Scientists Show We've Been Losing Face For 10,000 Years

The Times (UK) ^ | 11-20-2005 | Jonathan Leake

[blam]

The Sunday Times November 20, 2005

Scientists show we’ve been losing face for 10,000 years

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

THE human face is shrinking. Research into people’s appearance over the past 10,000 years has found that our ancestors’ heads and faces were up to 30% larger than now. Changes in diet are thought to be the main cause. The switch to softer, farmed foods means that jawbones, teeth, skulls and muscles do not need to be as strong as in the past.

The shrinkage has been blamed for a surge in dental problems caused by crooked or overlapping teeth.

“Over the past 10,000 years there has been a trend toward rounder skulls with smaller faces and jaws,” said Clark Spencer Larsen, professor of anthropology at Ohio State University.

“This began with the rise in farming and the increasing use of cooking, which began around 10,000 years ago.”

His conclusions are based on measurements from thousands of teeth, jawbones, skulls and other bones collected from prehistoric sites around the world.

Skulls from the site of a 9,000-year-old city in Turkey — thought to be the world’s oldest — show that the faces of city-dwellers had already begun to shrink compared with contemporaries who had not settled down.

Details will be reported at a forthcoming conference on the global history of health. Larsen will suggest that a typical human of 10,000 years ago would have had a much heavier build overall because of the hard work needed to gather food and stay alive.

He said: “Many men then would have had the shape of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head while women might have looked more like Camilla [the Duchess of Cornwall]. By contrast, Tony Blair and George Bush are good examples of the more delicate modern form.”

Other studies are confirming Larsen’s findings. George Armelagos, professor of anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has made extensive measurements on people from Nubia in modern Egypt and Sudan to see how their appearance has changed.

He found that the top of the head, or cranial vault, had grown higher and more rounded, a pattern also seen in human remains found at sites in other parts of the world.

Charles Loring Brace, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, said: “Human faces are shrinking by 1%-2% every 1,000 years.

“What’s more, we are growing less teeth. Ten thousand years ago everyone grew wisdom teeth but now only half of us get them, and other teeth like the lateral incisors have become much smaller. This is evolution in action.”

Softer food may not be the only cause. Some scientists blame sexual selection — the preference of prehistoric people for partners with smaller faces.

Dr Simon Hillson, of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, has studied humans living from 26,000 years ago to about 8,000 years ago. He measured 15,000 prehistoric teeth, jaws and skulls collected by museums around the world and found the same pattern of shrinking faces.

He said: “The presumption is that people must have chosen mates with smaller, shorter faces — but quite why this would be is less clear.”

[brytlea]

I have to admit that the defintion of species seems to have become muddied now that we can look at DNA.
susie

[editor-surveyor]

"Evolution deniers will have rather long faces after reading this..."

After ROTFLTAO possibly :o)

[zeeba neighba]

Don't forget the little lemur relative. It could see in the dark. Now, why we can't is a mystery, along with that tail.

[ValerieUSA]

The most striking difference between human teeth and ape teeth is the absence in humans of huge canines. Human teeth are generally smaller and less specialized than those of apes. Since large canines are used in many primate species for social display and competition for dominance, the loss of distinctive canines in Hominid species is sometimes taken as a sign that less competitive and more cooperative forms of social behavior had emerged in very early times.

source:
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/phychar/culture-humans-14fourteen.html

A charming smile replaced the need for ferocious canines?

[zeeba neighba]

No Valerie. Big teeth, litte monkey private parts. (wink)

[ValerieUSA]

There are other explanations for micro evolution that do not need the word evolution, in that it combines micro and macro into one.

[andysandmikesmom]

This is very interesting about the wisdom teeth...I had 2 wisdom teeth, and had to have them both pulled, because my mouth was too small to accomodate them...my girlfriend had 4 wisdom teeth, and had to have all 4 of them pulled for the same reason...

X-Rays show that my husband never had any wisdom teeth to begin with...neither one of our boys ever had any wisdom teeth either...thankfully, my boys genetics were such, that they never had any wisdom teeth, just like their dad...

So to me, that shows, that slowly, the incidence of wisdom teeth in humans is declining...some people have all four wisdom teeth, ,some have fewer than 4 wisdom teeth, and many have no wisdom teeth at all...

Some people have 4 wisdom teeth, some have less than 4, and some have none at all...is that evolution at work?...since wisdom teeth are not necessary for human beings, and more often than not, they are just a pain, become impacted and have to be removed by a dentist, doesnt understanding evolution explain the decline in people having wisdom teeth?...we dont need them, so eventually the human race will no longer have them...

Please remember, my understanding of evolution, is at best, minimal...

[sourcery]

After ROTFLTAO possibly :o)

My remark was supposed to be funny. I guess I'm not all that surprised it wasn't taken that way..

I think we all need to lighten up.

[Ichneumon]

Check out the posting history--no interest in life or FR except singing that one note...poor needy thing. Methinks a marker of genetic weakness.

NOTE HOW THE ANTI-EVOLUTIONISTS LIE AND SLANDER, SINCE THEY CAN'T WIN ON THE EVIDENCE

This bitchy remark was made about me, but if "Mamzelle" (a sweet name for a very not-sweet person) had actually bothered to CHECK HER FACTS before making false conclusions (something she never seems to bother to do), she'd have seen that I have posted on:

cosmology, etymology, US policy regarding Iranian dissidents, the First Amendment, squirrel behavior, the feasibility of farming comets, the economics of space exploration, the hypocrisy of Iran chastising the West for "Islamophobia", the case of a psycho who tricked a woman into drinking drain cleaner, the case of an 87-year-old sexually involved with a child, helping in the identification of a woman seen in news photos with several SCOTUS nominees, mandatory seatbelt/helmet laws, sonic weapons, CNN's continued anti-Bush bias, decompiling Microsoft programs, a programming copyright case, the case of a woman with 35 cats, handguns without magazine safeties, essayist Mark Steyn, a questionable proposal about an energy source, rioting in France, the animated series "Family Guy", the cheesy TV movie "Category 7", Pokey's "Today's Toons", an irrational anti-gun editorial, OJ Simpson buying a new house, funny auctions on eBay, the economics of alternative fuels, a body mistaken for a Halloween decoration, and why it's easier to build a four-sided pyramid than a three-sided pyramid.

AND THAT'S ONLY IN THE PAST THREE WEEKS.

So Mamzelle, I SUGGEST THAT YOU STOP LYING ABOUT ME. An apology for your false slander would be in order as well.

[Sofa King]

The thing about the definition of a specie is that there is no natural criteria that it can be based off of. When species A evolves into species B, you wind up with a gradual transition where each generation along the way has more genetic difference between individual organisms of the same generation than those organisms have between themselves and their parents or offspring. What possible criteria could you use to draw a line between the two and say "this is species A and this is species B"? The first member of species B would be infinitely more like the last member of A than it would the last member of B.

When creationists are asking to see speciation happen over the course of a generation or two, they're actually asking for something that goes *against* the theory of evolution.

[PatrickHenry]

Too late for a ping to the list.

Junior, wanna archive it?

[Mamzelle]

lol--so "child" and "hon" has a temper? Fortunately, I've selected out for that unsuccessful trait.

[editor-surveyor]

"--no interest in life or FR except singing that one note"

It would appear that Ichneumon is a professional propagandist that is assigned to twist FR. About 1 in 10,000 freepers believes that evolution is even possible, and Ich aims to change that. The really laughable thing is that the handful of evos here are constantly trying to forge a link between evolution and biology, which is absurd on it's face since biology is all about what is really alive, not what someone chooses to imagine once was alive.

Evolution is clearly a deviant philosophy/religion issue, not science.

[Mamzelle]

Don't look now, but I think he's displaying his canines at a poor child.

[zeeba neighba]

"The better to teach you with" no doubt.

[Dustbunny]

Words escape me. Other than another theory that will be debunked in later years.

[ValerieUSA]

Perhaps the ability to make knives that we can display when feeling aggressive or territorial replaced the need for large canine teeth, thus promoting our more cooperative social behavior which in turn led to the development of more organized raiding parties, then trained armies, and increasingly advanced weapons... and the U.N.

[zeeba neighba]

That or smooching.

[Mamzelle]

re: which is absurd on it's face since biology is all about what is really alive)))

What garners my impatience is the lack of wonder at life itself.

What garners my contempt is the rhetoric of dogma--"anti-evolutionist", indeed. Sounds like "anti-Christ" and raises my suspicions that they are trying to sell a franchise, not increase the realm of knowledge. The theory of evolution is an invaluable, even indispensible, paradigm for categorizing life and studying life. The fossil and genetic evidence is fascinating (though they seem impervious to the glory of it), but they reason from now to the past, then try to reason from the past until now. It just ain't necessarily so--and tell them that, and watch them fly into a rage.

For instance, the anthropologist reasoned that the jaw changed because of soft food. It could very well have been that cooking was developed to allow for the changing jawline.

If we ever can explain the Why and How of it--I doubt it'll be the biologist who does it. He reasons the cart before the horse and thinks so small--I think it'll be the physicist, if anybody can.

[andysandmikesmom]

Where in the world do you get your statistics from? Only 1 in 10,000 Freepers believes in evolution?...did you just make that up, due to wishful thinking on your part?...or do you have an actual survey?...

There are not just a handful of evos on FR...I believe there are way more evos than you would like to admit to...unless you have some survey, which proves me wrong(which I am looking for you to produce), my belief about how many FReepers believe in evolution is just as valid as your belief that Freepers who believe in evolution are just a handful...

It is your belief, not a fact, that evolution is deviant philosophy/religious issue, and not science...there are many of us on FR, who would disagree with you...and dont bother to try to call me an atheist...a lot of anti-evos think that calling a believer in evolution an atheist is only thing to call them...well, sorry, but there are millions of Christians, who believe in God, believe in the Bible, and also believe that evolution was created and used by God...and I happen to be one of them...

Now, it may very well be, that in your personal interpretation of the Bible, evolution does not fit in...but in millions of other Christians views, evolution can fit it...

Do be sure to produce that survey that confirms your statement that only 1 in 10,000 Freepers believes that evolution is even possible ...until you do so, I will just assume you made that statistic up...