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Study: Male Facial Development Evolved To Take Punches
First time accepted submitter Joe_NoOne (48818) writes "A new theory suggests that our male ancestors evolved beefy facial features as a defense against fist fights. The bones most commonly broken in human punch-ups also gained the most strength in early hominin evolution. They are also the bones that show most divergence between males and females. From the article: 'Fossil records show that the australopiths, immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo, had strikingly robust facial structures. For many years, this extra strength was seen as an adaptation to a tough diet including nuts, seeds and grasses. But more recent findings, examining the wear pattern and carbon isotopes in australopith teeth, have cast some doubt on this "feeding hypothesis". "In fact, [the australopith] boisei, the 'nutcracker man', was probably eating fruit," said Prof David Carrier, the new theory's lead author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah. Instead of diet, Prof Carrier and his co-author, physician Dr Michael Morgan, propose that violent competition demanded the development of these facial fortifications: what they call the "protective buttressing hypothesis".'"
That's why we all have such flat noses.
"Protective Buttress Face" is my new insult.
In the interest of feminism, er, I mean equality, we must acknowledge that girls, women, womyns, er, females! are just as eager to punch the ever living shit out of male faces.
Sexual selection is most likely an additional element in the facial features as it has been theorized to be one of the primary driving features of some of the physical statue difference between males and females of many different species. Hence Darwin's explanation of the ornate peacock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
I realize that you evolve with the genome you have, not the genome you might want or wish to have at a later time; but even with a bit of incremental up-armoring the human face seems like kind of a dreadful mess when it comes to fist-fighting prowess. Lots of relatively poorly anchored teeth, plenty of well-vascularized soft tissue, some of it of considerable sensory importance (like the squishy, squishy, eyeballs, conveniently also located in two of the big holes in the skull, where there is little more than goo and connective tissue between your brain and the wide, horrible, world...
Is this just because "radically alter facial morphology" isn't one of those things you evolve even remotely quickly, or without changing a hell of a lot of genes, some of which have other functions, or do we suspect that there are competing constraints working against, or at least limiting, the degree that masculinized facial features are allowed to make you look like some sort of bio-tank?
Shirley Manson looks like she has a pretty punchable face.
I'm trying to keep an open mind about these theories, but they just keep on striking me as mental masturbation by a sub-field that needs to have B.S. called on the lot of them.
AFAIK, we can only make wildly speculative guesses as to the lifestyles of these creatures. And that will probably be forever true. So unless we find cave drawings of an extensive face-punching meritocracy within these families, it's probably wild speculation as to whether or not it was a relevant factor in the evolution of these features.
This isn't science.
Are you saying that Men are inherently more able to take a punch than a woman? That's sexist.
Of course I read this after my sandwich was late.
Sorry, sweetie...
Trolling is a art,
I heard another theory on the way that violence has influenced our evolution. It was suggested that opposable thumbs were favored because they make some apes like ourselves capable of forcible rape, unlike most animals. The success of forcible rape as a breeding strategy led to the differential survival of more violent, impulsive men and more submissive (more likely to survive rape) women who ovulate monthly. And this male aggression has led to homo sapiens becoming earth's dominant megafauna. So if true, on evolutionary time scales the optimal amount of violence to promote species survival is greater than zero.
This is depressing in proportion to its plausibility.
(I see what I did there in the title).
If this made sense at all, after a few rounds of Rochambeau v. 2 , we'd all have developed a massive testicular protection layer too.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I realize that you evolve with the genome you have, not the genome you might want or wish to have at a later time;
Say that again and I'll punch you ;-) ........ or should that be [;=))]
If Evolution is true then why the fuck are there so many ugly people?
So what I'm hearing is they have no idea what they are talking about but after looking at some bones and isotopes they decided that they got punched in the face more? And how much more "funding" do they need?
Survival of the hittest?
"Yes officer, he was meant to be beaten"
He must be the non plus ultra of evolutionary progress, since never has there been a face so in need of being punched.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I hate to break it to you but women didn't have any historical protection from punches. In fact, I'm willing to bet women were punched far more often than men until recently.
Jay Leno: clearly developed offensive chin to return punishing blows to his opponent
Gary Busey: long forehead designed to absorb impact, but also more importantly channel telekenetic messages to ice tray full of cream cheese across room
Good people go to bed earlier.
You as an individual do NOT evolve. You are the same as you were when you were born. Species evolve, not individuals.
Facial bones designed to withstand punches, and their language having over four hundred different words for 'vomit'.
one obvious constraint would be the importance of facial expression in human interactions. How many facial muscles are purely mimic? I'd say most of them.
Eyeballs are not that squishy and one could argue that that deep eyesockets are actually protective - it's rather unlikely to do damage to eyes when the surrounding bone takes the hit, especially with a fist. The nose looks like a bad design though.
It couldn't possibly be that the skull was designed to protect the brain, oh no.
Cranky educator.
Actually there's a bone plate between the eye sockets and the brain cavity - it's still one of the weak points, but it's not completely unarmored.
As for the comparative weakness of the face, I'm inclined to agree, but it also seems that resisting punches was a fairly transient evolutionary force. Consider that it probably didn't take long, evolutionarily speaking, between the invention of the punch and the adoption of the club as a force-multiplier that would have rendered minor skeletal fortifications relatively useless. As for all the squishy tissue - unlike bone it tends to heal fairly quickly with little functional long-term consequence, with the exception of the eyes which are largely protected from impact by something as large as a fist, and would have been even more protected in our ancestors with a more protruding brow and deep-set eyes.
There's also the fact that we're probably talking about primarily ritual combat - the kind where both parties are simply attempting to assert dominance, rather than actually do any lasting injury. Serious combat would break out the clubs, but high-stakes combat tends to be selected against within a population - after all your rival is also a member of your tribe, hurt him too badly and the whole tribe suffers. So fortification would be relevant primarily in terms of insuring against accidental severe damage when your opponent is primarily attempting to simply inflict pain.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If only the Red Viper had a more punch-resistant face, eh?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
TroLLOLOlllloLOlLololOol!!!!
lose != loose
Evolution of Garbage? That we were designed by natural selection to take a punch to the face is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the evidence. See exhibit:
https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1398/99/1398991263829.jpg
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I realize that you evolve with the genome you have, not the genome you might want or wish to have at a later time; but even with a bit of incremental up-armoring the human face seems like kind of a dreadful mess when it comes to fist-fighting prowess. Lots of relatively poorly anchored teeth, plenty of well-vascularized soft tissue, some of it of considerable sensory importance (like the squishy, squishy, eyeballs, conveniently also located in two of the big holes in the skull, where there is little more than goo and connective tissue between your brain and the wide, horrible, world...
Is this just because "radically alter facial morphology" isn't one of those things you evolve even remotely quickly, or without changing a hell of a lot of genes, some of which have other functions, or do we suspect that there are competing constraints working against, or at least limiting, the degree that masculinized facial features are allowed to make you look like some sort of bio-tank?
The size and number of teeth are placed on different parts of the genome. It used to be that people didn't travel very far or mate beyond a small gene pool, so the teeth all kind of fit together pretty well. Now, we get people with tiny little Asian jaws and huge Nordic teeth, and all sorts of other strange mixes. A lot of our modern problems with dentistry come from the fact that we travel so much, and breed outside of a small area. Not that I'm suggesting we should go back or anything...
Does that also mean that male hands developed in a way that they could better absorb the impact of a punch?
What about nuts? It seems to me that we should have developed "stone-nads" to better absorb the impact of a kick in the nuts. I guess that evolution is still in progress :-)
There's nothing like pulling a steamy pile of shit out of your ass, and getting paid for it to boot!
Current apes fight also, so why don't they have such features? I suspect it's because apes tend to fight by pushing and kicking more so than slugging: they wrestle.
Table-ized A.I.
Even with our much more moderate skull structures today, it's very rare (relatively) to sustain severe eye damage from punches. You pretty much have to break the orbital first. As far as injuries that mean you're probably going to die, their weakness is poking attacks with tools which probably wasn't that common. (I doubt too many guys back then did the Blade Runner thumbs-in-both-eye-sockets attack, and you can survive with just one eye.)
I will punch the researchers in the face and see how evolved they are.
Nonsense. God created us the way we are 6000 years ago. Watch Kent Hovinds movies to understand why creation is scientifically accurate.
Is this just because "radically alter facial morphology" isn't one of those things you evolve even remotely quickly, or without changing a hell of a lot of genes, some of which have other functions, or do we suspect that there are competing constraints working against, or at least limiting, the degree that masculinized facial features are allowed to make you look like some sort of bio-tank?
Because of the degree of randomness in evolution by variation and natural selection, there are very few limits imposed by the incremental nature of the process. Random steps can take a locally deleterious feature a long way "up hill" in terms of fitness before it gets lost entirely from the population, and that process may well carry it over into a new local minimum that was deeper than the one it drifted out of.
That said, there are quite likely strong constraints on facial morphology that put limits on armouring. The human face is extremely important as a communications device, and remember: selection is driven by the differential probability of getting laid and creating successful offspring (where "successful" means... "getting laid and...")
So for example, blood flow in the face is a very important communications tool. There is reason to believe that the whole point of human's red/green colour acuity is so that we are maximally sensitive to variations in blood flow in each others' skins, particularly in the face. So variations that substantially reduced that already-subtle signalling channel would plausibly reduce the chance of those individuals getting laid.
Likewise, facial flexibility and mobility are important aspects of communication between humans (and likely proto-humans), and so on. Because we are by nature social primates, the effective communication goes beyond simple mate competition, too: the ability to form viable troops, work together cooperatively, etc, all will affect the individual's reproductive fitness, particularly when kin-selection is factored in (my genes will go on if my siblings and cousins are successful at mating, even if I am not, so my contributions to their success matters in the evolutionary process.) [Of course, there are also completely kooky speculative ideas about group selection, which are fun to play with: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-...
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Only seems weak because we live soft lives and never really fully "develop" into men these days. Most modern males have pretty weak jaws and faces (overbites no room for wisdom teeth etc) not due to heredity but instead environment. If you actually let kids use their jaws to chew stuff instead of cutting everything up and swapped out much of the carb load for more fat and protein you'd see a dramatic change in the populations facial structure. We'd look more like native americans who have stronger features.
You're greatly underestimating the human body. There are documented instances of humans taking on bulls, leopards and even a tiger, one on one without weapons and winning. We also have a vastly superior brain allowing us to project a bull's trajectory and sidestep it or, as the Minoans did, literally take it by the horns and use its goring actions to flip us up, somersault and land behind it safely. We're not nearly as soft as you seem to believe.
I heard another theory on the way that violence has influenced our evolution. It was suggested that opposable thumbs were favored because they make some apes like ourselves capable of forcible rape, unlike most animals. The success of forcible rape ...
Is "forcible rape" another category of rape like "legitimate rape"?
Many people would say that Justin Bieber is a prime example.
(Capcha word is repulse).
Even without our large brains, we are a fairly tough animal.
Bi-pedal allows us to stand taller or as tall as animals 100x our size, means we can see them coming and get out of the way. or if we are hunting we can find pry easier.
We can run, when in good condition we can run for miles and exhost most animals to death so we don't need to actually fight to kill them.
We have color vision, being able to help distinguish a lot of camouflage, add this with our ability to see in 3D perspective means we know how far it is out.
Sure a 150lbs frame seems tiny compared to fighting a bovine. But more then adequate for normal deer. We are as big as most bares.
There is a lot of things other then our brains that can make us a dangerous animal. Our brains really give us the extra edge to dominate animals many many times our size.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You're greatly underestimating the human body. There are documented instances of humans taking on bulls, leopards and even a tiger, one on one without weapons and winning.
Okay, I'll bite: how does one kill a bull with one's bare hands? With no weapons, all I can think of is tricking the bull into running off a cliff or something. That is to say, a technical victory via "disqualification" of the opponent.
It's not like a human can eviscerate, exsanguinate, or strangle a bull without weapons.
Anecdotal evidence, but as I have a penis, clearly, this is scientific:
Women with average face and Greek goddess-like body? Meh.
Woman with a bit of odd lumpiness an above-average face? Yepyepyepyepyepyepyepyepyepyepyep.
(Yes, Social Justice Warriors, I have checked my privilege, much to my regret - United lost it, and I expect it's somewhere in Hawaii in spite of my flying to the east coast. To any who don't grok that humans base initial sexual attractions on looks, mannerisms, et cetera - have a preemptive "piss off".)
Of course, it is the preffered form of combat for meatheads but is rarely used in martial arts.
Unless of course you know your physics and how to impart the proper force to generate the necessary torque to knock someone out by overloading their trigeminal or vagus nerve. Suprisingly doesn't require much force at all, and yet something that most fighters are ignorant of... well, except Anderson Silva.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
... but then why would all the proto-humans that had the most 'built-up' faces die out and just the pretty boy HSS survive, which was the most aggressive in eliminating the others?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
... because evolve face to support strokes during falls and other nature related hurts are too mainstream.
It is because evolution is set by many different issues.
yes a face could just be one giant bone shield and it would be better at absorbing punches, but that would also mean you were blind or had your eyes located at a worse vantage point.
I think this finding is pointing out that Fist Fighting prowess was a signification factor in evolutionary terms, and this related to your face being able to absorb a few punches before becoming horrendously deformed or your death.
At the same time the ability to see (alongside others) was obviously higher on the list of important features.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I think what you're missing here is that we are not at the *end* of human evolution, but instead we are somewhere in the middle. Perhaps that's why the human face is better than some other creatures for taking a punch, but not as good as it could be. Also keep in mind that there are many other factors that would go into the evolution of the human face, and what we look like right now is a result of all of those to varying degrees.
The problem I have with these theories is that they don't explain why the hand is so poorly adapted to *deliver* punches. It wouldn't be complicated, you've got all you need to start with given normal variations in hand anatomy. Favor the guys with extra sturdy 5th metacarpals, and voila! Boxer's fractures are a thing of th evolutionary past.
It's just hard to buy that punching exerts such a dramatic evolutionary pressure on various anatomical features and leaves the fist something a person has to be *taught* to make properly, and which *still* tends to injure itself while punching without the benefit of gloves or taping.
It seems more plausible that the response of facial development to the presence of testosterone is a matter of *sexual* selection than survival based selection, that humans evolved to hit with clubs and rocks and that fists are a less critical corner case. People who come up with these theories evidently don't have much experience hitting things with their bare hands, which is not surprising given that they've got these handy opposable thumbs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think it is hilarious that faces were designed for punching.
Your face was made for punchin! So that's just what I'll do! One of these days these fists are gonna punch all over you!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The bones feels a little pointy around there.
I don't care who you are because no face evolved to take that.
What's the point of the captchas when my decoder software hits 98% here on Slashdot?
That would explain why boxers are ugly. Ha-ha.
Even without our large brains, we are a fairly tough animal.
Bi-pedal allows us to stand taller or as tall as animals 100x our size, means we can see them coming and get out of the way. or if we are hunting we can find pry easier.
WTFF animals are running around near you? A good horse is 6' 800#. At 6' tall, 200# for a decent sized man, you'd need 20,000lb snakes to be 100x as big.
Quiet! He's on *really* good acid right now, and you're harshing his trip.
For many years, this extra strength was seen as an adaptation to a tough diet...
And not even one joke about "knuckle sandwich"?
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Does this mean that those 'greys' aliens everyone describes with "effeminate" facial features don't fight each other with fists? Or at all? Captcha: "Papyrus"! Neat!
I realize that you evolve with the genome you have, not the genome you might want or wish to have at a later time; but even with a bit of incremental up-armoring the human face seems like kind of a dreadful mess when it comes to fist-fighting prowess. Lots of relatively poorly anchored teeth, plenty of well-vascularized soft tissue, some of it of considerable sensory importance (like the squishy, squishy, eyeballs, conveniently also located in two of the big holes in the skull, where there is little more than goo and connective tissue between your brain and the wide, horrible, world...
...And really weak fists!
OLDUVAI GORGE, Warringah, Monday (NTN) — A new theory suggests that Tony Abbott's ancestors evolved remarkably punchable facial features, accounting for people's deep desire to do so today.
The bones most commonly broken in prehistoric Liberal Party punch-ups gained the most strength in early "conservative" evolution. They are also the bones that show most divergence between Liberals and Nationals.
The paper, in the journal Guardian Australia, argues that the reinforcements evolved amid fighting over females and resources, in which communication by kicking each other's heads drove key policy changes.
Fossil records show that Australopithecus menzieii had strikingly robust facial structures. This was long seen as an adaptation to a tough diet including nuts, seeds and Malcom Turnbull's balls. But more recent findings suggest that violent intra-party competition was the cause: the "protective buttressing hypothesis".
Interestingly, the evolutionary descendants of Australopithecus — including more left-leaning humans — have displayed less and less facial buttressing. "Human arms and upper bodies are not nearly as strong as those found in Liberal Party members," said the author, Prof David Carrier, dusting off his gloves.
Studies from Canberra emergency wards show that faces are particularly vulnerable to violent injuries, many self-inflicted from being banged against desks when Coalition policy proposals reach the news.
"The historical record goes back a short time, but anatomy holds clues as to what selection was important, what behaviours were important; and so it gives us important information about what caveman notion Mr Abbott is going to come out with next."
Photo: Tony Abbott actually getting punched in the face. What a happy-making photograph this is.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Exactly!
I have always thought the ability to get knocked out has been an evolutionary answer to resolve sparring disputes between mails without killing anyone. There is no advantage to losing conciousness in other life threatening scenarios.
You're underestimating the ability of the mammalian eye to withstand and recover from damage. Remember that LASIK surgery doesn't even bother with stitches, for example. And practically speaking the amount of force and accuracy required to drive a weapon or tool through an eye socket isn't much less than what's required to puncture the thinner parts of the skull.
I've been stabbed in the eye with a pencil, hard enough that it lodged in the socket behind the eye until I yanked it out, and had one of my eyes gouged far enough out that it was briefly laying on my upper cheek. Because of that I am at a higher than normal risk for glaucoma, but everything healed up fine years ago. Eyes are remarkably tough! The biggest danger to them is generally infection, not blunt trauma. Although if you actually pop one, they don't always refill without medical intervention, so do try to avoid that.
As for selection processes, remember how much of our brain appears to be optimized for facial recognition - even at birth - and consider how much being recognizable might improve one's chance of being sexually selected. :) That could provide some of the competing constraints you theorized.
The problem I have with these theories is that they don't explain why the hand is so poorly adapted to *deliver* punches.
Actually it has been proposed that humans are unique amongst primates in the fact that their hands developed in part to maximize destructive punching power.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
The southern most state of my Australian homeland (Tasmania) is dominated politically by aboriginal people, who are as dark as USA's Ken-Doll & Barbie-Doll, complete with solid, heavily-boned, squared-off chins, blue-eyes and blonde hair. Australian citizens have direct advantages: (financial, employment, educational and political), if any one of your last 32 parental ancestors was a victim of rape by a white man. Astounding theories also prove why the Muslims, Spanish, Dutch, Germans, Portuguese, French and USA beat the primitive little darker-skinned creatures in Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. Because of the white skins allowed superior facial nonverbal communications, their superior weaponry, plus group coordination skills led to massive cross-breeding, almost wiping out these inferior genotypes. Personally, one of my grandmother was from Europe, so that why I am also a superior, genetic white man, even if I look to the standard observer like Charlie Chan.
Australian Capital Territory
That's why we will eventually evolve so that we all look like Chuck Norris.
1)Dig pit. 2)Tease bull. 3)Outthink, outplay, outlast, and for heaven's sake, outrun.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
How is this materially different than the cliff example?