Were Ancient Humans Stronger Than Us?

Were ancient humans stronger than us? This video digs into the real evidence, from Greek strongmen who carved their lifts into stone and brutal Roman army marches to what our actual bones reveal, including the farming women whose arms were stronger than elite rowers today. A Greek man named Bybon once hoisted a 316-pound rock and carved the brag right into it. But strongmen who put their own name on the proof aren't the best evidence, and when you line up the best ancient lifters against modern ones like Hafthor Bjornsson, they come out about even. The real question is the regular person. So we look at the Roman recruit who had to march about 18 miles carrying 45 pounds and then dig a camp, and find that modern soldiers do nearly the same thing today. Then we go inside the body, because bone quietly records how hard you work it. Hunter-gatherer hip bones were as dense as an ape's, and human bones only got lighter after farming began about 12,000 years ago. The twist is the women of the first farming villages, whose arm bones came out 11 to 16 percent stronger than elite Cambridge rowers and nearly 30 percent stronger than regular students, strength built not in a gym but by grinding grain by hand for hours every day. Then it faded, and a study of baseball pitchers' arms explains why: bone builds up where you load it and gets taken back when you stop. We got weaker because machines and cars took over the work, which also means it's the kind of strength a body can build back. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 SOURCES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Wikipedia, Bybon The 143.5 kg (316 lb) inscribed stone at Olympia reading "Bybon, son of Phola, lifted me over his head with one hand," along with the note that strength historians doubt the one-hand version and think he pressed it overhead with both arms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bybon Material Musings (University of Warwick), A Rather Bould(er) Claim Covers the inscribed Greek lifting stones including the Thera (Santo