In a fascinating research project, British archaeologists reconstructed the face of a 13th Century laborer from a skeleton excavated in Cambridge.
Physiognomy of the dead is real. The dude even has that alpha smirk.
He was just slightly over 40 years old when he died. His skeleton showed signs of considerable wear-and-tear, so he likely lead a tough and hard working life. His tooth enamel stopped growing during two occasions in his youth, suggesting he likely lived through bouts of famine or sickness when he was young. The archaeologists found traces of blunt force trauma inflicted to the back of his head, which healed over before he died. The researchers aren’t sure what he did for a living, but they think he was a working-class person who specialised in some kind of trade.
Context 958 ate a diverse diet rich in meat or fish, according to an analysis of weathering patterns on his teeth. His profession may have provided him with more access to such foods than the average person at the time. His presence at the charitable hospital suggests he fell on hard times, with no one to take care of him.
Men are expendable, women are perishable. Also, mass scaled society and its attendant disruptions of the link between affordable family formation, fertility, and old age care were evident in Medieval England.
This man looks more alpha than most American men do today. Was he representative of his time? As a poor laborer, I’d guess yes. He didn’t have the wealth or occupational status that would have set him apart physically as well as socially from the masses. His eau de alphatude was likely the norm for his era.
My hunch is that the Good Life has been Very Bad for modern man’s masculinity. We already know testosterone levels are down over the past three generations. Soft hands and crabbed faphands are the mark of modern man, a far cry from the bear mitts of Olde Alpha man. All you have to do is look around at Millennials with their furries and anime and ennui and uptalking and vocal frying and safe spaces and lackey feminism to suspect that a physiognomic, hormonal, physical, and mental degeneration of modren man is rapidly metastasizing.
And perhaps now we have a clue to why modren White woman has taken up the masculinity slack and revolted against her own men.
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