People are the most ill-equipped animals(for wilderness survival)

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Oniw17, Feb 17, 2009.

  1. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Including us.

    Like what ? Most people wouldn't advance beyond using rocks and sticks.
     
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  3. Betrayer0fHope MY COHERENCE! IT'S GOING AWAYY Registered Senior Member

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    Humans are amazing endurance runners compared to most other animals. Tribes of humans chased down entire herds of animals, sometimes for days, until they animals died of exhaustion and the humans (not humen

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    ) could get their catch. At least that's what I heard on the discovery channel (on a scientific program, not a quack one). I would be fine with a few of my friends, but most of humanity would not be.
     
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  5. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    where in the world do you think we got technology from? what did we dig it up? no we made it from scratch.
     
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  7. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Technology has to be built from the bottom up. Do you know how long it took for us to advance from sticks and stones to more advanced technology ?
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Bad teeth started with agriculture.

    A lot of our current apparently slack physical abilities are consequences of agriculture. The Cro-Magnons were six feet tall, muscular, long-lived barring violence, with a mouthful of healthy teeth and much more chance of being killed by another human than any bear. Bears were prey. So were elephants. To this day the smallest, weakest, least technologically advanced people on earth hunt and kill elephants for food.
     
  9. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Why do you limit yourself to not using any tools? You might just as well ask a lion to hunt without its claws or teeth. It is our ability to make and use tools that makes us the dominant species on this planet. Even if you were dropped naked into a forest, you could soon enough make a spear or some such tool to facilitate the hunting/killing of the deer.
     
  10. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I'm making a bow and arrow and using Enmos' teeth for arrowheads.

    And its not hard at all to make a fish trap. The only wilderness I don't think I could survive in is Sahara dessert, open ocean, or the arctic circle.
     
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    How could you tell what the water is? Is the watyer good to drink or bad, how do you determine that in the wildreness?
     
  12. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    If animals are drinking it, I'm drinking it. I'd prefer rain water or moisture from anilmals/plants but I'll drink dirty water if my only option is dehydration.
     
  13. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    In general it will be safe to drink if it's fast-flowing. But you can always boil it (in your self-made clay pot, I guess). Even smelting metal isn't that complicated, if you can find it. It would mostly just be trial and error to figure out what works.
     
  14. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    I'd build a nuke just for the heck of it.
     
  15. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    My teeth ?

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  16. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Sure.. lol
     
  17. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Humans managed to survive on the moon (be it briefly and we never went back) so I don't know what your talking about! humans survive in a wider range of habitats than any animal on earth! Sure the human body is built like shit (and evolving to be increasingly shittier) and has many detriments and no exceptional capabilities, other then a brain capable of advance language and sound modulating systems to implement that capabilities, also the capability of sentient thought and hands for which it implements its diabolical ideas, those are about it, everything else is shit, but dam the exceptional features are so incredible that humans have completely dominated this planet, and to great horror possibly will take over other worlds as well! Sure most humans could not live without the technology of theres, but so what?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 18, 2009
  18. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Well, that's actually the point of this thread..
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2009
  19. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Enmos, who do you think would live longer in the wilderness, you or me?
     
  20. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Me

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  21. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    none of you, you would all die.
     
  22. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Everyone dies.
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It sounds like this discussion is not about the fitness of Homo sapiens as a species for wilderness survival. Our ancestors were so skilled at it that they actually began to modify the environment to suit them.

    If you're talking about the ability of a dweller in modern civilization to survive if he were dropped off in a wilderness with no training, no physical conditioning and only Stone Age tools, that's a different issue. I don't know why anybody would care about that. We've spent the past eleven thousand years building a world that's more to our liking and we're very adept at flourishing in it. With the tools ("technology") we've invented, we have become the apex predator despite the existence of tigers, bears, alligators and sharks; we have marginalized or extinguished species with whom we didn't care to share our space; we have enslaved others for food, work and sport and made second-class citizens out of others for sheer frivolous companionship; we have re-shaped the face of the planet, turning forests into farmland, fields into shopping malls and rivers into hydroelectric generators.

    In other words, we didn't much like living in the wilderness, so we abolished it. To say that we could no longer survive in the wilderness is simply to acknowledge the unique nature of our species: our survival skills are not merely instincts honed by parental training, but elaborate systems crafted over thousands of years. We've chosen to suit ourselves to the world we made.

    People who care about wilderness survival skills put great effort into learning them and apparently they become very good at them. As far as I'm concerned this proves that our species has not lost its natural ability for wilderness survival, merely that we no longer teach our children to exploit it.

    Which brings me back to Orly's remark. Orly, are you a resolute outdoors enthusiast? Have you bothered to learn how to hunt and fish? Could you build a trap to catch small mammals? Few of us Americans have.

    I wouldn't last a week in the wilderness because I've never learned to do any of those things. But I can play a bass guitar, write publication-quality text, drive a car, play go and teach algebra and three languages. Those are the skills I value. I would not want to live in a world where I could not use them so my inability to survive in that world is by definition of no importance to me.
    Actually, at the close of the Mesolithic Era in 9500BCE the life expectancy of an adult human who had survived the rigors of childhood (no mean feat, to be sure) was in the low 50s. The cause of death for the majority of them was violence, since the inability of a hunter-gatherer "economy" to generate surplus food made every tribe an enemy of every other tribe during hard times.

    It wasn't tooth decay that brought us down; it was, ironically, agriculture. After the invention of the technology of farming, the burgeoning human population quickly adopted a grain-based diet, which is woefully deficient in many key nutrients. By the Roman Era, that same adult had a life expectancy of about 23.
    That's easier said than done. I hope you don't ever have to test that hypothesis.
     

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