodores 12y ago
    I think that winning is what is important in an on-going war that is fought on a daily basis, the prize being females/territory. I base my opinion on the antics of the foxes fighting outside my window right now. I am fairly sure I won't find a dead fox on my doorstep in the morning and I am fairly sure tomorrow will be another chapter in the on-going duel. Their fighting is truly no-holds barred however killing is not necessary to win females/territory. A given territory only supports a given quantity of a given species, a given territory can only be defended up to a certain area, so there is no concern needed to only fight so far lest the population/gene pool be diminished. As for us humans and how we fight, we are pack animals that can augment our fights with words. This applies okay in pub brawl situations, however, we have no hesitation at all when it comes to wiping out rival tribes. This has applied historically, I think that Hitler bloke was quite keen on wiping out the Jewish tribe and, although worded differently, Bush and Blair had no qualms when it came to wiping out tribes of people in more recent times. We also have class hierarchy so the rich have no problems sending millions of their own off to certain death, e.g. WW1, because they are a different tribe within a tribe. Concern for population depletion really matters not.
interg12 12y ago
I worked at an oral surgeons office for a few years. Everytime we performed jaw surgery on someone who was in a fight, 9/10 times they also had a broken hand. The hand wasn't designed for punching either.
- usumoio 12y ago
  I've studied Martial Arts for about 12 years. You're totally right. It takes years of training to learn how to properly throw a punch such that you harm your opponent and do not break your own hand.
  - zarify 12y ago
    And part of that is not attacking targets where you're likely to significantly injure yourself as well as your opponent. There's a lot to be said for not punching someone in the jaw.
    - aResponder52 12y ago
      and that part about the right way to hit different parts of the body. a slap is almost as hard, and won't hurt the slapper.
      - 1stop 12y ago
        A slap is no where near as hard. Surface area of an open hand vs surface area of 2-3 knuckles. Think hammer vs fly-swat.
        gadders 12y ago
        It is still possible to knock someone out with a slap. Some bouncers in the UK recommend it as a) it doesn't hurt your hand so much and b) telling the police you just slapped someone doesn't sound so bad. Plenty of videos on youtube of people being knocked out with a slap.
qwerta 12y ago
Article is dumb. Early humans had rocks, they did not need fists. And reinforced skull is good in any case, when living in wilderness.
Someone 12y ago
"Given the very few fossils of the australopith face, I am not optimistic that evidence of…" That is the primary reason you shouldn't put much faith in anything you read about most early humanoids, especially not the parts that reach general audiences. We simply cannot know much from the samples we have. Yet, scientists feel the pressure of having to publish, and cannot just publish new measurements, so they hypothise away. This, like many in the field, mostly is a "we cannot rule out that" paper; all evidence is circumstantial. It may be truly insightful or it may not be, but we simply cannot know at the moment. Can we blame the scientists? No, but I wished we educated fewer in this field and/or told those working in the field "feel free to think, study and experiment for a few decades and publish something when you are certain you have a convincing argument" On the other hand, it is intriguing to read about the latest ideas in the field, just like it is to read about our new thinking about dinosaurs, even if experience tells us our ideas about both will swing heavily (in a few decades, what color will dinosaurs be? Will they be warm-blooded? Will all of them have feathers?)
- gohrt 12y ago
  There's nothing wrong with publishing new theoretically plausible ideas. They just need to be properly qualified.
pokstad 12y ago
Uh yea, that's why we punch people in the head. It's exploiting a weakness.
dbbolton 12y ago
I honestly can't even read the article because that GIF is so annoying. I have two different GIF-stopping extensions and neither of them works because of the way the elements are nested (I guess). I'm actually so irritated that I'm binding giphy to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts file. /rant
- tim333 12y ago
  Clearly (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearly/iooicodkiihhpojmmeghjclgihfjdjhj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearly/iooicodkii...) is pretty effective for a wide range of internet reading irritations. It even kind of works on G+
stiff 12y ago
I do not want to contradict the research by this, but our heads certainly aren't all too well adapted to punching. The brain is to a large extent floating quite freely in the cerebrospinal fluid in the skull, and when the head is punched it experiences an effect similar to a passenger in a suddenly breaking car - it is smashed against the skull as a result of inertia, often resulting in permanent brain trauma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_pugilistica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_pugilistica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopath... In fact, many people die from just a single punch to the head. They become unconscious and fall on the concrete, for example: http://www.smh.com.au/national/90-killed-in-singlepunch-assaults-since-2000-20131201-2yjtr.html http://www.smh.com.au/national/90-killed-in-singlepunch-assa...
- jljljl 12y ago
  It's worth noting that both Dementia Pugilistica and CTE seem to take a decade or longer to appear in affected individuals, which means it is unlikely that they would have a significant impact on an individual's ability to reproduce (especially if winning a fist fight led to immediate opportunities to mate).
- mcv 12y ago
  The head of Australopithecus had quite a different shape than ours, though. Not nearly as much brain, and a lot more bone.
robomartin 12y ago
What te hell? Evolution doesn't work to achieve a goal. It isn't a goal-seaking mechanism. Are these people getting grant money to pretend they are doing science? Unbelievable. Somebody send them copies of "The Blind Watchmaker".
gadders 12y ago
In Demonic Males (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonic_Males http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonic_Males) there is a section that highlights punching as a particularly chimpanzee (and human) activity.
hownottowrite 12y ago
I recently dismantled a human skull, cutting the entire mass into 2mm squares. The face is definitely one of the more delicate bits. I suppose the argument could be made that it is a crumple zone designed to absorb shocks that might otherwise damage the brain. However, it seems far more likely that like the rest of the skull the face evolved to facilitate the birth of a bipedal creature with a ginormous brain. Most studies of rapid human encephalization and obstetrics also seem to lean towards this conclusion.

118 points by tokenadult 12y ago

Interesting. I would think that pre-modern humans would be unlikely to strike each other with very much force, simply because they were so strong that one or two blows would debilitate if not kill the opponent. The Neanderthals are thought to be many times stronger than modern humans, judging by the thickness of their bones and the size of the muscle attachment sites, as well as their likely lifestyles in the brutal Pleistocene era. If one male were to strike another with full force, it would more than likely cause concussion if not death. In those days, you couldn't afford to lose a healthy male from the tribe, even one you're pissed off at for wanting to mate with your woman. Probably ditto for other ancestral variants such as homo erectus. They weren't exactly sophisticated, but you have to logically assume that a population that tolerated high levels of violence would be more likely to die out. A population that tended to resort to symbolic confrontations like shouting and gesturing and jumping would be more successful.

thefreeman 12y ago
Wouldn't their increased strength and size also offset the increased force of the blows to make it about the same as the current situation? In my head I'm comparing it to something like: If a 250 lb NFL linebacker tackled me at full speed I am pretty sure I would break multiple bones. But NFL running backs take that kind of beating 40-50 times a game, 20 games a year.
- baddox 12y ago
  Not everything scales the same. I suspect that heavyweight boxers, for example, can hurt each other a lot more than featherweight boxers.
  - Swizec 12y ago
    In fact, professional heavyweight boxers usually develop parkinson's whereas that's virtually a nonexistent problem in welterweight and lower.
  - aResponder52 12y ago
    Can confirm. Getting hit by a 200+ pounder sucks. Getting hit by a 130lber makes you wonder if they're even trying.
  - gamegoblin 12y ago
    This is actually why I much prefer watching lower weight MMA fights to the bigger guys. The fights tend to go on longer and are more dynamic. With the bigger guys, one solid punch to the head and it's often game over. http://fightnomics.com/blog/ufc-finishes-by-weight-class-2013/ http://fightnomics.com/blog/ufc-finishes-by-weight-class-201...
    - zarify 12y ago
      Interesting stats. I'm not sure it completely explains the higher weight divisions though, since if you look at the rate at which the heavier fighters get tired and start lowering their guard, it's much higher than in the lower weight divisions, leaving them more susceptible to the KO/TKO.
- wingerlang 12y ago
  Maybe on the body? But wouldn't the head still be (relatively to the strength of the body) fragile?
- GhotiFish 12y ago
  It's the cube square law in action. Elephants can seriously injure themselves from falling over. If I fall over I get a sore butt. Yet if you were to scale me to the kind of weight an elephant has, I'd have a far larger fall, so obviously scale has a real effect. I think the thing is, NFL running backs are trained to survive that kind of abuse.
  - aResponder52 12y ago
    They're on some painkillers, too, and have short careers.
- dfc 12y ago
  Do RBs get the ball that many times per game? I am genuinely curious. I rarely/never watch football so that could be a low number.
  - thefreeman 12y ago
    Depends on the back, but feature back's of run heavy offenses definitely get 40-50 touches.
    - Pinatubo 12y ago
      This is an exaggeration -- if they were getting 40-50 touches per game they'd never survive the season. 300 carries per season is regarded as a heavy workload, and that works out to about 20 carries per game. Of course, running backs can also catch passes, but they guys that are the featured backs in a run heavy offense rarely catch more than a pass or two per game. Edit: I found a list of the highest numbers of rushing attempts in an NFL game since 1960. The record is 45. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_att_single_game.htm http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_att_singl...

alexeisadeski3 12y ago

As human ancestors became more adept at tool usage, one would expect any evolved skull defenses to crumble. No amount of skull reinforcement will stand up to a solid strike from a club. And even if it did, it wouldn't matter - our huge brains concuss easily, meaning that even if the bone structure itself remained intact following a club blow, the brain it protects would be quite damaged. Human weapon use has been discussed as one reason why humans are less sexually dominant than many other primate relatives. Beta chimps don't have the ability to easily murder the reigning alpha chimp in his sleep. Humans do.

peterwwillis 12y ago
This, along with the fragility of the bones in the human hand and the hardness of the skull, make it pretty clear that we aren't evolved for punching or being punched. Boxing was developed specifically to get around the many problems with punching: protecting the hands from being broken, and developing defensive strategies to avoid blows from even padded fists. Barehanded boxing is worse. If you want to hurt someone with impunity and ensure you win, grab a stick. If anything, the evolution of humans as bipedal creatures should have made the legs into the weapons of choice, since they are not only stronger and larger but can be wielded with momentum for increased force. But the legs make for poor weapons because all the vulnerable targets are up high. While the most direct way to hurt someone is actually a straight movement towards someone, our limbs are designed to swing and swivel, not shoot out forward. If hands were for punching, then the tissues attaching our arms to our bodies would have been designed to issue strikes faster and more powerfully. Currently it's very difficult for humans to issue incredibly rapid strikes with power; we have to use our lats, core, legs, and hips to rotate our bodies to increase momentum in a punch and line up the shoulder with the target, lest you deliver with reduced power. In contrast, kicks can be issued just as fast and with greater power, so one would think that naturally humans would have gravitated to kicking each other rather than punching, but the opposite seems to be the case. IMHO, the most ideal strike a human can give without injuring themselves would be from the shin or heel. If you look at animals that don't have sharp teeth or claws, often they'll use their hind legs in a kicking motion to provide the most powerful hit, while moving their sensitive head/neck/chest away from the target. A few human groups developed fighting styles this way, but for millenia we've still been fighting standing up. I can only assume this is because we got so used to being bipedal that we adapted our fighting to it. I think our evolution probably prompted us to develop new ways of fighting that were comfortable to our bodies, rather than vice versa.

araes 12y ago

Honestly, this article just feels like an overreaction / rant the other direction. That there is No way that fist combat could have affected skull morphology. Like alot of evolution, it mostly comes down to a) does a trait make you more likely to have sex / better or more effective sex? b) does a trait make it more likely you'll survive to have sex? I find it hard with this amount of evidence to say that fistfights could be a driving trait, that would single-handedly shape survival / mating statistics, but I could see it being a contributor, something that helps other factors dominate survival / mating statistics. Perhaps our skull features are mostly for effective eating, but have an ancillary benefit to survival / mating when it comes to fights.

thefreeman 12y ago
I don't know, to me he presents at least one pretty compelling point indicating that point. The species which exhibit the exaggerated facial features could not even form a fist with which to fight.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  He said that punches driving facial evolution was fine as a hypothesis, it just needs evidence and he hasn't seen any. His characterization of this as a just-so story, glib and light on evidence, doesn't just accurately describe this one specific claim; there are dozens or hundreds more just like it. On any given day, you can probably find an equally vacuous story about evolutionary psychology in some newspaper. It's a lame excuse for science.
WalterBright 12y ago
Note that bighorn sheep ram each other in the head, and there are definite adaptations for it.
x86_64Ubuntu 12y ago
The problem is that humans are woefully designed for combat. Our hands break, and our skulls are paper thin. Compare these aspects to animals that actually fight with horns, cushioned brains, fangs and so on, it's clear to see that fighting is a spectator sport for us.

GenerocUsername 12y ago

This is dumb. If a single human survived a punch that otherwise would have killed them before breeding age than Yes, we did "evolve" to handle punches. Evolution is not driven, it is all the little things that worked over a long period of time. The sum of all factors. There will be no smoking gun that says we did this or that for this or that, only our modern form that says "this worked".

pessimizer 12y ago
Did our feet evolve to avoid slipping on banana peels?
- batmansbelt 12y ago
  Mythbusters did one on that. The demonstrated fairly convincingly that it's not that easy to slip on a banana.
  - Torgo 12y ago
    The variety of banana (Gros Michel) that was commonplace when the "slip on a banana peel" comedic device was invented was a different breed than the one that is commonplace today (Cavendish.) The Gros Michel peel was reportedly very slippery.
    - soperj 12y ago
      as an addendum to that, the reason you don't see Gros Michel today is because "Panama disease" (a wilt fungus) wiped out most of the plantations in South America/Africa. You can still find Gros Michels in Thailand today. Someone should write myth busters, maybe they could import a gros michel to test it.
- gambiting 12y ago
  If any person has ever been saved from dying from slipping on a banana peel by the shape of their foot, then the answer is yes.

nautical 12y ago

Or the aliens didnt allow it to evolve so that they can come one day and crush it ... x( ...

femtards885 12y ago

Having lived up north in t'UK, I would say some peoples bodies have evolved in interesting ways. Drunken fights seem common here, and seems evolution has provided enough protection. Also, evolution seems to have made them quite supple, evidenced with the "T'Northern Yoga", which is basically the awkward body poses they pull off when passed out drunk in the Town Square.

khaki54 12y ago

Interesting article, but better for reddit than hackernews

batmansbelt 12y ago
The same content is always on both sites. Why are you making a distinction?
- khaki54 12y ago
  I know you're probably joking, but on hacker news I usually don't have to sort though a bunch of "interesting" articles to find relevant news. Another distinction is that I read hackernews on the clock, but not reddit.

hcrisp 12y ago

My dad often said, "Fits like a fist in an eye". So he was right or wrong depending on your point of view.

surrealize 12y ago

There's a point-by-point reply from one of the authors, David Carrier, in the comments: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/10/our-skulls-didnt-evolve-to-be-punched/#comment-96986 http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/10/our-skull...

beloch 12y ago
Carrier's hypothesis is interesting and well argued, but only time will tell if it stands up to further scrutiny. This is the scientific process. Yong, on the other hand, is just defending his own preconceptions. While I agree with him that the established theory of changing diet/changing dentition is very well supported, Carrier's theory doesn't necessarily contradict it. Both of these theories could have shaped the faces of our ancestors and, eventually, us. I would love to see models testing how well the skulls of different human ancestors and humans themselves stand up to blunt blows, both head-on and oblique ones. It's possible that the skulls of modern humans, despite being more gracile, might perform surprisingly well thanks to the force-spreading properties of our parabolic dental arcades. i.e. If you hit a human in the side of the jaw you're hitting a self-buttressing arc of bone and teeth. If you hit the U-shaped jaw of an australopithecine on the side, you're hitting a straight wall.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  Yong, on the other hand, is just defending his own preconceptions. When I take into account that the author of the submitted article is science writer on evolution topics Brian Switek and not general science writer Ed Yong, I wonder what defending of preconceptions is going on in your comment. AFTER EDIT: After I first posted this, I looked up how the first attested use of stone tools by early hominins compares in time with the hypothesized change in facial features discussed in the article, and I see there is some dispute about the very earliest regular use of stone tools, but that definitely precedes the emergence of Homo sapiens by far, and may go back to the time of some of the later australopithecines. Using stone tools as weapons (even just picking up and throwing rocks) was surely a game-changer in fights.
- NAFV_P 12y ago

ultimatedelman 12y ago

What's silly to me about the original argument is that the authors think that our ancestors fought in a kind of "put your dukes up" kind of fighting where only punches are thrown. While not an expert in the subject, I feel it's safe to assume that fights for mates and territory where the loser dies would not be fist fights but rather full-on fights to the death using every biological weapon available, including feet and teeth.

azakai 12y ago
Such duels are often heavily ritualized, they aren't necessarily lacking in rules. The victor doesn't want to kill the opponent, they want to prove their social standing. For example wolves have a submissive signal they can show, that stops a fight in the middle, avoiding serious injury or death. If every such duel ended in a death, the population would quickly shrink.
- Theodores 12y ago
  I think that winning is what is important in an on-going war that is fought on a daily basis, the prize being females/territory. I base my opinion on the antics of the foxes fighting outside my window right now. I am fairly sure I won't find a dead fox on my doorstep in the morning and I am fairly sure tomorrow will be another chapter in the on-going duel. Their fighting is truly no-holds barred however killing is not necessary to win females/territory. A given territory only supports a given quantity of a given species, a given territory can only be defended up to a certain area, so there is no concern needed to only fight so far lest the population/gene pool be diminished. As for us humans and how we fight, we are pack animals that can augment our fights with words. This applies okay in pub brawl situations, however, we have no hesitation at all when it comes to wiping out rival tribes. This has applied historically, I think that Hitler bloke was quite keen on wiping out the Jewish tribe and, although worded differently, Bush and Blair had no qualms when it came to wiping out tribes of people in more recent times. We also have class hierarchy so the rich have no problems sending millions of their own off to certain death, e.g. WW1, because they are a different tribe within a tribe. Concern for population depletion really matters not.

interg12 12y ago

I worked at an oral surgeons office for a few years. Everytime we performed jaw surgery on someone who was in a fight, 9/10 times they also had a broken hand. The hand wasn't designed for punching either.

usumoio 12y ago
I've studied Martial Arts for about 12 years. You're totally right. It takes years of training to learn how to properly throw a punch such that you harm your opponent and do not break your own hand.
- zarify 12y ago
  And part of that is not attacking targets where you're likely to significantly injure yourself as well as your opponent. There's a lot to be said for not punching someone in the jaw.
  - aResponder52 12y ago
    and that part about the right way to hit different parts of the body. a slap is almost as hard, and won't hurt the slapper.
    - 1stop 12y ago
      A slap is no where near as hard. Surface area of an open hand vs surface area of 2-3 knuckles. Think hammer vs fly-swat.
      - gadders 12y ago
        It is still possible to knock someone out with a slap. Some bouncers in the UK recommend it as a) it doesn't hurt your hand so much and b) telling the police you just slapped someone doesn't sound so bad. Plenty of videos on youtube of people being knocked out with a slap.

qwerta 12y ago

Article is dumb. Early humans had rocks, they did not need fists. And reinforced skull is good in any case, when living in wilderness.

Someone 12y ago

"Given the very few fossils of the australopith face, I am not optimistic that evidence of…" That is the primary reason you shouldn't put much faith in anything you read about most early humanoids, especially not the parts that reach general audiences. We simply cannot know much from the samples we have. Yet, scientists feel the pressure of having to publish, and cannot just publish new measurements, so they hypothise away. This, like many in the field, mostly is a "we cannot rule out that" paper; all evidence is circumstantial. It may be truly insightful or it may not be, but we simply cannot know at the moment. Can we blame the scientists? No, but I wished we educated fewer in this field and/or told those working in the field "feel free to think, study and experiment for a few decades and publish something when you are certain you have a convincing argument" On the other hand, it is intriguing to read about the latest ideas in the field, just like it is to read about our new thinking about dinosaurs, even if experience tells us our ideas about both will swing heavily (in a few decades, what color will dinosaurs be? Will they be warm-blooded? Will all of them have feathers?)

gohrt 12y ago
There's nothing wrong with publishing new theoretically plausible ideas. They just need to be properly qualified.

pokstad 12y ago

Uh yea, that's why we punch people in the head. It's exploiting a weakness.

dbbolton 12y ago

I honestly can't even read the article because that GIF is so annoying. I have two different GIF-stopping extensions and neither of them works because of the way the elements are nested (I guess). I'm actually so irritated that I'm binding giphy to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts file. /rant

tim333 12y ago
Clearly (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearly/iooicodkiihhpojmmeghjclgihfjdjhj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearly/iooicodkii...) is pretty effective for a wide range of internet reading irritations. It even kind of works on G+

stiff 12y ago

I do not want to contradict the research by this, but our heads certainly aren't all too well adapted to punching. The brain is to a large extent floating quite freely in the cerebrospinal fluid in the skull, and when the head is punched it experiences an effect similar to a passenger in a suddenly breaking car - it is smashed against the skull as a result of inertia, often resulting in permanent brain trauma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_pugilistica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_pugilistica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopath... In fact, many people die from just a single punch to the head. They become unconscious and fall on the concrete, for example: http://www.smh.com.au/national/90-killed-in-singlepunch-assaults-since-2000-20131201-2yjtr.html http://www.smh.com.au/national/90-killed-in-singlepunch-assa...

jljljl 12y ago
It's worth noting that both Dementia Pugilistica and CTE seem to take a decade or longer to appear in affected individuals, which means it is unlikely that they would have a significant impact on an individual's ability to reproduce (especially if winning a fist fight led to immediate opportunities to mate).
mcv 12y ago
The head of Australopithecus had quite a different shape than ours, though. Not nearly as much brain, and a lot more bone.

robomartin 12y ago

What te hell? Evolution doesn't work to achieve a goal. It isn't a goal-seaking mechanism. Are these people getting grant money to pretend they are doing science? Unbelievable. Somebody send them copies of "The Blind Watchmaker".

gadders 12y ago

In Demonic Males (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonic_Males http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonic_Males) there is a section that highlights punching as a particularly chimpanzee (and human) activity.

hownottowrite 12y ago

I recently dismantled a human skull, cutting the entire mass into 2mm squares. The face is definitely one of the more delicate bits. I suppose the argument could be made that it is a crumple zone designed to absorb shocks that might otherwise damage the brain. However, it seems far more likely that like the rest of the skull the face evolved to facilitate the birth of a bipedal creature with a ginormous brain. Most studies of rapid human encephalization and obstetrics also seem to lean towards this conclusion.