Peter McAllister - Manthropology: The Science of Why the Modern Male Is Not the Man He Used to Be

If youre reading this, then youor the male you have bought it forare the worst man in history.

No ifs, no butsthe worst man, period.

How can I be so sure? As a paleoanthropologist (Greek roots: palaeo = ancient; anthro = man; logy = science) its my job to study people, including men, from way back in our evolutionary past until today. Its been my work for many long years to mark them, measure them, research them, and describe themand those years have convinced me that all is not well with the male of our modern species.

Not well at all.

As a class we are, in fact, the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet. And, since any man reading thisor woman reading it about himis by definition a modern one, I confidently repeat:

You areor he isabsolutely the worst man in history.

I know, I knowsuch sentiments arent exactly helpful right now. In these times of masculine crisesof falling sperm counts, accelerating job losses, waning libidos, and fading masculine relevancemen are not looking to be challenged. They are looking for a messiah. A savior. Someone who will soothe their battered egos, restore their lost virility, and set them back up where they think they once belonged: at the top of the gender chain.

Sorry. I am not that man.

In the words of another man, one who really was a messiah, I have not come to make peace among you, but war. I have come to turn father against son, brother against brother, and friend against friend. I have come, with the sword of science in my hand, to demonstrate that every terrible little doubt you have ever had about yourself is completely and utterly true.

I have come, in short, to rub it in.

In my defense, it wasnt always so. I didnt set out to destroy the image of modern males when I started this book. Far from it. As a paleoanthropologist, and a man, I love my brother malesevery single one of those who, like me, carry the mark of our stunted, mutant Y chromosome on their brows. It was that love, believe it or not, that started me writing. I read everywhere that my fellow men were sufferingfrom feminization, ornamentalization, emasculationand I decided to help. I would use my research into the evolution of our species to prove that men today are not weak, contemptible commitment-phobes who cant hold down their end of a meaningful conversation, let alone a snarling cave bear, but gods on earth whose heroic abilities would make Zeus himself sneak back to Mount Olympus to work out on his Abdominator in shame. I would write an ABC of the virtues of Homo masculinus modernus, comparing him to earlier men to prove that he iswe arethe crowning glory of humanitys long evolutionary struggle up from our inauspicious beginnings as leopard food on the African savannah.

As you will see, I failed.

In fact, I didnt even get past B. I discovered, to my horror, that its impossible to write a book about the superior achievements of modern males, because we havent made any. From battling to boozing, babes to bravado, theres nothing we can do that ancient men, and sometimes women, havent already done better, faster, stronger, and usually smarter.

Typically, that knowledge dawned on me slowly. Like any challenged male seeking to cover up a gnawing sense of inadequacy, I started by picking on a girl: a Neandertal girl, to be precise. I decided that demonstrating how strong modern men are compared to our ancient brethren (thanks to fitness science and superior nutrition) would make a great beginning, so I calculated the average upper-arm strength of several winners of the World Arm Wrestling Federation Championships since 2000 and compared it to that of the Neandertals who lived in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic roughly 40,000 years BCE (before current era). I must have already sensed I would need to stack the deck a little, since for some reason I decided to start with a Neandertal woman. That did me no good, however, for a troubling inconsistency quickly emerged.

She was stronger.

I checked and rechecked the data, but there was no mistake. Incredibly, it seemed that even a random, anonymous Neandertal female would slam the big men of the WAF to the table every time.

That, admittedly, was disturbing, but I felt that it had to be a statistical anomaly, what scientists sometimes call an outlier. So I moved on confidently to a surer field of inquiry: sports. Competitive athletics are widely considered the proving ground of modern physical superioritywitness the succession of smashed Olympics records last century, culminating in the dizzying, drug-fueled heights of the 1980s and 1990s. A rough calculation shows over 80 percent of current Olympic athletics records were set between 1984 and 2000, and have remained unbroken since. Surely modern men of the track and field would leave their ancient rivals trailing in the strength, speed, and agility stakes?

To my intense disquiet, the answer was no. As I went deeper into the research I uncovered a succession of startling facts. I found Mongol bowmen in the twelfth century who shot with higher accuracy than modern Olympic archers, over distances six times greater, and from galloping horseback to boot. I found ancient competitors in the Greek Olympics who won three grueling events on a single days competition, in one case repeating the feat at four successive Olympics. I found other Greek athletes who set long jump and triple jump records, unassisted by modern technology, that would have stood until the 1952 Olympics. Not to mention the bravery and commitment of competitors such as the boxer Eurydamas of Cyrene, who swallowed his smashed teeth during a match to disguise his injuries from both his opponent and the judges.

The further back I went the more calamitous the news became. Archaeological research from a fossil footprint site in the Willandra Lakes region of southwestern New South Wales shows that twenty thousand years ago Australian Aboriginal men regularly ran at speeds rivaling, and probably exceeding, the top speed of the current one-hundred-meter world record holder, Usain Bolt. Going back beyond the dawn of our own species, the picture is bleaker yet: even female chimps, gorillas, and bonobos, our closest living relatives, not only carry much higher ratios of lean muscle to body mass than modern men, their individual muscles are up to four times stronger than those of any male Homo sapiens .

By this time I was seriously shaken. In desperation I widened my focus; if we modern males couldnt compete on speed and strength I would simply find a field in which we couldsuch as brains, or beauty, or even the bardic arts for Gods sake. But it was no good. Wherever I turned I found humiliatingly high historic and prehistoric achievers. In the manufacture of their intricate Levallois spear points, Neandertal flintknappers from the Lower Paleolithic display an understanding of stone fracture mechanics beyond that of most modern-day geology graduates. The beautification routines of modern metrosexuals wouldnt get them into the starting line-up of a Wodaabe male tribesmens Gerewol beauty pageant. The wittiest and most grueling freestyle battle rap between superstars such as Kanye West and 50 Cent couldnt match the drama and duration of a traditional Eskimo song duel, let alone the poetic feats of medieval Slavic bards who frequently free-rhymed for days on end. The final straw came when I read of the extraordinary parenting feats of Aka Pygmy fathers in Central Africa (who spend 47 percent of their waking time in close physical contact with their children and even sometimes grow breasts to suckle them). That was it. Suddenly even the very last refuge of the modern incompetent malebeing good with the kids was no longer safe.