Football Future CZ Man
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 4th, 2007
Yes, today is Super Bowl Sunday in North America. It has become a minor (maybe major) unofficial holiday, in which people abandon the internet to watch commercials, cheerleaders, halftime fashion malfunctions, and apparently some football.
I often wonder about where humans are evolving, where we have come from, and will cryptozoologists of the future look like football players or professors. What does this have to do with football? Probably nothing, but then Super Bowl Sunday has little to do with football any longer. It’s about celebrity, betting, money, ads, and people, people, people. The men on the field are a portion of the day, so why not speculate on what future cryptozoologists will look like today too?
It started for me, growing up in the 1950s, reading articles on what future humans - mostly males it always seemed like - would look like. The drawings of the men would invariably be shown to be someone with a huge hairless head, as if we would evolve into “brain man.” I’ve searched high and low for one, just one, of these illustrations for today’s blog. Without luck.
I know Boing Boing often posts retro sketches from old magazines and books, but I couldn’t find any drawings there of future brainy man. But I haven’t give up on my search. Someone else out there must have read the same articles I did, and have visions of what future men are suppose to look like, right?
What I started to find easily, however, were images of men who were not rock stars or football players, but illustrations from our past, such as the imagined (without hair) reconstructions of Java Man (at top) and Neanderal Man (below).
At top is Java Man, Homo erectus Sangiran 17, reconstructed by sculptor Yoichi Yazawa, under the direction of Hisao Baba, Curator of Anthropology at the National Science Museum in Tokyo. Was the image of future man created via the past?
In my quest for the image of future man, I started noticing something strange. Modern men, some who have searched for Chupacabras, Lake Monsters, or Bigfoot, some who are rap stars, some who are football players, began appearing on my radar that looked similar to my 1950s remembrances of these future men. Had tomorrow’s brainy males already arrived, on the football field and in cryptozoology?
Take for example…Nick Redfern, author of cryptozoology articles, books and recently of UFOmystic.com:
Or skeptic Benjamin Radford, who just finished a book on Lake Monsters:
Exhibit 3, here is a comparison between Matt Crowley, Bigfoot footcast investigator, and Ben Radford:
Click image for larger version, if you wish.
And finally, the ultimate piece of evidence, a photograph of Animal X host Bill Kerr, the aging future man:
Future Man is here, and he may assuredly be a football player or a cryptozoologist, it seems. So, the answer to the question about whether cryptozoologists will look like football players or professors is, well, they both already look like each other now. We seem to be in the future. Enjoy the commercials.
- Similar Phenomena:
Hello, Loren
Mad magazine did a cartoon spread on future man in the early 60s. They portrayed future man as a bowling ball, due to excessive couch potato-ing.
Love the site and fellow commenters.
So, does this mean that future man is bald? Just kidding.
I remember reading once that the meek shall inherit the earth when the alpha males are done with it. Also Orwell’s “Ignorance Is Strength” line seems to be in force altering the conceptuals of any future hominid.
Since I don’t look like an egg head or a football player, I’m hiding in my cave today and will watch Puppy Bowl 3 on Animal Planet. It’s much funnier and has lifeforms I can better relate to and frankly resemble.
I think I’ll tune in to the Puppy Bowl today.
I’ve heard that the halftime show of the Puppy Bowl is scheduled to show kittenz, er, kittens.
OK, to be REALLY speculative, our ability to control our environment means we bald (or balding) people are not as susceptible to weather stress and skin cancer (compaired to hairy-head people) as we used to be. Maybe over time that translates into a slight increase in baldness. Just maybe.
It is interesting to think about football players. About 1978, I met Hall of Fame offensive lineman Anthony Munoz while he was at USC. He looked even taller than his claimed 6-7 or 6-8 (At 6-4, I am not used to feeling dwarfed) and had the widest shoulders I have ever seen on a human being. Today, at 280 lbs, he would be too light to play any line position except possibly center. They’d tell him to put on 50 pounds to increase his mass and lower his center of gravity so he could play guard or tackle. They might even make a blocking tight end out of him. There are high school players who outweigh him considerably.
Fifty years from now, who knows?
Matt Bille
Loren if you’re looking for an image of the “future man” you should go to the St. Louis Science Center. There’s a diorama of the “future man” (big pointed hairless head and all) digging through a wall of garbage. Why is he doing this, I can’t remember. It’s been a few years since I was last there. I don’t know if he’s still there. I hope this helps.
Hey, Loren.
Wow, I’ve been shaving my head since 1992, so by now it’s kind of like brushing my teeth or tying my shoes, I kind of forget that for some people it is considered a novel characteristic.
Were I given a choice, I’d probably opt for the haircut Eddie Van Halen had in about 1978…
Loren, the only images of “future man” I can remember encountering where all from superhero comics of the 60s, particulary DC, and to a lesser extent Marvel.
But while it’s true they all depicted baldness as an indication of the ascent to “pure cerebration”, they also usually depicted such “living human brains” as having tiny, underdeveloped baby-like bodies.
And while it’s true they also often had fierce expressions on their faces, this was usually to indicate intense concentration, whereas all the baldies you’ve provided us with look more like British skinhead soccer hooligan bootboys!
Come to think of it, though, many of these brainy scientific types who go round imperiously denouncing their “inferiors” for showing interest in “laughable” research fields like cryptozoology and ufology, behave exactly like intellectual versions of British skinhead soccer hooligan bootboys, so maybe you’re onto something!
Try here for a start.
Future man sounds like the Mekon from Dan Dare comics.
Is it me or is the Neanderthal actually Vin Diesel…? Enjoy your Superbowl citizens of the USA, it sounds about as interesting as cricket.
I thought Mike Judge made some comical but interesting points about “future man” in his movie Idiocracy — the premise being that natural selection no longer weeds out the sick and weak while the most intelligent of the species are no longer bothering to breed as it’s not fiscally prudent. The result is a future world full of complete dunces living in piles of garbage and totally reliant on technology that they barely have the comprehension to maintain.
Fredfacker, that sounds a lot like the world today! No, MBFH, it is not you. I thought “Vin Deisel” immediately.
I had a teacher once who kept pounding into us youngsters that he was more evolved than the rest of the human race since he was born completely without hair.
Yes, he had some issues.
I pity you folks who are cursed with hair…
Frankly I prefer Matt’s angular head to Nick’s rounder shape, and I’m somewhere in the middle.
I remember seeing a TV show like “Nova” many years ago that showed a sketch of “future man”. It showed a bald , somewhat pointed cranium and it also implied that “future man” would be significantly taller than the average man today.
Nerd Alert: Captain Picard, Charles Xavier and Lex Luthor all look like “future man” to me, mostly beacuse of the bald head.
And let’s not forget the Coneheads!
I just thought of this… future bald head= everyone being exposed to radiation.
BUSTED!