Fifth-century monks were among the healthier people of their time, but they would have made lousy running backs. At least the ones who had been cloistered awhile.
Notre Dame anthropology assistant professor Susan G. Sheridan, who has studied some 6,000 bones of monks who lived at the Byzantine monastery of Saint Stephen outside Jerusalem around 500 A.D., says they're among the healthiest populations whose remains she's examined. The one exception was their knees. Almost all of them showed signs of arthritis at the point where the muscles used in kneeling attach to the bone.
The reason is not hard to imagine. According to a report in the September 1997 Discover magazine, historical records show that the Saint Stephen's monks spent an impressive amount of time kneeling; praying at midnight, sunrise, twice during the day, at sunset, and again at night. One monk wrote of his nightly devotion, which consisted of descending 18 steps into a holy cave, genuflecting 100 times on each step.