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.”
;-)
hehe! :-)
Baglady placemark
There have been, and a few were interesting to chat with, but they don't stay long. I think they're repelled by the behavior of those on "their" side. Of those who are here regularly ... maybe Elsie. A couple of others.
Excuse me, but variation within a species does not prove evolution. No creationist would ever deny variation within species. Let me know when you find a person becoming another species. Variation is inbuilt as a means for the survival of species. God created great amounts of variation as expression of His infinite creativity.
Hey a gasket just came popping out through my monitor and it seems to be yours;>)
But they were still fruit flies. No one says that there is not specialization within a species. The gene info is becoming less and more selective not greater or different. Nothing is being added.
Standard creationist blat, and typical failure to understand what evolution is, how it works, and what the results are. ALL EVOLUTION is about "specialization within a species" UNTIL it reaches such a point of gross specialization that said "specialized species" cannot interbreed with the base species.
Lions and tigers are definitely considered separate species, but they CAN produce offspring (though I believe that the resultant offspring is sterile). Certainly that is true of horses and jackasses--the resultant mule IS sterile. The two variants of fruit flies are less closely related than that, and thus, ARE different species, despite the fact of surface resemblance.
Genetic analysis has re-shuffled the deck on a lot of species family trees, showing that certain animals with a strong surface similarity are, in fact, not closely related at all.
Dimensio is on top of this.
Right???
Dimensio is on top of this.
Right???
Actually, the male Chihuahua CAN breed the female Great Dane; if someone puts him up to it.....
I am very happy that was not my career choice. LOL!
It goes along with the martyr complex.
Then it's your job to be out there policing them. The sad truth is that the "history" of man is just a story, and some are making it up as they go.
It probably can't fit into his worldview.
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.