
How modern life is transforming the human skeleton - novaRom
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190610-how-modern-life-is-transforming-the-human-skeleton
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MarcScott
Archeological remains of English and Welsh longbowmen are frequently
identifiable from the changes to their skeletons, from the hours of practice
they put in to be able to draw a 180lb bow

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-17309665](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-
wales-17309665)

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faissaloo
Those reading this might find John Mew's research quite interesting, this
malleability of the bone is part of the theory behind orthotropics.

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jdhn
From what I understand, mewing only works in adolescents and younger children
due to the fact that they're still growing and their skulls are more
malleable, correct?

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faissaloo
It still works in adults, it's just alot more work. The younger you are the
more malleability you have.

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agumonkey
I find it super concerning that "modern" life thinks putting things into silos
(doing soccer twice a week, going to the gym, spending hours sitting at the
office) is a good thing.

Not long ago there was an article about the healthiest group on the planet
(~~) and it was a tribe in south mexico .. they were mostly eating few and
walking tons everyday.

We need to reintegrate things.

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danielnixon
Nicholas Carr wrote a great piece on this exact topic. You might like it.

It looks like his site is struggling so I'll include an archive.org link too.

Here are his last three paragraphs:

"There’s something bigger going on here, and I confess that I’m still a little
fuzzy about it. Silicon Valley seems to have a good deal of trouble
appreciating, or even understanding, what I’ll term informal experience. It’s
only when driving is formalized — removed from everyday life, transferred to a
specialized facility, performed under a strict set of rules, and understood as
a self-contained recreational event — that it can be conceived of as being
pleasurable. When it’s not a recreational routine, when it’s performed out in
the world, as part of everyday life, then driving, in the Valley view, can
only be understood within the context of another formalized realm of
experience: that of productive busyness. Every experience has to be cleanly
defined, has to be categorized. There’s a place and a time for recreation, and
there’s a place and a time for productivity.

"This discomfort with the informal, with experience that is psychologically
unbounded, that flits between and beyond categories, can be felt in a lot of
the Valley’s consumer goods and services. Many personal apps and gadgets have
the effect, or at least the intended effect, of formalizing informal
activities. Once you strap on a Fitbit, you transform what might have been a
pleasant walk in the park into a program of physical therapy. A passing
observation that once might have earned a few fleeting smiles or shrugs before
disappearing into the ether is now, thanks to the distribution systems of
Facebook and Twitter, encapsulated as a product and subjected to formal
measurement; every remark gets its own Nielsen rating.

"What’s the source of this crabbed view of experience? I’m not sure. It may be
an expression of a certain personality type. It may be a sign of the market’s
continuing colonization of the quotidian. I’d guess it also has something to
do with the rigorously formal qualities of programming itself. The
universality of the digital computer ends — comes to a crashing halt, in fact
— where informality begins."

[https://www.roughtype.com/?p=5813](https://www.roughtype.com/?p=5813)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160306010921/https://www.rough...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160306010921/https://www.roughtype.com/?p=5813)

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ambivalents
More of a meta-comment, but I'm disappointed there were no images in this
article that visualized these changes.

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lucb1e
I'm particularly interested in those giants, even if it's just two skeletons
to compare. And surely someone made a rendition at some point!

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arkis22
According to
[http://guam.org.gu/gary.heathcote.muscle/Legendary.Chamorro....](http://guam.org.gu/gary.heathcote.muscle/Legendary.Chamorro.Strength.2012.Heathcote.htm)

The Taotao Tagga mentioned in the article is estimated at being 5 feet 9.5
inches while records of European soldiers from Hungary, France, Bohemia, and
Saxony who were born between 1735 and 1739 were around 5 feet 5.5 inches.

Noticeably taller, but maybe not gigantic. On the other hand I have a newfound
understanding of just how gigantic George Washington (6 feet 2 inches, born in
1732) would have seemed to the vast majority of people.

