Expert: John Shea - 3/16/2005

Question
Knowing that the Neandertals had super human strength just by observing the robustness of their skeltal remains, would it follow then that bigger boned people tend to have more muscle mass most people?

Answer
Dear Ron,
Bone grows in part in response to strain, so, the more active a person is, the larger and more robust their bones will grow.  All other things being equal (genetics, diet, health care) It follows that people with more muscle mass ought to have bigger bones.  The problem with this correlation, though, is that people with a genetic predisposition to large stature or good diet/health care will be big (tall especially) whether or not the get a lot of exercise.  (For example, we couch-potato 21st Century Americans would tower over our 19th Century ancestors, not because we work harder,but because better diets and health care have reduced our parasite and disease load.  So, you could have people who are big/tall who do not do the amount of exercise that results in more muscle mass.
FYI: If there was a way to compare them to us, Neandertals would have been very strong, but analyses of bones from early modern humans who were roughly contemporary with Neandertals 30,000-130,000 years ago suggests they too were very strong.
If you're interested in reading up on the scientific literature about this, look up the webpages of Chris Ruff (John Hopkins), Osbjorn Pearson (Univ. of New Mexico), Erik Trinkaus (Washington Univ.) and Daniel Lieberman (Harvard).  These are some of the prominent experts on this subject.
Cheers,
John Shea