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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.
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?
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.
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.
true equality would be them getting punched in the face.
Not just punch. Vodka, whiskey, beer as well. It all depends on the body mass.
Ezekiel 23:20
(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 you think they're bad, you should see the even uglier people who never had kids!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"Yes officer, he was meant to be beaten"
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.
If only the Red Viper had a more punch-resistant face, eh?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I will punch the researchers in the face and see how evolved they are.
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.
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.
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.
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