"EXCELLENT!"
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.”
Midnight is too early in the day for that thing.
OW!
"EXCELLENT!"
There are also other factors playing here. A lot of work has been done on facial symmetry and other factors.
Here's a link to a recent paper which will lead you to more studies if you wish.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10535106&dopt=Abstract
Bottom line: men appear to like symmetrical faces in women as do women, but other factors also come into play (cheekbones and jaws). We all know people that we find "striking" - unforgettable faces. They are usually asymmetrical. But most when asked who'd they like to "get to know better" (less sexual) will choose a much more symmetrical face.
So Mamzelle might be right about the sweet baby face in women, but women still seem to prefer "rougher" faces. Lots of factors in play here.
The Anti-Evos might well have tried to float that notion, but for Godel's wise inclusion of the IP addresses (minus the last three digits) of the two offending voters in the poll. While he didn't reveal their identities publicly, he did do so privately. It was two of the more notorious, if not infamous, anti-Evo posters on FR at the time.
Neither "honey" nor "child" appear in post #257. If you're going to raise a point, try to make it factual.
Having a busy day, are we?
I've been wondering about this for years.
Why is paranoia such a common trait among anti-evolutionists?
I found one! Found it! After scrolling through page after page of your posts--a dreary, dreary business, I found a non-evo/crevo post on 11/11.
You know, not many people take Pat Robertson all that seriously. You need to get over him.
Yeah, a lot of articles about evolution are sloppy that way and seem to suggest that the environment causes mutations. Mutations happen at random. They are retained because they are either beneficial or perhaps simply not harmful. While a smaller face might have become less harmful in an agricultural setting, that doesn't really explain why it would be better than the bigger face, which is what you need for replacement -- the one has to be superior to the other.
I think there might be a better explanation, though. I've heard it argued that human beings retain a lot more juvenile traits into adulthood than apes do, much as domestic animals carry more juvenile traits into adulthood. Further, part of what differentiates dog breeds, in both look and temperment, is determined by what parts of their physical or mental development is stunted. It's entirely possible that human development has become more stunted and that we've retained more juvenile traits into adulthood because those traits make us smarter or, like domestic animals, more sociable in larger settlements. Perhaps it could ultimately explain the Baby Boomer desire to never grow up.
Does that mean you have a law degree?
Festival of the Paranoid Stalker placemarker
That took me thirty seconds to find. What's *your* excuse?
Lying about how you went back "multiple pages" in his posting history and didn't find anything only reveals, yet again, your gross dishonesty.
Furthermore, the ID/evolution controversy has been front-page news for weeks now, thanks to the Dover trial, so it's extremely disingenuous of you to try to pretend that there's something "suspicious" about the fact that some folks have posted a lot on that topic recently. It's the very epitome of "News and Current Events", which is the primary focus of this forum.
I read through page after page of Dimensio's posts--it's quite possible I missed ONE. Go look for yourself and add up them li'l numbers and send 'em to me in biiiiig fonts.
Hon.
Sorry if I missed the humorous intention of your post. I try to stay away from the crevo threads but sometimes I just can't help myself and I go there anyway. As you can probably surmise, I don't think all that much of the theory of evolution. I'm glad that you at least still call it a theory.
LOL! We'll need some extra pockets to carry them in, perhaps?
I'll let ya'll have the last word--but you really ought to look around FR more. Live a little.
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