freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
Quote:Not relevant. Body-type is not determined by the occasional absence of food ~ or glut of plenty.
It is if the biggest people starve to death.

Starvation doesn't favour the skinny.
Quote:Before I was 10 years old I had spent 7 years of my life in both north and southern China. My father spoke Mandarin like a native. That by no means makes me an expert, but neither does it make me entirely dependent on Hollywood for my information.
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
It does not make you anything at all.
Ouch.
You whimsically pigeon-holed me as being a naive student of Hollywood blockbuster historical action movies without having a clue as to my background or credentials, and so you've now opted for petulance with an offensive one-liner that you hope will help you to recover from your pratfall.
Quote:All that bulk needs to be fed. From an evolutionary point of view it's hugely inefficient for these type of homo sapiens to have to feed 250 kilograms of blubber each day rather than a modest body-mass. That bulk had no strategic Darwinian advantage for surviving on coconuts and rock-pool molluscs ~~ quite the opposite.
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
It did help in war, especially stone age war.
There were no Stone Age wars. Populations were a fraction of what they are today, and were spread across large landmasses groaning with food on the hoof.
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
I didn't realise we were merely talking about fat.
Survival. We're talking about body-types developed through evolution to maximise the chances of survival in various types of environment.
Quote:Scarce as hen's teeth. The coastal waters would soon have been depleted of large live-stock.
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
That depends on the size of the human population.
The Islanders' main means of catching fish is to trap small fish in nets during periods of high tide. The tide goes out and they pick up the flapping fish.
Quote:Deep-sea craft was so scarce among islander people that it was the reason Captain Cook got killed.
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
All you need is a canoe. You don't have to cross oceans to hunt turtles etc.
Not quite true.
As I've said elsewhere, when the first fleets landed in Sydney Harbour they discovered that the local natives didn't have any kind of water craft that could go beyond the harbour heads into the open sea, and so they lent the natives their sturdy rowing boats so they could catch something more than the starvation diet they had been living on from the foreshores of the harbour.
Quote:And ... the trump card is .... why aren't they burnt black like our abos, or the subcontinental Indians, or the Africans ... ?
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
Who's to say they weren't?
They weren't what?
freediver wrote on Mar 10
th, 2014 at 6:43pm:
Ever heard of a tan?
There's that petulant streak again.