The relationship between the head and the cervical spine is like a ball on a thin wooden stick, similar to a golf ball and a ball holder. This ball is not good, you think our big head weighs more than ten pounds, almost equivalent to a bowling ball.
To stand up to this ball, you must first be steady, and secondly, you must be flexible. This involves the contradiction between stability and flexibility. We all know that stability and flexibility are opposites to each other, and to be stable you cannot be too flexible, and vice versa.
Fish live in the water, the streamlined type of head and body is conducive to rapid swimming, their spine is not differentiated, so there is no cervical vertebrae, and the head and body are stable (except for mermaids, of course).
So fish have to evolve the way to observe movements with eyes that are arranged on both sides and can be rotated around, and movements that shake their heads and tails.
The frog has only one cervical vertebrae, and the head is slightly moved, but it is small, mainly stable, and cannot turn back to greet you like the frog prince.
Reptile cervical vertebrae are very developed and can be rotated flexibly, and the number of cervical vertebrae varies, like lizards with 8 cervical vertebrae, dinosaurs have 10-20 cervical vertebrae. You see the tyrannosaurus in the movie Jurassic Park, biting the prey and tearing it apart as soon as it turns its head, and its neck is extremely strong.
Birds have the most cervical vertebrae, with 14 wild ducks and 25 swans.
Birds must have pairs of wings to fly, to fly high wings must be large and long, fly low to small and fast. Everything in the world has its advantages and disadvantages, and your winning advantages are often your fatal shortcomings.
The wings fly high and far, the foraging space is large, the activity distance is long, but when the hurricane comes, you will stop; the wings fly low but will fly fast, the foraging range is small, it is easy to be hungry, but when the wind comes, you can hide; this is also like a big tree and a small grass, the wind comes to the tree to break its branches, and the grass just bends over, and the waist is straight after the wind and rain.
Therefore, the great Zhuangzi said at the beginning of his "Getaway" that Kunpeng and Bird sparrow, all things are in harmony, and fate is one. Far from it.
To spread your wings and fly, you must have a stable chest and strong chest muscles (so the chicken breast is delicious), the bird lumbar spine is very short, and the chest ribs are developed.
Excessive stability of the thoracolumbar spine does not provide mobility, which requires the cervical spine to be flexible to compensate for the chest and waist to assist the head to rotate, so their necks are thin and long, can rotate more than 360 degrees, and can also tuck the head in the arm socket (you can't tuck it, you can only smell it).
Such a slender cervical spine is parallel to the ground when flying, and cannot bear too large a head, otherwise it can only hit the ground like a falling plane. Birds can only pay the price of intelligence to maintain balance (this is why stupid people are called stupid birds or dumb-headed geese, of course, humans are not necessarily smarter than birds, at least birds know where to fly and where to aim).
Mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae, from small mice, to large tigers, to giraffes and you.
Giraffes have long necks and high vision, can eat leaves from high places, and can detect dangers in advance, but have to pay the price of thick necks, clumsy movements and high blood pressure. Male giraffes fight for territory and females, they all use their long necks as weapons to bump into each other, and we humans fight each other's necks.
The quadruped animal's spine is parallel to the ground, the head is located in front, and in order to maintain the upright stability of the head, the neck is very strong and powerful, especially the ligaments at the back of the neck, which are particularly thick. It can be seen that all things have evolved in pursuit of relative balance.
Just as ears didn't evolve for glasses, our thin necks didn't come to hang necklaces and bow ties. The thin neck is for flexibility. After walking upright in humans, the downward movement of the occipital bone hole migrates the cervical vertebrae from the posterior side to just below the skull, from the posterior suspension to support, reducing the burden on the neck and making our neck ligaments less thick.
In addition, the application of fire and the eating of cooked food make the human chewing muscle weaker, the jawbone degenerates, no longer like the ape man snout protrudes, the face becomes smaller, the intestine becomes shorter, the so-called "folding time", that is, it does not take so much time to chew and digest food to quickly absorb nutrients, so that the human brain can grow rapidly. Bone changes in the maxillofacial area also reduce the burden on the cervical spine.
Evolution is not about being better, it's about being more adaptable to the environment. The advantage of that time may be the disadvantage of this time, and the advantage of this place may be the disadvantage of other places, because the environment has changed and time has changed.
For example, our love of food, fat this incense! Fish this fresh! Cake this sweet! Because only the ancestors who loved these foods could survive the extremely harsh environment, the slim, vegetarian and bone-seeking ancestors were the first to stop cooking in the event of famine.
But when food is plentiful, the genes of our food-loving ancestors become a stumbling block to our health. The way we live and work now has changed dramatically from a few decades ago, and it has also put more pressure on the cervical spine to show its fragile side, and perhaps we will evolve again into a back neck with the strength of horses and donkeys in the future.
The above said that half a day is about stability and flexibility, the fact is that there is no best only the most appropriate, that is, according to different requirements to find a proper point between the two poles of flexibility and stability, all parts of the human body are the same truth.
The "moderation" in traditional Chinese culture and the "moderation" in ancient Greece such as Aristotle are the wisdom embodiment of this truth, not seeking extremes, adhering to the middle way, stressing restraint and pursuing balance.
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