For West Coast programs that can afford the steep airfare, the best bet is to cast their nets even further west into the Pacific. Hawaii produced five NFL linemen, and tiny American Samoa (population: 67,190) produced six. Those who can't afford the flights to paradise may want to check closer to home in Salt Lake City, a metro area that produced five NFL linemen -- including former Oregon great Haloti Ngata. Like Ngata, three of the other future NFL linemen who grew up in Utah are of Polynesian descent. Salt Lake City has a high Polynesian population because the Mormon church does extensive missionary work in the Pacific islands, and many families have relocated from the islands to Salt Lake City, where the church is headquartered.
SI VAULT: How Samoa became Eden for recruiters
Anthropology may help explain why so many good linemen developed in certain areas. Many of the linemen from west of the Rockies are of Polynesian descent. Polynesian cultures tend to produce large men capable of generating massive amounts of force. And with good reason. "Big, fast males sound like what ought to come out of centuries or millennia of social systems where there is direct male-to-male violence, but not where there are standoff weapons used in war like bows and arrows," University of Utah anthropology professor Henry Harpending wrote in an e-mail. "There was certainly this kind of violence on Polynesian islands, which were demographic pressure cookers."
Harpending is one of the authors of The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, which argues that, contrary to popular belief, the advent of advanced societies didn't stop human evolution but actually kicked it into a higher gear. In a phone interview, Harpending called the development of the Polynesian islands "a unique experiment in human history."
"They were fighting for land," Harpending said. "There just wasn't enough arable land in most places. The records and the archaeology both show that there was just a lot of warfare, violence, turnover of chiefs."
Harpending wrote that it might be more difficult to explain the anthropological reasons for the explosion of players in the South without knowing more specifics about their ancestries. Most would be classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as black, and Harpending said most black Americans are descended from ancestors who lived in the tropical regions of central Africa. He wrote that throughout history, most violence in those areas tended to be "hand-to-hand," which would have produced large, fast, muscular males through natural selection. Like the Polynesians, ancient people in central Africa never favored the bow-and-arrow as a hunting or warfare tool. Harpending said archaeological evidence from central Africa shows the ancient residents preferred spears and bludgeoning instruments. In other words, the biggest and strongest would have survived the fighting to reproduce. "Bows and arrows kept the distance between people," Harpending said. "It decreased the premium on being big and strong
January 28, 2011
Harpending on NFL Linemen
Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples goes looking for the places that produce the best NFL linemen:
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As a friend once said after observing a bunch of Samoans jump out of the gym and crush volleyballs into the gym floor: "There are two things to do in Samoa: eat dirt and play volleyball." I think we can amend the remark to read "and block & tackle like mad", too.
The Vikings (Danes) used battle axes according to Trevelyan.
"Most would be classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as black, and Harpending said most black Americans are descended from ancestors who lived in the tropical regions of central Africa. He wrote that throughout history, most violence in those areas tended to be "hand-to-hand," which would have produced large, fast, muscular males through natural selection. Like the Polynesians, ancient people in central Africa never favored the bow-and-arrow as a hunting or warfare tool."
But is the advantage of Polynesians mostly size or fast-twitch muscle? They seem to have some black blood but they can't be said to be really black. If Polynesians are all-around athletes like blacks, they would be winning 100 m sprints and also be recruited for running back and reciever positions(and basketball). But they are mostly lineman in football chosen MAINLY for size.
And are they mostly on offensive or defensive line? Defense guys have to be stronger and more explosive in order to penetrate the offensive line and sack the quarterback and/or stop the runner. It seems most defensive linemen are black. They not only have the size but explosive power--fast-twitch muscle--and rhythmic coordination in movement; and black running backs and receivers are very skida-do-jazzy in their movements. So, it would be interesting to find out if Polys are mainly chosen for size--like big Poles and Hillbillies on the offensive line--or for explosive power.
I heard one reason Polys are big is because they were a sea people and had to travel through vast distances by canoeing. Without sail ships or horses or camels, Polys had to row and row and row and row over vast distances. So, their bodies had to store lots of fat, which is why polys grow fat like a mothaf--when they eat junk food.
Hawaiians were big in sumo, with guys like Akebono, Musashimaru, and Konishiki. But they were mostly about size, not explosive power. And they weren't as coordinated in their movements like (even big fat)black guys can be.
Even without the size advantage, many blacks are better at sports. Small basketball players like Isiah Thomoas; and many smaller black boxers have defeated much bigger white boxers.
Compare the huge hawaiian--with tons of body fat as well as muscle--vs a pure-hard-muscle black.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O47BGvtO44w
Sapp looks like he could play defensive lineman in football, but Akebono would have been good only for offense.
Today, Mongols dominate sumo--Hawaiians lost interest--, and though Mongols aren't among the biggest/toughest people on Earth, they are very big and tough by Japanese standards. They were a nomadic warrior herding people than a settler people.
Do you suppose choice of females also had something to do with this?
Let's consider the Helga/Heather factor. Helga is a big tough viking woman who can skin a moose in 5 minutes flat. Heather is a damsel who faints when she hears nasty words.
If a man has children with Helga, he will produce both bigger/tougher girls and bigger/tougher boys: little Helgas and little Halvars. Warrior boys and tough girls.
If a man has children with Heather, he will produce not only more feminine girls but more feminine boys: Heathers and Harrys. After all, boys and girls take after both their parents.
It's like if a male wolf mated with a female wolf, they will produce tough male and female wolf cubs. But if a wolf mated with a beagle, both male and female offsprings will be 'less tough'.
Did the rise of 'heather ideal' in the West and East lead to the wimpization of the males? In China, the ideal woman became a small foot-bound soft-spoken woman. Worse, even among men, the geeks--scholars--were chosen over others. Of course, most Chinese were hardworking peasants and didn't have time for silk and poetry, but the ideal of the elites seeped down to the masses. Even poor peasants wanted the very feminine woman than a big tough woman.
Though Japan has a warrior samurai culture, most samurai were chosen for their sheepish obedience to their lords--much more so than in feudal Europe. They were warrior geeks.
Look at most Japanese men and they prefer the 'cutey' female stuff. They prefer the cheek or gick(geek chick)Nene to the tough biker chick Priss--in Bubblegum Crisis 2032. If this had been the case for centuries, it means both Japanese men and women got super-geekified.
But Mongols are bigger and tougher--at least by Asian standards--not only because Mongols were warrior nomads but because they preferred tough woman--or at least that's the impression I got from the movie MONGOL. Genghis has the hots for a tomboy girl, a kind of Sarah Palin of the steppes.
With rise of civliization, men want finer things--in arts, clothes, and women(seen as kind of prize possession to show off)--whereas in primitive societies, a man admires a woman who can skin animals, shake her ass, and cheer her man on to bash some skulls of the other side.
In ancient times, the Romans were amazed by big Germanic barbarians--big men and big women. But maybe Germans got wimpied with the rise/spread of agriculture and civilization. Heathers came to be preferred over Helgas, and men had more children with Heathers. And WWI and WWII probably killed off the last of tough German males.
Of course, it's just a theory, and there are many other possible reasons too.
That explanation makes sense, but you'd think there might be more to it than that. Whites in Europe could have been selected for size and quickness as well as the ability to plan through the winter. Even with the use of bows and arrows and catapults etc, size and speed would still have been an advantage.
So those bow-and-arrow cultures should have better eyesight and better hand-eye coordination? Probably not, since archers are more effective in groups, not individually.
I can see the explanation on size, I just don't buy the notion that technology shapes natural selection. I still buy the argument that technology shields us from nature.
This is a really good article. Sports offer the most obvious examples of HBD, yet so few dare speak about the implications their eyes see on a daily basis.
WOW, I'm surprised from reading the article that many of these Samoans are ELITE DEFENSIVE LINEMEN. I guess they really are tough.
These damn liberals. Is THE SOUTH the new euphemism for BLACK?
I mean it's not like they are recruiting Mexicans from El Paso and Vietnamese community in New Orleans.
Interesting stuff, in New Zealand the influence of polynesians in sport is massive. At school our first IV rugby team was bolstered by a number of samoan imports. I also played cricket against several largely polynesian schools. It was quite noticeable at High School from ages 13-16 that they were more physically mature.
Rugby league is another sport in which they are hugely overrepresented.
I hadn't thought of the stand-off weapon factor. Jon Entine mentions them of course in his writings on HBD in sport.
[a]http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/about_interview.htm[/a]
Another factor may help explain the greater numbers from the South. When they're placed side-by-side, it's difficult to tell the difference between the clustering in a map of the NFL defensive linemen's hometowns and a map showing the percentage of obese people in each state.
How about the Baltic types who dominate strongman competitions?
"Most would be classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as black"
Not that they're black, mind you. We don't want to label anyone. But the Census Bureau would probably classify them that way.
Not too many good samoan boxers. David Tua is the only one that comes to mind. Samoans may be big but very few are muscular or have the speed of blacks.
This doesn't sound right. Read Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture to see just how rare close-quarters hand-to-hand combat was outside of the Western military tradition (which starts in the Greek phalanx). Tribal warfare is generally a skirmish in which direct confrontation is avoided, javelins and such are thrown. The Aztecs also used rudimentary bludgeoning weapons but this didn't mean they had seen anything like the close-quarter engagement tactics that their (short) Spanish conquerors used. Tribal warfare is highly ritualized, etc., see "flower wars."
By this reasoning the Classical Greeks should have been massive tall men since they were almost unique in their time to fight in close-quarters formation, but they were smaller than both north Europeans and Ethiopians (whom Herodotus calls strong and powerful, but he shows they used the bow and arrow).
The one time that German tribesmen achieved a spectacular victory over Romans was an ambush and deceit in the Teutoburg forest, because they knew they couldn't close with them. In fact the only army I know of that fought a pitched battle outside the Euro tradition were Pashtuns.
Samoans have a really high body fat percentage. They don't have the leaness, agility, and stamina of Africans. They can generate quick bursts of energy, but their mobility is somewhat limited.
Here's a picture of what Samoans typically look like - big, strong, and fat. Perfect build for playing lineman or playing rugby, but otherwise not that built for most sports. Pacific Islanders usually do poorly at the Olympics.
http://www.sojones.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/boo_yaa_Tribe_0.jpg
Very interesting, but I fear Mr Staples is skating kinda close to the edge of career-ending crime-think. if and when iSteve goes bigtime, he could be your sports columnist ;)
Island gigantism... only for humans!
Some of the kings and queens of those islands were remarkably big people, too.
So that's why there are no Mongolian football players.
Polynesia is also a huge rugby region. Tiny nations like Fiji do pretty well as national teams in spite of their tiny populations, and they supply professional players in both rugby union and rugby league to Australia and Europe. Needless to say, as with gridiron, being big and fast is a big advantage in rugby.
Trap blocking is merely a cultural construct. Teach for America coaches could make pygmies the best lineman in the world if we just took of the racist blinders.
i always thought if you changed the football rules to be more like rugby (limit substitutions, continious play and clock) there would be many many more white backs
Perfect build for playing lineman or playing rugby
don't know much about rugby, do we? You need much higher endurance as there is a continuous clock and limited substitutions (though I think the rules have changed on this since i played and rugby went pro - it used to be only two)
Polynesians are not all fat. There are quite a few mesomorphs. Really fat people cannot play Rugby as it has a strong endurance factor.
See, e.g., Troy Polamalu (4.3 40) or Rugby All-Star Jonah Lomu.
There are lots of poly's in skill positions these days, like running back or quarterback.
See also this ESPN documentary:
http://nwfl1.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=866
Anon re VDH's points, shock battle, is quite correct. And in European evolution of warfare, body armor (as in Japan and to a lesser extent China) somewhat mitigated against arrows.
And you had some "stand-off weapons" of first the Phalanx, and then the Swiss Pike Square, allowing basically a pincushion stabbing machine, killing at greater distance than sword or ax. The Romans were considerably smaller (so says Tacitus, Caesar, and others) than the Gauls, Germans, and Britons they slaughtered, by and large. Small brown olive farmers, for the most part, yet they lined up in one giant stabbing machine (the Roman maniples) with the impact of the Phalanx but far greater flexibility.
Let me add, the trend is now among some NFL coaches to move away from Sumo sized guys (they break down in the season) to more svelte behemoths who don't have knee/ankle problems that bring a critical component of the line out. An intact line being the difference between playoffs or not.
I don't think bow-and-arrow stuff is the key because American Indians, even though had bow-and-arrows, did a lot of hand to hand fighting. And many African tribes did have bow and arrow technology. Bushmen were among the most primitive but they had bows and arrows. And I saw some Africans using bows and arrows in GREYSTOKE, THE LEGEND OF TARZAN.
I'm wondering if diet played a role in the South Pacific, too. Is it safer to get fatter if most of the fat is coming from unsaturated fat like fish rather than beef and pork?
Also, Polynesians could have benefitted from low metabolism/fat storage due to the need for such during long ocean journeys, which were a more routine part of their lives than elsewhere.
There are many places on earth where being bigger would be advantageous. Why does that seem especially pronounced in the South Pacific? Strength for battle doesn't seem enough.
Samoan-American Troy Polamalu, strong safety of the Pittsburgh Steelers, is perhaps the most popular defensive player in all of football. He's not huge at 5-10 and 207 pounds but he's fast (Wikipedia says 4.31 in the 40), and his character is widely admired.
I can't really tell if any Samoans might have world class sprinting speed just because there are so few Samoans in the world. They appear to be remarkably fast for their massiveness, but perhaps not quite as fast as West Africans, all else being equal.
***Sports offer the most obvious examples of HBD***
Indeed, the issue of polynesian dominance in rugby in New Zealand has raised some controversial issues too. For instance, last year an ex-All Black suggested that the successful Crusaders franchise had an informal quota on polynesian players. The Crusaders play a very structured style of play, and polynesian players tend to be more dynamic and instinctive.
Another former All Black wrote in his book:
" "When there is a loss of confidence among one or two Polynesian players it can rapidly affect the others, dragging the team performance down," Laidlaw writes. "It is often said that Pacific Islanders are not thinkers on the field, and that too many of them on a team means a dumbing-down of tactical acumen. It isn't a very persuasive argument, but it is clearly a factor in some teams because, on balance, Maori and Pacific Islanders tend to be more instinctive than measured in their approach, and every team at the top level needs someone who can plot and plan, adjust and adapt ..."
I'm guessing here what race would be at the top level, then.
An anecdote follows about an American watching rugby with Laidlaw observing that in the American code, "you'll never see a black quarterback. The thinking guys in any football team are all white. This ain't prejudice. We have the stats to prove it". It troubles me that Laidlaw does not distance himself from this.
He concludes his chapter with: "If there is a better combination than a bunch of hardened, pragmatic Pakeha tight forwards surrounded by a Polynesian loose forward combination, marshalled by a dictatorial Pakeha halfback or first-five and a backline of lightning fast, sidestepping Polynesians, then I don't know what it is."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/3770500/Forget-Haden-its-Laidlaw-who-worries-me
*** Tony said...
Not too many good samoan boxers. David Tua is the only one that comes to mind. Samoans may be big but very few are muscular or have the speed of blacks.***
Remember they're a pretty small population and in NZ (Auckland has more Samoans than anywhere else) rugby & rugby league tend to attract the best samoan athletes. Nonetheless, aside from Tua there has been some pretty successful samoan boxers like Jimmy Thunder and current All Black star
Sonny Bill Williams is also starting a boxing career.
Also, Ray Sefo was a six-time world kickboxing and muay thai champion who recently was inducted into the Masters Hall of Fame.
But is the advantage of Polynesians mostly size or fast-twitch muscle? They seem to have some black blood but they can't be said to be really black.
They're not in the least bit black. Prince Charles as is black as your typical Polynesian.
Anonymous said...This doesn't sound right. Read Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture to see just how rare close-quarters hand-to-hand combat was outside of the Western military tradition (which starts in the Greek phalanx).
I agree--this theory doesn't hold water. Most African fighting was done with light spears at standoff distance and was ritualistic. It was a huge innovation in the 19th century when Shaka had his Zulu warriors close with the opposing side and finish them off with heavy stabbing spears.
Africans used other distance weapons such as knobkerries which they threw with considerable effectiveness.
Another thing is that effective bows, like the English longbow and the Mongolian compound bow, take a great deal of strength to draw, so it's not as if archers were weaklings.
Not too many good samoan boxers. David Tua is the only one that comes to mind. Samoans may be big but very few are muscular or have the speed of blacks.
Boxing is cultural, not physical. Hell, Jews used to be good boxers!
Pro sports are not very good examplars of genetic potential, foremost because of different developmental rates. Blacks have an almost 2 YEAR PUBERTY ONSET ADVANTAGE.
When long-term sports success is largely determined by your physique when you are 16-7, having a two year puberty advantage will produce massive distortion in athletic career allocation by race.
We don't know what race would produce better offensive linemen, because WE DON'T HAVE RACIAL COMPETITIONS. If we had white leagues developing white players to their full adult potentials, along with doing the same for blacks, we could play the mature pros against each other and check results.
The college and pro recruiting processes are hardly pure meritocracies. I recently examined some instructive cases:
Racial Discrimination in Football Recruiting
Don't Polynesians have remnants of the recently discovered Denisovan (cousin to Neanderthal) DNA?
Homo Sapiens are slighter of build than our hominid ancestors, the Denisovan DNA presumably would add robustness.
I don't think people can claim that Polynesians are exclusively relegated to offensive and defensive lines anymore. Juinor Seau who was drafted I think in 1990 was one of the most dominant linebackers in NFL history and was renown for both his strength and speed, Despite weighing in at 255 lbs, I think he had a 38 inch vertical jump at the NFL combine, which is a more objective measure of explosiveness than the 40 yard dash because it doesn't vary with who has the stopwatch. Additionally there is Troy Polamalu who is generally considered the best safety in the NFL and safety is considered a "speed" position.
There are increasing numbers of Polynesians at non-lineman position in the NFL and nearly every NFL team has at least 4 or 5 Polynesians, mostly American Samoans. The main reason there are not more Polynesians in the NFL is that for the most part only Samoans from American Samoa generally play American Football and both the population of American Samoa and the Polynesian American population is not very big, it's less than 800K in total and a lot of that is the population of Hawaii which tends to be multiracial with many Hawaiians having Asian or European ancestry as well. Samoans from Western Samoa, plus Tongans, Maoris, etc... usually play Rugby Union or Rugby League. From what I understand some of the best rugby players in the world are Polynesians and Melanesians ( Fijians ) so my guess is that if more of them played the American version of rugby there would be still more in the NFL.
Harpending is one of the authors of The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, which argues that, contrary to popular belief, the advent of advanced societies didn't stop human evolution but actually kicked it into a higher gear.
Popular belief, my ass. People don't believe that human evolution stopped 50,000 years ago, and if they did it wouldn't be some sort of putative folk wisdom; it would be because they had been lied to.
Pacific Islanders are really quick for their size, but not that quick overall.
Beyond size and muscle mass, PIs are very capable of taking a beating and getting back up.
"Perfect build for playing lineman or playing rugby"
don't know much about rugby, do we? You need much higher endurance as there is a continuous clock and limited substitutions (though I think the rules have changed on this since i played and rugby went pro - it used to be only two)
The difference isn't that stark in regards to endurance between gridiron and rugby union as some people think (there is a difference, but it's relative); yes there is a continuous clock and limited substitutions, however, there is still enough stoppage of play and "standing around time" due to the specializations of player positions in rugby union to allow for less endurance than some people would think.
In other words, there are plenty of rugby union players with a bit of a gut on them. They tend (if I understand correctly) to play in positions where weight is important (ie in the scrum) but speed and endurance are less important. So some players in rugby union will put on a bit of fat and will train for quick bursts of energy output, rather than endurance, because that is a strategy that works for the position that they play. There are other positions where that doesn't work, so you'll see smaller, faster, quicker players with more endurance too. Rugby union has a variety of "body types" due to player position specialization and the somewhat limited pace of the game (compared to rugby league).
Rugby league is the code that doesn't have as much specialization of player positions, and which is much more continuous play than rugby union. Rugby unionists often make the mistake of thinking that the six tackle rule in rugby league means that the play in rugby league is "broken up/interrupted" like gridiron is; but this is incorrect, as would be obvious if they actually watched rugby league. Yes the ball is "dead" for a moment after a tackle but play resumes immediately; the play is much faster and more continuous in rugby league than the plodding, stop-start-stop action of rugby union with its constant petty rule infractions, scrum collapses, rucks and mauls that don't do anything, line outs, and pointless punting for territory. As a result of the higher pace of rugby league and the relative lack of player position specialization, rugby league players have to have high endurance and you won't see professional rugby league players with guts on them like you will in rugby union. Instead of differing body types like you see in union, in league all of the players are big and lean; high endurance, low fat.
Or put another way: rugby union is chess, with each player having a different specialization like the differing chess pieces, and much more complicated rules. Rugby league is checkers: the players are much more identical to each other, less specialization, and the rules are simpler. There's good and bad to both approaches.
Steve,
To expand on some comments about Polynesians in rugby:
I've been looking at statistics for the All Blacks (New Zealand national rugby union team).
To show how disproportionately Pacific peoples are represented in New Zealand rugby, I'll give you a rundown on ethnic backgrounds of some of the bigger names in All Blacks history. I'll use two statistical criteria: players with at least 50 Test caps (appearances in Tests, the highest-level international matches) and those with at least 15 Test tries (analogous to touchdowns).
First, 50 caps. As of January 2011, 38 players have reached this mark. Here's a rundown of Māori, Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians in the group, AFAIK. (Note that some people who consider themselves Māori are ethnically mixed with other groups.) I'll welcome additions/corrections from any Kiwis reading this.
Mils Muliaina, 94 caps (tied for all-time lead with current AB captain Richie McCaw) — Born in (Western) Samoa.
Keven Mealamu, 83 caps — Samoan born in the Waikato (north central North Island). His brother Luke played for Manu Samoa (that country's national rugby union team).
Tana Umaga, 74 caps — Samoan born in Lower Hutt (Wellington area). His older brother Mike played for Manu Samoa.
Joe Rokocoko, 68 caps — Born in Fiji.
Jonah Lomu, 63 caps — Tongan born in Auckland.
Robin Brooke, 62 caps — Māori.
Doug Howlett, 62 caps — Tongan born in Auckland. His older brother Phil played rugby league internationally for Tonga.
Rodney So'oialo, 62 caps — Born in Samoa.
Zinzan Brooke, 58 caps — Māori. Older brother of Robin.
Christian Cullen, 58 caps — A true mix; Irish, Samoan, and a dash of Māori.
Olo Brown, 56 caps — Born in Samoa.
Leon MacDonald, 56 caps — Māori.
Ma'a Nonu, 56 caps — Samoan born in Wellington.
Frank Bunce, 55 caps — Samoan born in Auckland. Also played four Tests for Manu Samoa.
Michael Jones, 55 caps — Samoan born in Auckland. Also played one Test for Manu Samoa.
Taine Randell, 51 caps — Māori.
Now, 15 tries... I count 19 players who have reached that mark. Most of the Pacific-descended players who have reached that mark are on the above list:
Howlett, 49
Cullen, 46
Rokocoko, 46
Lomu, 37
Umaga, 36
Muliaina, 32
Sitiveni Sivivatu, 27 (plus 4 for the Pacific Islanders touring side) — Born in Fiji. I've seen sources indicating that he and Rokocoko are cousins, though I don't know for sure.
Bunce, 21 (plus 1 for Samoa)
Zinzan Brooke, 17
Nonu, 17
So, I have 15 out of 38 ABs with 50+ caps, and 10 out of 19 with 15+ tries, descended from peoples of the Pacific islands. Impressive...
Interestingly, only one of the players on the 50+ caps list, Olo Brown, was a prop—the position most analogous to a lineman in American football. Mealamu is a hooker (front row of the scrum between the props). Robin Brooke was a lock (in the scrum, behind the front row). So'oialo, Zinzan Brooke, Jones, and Randell play(ed) in the back row of the scrum. The rest are/were backs of one kind or another.
Top try scorers are almost always backs; the only AB forward with 15+ tries is Zinzan Brooke.
Note that Lomu, though he was a wing with the All Blacks, comes closest to the prototype for a lineman—he is 6-5, and played at about 260, which made him both the tallest and heaviest back in AB history. Even at that size, he could run the 100 m in 10.8 before his kidneys failed. His career with the ABs ended in 2002 due to his illness, which led to a transplant in 2004. He did come back to professional rugby, but was far from his former self.
BTW... you may not remember, but I'm the person who nominated Lomu for the HBD Hall of Fame, but I didn't have a free picture of him. Wikipedia should now have at least one, if not more.
anon:
"i always thought if you changed the football rules to be more like rugby (limit substitutions, continious play and clock) there would be many many more white backs"
US sports often seem designed to favour black talents over white. American football and basketball are good examples. The progressive shortening of the boxing match duration also favours explosive power over endurance.
This isn't an exhaustive list (I'm not looking at practice squads and such), but it gives a pretty good idea of Pacific Islanders on active rosters at various positions in the NFL. I'm mostly going by names, but when I wasn't sure, I tried to determine through Wikipedia if they are PI or not. Like I said, this is a rough compilation, but it should be pretty complete:
Haloti Ngata (DT Baltimore)
Kelly Talavou (DT Baltimore)
Reagan Maui'a (FB ARizona)
Domata Peko (DT Cincinnati)
Jonathan Fanene (DE Cincinnati)
Rey Maualuga (LB Cincinnati)
Kaluka Maiava (LB Cleveland)
Harvey Unga (RB Chicago)
Brandon Manumaleuna (FB Chicago)
Will Ta'ufo'ou (FB Chicago)
Matt Toeaina (DT Chicago)
Pisa Tinoisamoa (LB Chicago)
David Veikune (LB Denver)
Fili Moala (DT Indianapolis)
Al Afalava (Safety Indianapolis)
Tyson Aluala (DT Jacksonville)
Naufahu Tahi (FB Minnesota)
Tony Moeaki (TE Kansas City)
Marcus Mailei (FB New Orleans)
Kawika Mitchell (LB New Orleans)
Paul Soliai (DT Miami)
Koa Misi (LB Miami)
Ikaika Alama-Francis (LB Miami)
Daniel Teo Nesheim (maybe PI? DE Philadelphia)
Sione Pouha (DT NY Jets)
Ropati Pitoitua (DT NY Jets)
Michael Hoomanawanui (TE St. Louis)
C.J. Ah You (DE St, Louis)
Isaac Sopoaga (DE San Francisco)
Will Tufuaku (LB San Francisco)
Troy Polamalu (Safety Pittsburg)
Junior Siavii (DT Seattle)
Lofa Tatupu (LB Seattle)
Maake Kemoeatu (DT Washington)
11 out of 34 play Defensive Tackle.
9 out of 34 play Linebacker.
5 out of 34 play Fullback.
4 out of 34 play Defensive End.
2 out of 34 play Tight End.
2 out of 34 play Safety.
1 out of 34 plays Running Back (at the bottom of the Depth Chart).
What these numbers suggest to me is that Pacific Islanders are unusually large and strong, but not unusually fast. What most surprises me is that there are no Offensive Linemen.
Obviously, there are not four or five per team.
***When long-term sports success is largely determined by your physique when you are 16-7, having a two year puberty advantage will produce massive distortion in athletic career allocation by race.***
In NZ soccer has had an upsurge in numbers over the past 20 years and this is partially due to european teens choosing it to avoid getting steamrolled by polynesian players who mature earlier.
Question for the New Zealanders: Are there are any significant physical differences among Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians?
I always thought that Fijians seemed a little bit smaller and skinnier than the first groups. Samoans seem to be even larger than Tongans.
It seems like an interesting theory, but my thought is inherently skeptical, as, if land is scarce enough to fight over, food is scarce, and if food is scarce, then being big and strong is a disadvantage, unless you can do it on less calories. Maybe they just happen to be on the parameter balance where being big and strong is an advantage though.
Harpending and Cochran's previous stuff tends to present the idea that tropical gardening societies have high male pressures precisely because arable land is plentiful and disease keeps the Malthusian limit in check, causing farming to be female centered and males to engage in warfare and direct competition rather than male farming effort to intensify and males adopt a mixed strategy of cooperation, conflict avoidance and continual trends to up the scale of political structures to crush nascent violence.
This latest from Harpending seems to be rather a volte-face from the above.
I'd also interested to see if Polynesian skeletons show the same gracilisation trends as the rest of the world, in the fossil record. They might just be "unreduced proto-East Asians".
I wonder why N. Europeans dominate the World Strongman Competitions but not the NFL line to the same extent. The same body type is selected for each sport. By the same measure, why aren't there more Samoan guys in the World Strongman Competitions?
Would you guys get off the strongman fixation? (I know, I know, it's the last thing WNs have to cling to ...) It's a fringe event with hardly any competitors who actually train full-time for it. Olympic lifting and power lifting draw from a much bigger talent pool, and the NFL talent pool is a 100x bigger. How many black or poly guys actually try to compete in goofy strongman stuff?
Selection and optimization of potential should be looked at in more depth. My anecdote isn't even about big time pro or college sports.
I went to a very small HS in New England. Team had about 20 whites and two blacks. One Black was a middling athlete and the other was lower third at best. Most of the whites on that team are businessmen or engineers and a few tradesman. The two blacks stayed w/ sports coaching and one went into physical therapy as well.
So you see that people seem to get tracked into kind of an optimal path for their human potential (at least in this small town anecdote).
Most of my teammates were rabid about soccer in our youth, but seem to have mostly outgrown a serious interest in sports.
Egg-heads at isteve seem to have a fetish w/ the gestalt of black musculature but actually ignore the actual documented feats of white strenght. I guess in a way they are also ignoring within group hbd which seems more prevalent among whites.
Just look at the bench stats to an average white qb or tight end and how they compare w/ black athletes in comparable positions. These numbers are available through the draft.
One interesting thing I've noted is that dopey white commentators might joke about the spee of a white man even if he's returning a punt for 80 yards. However, they never ever critique the physical strength of whites mainly because I think it is not disputed by anyone.
Harpending is quite wrong about size and archery. He assumes that the big men would have an advantage in face to face confrontations but would have no such advantage with "stand off" weapons.
Exactly backwards.
The biggest, strongest man on the fourteenth century battle field was the English longbow man. The archer had to be six feet tall and he would have trained for a decade or more. That royally mandated training was not to maintain the archer's shooting eye but to maintain his musculature.
The bow that beat the French at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt had a draw weight of up to 200 pounds. These extreme draw weights deformed the skeletons of the medieval archers. We see a similar phenomenon today in long term power lifters.
Albertosaurus
To Matt: I suggest that the difference between our ideas about tropical gardeners in general and Polynesian islands has to do with land. If land is a free good like air then our model works but on an island the ecological framework is quite different. You are right to point out the contrast.
Several people put for the idea of primitive warfare being "ritualized." This model prospered after the Vietnam war as anthropologists decided to become relevant by lying essentially. One could read that there was never cannibalism anywhere, that all warfare was caused by colonialism, and so on. Fortunately all this kind of talk essentially ended with the publication of Keeley's "War Before Civilization" in 1996. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
"Boxing is cultural, not physical. Hell, Jews used to be good boxers!"
Boxing is pretty much a worldwide sport. Football is more cultural than any other sport. Its purely American.
"What most surprises me is that there are no Offensive Linemen. "
Not tall enough to play tackle, not smart enough to play center...?
Do they have short limbs?? Offensive guard seems like it would be a sweet spot for them, but in the modern pass heavy offenses, you need long arms to pass block.
"if land is scarce enough to fight over, food is scarce, and if food is scarce, then being big and strong is a disadvantage, unless you can do it on less calories. Maybe they just happen to be on the parameter balance where being big and strong is an advantage though."
Look up "thrifty phenotype" on pubmed.
There are many places on earth where being bigger would be advantageous. Why does that seem especially pronounced in the South Pacific? Strength for battle doesn't seem enough.
In stable environments traits tend to end up in stable equilibrium because they have tradeoffs with other traits. The most obvious one is that bigger people need more food. Maybe in Polynesia something limited population size so much that needing more food wasn't as strong an advantage as most other places.
"I wonder why N. Europeans dominate the World Strongman Competitions but not the NFL line to the same extent. The same body type is selected for each sport. By the same measure, why aren't there more Samoan guys in the World Strongman Competitions?"
Not much fame, fortune, glory. Why would a supertough black guy who can succeed in football(earn millions and get tons of blonde chicks) make a fool of himself by dragging trucks like an idiot mule?
"US sports often seem designed to favour black talents over white. American football and basketball are good examples. The progressive shortening of the boxing match duration also favours explosive power over endurance."
More insipid whining by sore losers.
As I recall, Jack Johnson kicked ass when boxing matches went on much longer. Ali was king when boxing matches lasted 15 rounds.
And Joe Louis before him. So, how could boxing be made 'fair'? Have the black fighter and white fighter run for 10 miles just before getting inside the ring?
And I suppose men do better than women because Americans sports are 'designed' by social engineers to favor males over females.
This is what kills me about many rightwing guys. They lose fair and square biologically but then blame it on society.
It's like blacks doing worse in school and then bitching that it's because learning and tests are designed to favor white 'rational' intelligence over black 'creative' intelligence.
How pathetic and wussy can you get?
A man who cannot accept the truth cannot be a real man.
"Boxing is cultural, not physical. Hell, Jews used to be good boxers!"
But they still got their ass whupped by blacks.
Barney Ross was one of the biggest Jewish names in boxing but he got destroyed by the black Armstrong.
http://www.j-grit.com/athletes-barney-ross.php
So did Max Baer at the hands of Joe Louis--though I read somewhere that Baer was not biologically Jewish.
"I wonder why N. Europeans dominate the World Strongman Competitions but not the NFL line to the same extent. The same body type is selected for each sport"
Maybe they're too smart to subject themselves to the body and mind crippling effects of playing NFL football for a living.
sort of germane to the topic, steve nash recently passed mark price as the most accurate free throw shooter in NBA history.
Question for the New Zealanders: Are there are any significant physical differences among Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians?
I think there are differences yes. The two recent Fijian All Blacks-Sitiveni Sivivatu and Josevata Rokocoko were both wingers, the fastest men on the field.
They came up through sevens rugby which is a fast, game with much side stepping.
There has been a trend in the All Blacks, Melanesians on the wing and Polynesians in the centre.
Fiji invariably wins the sevens tournaments, or is in the finals against NZ, whose team is stacked with Fijians and Polynesians anyway. Watching Fiji play, expect the odd brain fart, followed by sublime brilliance.
My apologies,I should have put the first paragraph in quotes or italics.
I once read that blacks don't have an advantage in upper body strength. Can anyone confirm this? It might explain why they aren't so overrepresented in the strongman events.
sort of germane to the topic, steve nash recently passed mark price as the most accurate free throw shooter in NBA history.
ah, selective environments in which male warfare includes missile weapons ftmfw! ; )
(the above not meant to be interpreted as any kind of knock on Harpending's theory)
"US sports often seem designed to favour black talents over white. American football and basketball are good examples. The progressive shortening of the boxing match duration also favours explosive power over endurance."
More insipid whining by sore losers.
nope, limit substitutions in football and have a continuous clock and you'll get white black player ratios as there are in rugby and soccer, even south africa's team is majority white.
"I once read that blacks don't have an advantage in upper body strength. Can anyone confirm this? It might explain why they aren't so overrepresented in the strongman events."
Documentary proof. Get me da amber lamps.
Re: combine stats, college FB
A white "busy beaver" type is in the weight room all the time (see: Asian grind for analogy), and training his sprint mechanics for the combine.
Most of the bro's who are destined for the NFL don't need to train that hard at the college level.
If you don't think black / poly athletes are functionally strong you have probably never competed in a man's sport in your life.
Jack, that just proved everything!
Who every in his wildest dreams would have imagined that a 6-4 240lb. whiteman could defeat a 5'8 168lb. blackman in a tustle?
"Not much fame, fortune, glory. Why would a supertough black guy who can succeed in football(earn millions and get tons of blonde chicks) make a fool of himself by dragging trucks like an idiot mule?"
I get more blondes
Also Strongman is awesome
***Question for the New Zealanders: Are there are any significant physical differences among Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians? ***
As FF said, the Fijians tend to provide the fastest rugby players . Tongans and Samoans are also fast, but tend to be more robust (John Hopoate, Jonah Lomu etc). You can get an idea of the differences by looking on YouTube for the respective countries playing rugby sevens.
White-haters will talk about how blacks are a bit more masculine or quicker than whites, then about how yellows are a bit smarter or more studious than whites. But they seldom talk about both things at once.
That's because there's nothing wrong with being good generalists: a lot smarter and more studious than blacks, and a lot more masculine, strong, and quick than yellows.
I don't know about upper body as such, but:
http://racehist.blogspot.com/2009/12/racial-differences-in-muscle-mass.html
"African-Americans had a (statistically) significantly larger SM (skeletal muslce) / ATFM (adipose tissue free muscle mass) ratio than the other groups, although the difference was very small. According to Equation 4, for example, the mean SM/ATFM ratio is 0.524 for a 30-year-old African-American man weighing 70 kg, while the mean ratio is 0.522 for Asian,
Caucasian, and Hispanic men of the same age and body weight."
"Overall, the matched Black and White men had similar fat, FFM, TBW, and TBK. Thus there were no major absolute differences in body composition between the two ethnic groups beyond that of skeletal mass."
"Black men may have more appendicular muscle and less trunk muscle than White men. According to this hypothesis, Black and White men would have different amounts of skeletal muscle in specific anatomic regions but similar amounts of total skeletal muscle."
Trunk muscle may be more useful in lift and hold, while appendicular muscle might be good for being a puncher/runner. Seems consistent with strongmen/wrestling vs punchers who are also fast long distance runners/sprinters.
Of course muscle groups are all integrated and for example, swiping a sword, stabbing a spear or shooting a bow and arrow seems intuivitely like they would involve more muscle groups than being a puncher - seems like there'd be more trunk involved - though I'm totally unathletic and someone with experience would know better.
There's probably an illusion of greater muscle than in reality, as American Black men are relatively lean and may have more robust bones than Whites/Hispanics/Asians.
Do you hear as much about the Maori in sports as you do Samoans or other Polynesians? I wonder if living in New Zealand - a land much more accomodating to a sedentary pastoral lifestyle than the other Pacific nations - has made them less athletic and massive than their Samoan counterparts. And for what it's worth, I've heard that in New Zealand the Maori have a considerable amount of animosity towards the Polynesian immigrant community.
Henry, you'll have to stay after class and write the following 100 times on the blackboard:
Year-round tropical horticulture
= more female reproductive autonomy
= less expensive polygyny
= more male-male rivalry for mates
= a more robust male body type
Yes, it's a bit long for a sound bite. Sometimes, shorter explanations are not always the best ones.
Is there anything more pathetic than this white man (especially Anglo-Saxon) obsession with sport?
I'm reminded of Kipling and the "flanneled fool at the wicket and the muddled oaf at the goal"
Most pro sport team US athletes are genetic freaks and represent an incredibly small proportion of the population. How many young American males weigh over 210 lbs with 15 or less body fat? How many are over 6" 4" and can shoot 75% from the foul line? How many could ever hit a home run against Major league pitching or throw a 90 mile fastball accurately? And these represent the minimum standards for a lot of the positions.
Further, the difference between making the pros or not is very small. Run a 4.4 "forty" and you're a Pro - run a 4.6 forty and you're out.
"Is there anything more pathetic than this white man (especially Anglo-Saxon) obsession with sport?"
Is there anything more pathetic than a white man bemoaning the white man's obsession with sports because blacks dominate?
"I once read that blacks don't have an advantage in upper body strength. Can anyone confirm this? It might explain why they aren't so overrepresented in the strongman events."
Just use your eyes. Look at the upperbody of an average black guy and compare with the average build of a white guy.
What do you see?
Greg Louganis, the diver, is Samoan and Swedish (adopted by Greek parents).
Maybe Samoans are all around good athletes.
Yellows have the agility and balance advantage.
***Do you hear as much about the Maori in sports as you do Samoans or other Polynesians? I wonder if living in New Zealand - a land much more accomodating to a sedentary pastoral lifestyle than the other Pacific nations - has made them less athletic and massive than their Samoan counterparts.***
They still tend to be pretty good at most athletic pursuits, but don't tend to be as massive as the Samoan/Tongan migrants. Also, most have considerable european ancestry.
"Is there anything more pathetic than a white man bemoaning the white man's obsession with sports because blacks dominate?
To be honest, I find grown men obsessing about Pro Sports faintly ridiculous, but I guess it beats stamp collecting or watching the Oscars. It gets even more absurd when you see a bunch of grown white men actually CARING which team of Black Basketball players are the best or rooting for some Pro Baseball team made of Japanese, Hispanics, Blacks, and foreigners along with a few greedy native-born whites.
But I suppose its a harmless waste of time.
Anon's so right about grown men obsessing about sports. And God forbid you point out how absurd it is, and damage their fragile egos.
"Anon's so right about grown men obsessing about sports. And God forbid you point out how absurd it is, and damage their fragile egos."
You're both uninformed.
For centuries, men have needed proxies to communicate with each other. You cannot just go ask your neighbor how his sex life is with his wife, so you come up with a substitute for reasons of fraternity.
Some men like to speak about engineering or construction or business, but that demands that both participants have the same knowledge base. What subject of conversations are simple, with readilly available research materials, and an daily renewable supply of information? Politics, entertainment and sports.
Sports is especially convenient because most of us grew up playing them, so there is some common ground there.
In addition sports appeals to men, in terms of conversation, accross the board. There is space in the the conversation for the emotionally oriented man:
"Go Steelers! you losers from Philly can't hang with us!"
the Physically oriented man:
"Did you see that 360 degree slam dunk from Le Bron last night?!"
And the mentally oriented man:
"The Yankees would be so much better if they traded their backup second baseman who has a .387 on-base percentage for a #4 starter..."
It's rather simple actually.
"Anon's so right about grown men obsessing about sports. And God forbid you point out how absurd it is, and damage their fragile egos."
You're both uninformed.
No, you're uninformed, as to the meaning of the word "obsession." I have no problem with guys watching sports, or guys relating via sports. That's natural. Grown men obsessing over sports is absurd. A guy who can discuss sports all day, but gives you blank stares over politics = moron.
And in European evolution of warfare, body armor (as in Japan and to a lesser extent China) somewhat mitigated against arrows.
"Somewhat" is putting it mildly. Arrows were basically shit against 15th century and later armor. Arrows took out the horse and put the rider on the ground, and then you got out your can-openers, and ganged up on him. Innovation was already going at such a rate that this period didn't last long, and it was put to rest by the firearm. Hmm, has anyone worked up a theory that the technological progress of pre-Renaissance Europe drove, prefigured, informed, or otherwise segueued into the technological progress of the Renaissance? Necessity being the mother of invention?
And speaking of who does and does not have a history of a given weapon...firearms seem to be a white thing...
And you had some "stand-off weapons" of first the Phalanx, and then the Swiss Pike Square, allowing basically a pincushion stabbing machine, killing at greater distance than sword or ax.
You make it sound like someone just up and went "Eureka! Long pointy things! I can do this beyond arm's reach!" one day. Massed pikes were a response to centuries of domination by cavalry.
But this stuff is more about training and tactics than weapons. Any cretin can think up and make a long spear. It takes social depth and organization to have a mercenary/professional soldier class with the wherewithal and desire to take tactics seriously.
I don't think bow-and-arrow stuff is the key because American Indians, even though had bow-and-arrows, did a lot of hand to hand fighting.
There are bows and arrows, and then there are bows and arrows. Big difference between cultural achievements in these areas, I would think. I'd hardly expect an Amerind bow or arrow to hold up well in comparison to a medieval English longbow, or a Genovese crossbow, or a Tatar composite bow. The tactics thing holds up here as well. It takes a certain level of sophistication to go from a low-intensity hit-and-run archer (like the Amerinds) to the high-intensity, unit-, experience-, and institution-driven archers of 15th century England. But yep, even at Agincourt, most of the French dead probably met their fate hand-to-hand (advanced under fire, lost their horses, trudged through the mud and arrows to the English lines, then, exhausted, bit it or surrendered.
Another thing is that effective bows, like the English longbow and the Mongolian compound bow, take a great deal of strength to draw, so it's not as if archers were weaklings.
Composite, not compound.
Harpending is quite wrong about size and archery. He assumes that the big men would have an advantage in face to face confrontations but would have no such advantage with "stand off" weapons.
Exactly backwards.
The biggest, strongest man on the fourteenth century battle field was the English longbow man. The archer had to be six feet tall and he would have trained for a decade or more. That royally mandated training was not to maintain the archer's shooting eye but to maintain his musculature.
The bow that beat the French at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt had a draw weight of up to 200 pounds. These extreme draw weights deformed the skeletons of the medieval archers. We see a similar phenomenon today in long term power lifters.
Well, yeah, but again this was a fairly specialized thing. What would the English bowman think of Amerindian kit? Training? Organization, leadership, & tactics? The English bowman's strength was necessary because his technology & skill required it. Doesn't mean strength and archery are all that correlated.
Boxing is cultural, not physical. Hell, Jews used to be good boxers!
I kinda agree with this. Look at the racial back-and-forth in boxing and it's easy to conclude that the culture of wanting it bad enough to get punched in the face for a living is a huge part of it.
because it doesn't vary with who has the stopwatch
The NFL really doesn't have that sorted out yet? Someone please tell me it ain't so. Anyone told them about cameras, lasers, and the PC yet?
Would you guys get off the strongman fixation? (I know, I know, it's the last thing WNs have to cling to ...)
Well, there's something to be said for distinguishing athletics and spectator sports. Obviously, prestige is going to favor spectator sports, but when you step back and look at the things underlying the prestige, the traits atheletics showcase, whites are doing pretty well. It may sound like "yeah but we rule ping-pong" to some, but the traits underlying ultrarunning are admirable.
Nobody's mentioned that MAO-inhibitor gene thingy, or whatever it is. You know - Polynesians are very aggressive? I wouldn't be surprised if whatever "he's got a motor" is referring to correlates with this agression.
i always thought if you changed the football rules to be more like rugby (limit substitutions, continious play and clock) there would be many many more white backs
Maybe. Stamina favors whites. But blacks have heavier/denser skeletons, which means they're better at absorbing impacts. So they might be more white backs, but they might be more injury-prone, too.
Substitution is a big one for white athletes, who are long on stamina relative to other groups.
This article compares the height, weight, body composition and distribution of muscle mass of young New Zealand white, polynesian, and South Asian men.
http://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/2292/4675/15608799.pdf?sequence=1
See table 1
So many "anonymous" idiots living in the past and thinking they are current.
"As I recall, Jack Johnson kicked ass when boxing matches went on much longer. Ali was king when boxing matches lasted 15 rounds.
And Joe Louis before him. So, how could boxing be made 'fair'? Have the black fighter and white fighter run for 10 miles just before getting inside the ring?"
Did boxing end in 1975? White boxers hold 13 of 20 belts from middleweight to heavyweight. The current heavyweight champs, the Klitschko brothers, would kill, that's KILL Muhammad Ali or Jack Johnson or any other of the black superman you refer to.
"This is what kills me about many rightwing guys. They lose fair and square biologically but then blame it on society."
This is what kills me about left wingers, they are wrong, the data doesn't support them, yet they insist they are right.
The NFL has a lot of polys for the same reason it has a lot of black head coaches, aggressive affirmative action practiced at all levels by whites everywhere.
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