Posted on 11/20/2005 1:21:49 PM PST by 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.”
Perhaps you're fit to give me lessons about evo-crankism, but you might be surprised what'd happen if you attempt to lecture and hector me about the law and what you think you can do to try and "shut me up" legally-wise.
What you ought to do is lobby for your own corner in FR-- EVO BORES -- where you can preserve your weak species without challenge from the tough old brutes without and about your gates.
"Once I was a baby, many years ago,
And I was born unto a lady, many years ago."
So, you tell me about your hobbies. What are your political interests other than finding evo-doubters and non-athiests to bait (and make implied threats of litigation)?
And I'll be frank in stating my own resentment of those who farm FR to beat their own dead horses, horses which have little or nothing to do with conservative politics. You can reliably find a few Christians on FR to bait--since there are so many Christians in conservative politics.
Warthogs go wherever they want, and the Islamists tremble when they show up.
Natural selection works on selecting those features adapted to enviomental pressure. Selection of smaller teeth will only kick in after the problem begins to affect the population.
Your opinion of what evolution is is severely limited.
Brilliant.
I repeat: Preferential breeding does not change one species into another.
Prove that it does.
I've been wondering about this for years. I really think it's something Jim should look into.
Well then sin and politics are a factor in selection and the backward evolution of mankind.
History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud
I wonder how long it will take to weed-out the incorrect information from textbooks around the World? He *was* one of the most cited paleontologists in the World.
How pathetic it is to worship at the shrine of a copy monkey.
No, I think it just changes the time frame. If people lived, reproduced and died by, say 25 (just as an example), then nature would select for people who could do that (because those who could not would die in larger numbers before they reproduced). susie
Liberals have already achieved pin head status.
It's funny that people struggle so hard with the concept of sexual selection for beauty for its own sake, as though there must be something deeper and more chemical and mechanical behind all of it.
There isn't. Our minds do not simple see things in linear, mechanical terms. We also have emotions, many of which are not particularly pleasant or helpful, and because of these minds and our equipment we have an esthetic sense. We like things that are pretty even if they have no inherent survival function at all. A bowl is a bowl is a bowl. But we gussy it up with decorations, always have. An ancient cave served as a home, but people painted all over them. Rather than straining a gnat and trying to find some nonexistent chemical survival explanation for cave-man art and painted bowls or cord designs pressed into pottery, we really ought to look at the obvious: hunting and gathering doesn't take every waking minute. It actually only took a few hours a day, on good days. We're awake for a lot more than that, and we are not simply grazing and hunting machines. People have always had a lot more time than they needed to spend feeding, clothing and sheltering themselves. At night in the ancient world, sitting in those caves, there was no hunting or gathering to do...so what do you do? Well, if you're human, you get BORED. And if you're bored, you fiddle around to occupy yourself. Kids and adults do it now, and they did it then too. Why paint hunting scenes on the wall? To gussy up the cave, for one thing. Because there's nothing ELSE to do in the middle of a downpour. Once you've eaten and had sex, what do you do with the other 13 hours in the day?
We like pretty things, always have.
And this extends into our choice of mates.
Trying to find some deep chemical drive for preferring the pretty is interesting, but we mustn't get carried away. We have an esthetic sense. It is not an illusion. And it certainly does not wire us particularly for survival.
To deny the non-survival-based preference of the mind for pretty things is to miss the forest for the trees. Nature is fat, not thin. Every waking moment of an intelligent animal's life is NOT spent in a desperate struggle for survival, and never has been. Men have always had a lot of time to laze around and play with their minds. Many useful things have come out of this. But also many beautiful things that are not a bit useful (other than by being pretty) have come out of it.
A preference for the pretty is not perforce driven by the hard calculus of food and survival. That ought to be self-evident, but some folks have the hardest time accepting it. It helps to remember that nature is fat, not thin, and that the margin of survival of many creatures is really quite high. Some creatures struggle for survival every instant, but men (and elephants) have very rarely been in that category.
Probably overbreeding--happens a lot with puppy mills.
I think we could use a "EVO CHAT" here on FR--and keep the fanatics out of News and Current Events. It would be a comfort for the poor dears to have a day room to call their own. We could even pad it. And hire Nurse Ratchet to hand out the meds.
"we won't have faces at all"
Yeah but we will still have teeth!
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