More evidence for the Paleo theory - humans definitely got less dense bones when we changed from hunter-gatherer to farmer. This is not rocket science in the sense that loading bones stimulates osteoblasts to create more bone, so if you don’t load the bones as much - and presumably farming was less bone-loading than hunting, according to these studies - they will be lighter and more trabeculated. Of course for the last 100 years, industrial society has been less bone-loading than farming, and the electronic world promises to be less bone-loading than that. So presumably this trend is continuing and we are going toward ever-lighter and less strong bones. This has one big advantage, and that’s weight loss. I don’t mean dieting, I mean these ‘new’ bones are lighter, and therefore we can accelerate faster. There’s a price for everything, and when God closes one door… So this leads to the question: Did we break the long-held barrier of a four-minute mile because our bones are getting steadily lighter? Is that why it is ever more common to be able to do so? We are already descended from australipithicus gracilis who had thinner (more gracile) bones than a. robustus, our larger, grass-chewing cousin. Now we are taking that trend farther as we create a world where there is less and less need for loading. In space, with yet less bone-loading, the cosmonauts lost significant bone and had to come back to earth - literally - in a wheelchair until the demands of gravity built them up again. So if we keep up this way, will we end up as round, boneless blobs? Things that float in space tend to move to a spherical shape. Captain Kirk, make way for the Teletubbies! - Tom
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 14:20:27 +0000
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