Extinct people of the Land of Fire were mighty wrestlers

Were the Selk’nam the Sumos of South America ? Bones of an extinct people of Tierra del Fuego , “ the Land of Fire , ” suggest they may indeed have been the mighty wrestlers that Charles Darwin and others say they were .

Magellan came across the coastline of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Argentina in 1520 , seeing 100 plumes of skunk . He actually named it Tierra del Fumo , “ the Land of Smoke , ” but upon his return , the story goes that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V change the name to Tierra del Fuego , noting that there was no gage without blast .

In the rugged , mountainous , forested north of Tierra del Fuego dwelled the Selk’nam , a now - extinct hoi polloi who hunted with bow and arrows , live on nearly only off a small species of llama known as the Lama guanicoe . The Selk’nam were the most feared and demonized of those living in Tierra del Fuego by both indigenous the great unwashed and European settler , and were often described as knock-down giants , investigator say .

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The diaries and log of Charles Darwin , as well as those of Robert Fitzroy , the skipper of the HMS Beagle , suggest the Selk’nam were indeed enforce — tall , across-the-board and massively powerful . Fitzroy also recounted wrestling turn with the Selk’nam , who easy outdo his bunch . A son of a Christian missionary , Lucas Bridges , write that Selk’nam wrestling involved obligate the arms of one ’s resister and set about to confound him to the ground while never breaking the hold , fighting until one or the other could no longer continue .

Now scientist find trauma in Selk’nam bones of the kind one would expect of mighty wrestling . The researchers analyze pinched clay at the Museum at the last of the World in Ushuaia , Argentina . cure fractures were realise in forearm bones of the form expected with Selk’nam worm .

These finding , detailed in theInternational Journal of Osteoarchaeology , helps reveal how good at fighting the Selk’nam might have been .

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