Homo Patheticus

Are we the most pathetic men in history? Kyle Smith says there’s a very good chance of that:

Twenty thousand years is a long time, but the Aboriginal men were essentially the same species as today’s homo sapiens. Calculations indicate that one of them, “T8” — sounds like an action hero right there; Vin Diesel’s XXX wouldn’t stand a chance — reached 23 miles per hour while chasing prey. OK, Usain Bolt hits about 26 miles per hour on the 100-meter sprint — but T8 was just a random dude out of a population of 150,000, and he was running barefoot in a muddy lake edge. Give the guy a pair of sneakers and a little training, and Usain would be lucky to get a job as a middle-school gym teacher.

Even over shorter time periods, things look bleak. In the Victorian age, bridge builders spent all day working with 40-pound sledgehammers. Their counterparts today wield toothpick-sized 14-pounders. In the same era, young lads who worked as runners for British glassworks regularly ran 13 to 17 miles a day. They didn’t need some cocktail-party credential like “Oh, did I mention? I ran the Marathon” to prove their mettle.