Time Changes Modern Human's Face

BBC ^ | 1-25-2006 | Rebecca Morelle

[blam]

"They had come from the unlucky victims of the plague. The skulls had been excavated from plague pits in the 1980s in London. "

I wonder if anyone considered that people with lower foreheads may have been more sensative to the plague?

[Jeff Chandler]

The British Dental Journal?!

[blam]

GGG Ping.

Scientists Show We've Been Losing Face For 10,000 Years (Your Face Is Shrinking)

[CarrotAndStick]

Do prematurely receding hairlines have anything to do with this?

[msnimje]

The British Dental Journal?!

You can lead a horse to,...er, ah......nevermind.

[MineralMan]

"The British Dental Journal?!"

---

Yes. Why not?

[DesignerChick]

This sounds alot like the turn of the century pseudoscience of measuring features to determine intelligence.
And, according to them, I have a high forehead!

[r9etb]

I wonder if anyone considered that people with lower foreheads may have been more sensative to the plague?

Or that there might be a financial correlation between lowbrow-ness, and being buried in a pit, as opposed to a grave.

[MineralMan]

Well, my forehead seems to be growing each year. Odd...

[ClearCase_guy]

that's in the order of 20% bigger, which is really rather a lot

In 650 years, a key element of the skull changes 20%. Now, I suspect that it wouldn't take too much more to say that we are looking at two different species.

Well, if we were looking at the fossil record, the 650 years would be tricky to measure. But, if the Medieval skull were found in a geological strata 250,000 old, and the modern skull were found in a strata 100,000 years old, they would most likely to classed as two species. Quite possibly as examples of "transitional fossils".

Compare this with yesterday's fossil thread in while a mammal from millions of years ago was found to have gone through "retrogressive evolution" or something -- which means it got more primitive as time went on.

Uh huh.

[Oztrich Boy]

Measuring things is doing the Devil's Work (and don't even think of taking a census)

[Gefreiter]

I wonder whether modern diet/nutrition, along with advanced medicine (from pediatrics to OB to general practice), are enough to explain the difference...?

[Red Badger]

People were generally shorter then, also. So it seems to me that the body patterns and ratios would have been smaller ,too.......

[GSlob]

"I wonder if anyone considered that people with lower foreheads may have been more sensative to the plague?"
Doubtful. Then the plague would have wiped out all microcephals/oligophrenes, and we still have A LOT of them around.

[Red Badger]

I was in a Calibration Lab for 20 years. Our business was measuring things. Our profession's as old as the Old Testament in which it is mentioned, as "keeping honest weights and measures"................

[snarks_when_bored]

I've always been impressed by Helen Hunt's high forehead...

...whenever I've happened to notice it.

[T.Smith]

Perhaps the cranial vault begins to shrink after death? The bones might just degenerate in that way.

[ClearCase_guy]

"I'm not low-browed ... I'm just degenerated."

[MeanWestTexan]

No, men don't like to sleep with women with course features, as much as ones with little noses, etc.

(And vice versa, I suppose.)

And, with civilization, we have the luxury of being picky.

Further, leaders and rich, tend to be more attractive and have more kids (until the advent of welfare!).

[ErnBatavia]

Our ancestors had more prominent features but lower foreheads

Is Judge Napolitano a throwback then?