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.”
Seems the problem was restricted to Japan due to its failure to provide peer review and its reticence in allowing outside scientists. This sounds more like creationist science than standard western science.
Even so, science has a long way to go for the number of frauds to equal just one creation 'scientist's frauds.
Yes, "spot on!" is quite the astute answer to posters who were insisting that humans had domesticated the wolf hundreds of thousands of years ago, and in the process these learned posters were saying that other people refuse to listen to what they try to explain.....
Well, duh!
Tell me that mankind was around hundreds of thousands of years ago domesticating wolves into dogs, and I'm not going to be a good little sponge absorbing all your nasty brain spillage...
Spot On! indeed!
This is nasty huh:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1522845/posts?page=69#69
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1520798/posts?page=136#136
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1524317/posts?page=114#114
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1520911/posts?page=69#69
Oh, how nasty!
How DARE you back up your claims with extensive evidence often drawing in part from your own expertise in the field!
How is copy/pasting a question, and then answering it rudely and wrongly a typo?
I referenced a direct insult - your links are irrelevant to the point.
Like you have a clue what we're talking about?
He is backing up what claims?
He is butting into another dispute with irrelevant links to the specific contention.
If he was posting evidence that mankind had domesticated wolves into dogs hundreds of thousands of years ago, maybe it would mean something here.... as it is, he should post it on its own, not as a response to this particular argument.
Why is this so difficult to grasp?
Do yourself (and the rest of us) a favor, and ignore the trolls.
You lost face with that one.
Apart from Alamo Girl and betty boop and maybe grey whiskers (I say maybe only because I don't know for certain which side of the debate that he's on, not because I think him to be a troll), are there any regular-posting creationists around here who aren't trolls?
POST THE NEW TAGLINE, DAMMIT!
Theologians that do so merely change network syndication.
I believe you meant you are unable to understand them.
I do appreciate the opportunity to correct your statement. :-)
Show me a single post in the history of FR where I referenced wolves.
Go back and look at my post I was responding to a specific statement.
I got a one time pass from Darwin Central to do so. :-)
Are you being dense on purpose?
Of course you did not reference wolves, you responded to posts that were about wolves with irrelevant comments and links. Backtrack the post #s and get a clue, or post your own info independently of mine.
"Die-hard creationists who refuse to listen to anything you try to explain to them are nothing but timesinks."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.