Stories Of Human Evolution - Part V The Problem With Long Hair

Humans have been called the hairless ape, a description which has one problem. It'S completely wrong, as we saw in another video we humans have as many hairs on our bodies as gorillas and chimpanzees. It'S just they're, much smaller and finer. Well, usually, you can see this more clearly on your skin when you get goosebumps, we argued that this may have come about as a response to the need to reduce body heat whilst hunting over the hot plains of Africa. Hunting uses a lot of energy and generates body heat. On the other hand, gathering food like chimpanzees and gorillas does take time, but not much energy, so both these species have retained their body here. Unfortunately, one thing we can't check up on is to see if all human species going back one and a half million years to Homo erectus and Homo ergaster had long head here or if it's just the recent phenomenon. Animal remains left in the ground, usually go through a process called fossilization, where the organic compounds are substituted with minerals, so that eventually all organic tissue and genetic information is lost. This means DNA analysis can't be used on really old fossils, at least that doesn't stop us thinking about where long hair came from, but first it's not difficult to see why head hair should exist. The human brain after all, is extremely important. Protecting it from Sun, cold and some trauma with a good covering of hair, makes perfect sense, but human hair can easily grow over one meter long or in the case of she. Aeg ping of China. Who'S grown a hair for over 40 years over 5 meters long. The usual catch-all in evolutionary theory is that if you come across a puzzling characteristic, then you generally can't go far wrong in ascribing it to sexual selection. This theory by Charles Darwin, in simple terms, maintains that, if say, the female of a species find certain characteristics in males, attractive strength, good muscles, loud voice, long legs, then there'll be a preference to mate with males who have these characteristics in abundance. This then, should result in two outcomes: male offspring will generally have the same successful characteristics as their fathers and female offspring will also have their mother's same preference for normally over generations. This selection pressure keeps males and females fit and on the ball, but if the preference is for the bigger the better, then things can get out of hand and can beat oddities such as peacocks tails, huge antlers or large differences in body size between the sexes. This is sometimes called runaway selection, so thick lustrous hair may be considered a sign of health and youth and therefore an advantage in mate selection. However, if pushed to an extreme by sexual selection, there may grow far longer than necessary to accomplish its original name of protecting the head and the brain. Usually examples of sexual selection have an effect on one sex. Only bright colors and special vocalizations in male birds increase size in body or horns and antlers in many male mammals, and so on. The problem with humans, of course, is that both sexes could grow along here and, if we're keen on using the theory of sexual selection, this indicates successful mutual admiration based on just one extreme characteristic, which is unusual, but not as we can see unique by the way You might be forgiven for thinking only women have long hair, even scientists, sometimes talk of long hair in humans as a female sexual characteristic. Only one of the slightly bizarre aspects of modern globalization is that, wherever you look in the world in virtually any culture, you'll find men with short hair long hair is nowadays considered feminine and for some people, the wild and woolly look is a sign of inferior status Or trouble so, whereas women generally still look natural with long hair. Men in their natural state should look like this, but nearly always head and I'm looking like this. But many cultures used to have long male hair. A standard Native American men, for instance, used to grow their hair past their waist as through seeks. Today. British sailors in the 18th century were famous for their long hair, kept in queues or ponytails, as were the Chinese in the Ching dynasty and Bedouin tribesmen. Until recently. In fact, long hair for men was often the norm rather than the exception. Ok, let's assume we're not happy with the notion of sexual salvation. Then maybe should take a look at a few more theories now, if you really want to get up the nose of a human evolutionary biologist, then just mention the aquatic ape theory. This theory is based on the fact that, just as other rapes are quite at home in the water, much human evolutionary development must have come from adapting to life in rivers and sea Shores. Looking for food, these include improved bipedalism and balance loss of hair to adapt to life in water, the larger brain through an improved fishy diet and long hair, while long hair. Well, while mother is foraging for food in the water, a small child can hang on to a long hair while swimming next to her. The main problem of the theory is that it puts the cart before the horse. Most of those developments are more easily explained by a life on land, with occasional use of rivers and shores, rather than a total adoption of aquatic life. Ok, maybe we should look elsewhere. How about considering horses tails the horse has a long hair retail, which it uses to flick insects away from its rump as humans lost their fur. Long hair hanging down the now unprotected back could perform the same function by keeping pests away and shading the spine from the Sun. How about the that's just the way things go! Hypothesis long hair may have been as a result of some genetic mutation which didn't actually cause any problems and was even attractive to some, given it's not difficult to get rid of long hair, maybe just stuck around in the gene pool long enough until it became popular And then took over, who knows to be honest as far as human long hair theories are concerned, your guess is still as good as anyone's