# Modern man a wimp - Australian aboriginals could outrun Bolt?! **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 24, 2013, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349 "2013-07-24T01:52:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2013, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349/21 "2013-07-24T18:54:36Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I think you’re remembering incorrectly. If anything, Neanderthals were more adapted to thrusting than throwing. It’s possible that I reversed what I read, give the statements made by other posters. I can’t pick up the book right now, since it’s in some box or another. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2013, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349/22 "2013-07-24T19:32:23Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > No but a Mongolian hunting drive [run the critters into a fenced area, blind canyon or off a cliff] works a treat for getting massive amounts of food, bone for tools and hides. I would imagine that smoking and sun drying meat is probably the oldest food preservation technology around, and probably practiced by our human ancestors, whether or not the Neanderthals did we can only conjecture. That would work, but it’s hard to see the Neanderthal population surviving on that alone. > [@](#): > > Maybe the jump to preserving food is where we survived as a species, and the Neanderthals who didn’t learn to preserve food died out. It would kick ass if we could find a Neanderthal Otzi in a glacier somewhere. Answer a hell of a lot of questions. Yeah, each new discovery shows Neatherthal’s to be more advanced than previously thought, and raises new questions. ---
**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2013, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349/23 "2013-07-24T20:58:02Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Think your tree climber man could do [this? (action starts at about 1:00)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBi22AKvsK0). What you need are the right modern athletes. Athletes who train to do that one set of things better than anyone else in history. Football players don’t climb trees, track stars don’t march with a pack of military gear. > > [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFVqMO48RWQ) are some more tree climbing types. Sure, they actually use tools to climb their trees, but a blowgun is a tool, too. Very good. However, I was more impressed with this: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy3SuhEQHVg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy3SuhEQHVg) ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349/24 "2013-07-25T18:31:34Z")
> [@blue\_infinity](#): > > Anthropology, as a hard science, would be right up there with Astrology. > > Colour me skeptical. Harsh! Much too harsh. I took Anthro in 1956, a couple years after the Piltdown fake was exposed. Our text, the 1948 edition of Kroeber said very clearly, something like, “Our understanding of human evolution would be a lot clearer if Piltdown hadn’t been found.” I think that that was the closest to a claim that it was fake as he cared to go, but it increased my respect for anthropologists enormously. Nonetheless I would want to see hard evidence (which doesn’t exist, I am sure) for the original claim. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349/25 "2013-07-25T20:49:49Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I have seen aborigines hunting on documentaries and their skills were amazing. This older looking guy was in a hunting party looking for monkeys. He used a blow gun with poisoned darts. He’d shot the monkey in the tree like a couple hundred feet up. He wrapped his legs around the tree trunk and went up like it was nothing. He did that repeatedly all day long. Are you sure they were monkeys? There aren’t any wild monkeys in Australia. Or is this somewhere else? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349/26 "2013-07-25T20:57:11Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Are you sure they were monkeys? There aren’t any wild monkeys in Australia. Or is this somewhere else? He must be talking about South America where they use curare tipped darts to kill monkeys with blowguns. I guess those people are technically aborigines too but not the ones people usually think of when they here the term. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/modern-man-a-wimp-australian-aboriginals-could-outrun-bolt/664349.md?page=1)