Fat stacks of butts12/5/2023 ![]() A decade ago, he and Sonenblum saw the potential for an engineering-minded solution to the serious clinical problem of injuries from sitting or lying down for extended periods. ![]() Stephen Sprigle, a Georgia Tech professor in industrial design, bioengineering, and physiology, started REARLab with better solutions for wheelchair users in mind. Julia Dufossé for Popular Science Supporting heinies of all shapes and sizesĪs Sharon Sonenblum, a principal research scientist at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, puts it, “What could be better than studying butts?” The Rehabilitation Engineering and Applied Research Lab that she’s part of is perhaps more aptly referred to by its acronym: REAR. They identified their 5,000-year-old equestrians-members of the Yamnaya culture, which spread from Eurasia throughout much of Europe around that same time-with the help of signs of wear and tear to hip sockets, thigh bones, and pelvises. Butt bones can also tell us about how people lived: This March, archaeologists published the oldest known evidence for human horseback riding in the journal Science Advances. Still, while the distinction isn’t completely black and white, the signs of a body primed for or changed by childbirth are useful in figuring out the age and sex of ancient remains. Recent research bears that out, with anthropologists now designating many more remains as having a mix of pelvic characteristics (or simply being inconclusive) than they did historically. In 1972, anthropologist Kenneth Weiss flagged that experts were 12 percent more likely to classify skeletons found at dig sites as men versus women, which he blamed on a bias for marking indeterminate skeletons as male. Differences in the pelvis and other sat-upon bones have long been used to determine the sex of unearthed skeletal remains, though we know now there isn’t as clear-cut a binary as researchers long assumed. Scientists also love peeping at the actual posteriors of our early ancestors, which hold a broader archaeological significance in telling the stories of ancient people and their lifestyles. The original Venus of Willendorf statue was excavated in present-day Austria, and is now housed at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna. The statuette, which some archaeologists suspect served as a fertility charm, immortalizes a body too thick to quit. The 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf is a famous pocket-size figurine carved by a Western European civilization during the Upper Paleolithic. Digging deep for ancient backsidesįor as long as humans have been making art, they’ve been thinking about bodacious butts. Here are a few of the ways our bums factor into scientific understanding, lifesaving medicine, and the future of engineering. The organs nestled behind those cheeks also have a massive influence on our health and wellbeing. The fat that sits atop it affects how we feel whenever we sit or lie down. That said, the gluteus maximus does more than just keep us on our feet. “The butt is an essential adaptation for the human ability to run steadily, for long distances, and without injury,” Radke writes. Research increasingly suggests that more massive muscles in the vicinity of the buttocks make for faster sprinting and better running endurance too. The curved pelvic bone that gives the butt its prominence likely developed as our weight moved upward and our muscular needs shifted. ![]() So why did our ancestors develop such a unique cushion? Evolutionary biologists’ best guess is that our shapely rears help us walk upright. But none pack anything close to the same proportions as us. Many other creatures have muscle and fat padding their backsides, and some even have butt cheeks. ![]() A booty is, in fact, a unique feat of evolution: Out of any species, humans have the most junk in their trunks. Unlike with a knee or an elbow, Radke argues, when it comes to the tuchus, we’re far more likely to think about form than function-even though it features the largest muscle in the human body.įor all the scrutiny we spare them (outside of when we’re trying on new jeans) our butts aren’t mere aesthetic flourishes. Radke goes on to explain that our feelings about our hindquarters often have more to do with race, gender, and sex than with the actual meat of them. ![]() “Butts are a bellwether,” writes journalist Heather Radke in her 2022 book Butts: A Backstory. Few muscles in the human body carry as much cultural clout as the gluteus maximus. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |