Your Hands Were Made For Punching According To New Study 240
They are capable of delicate surgery, creating beautiful works of art, and comforting someone feeling down, but according to a new study your hands evolved to smash someone in the face. From the article: "Human hands evolved so that men could make fists and fight, and not just for manual dexterity, new research finds.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, adds to a growing body of evidence that humans are among the most aggressive and violent animals on the planet.
'With the notable exception of bonobos, great apes are a relatively aggressive group of mammals,' lead author David Carrier told Discovery News. 'Although some primatologists may argue that chimpanzees are the most aggressive apes, I think the evidence suggests that humans are substantially more violent.''"
It's all about masturbation, Mr. Carrier (Score:5, Informative)
Then arms were made for masturbation. Otherwise why would they not be that length? If they were made for punching, they would be very much longer to minimize the risk to oneself from an attacker. Hands were then made for masturbation as well, otherwise why put them at the end of the perfect length of arm?
I call BS (Score:5, Informative)
Your hands are full of very small bones. It's very easy to break your hand by punching something hard and dense (such as a skull or face for instance).
If you want to strike someone in the face, it's smarter to use other parts of the body such as your knee, elbow or to use an open hand strike (such as a palm strike). That way you have the edge of a very long bone delivering the blow.
The actual article is free to read (Score:2, Informative)
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/2/236.full
Re:As a boxer... (Score:4, Informative)
Bone is a calcium phosphate complex bound with protein molecules, which form an extracellular matrix. Calcium is an alkaline earth metal. Phosphorus is a nonmetal, and oxygen is a gas. Calcium phosphate, all by itself, is a mineral which usualy only forms under unusual and arrid conditions.
The calcium phosphate complex that comprises bone cannot be classified as a mineral, because it is formed via a biological process. (Similar caveat for coal. Not a mineral.) /pedant
Re:Fist walking (Score:3, Informative)
Fifty years of martial arts experience here - the human body has a lot of armor and can take more punishment than the occasional KTFO video might indicate. Against armored targets, a punch can be as ruinous to the puncher as to the one being punched. In a fluid situation, it can be difficult to deliver an accurate, solid punch without injury to yourself. (This is why, although I teach beginners to punch to give themselves a sense of "power", for actual fighting, I don't use punching.)
The study showing peak stress to a punching bag misses the point of the many different reasons that any hitting occurs (from playful affection to simple relatively benign dominance behavior to kill-him-before-he-kills-you behavior). It also seems to me also to miss the point of fluidity in a situation. Against a resisting enemy, you can do more damage going for "acreage" and be more likely to take someone down. (Think "shock and awe".) I'd like them to measure me against fluid targets and measure untrained people against fluid targets. I'm going to bet that their numbers would - amazingly - be reversed.
I think that humans are violent for other reasons than that they were somehow "designed" for it by evolution. It seems to me that there's a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc in saying that, just because we can punch, we are made for punching. I can write my name in the snow with urine, ergo urine should be used as ink.