In the days of square-rigged sailing ships, a sailor needed one hand for the ship and one for himself (to hang on). A hook was a simple but effective replacement for a lost hand.
Don’t forget the scale principle: weight varies as the cube of length or height, whereas muscle strength varies as the square. Half the weight of a humming bird is a tiny fraction of half the weight of Frazz’s young friend, and the bird is much stronger for its size.
Almost everybody forgets the Greenlanders who, while politically and culturally tied to Europe, sit firmly on the Greenland plate, a subplate of the North American plate.
Just the last half century or so!