Has the human species made any noticeable progress since that first unknown person picked up a sharp instrument and made a mark on a rock? Are we any better than our barbaric ancestors? Are the iPad, satellite television and fuel-injected engines signs that we can rightfully look back with conceit at the gloomy depths from whence we came? By what measure should we gauge our history and achievements? What should our flagpole be?

They are quite fascinating, the thoughts I have while watching The World’s Strongest Man competition on ESPN. It is a rerun of the 2009 competition, and I can see why this sports TV network would regurgitate this adrenaline-drenched show – it is genuinely mesmerizing. As I type this, a stupendously enormous man by the name of Terry Hollands is pulling a Lear Jet along using a harness and rope. Hollands’ face is as red as a stick of cured bauernspeck; the stubby tree stumps that pass for legs on his body thump at the ground. I imagine that this is what a single Cro-Magnon hunter tugging a mammoth carcass back to his cave after a successful hunt would look like. The enormity of the task is only matched by the outsized and frankly disturbing bulk of muscle that this man is carrying.

His compatriots aren’t much better to look at. Incredibly, some of them manage to both squeeze into their taut skins these impressive amounts of muscle with equally impressive rolls of fat across their bellies and necks. Most of the competitors are from the USA, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. One of the fatter ones is Ettiene Smit, a Pretoria boy. His jowls tremble with effort when it is his turn to toil.

We have always been impressed by gigantic shows of strength. Atlas, the Titan of Greek mythology was said to carry the sky on his shoulders at the western end of the world after he tried to make war against the principal gods of Olympus. The demi-god Hercules was also tremendously powerful. In the Bible we have Samson, the man whose weakness was his hair and love for questionable Philistine women.

Such strength is of course pointless unless it is applied in some useful way (is there a scenario where a man would be called upon to pull a jet?), which probably entails modifying the environment in some way. Humans have always been troubled by an urgent desire to tame and dominate the environment around them. We have always associated progress with the idea of overpowering our surroundings – indeed, for a long time the notion of “the savage” was centred on the idea that these so-called uncivilised people had not yet conquered their environments. Men like Hollands would have occupied a high rank in early societies. His brute strength would have matched him to the unrelenting brutality of nature, making him a rare commodity. But what of the sterile, overly conquered world of today? One would think that these ogres would no longer be necessary, and yet here they are. Winning prizes for our entertainment. Do we still need the assurance that we can produce men, if necessary, to tame the wilds? Does it comfort us to know that nature can be met, fist for fist?

Or should we blame the World’s Strongest Man (in fact, let us throw in WWE Wrestling and cage fighting into the pot while we’re at it) on the erosion of an oft underrated virtue: the ability to control ourselves. These hulking bulks must spend their entire lives in the gym, pumping iron and doing whatever it is one does to grow to such grotesque sizes. This requires incredible discipline. Composure. Poise. Self-command. Exactly the things the majority of us in the McDonald’s driveway don’t have. This sport – was it the only way we could acknowledge the importance of the strength of will without twanging on the strings of our own guilty consciences?

It seems to me that we haven’t come very far if we are to measure progress by what our hearts desire. It seems to me – as I watch Hollands lumber over the white line, sweat dripping from his legs – that even as we’ve progressed as a people, we still want the reassurance that there is someone out there capable of bringing the bacon home at great personal expense. Besides, the World’s Strongest Man also makes for bloody good television.