This Is A Neanderthal.

[norseman]

^^^^^Parkie

 

As a staple diet?  And they are!

 

^^^^^

Antfoot

 

But we are tall and Eskimos are short...........why is that?

[Drew]

I think we are looking at an upper limit for bipedal locomotion.

 

It seems as though there is a size when joints don't work, and hearts can't pump blood to the extremities efficiently.

 

Is this universal for primates?  Are the joints and connective tissue of extremely long bones limited out at certain lengths?  Regardless of the size of the muscles, when you look at the forces on long lever mechanisms, the forces exerted are far greater as the bones get longer.

[JDL]

Mechanically, it comes down to the robustness of the limb.  With longer, you have to go bigger in bone diameter and in tendon and muscle structure.  I would also expect the tendons and musculature to adapt to support greater size and weight, perhaps with additional tendons, anchor points and muscle width to provide more stability. 

 

I'd postulated a while back that the thing most likely to plague a bigfoot of advanced age would be orthopedic deterioration.

Plenty has been written about their foot structure and compliant gait.  These indicate a different foot and leg structure than ours.

[MIB]

Yeah, I would expect differences in the location of anchor points on the bones for muscles and tendons changing the leverage.    Sometimes maximum strength is not the ideal, most useful option, sometimes arrangement for greater speed or endurance have survival advantages over arrangement for strength.

 

I've read that we are one of the top 5 "critters" on the planet for endurance running.   Not in our couch potato state, but in a stone age state.  We're an open plains / savannah "critter."   Look at our big toe arrangement, our ability to shed heat and continue doing so across mega miles, our eyesight.   Turn to the big guys ... like darwin's finches, they seem adapted to avoid direct competition.   They seem better suited for night time, to steep terrain, to feats of strength rather than endurance, cold weather rather than hot.   

 

In just about every way I can think of, they are nearly our opposites so far as adaptation to niches in ways that would avoid direct competition.   Seems remarkable for a "made up" monster, wouldn't you say?  

 

MIB

[Guest DWA]

^^^Many things make it remarkable for a "made up" monster.

 

Either many people with no biological training are jointly summoning their inner biologist to synergize with many other random people's inner biologists to paint an ecologically correct picture of a large temperate-zone omnivorous primate...or something else on which you do not want to bet anything you want to keep is happening.

 

Or, you know, there's an unlisted primate out there we might want to confirm.

[Cotter]

Nice post MIB.  I'm outta plusses, so you'll have to wait!
 

[hiflier]

Hello JDL,

 

Mechanically, it comes down to the robustness of the limb.  With longer, you have to go bigger in bone diameter and in tendon and muscle structure.  I would also expect the tendons and musculature to adapt to support greater size and weight, perhaps with additional tendons, anchor points and muscle width to provide more stability. 

 

I'd postulated a while back that the thing most likely to plague a bigfoot of advanced age would be orthopedic deterioration.

Plenty has been written about their foot structure and compliant gait.  These indicate a different foot and leg structure than ours.

Hey, there you go. It was written about nearly sixty years ago right here in good ol' North America.........mid-tarsal break. There may be other orthopaedic features as well such as the sagittal crest reported so often. There are reports of juveniles too. Could they be No. American Hobbits? Probably not. Ivan T. Sanderson wrote of "The Little Red Men of th Delta". Who knows.

[salubrious]

Yeah, I would expect differences in the location of anchor points on the bones for muscles and tendons changing the leverage.    Sometimes maximum strength is not the ideal, most useful option, sometimes arrangement for greater speed or endurance have survival advantages over arrangement for strength.

 

I've read that we are one of the top 5 "critters" on the planet for endurance running.   Not in our couch potato state, but in a stone age state.  We're an open plains / savannah "critter."   Look at our big toe arrangement, our ability to shed heat and continue doing so across mega miles, our eyesight.   Turn to the big guys ... like darwin's finches, they seem adapted to avoid direct competition.   They seem better suited for night time, to steep terrain, to feats of strength rather than endurance, cold weather rather than hot.   

 

In just about every way I can think of, they are nearly our opposites so far as adaptation to niches in ways that would avoid direct competition.   Seems remarkable for a "made up" monster, wouldn't you say?  

 

MIB

 

Read 'Born to Run' By Chrisopher McDougall... its all in there.

[Guest]

^^^^^Parkie

 

As a staple diet?  And they are!

 

^^^^^

Antfoot

 

But we are tall and Eskimos are short...........why is that?

That could be simple random genetic drift in two disparate populations. However Eskimos also lived in a much more harsh habitat with scarcer resources and smaller size may have had survival value just like dwarf elephants on islands were more successful than traditional sized ones. Norwegians had milder weather than the high arctic and access to resources besides their own. Larger size can be valuable in accessing those other resources.

[hiflier]

Hello antfoot,

You don't think the size of the openings on igloos had anythinng to do with it then? Hoo boy, am I on a roll or what?

Edited June 5, 2014 by hiflier

[Guest]

^that could be a much bigger problem for a six foot Scandinavian man than for a five foot Eskimo. I'm only five eight and I'd have a hard time adjusting to such a low threshold. Igloos in general were rather small compared to the large earthen and wooden houses of northern Europe. Eskimos did make larger structures as well though so maybe not such a big difference.

[southernyahoo]

Again, Norse, you're right. The forest people thing is beyond me. Neanderthals were not forest people...heck none of our ancestors were kindly forest folk. Everything credible I've ever read about sasquatch points to an animal not Homo. If somebody wants to provide some evidence of gifting and the like, well....until then? I'm in the animal camp.

 

Isn't it a matter of what you deem credible and what fits your view? What evidence is there that says it is only animal? When I look at the PGF I see a humanoid walking, and the same result with the tracks, hairs, vocalizations along with many described observations. (Humanoid) Personally I think there has been a lot of filtering in the data bases and people can't help but to inject bias because they have to demonstrate an attempt to vet the reports, yet with little to no personal observation of a live creature as a standard. A lack of personal emperical observation should never invoke certainty.

 

BTW, why weren't Neanderthals forest people? Do all people have to be kindly? They can't be wicked? 

[Guest]

Australopithecines were not Homo but were fully bipedal just like us. More animal in thinking and behavior than sapiens or neandertal or erectus. Not to say they're stupid either. Chimps and gorillas are quite intelligent and people-like themselves so an animal that is even more closely related to us is likely to be even more people-like. This does not imply they will be human-level intelligent though. Neandertals almost certainly lived in steppe habitats where their main prey, large wooly mammoths, rhinos and all of the other mega fauna was during the ice age. Most of Europe and quite a bit of Asia were covered with steppe habitat: open and grassy.

[Guest Stan Norton]

Isn't it a matter of what you deem credible and what fits your view? What evidence is there that says it is only animal? When I look at the PGF I see a humanoid walking, and the same result with the tracks, hairs, vocalizations along with many described observations. (Humanoid) Personally I think there has been a lot of filtering in the data bases and people can't help but to inject bias because they have to demonstrate an attempt to vet the reports, yet with little to no personal observation of a live creature as a standard. A lack of personal emperical observation should never invoke certainty.

 

BTW, why weren't Neanderthals forest people? Do all people have to be kindly? They can't be wicked? 

 

Yes, it is to a great degree, and I freely admit to being biased. I would counter the assertion that this is an issue by stating that as a professional ecologist my expertise is in studying animal behaviour and interaction with the environment and other organisms: from what I have read on the subject of sasquatch I am quite happy that it is perfectly animal in origin, albeit a rather extraordinary one. My experience and native common sense tells me to ignore the wacky and far out stuff like claims of habituation, time travel, cloaking and speech and anyone who says they have copious evidence but cannot produce it. In that sense only do I consider myself biased, and I'm proud of that. Humanoid only means like a human...it infers nothing about behaviour or culture. A tree can appear humanoid.

 

My quip about friendly forest folk is something of a direct challenge to those here who would expect us to believe that they are in touch with sasquatch routinely and can understand them. It is all nonsense with not a single shred of evidence. I have no time for it at all. 

 

Being in the British isles I have no direct experience of sasquatch but I feel safe in the knowledge that, whatever it turns out to be, it won't be human.

[MIB]

Hmmm ... I suppose I see what you mean about time travel.

 

I don't see what would be far out, biologically, about habituation.   Deer do it.  Racoons do it.   What would be odd about any other biological "thing" doing it?

 

I don't see what would be far out about speech.   We do it.

 

I really don't see what is far out about cloaking ASSUMING it's a side effect of infrasound, which we know exists, considering how waves act in fluids like a human body including eyes and optic nerves.   (If you try to explain it some other way, then I'm going to dig my heels in until you produce convincing evidence.)

 

It's just one person's opinion, not saying it's conclusive, but to me those last three seem less "far out" than many things we take for granted like ... microwave ovens and cell phones for instance, and yet we've come to take them for granted.

 

MIB