In October 2003 I went to watch the world freestyle wrestling championships, held at Madison Square Garden. I don't find wrestling a particularly fun spectator sport. Maybe I don't know enough about it, but watching a couple of guys maneuver around trying to gain a point or two on each other just didn't stir me. I suppose if I understood the sport better, I would appreciate it more, but I don't, so I didn't. I do, however, appreciate the strength, stamina, and skill it takes to reach the top levels of the sport.
I was struck by how hyperandrogenized all the wrestlers looked. They all seemed to have massive jaws, bullet heads, thick necks, and superhumanly powerful bodies. (I've never felt more like a girl in my life.) But even in this crowd, one of the wrestlers stood out: Eldar Kurtanidze, pictured above, from Georgia (the country, not the state). He stood 5' 8" and wrestled at 96 kilograms, or 211 pounds. And if he weighed in at 211 the day before, that means he was probably closer to 225 when he entered the ring. (Later in his career he wrestled at 120 kilos, or 264 pounds.) That's a lot of mass for a guy standing 5' 8". He looked like an immovable squat chunk of hairy gristle. He acted like one, too, winning the gold medal in his weight class.
Anyway, I was reminded of him when writing the previous post about Neanderthals. Kurtanidze fits the description of a Neanderthal almost perfectly. He's not tall, but he has wide shoulders, a deep chest, short upper arms (note the picture on the upper left), massive forearms, a prominent nose, and bony brow ridges (again, more noticeable in the picture on left).
He seems to be one piece of circumstantial evidence that Neanderthal blood still runs through our veins. Or at least his veins.
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10 comments:
Interesting that you picked a Georgian. I may be wrong but my impression is that the countries of and around the Caucuses punch above their weight (to choose an inappropriate figure of speech) in wrestling. This could be due to cultural or ethnic differences. If the latter, given the fairly wide range of human body types, a higher representation of compact and muscular mesomorphs in these countries could just be an ethnic difference among Cromagnons? Though it is interesting that they form part of the presumed territorial extent of the neanderthal population.
BTW, you couldn't pay me to go anywhere near a wrestling ring against even this guy's puny 170lb cousin. I think Bob Hoskins was pretending to be Kurtanidze in "The Long Good Friday".
G
I think it is due largely to cultural differences. A lot of the Bulgarians, Romanians, Turks, Iranians, and Georgians who are so good at wrestling would probably be playing football if they'd grown up in the States. Most of the people I've known personally who are either from those countries or descended from the people of those countries are built fairly normally. And yes, you're right, if you take someone of Cro Magnon descent who is built at the extreme mesomorphic end of the bell curve, you could easily get someone who looks like Kurtanidze. (I wasn't being entirely serious when I used him as "evidence" of our Neanderthal ancestry.) Still, for some reason I would prefer to think that we do have some Neanderthal ancestry, I wasn't kidding about that.
I agree about the intimidation factor there. It occurred to me as I was writing the post that you could cut off his left arm, put that in the ring, and that appendage alone would outwrestle me.
And, btw, I agree about Bob Hoskins in "The Long Good Friday," which was the one movie he's been in which allowed him free reign to demonstrate his feral best.
I'd love to be Eldar Kurtanidze for a week. Just the name is great. Of course the name wouldn't sound so cool if it belonged to a skinny, nerdy foreign engineering student. What would I wear? A muscle shirt wouldn't be necessary; even loose-fitting clothing would reveal that body. I'd grunt at men, just to scare them a little, and whisper to women while maintaining a steady, irresistible eye contact. Maybe I'd have to be Eldar for longer than a single week.
Anonymous -- Great comment. I'd agree, but I'm not sure I'd want to have to then face going back to being regular old me after my week was up. I feel nerdy enough already as it is.
Don't be so sure that you wouldn't scare the women even more than the men! Ask Robert Pattinson! :D
G
Guy -- This doesn't address the point of your comment, but I'm not so sure I wouldn't take Kurtanidze in a fight over Pattinson, vampire powers or not.
(I certainly hope you haven't actually SEEN the Twilight movies, btw.)
I can confirm, I'm sure to your relief, that I haven't seen the Twilight movies. But, bizarrely enough, I know Robert P a little because he attended my son's school in London where I mentored a program called "Young Enterprise", which he participated in, at least for a while.
G
Whew.
I'll have to share with my daughter that you're partly responsible for Pattinson's success. (Though, at 15, she claims she no longer likes the books or movies.)
I think you should share instead with your daughter that my son is handsome, a talented actor and a product of the same schooling as RP.
(Although I must agree that dropping out of our program surely contributed to RP's success as he clearly spent the time doing something he liked instead!)
I will pass that along as well, though I must warn you that the fact that this information came from me will count as a first strike against your son in her eyes.
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