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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Since I bet the overwhelming majority of our 300,000 years worth of homo sapiens ancestors and countless more years of prior ancestors exercised in these ways as a matter of course, I would instead title it

"How sedentary lifestyles and lack of strength training degrade your body and mind."

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Not sure if I made that comment already on HN. But I was watching a documentary on some amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe.

All the men from teens to elders looked like gym models. It never struck me until I was in my 30's - but really I have the body of a sick individual and the guy on the gym adverts is actually what the human body looks by design, not some sort of aspirational dream.

I've seen comments like this before, and they're valid, but I've also seen evolutionary biologists and/or anthropologists point out too that many if not most people who are wounded or sick die. So you're also seeing selection bias, where the healthy thrive and you don't see the unhealthy because they're dead.

I don't get it; I mean, I understand the idea of selection bias but what does that have to do with grandparent's point?

OK, a relatively large percent of hunter-gatherers die due lack of antibiotics & other modern medicine. But gp isn't claiming it'd be a good idea to return to a full hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They're just observing that "this is what a biologically normal, healthy homo sapiens looks like". And if you go to the gym you might replicate that -- presumably without incurring the fate of short-lived hunter-gatherers.

That's valid if someone's saying hunter-gatherers lived healthier lives on average, but in this case, the OP is presumably healthy enough to do strength training so can fairly compare themselves to a healthy group of hunter-gatherers.

I don't see it. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=amazonian+hunter-gatherer+...

Strange, cause I see it just fine. It's not necessarily Schwarzenegger style bodies, but those are perfectly healthy, with toned muscles and little fat.

This is literally the pics from the first page of results you've sent:

https://farm6.static.flickr.com/5262/5764935531_d03188cea9.j...

https://deeptimes.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/pygymy-dad.jpg

http://assets.survivalinternational.org/pictures/733/ind-jar...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tCsETZIB-z4/T8tJBhujVjI/AAAAAAAAHv...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/oD_KKvTaXNQ/hqdefault.jpg

(Plus a lot of the more exposed tribes have changed their lifestyles and are prone to all kinds of western influences).

Here's hoping you're young, and find the motivation to start testing the mental barrier that keeps you in this unhealthy state.

I'd guess that what our ancestors did would be more akin to endurance, stamina, and agility training exercises than strength training exercises.

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