Posted on 11/20/2005 1:21:49 PM PST by blam
The Sunday Times November 20, 2005
Scientists show weve been losing face for 10,000 years
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
THE human face is shrinking. Research into peoples 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 worlds 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 Schwarzeneggers 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 Larsens 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.
Whats 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.
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OK!
Not by itself. And gasoline doesn't start your car all by itself, either. But in both cases, they are key ingredients of the recipe.
We know that cars run (in spite of the fact that gasoline is insufficient by itself,) and that evolution works (in spite of the fact that natural selection is insufficient by itself.) If it didn't, people wouldn't spend anywhere near as much money as they do on genetic algorithms, nor pervasively put them to mission critical use. Denying evolution is equivalent to denying the possibility of airplanes: both positions are contradicted by existence proofs.
Yes.
The surge in dental problems is the proliferation of sugar in our diets now.
In ancient Rome when the citizens could afford some sweets, their teeth deteriorated over the lifetime of the individual, while the slaves who were never given expensive sugar died with broken down skeletons from hard labor, but their teeth were great.
That was not evolution either.
It's surprising how so many people think everything is "evolution." That's what modern scientific education does for us...... sheeesh!
It would not be a cause, period. It might ALLOW a smaller face as the larger muscles would not be needed to chew uncooked or harder foods. But it wouldn't CAUSE it. Evolutionary theory would suggest that an advantage of some sort must be given to those with smaller faces in order for them to become the norm.
Surely sexual selection could cause it, but there is some reason for that selection. Generally mate selection is based on factors that show greater health or fertility, or things like that.
susie
Methinks it's time for a Weston A Price ping.
you might want to read the link in post 48.
I actually read an interesting article suggesting that humans (and other creatures) preferred mates who were more symetrical. Being more symetrical suggestd better health, because when you were ill while growing, you didn't grow as uniformly. Don't know if it had any merit, but it made sense.
susie
Only when you can duplicate speciation in the lab, under reproducible conditions (something that was once taught to me when I worked in a lab was a very necessary part of science), does it start becoming the law and dogma that evos claim. And I'm not talking viruses, single-cells or asexually reproducing creatures.
Someday, you may manage it. I find it highly educational that it has not been accomplished thus far, with so many intelligent minds and nifty gizmos...
We can make another airplane anytime we want to. I find your analogy just plain silly.
I think because I don't frequent these threads, Im unclear why the subject of different species has been raised. I didnt see anything in the article talking about. What am I missing?
susie
Sure it is. EXACTLY "survival of the fittest. In this case the "fittest factor" is "attractiveness to the human female". Also postulated to be why only human females have large "tetas" compared to the rest of the primates.
You see it implied by the posts in the thread--whenever a dog grows a longer tail than another dog, evos see miracles happening. I'm just amazed at a university sceintist will allowing himself to be quoted speculating that softer food makes for rounder faces...
Since all teeth are the same fundamental chemical composition, it is impossible for evolution to make them harder. Have to switch over to a different chemical subsrate, and since the calcium system has been selected for over millions of years, that just ain't gonna happen.
Gasoline may be part of the process of running a car engine, but it does not change a car into a pickup truck.
Preferential breeding may eventually change the outward appearance of people, but it does not play a part in the species branching of horses and elephants and jackrabbits from the primordial soup. That's just silly to think so.
"Evolution" was raised, and that's what evolution is all about.
Gee, what's not to love about a prognathic snout?
It's been done. The test species was a variety of fruit fly. The result was two different species of fruit files that couldn't interbreed (i.e. they were more different genetically, for instance, than lions and tigers, or horses and jackasses).
No, you're kidding!
Something is impossible for evolution to accomplish?
How about the very development of teeth? You contradict yourself and explain it away with millions of years. Very convenient.
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