Physics question: Weight distribution and hanging by your wrists

Factual Questions
1

Background:

So I was watching a doc on The History Channel [ok, stop rolling your eyes] about crucifixions. I wonder if the REM group had a member with the last name of Patibulum?

Ooops. . . ADD setting in again. Anyway, one of the things they went into was how much weight the hand tissue could support if a person were nailed thru the palms. The numer they came up with was something like 60 pounds, which was much lower than had been estimated earlier in the 20th century by a French crucifixion researcher, who had crucified corpses.

Then, one of the researchers said that if a person weighed, say, 150 pounds, the weight drag on each wrist would not be 75 pounds as you might expect, but 150 pounds. They didn’t go into any details, just in passing mentioned that that was counter-intuitive. I assume, therefore, that the same would apply to other suspended objects, and not just human bodies.

So. . . could someone give a quick explanation on this counter-intuitivity? (I’m not asking questions about the specifics of crucifixions, just the weight distribution anomaly that they mentioned.)

2

Google “chain sling angles”
A 150 pound load will show a strain on the support of 150 pounds only when the support is vertical. Angle the supports and the load on the supports goes up.

3

If the arms are vertical (90 degrees), then you get what you would expect — each arm supports half the weight. But once the angle comes down, the tension goes up, because there are horizontal forces along with the vertical. At 30 degrees, the effective tension has doubled.

Note that this assumes the body is supported only by the hands, which was not true in many crucifixions, apparently including that of Jesus.

The Bible says that a guard came to break Jesus’s legs to hasten his death, and was surprised to find that he was already dead. That seems to confirm that the cross had a small platform that allowed the feet to support the victim’s weight. The idea was that eventually his legs would lose the strength to support him, and then he would suffocate when all his weight was on his arms. Crucifixion was intended to be a very gruesome punishment.