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.”
I cannot climb trees. The bark is too rough on my smooth skin.
Yes, they can take a frog apart and count all the little pieces. When they can put it back together again, they can call me.
WHy does a peacock have big tail feathers? It uses them to attract a mate. Therefor peacocks with bigger brighter plumage are more likely to breed. Because of this bright tail plumage haws evolved over time.
LOL. Dream on. The entire Catholic church accepts evolution. You think there are none of *those* around here?
And not only does that happen in nature, but farmers can do some cool stuff, too. Breeding livestock is the only long-term lab we can look at. But it's still a peacock, and makes a terrible racket.
The Pope's Astronomer. Would make a great book title. I do respect the Argument to Authority--do you like making it?
This may just be the one of the biggest piles of offal that ichie has ever posted here. The most striking difference between human teeth and ape teeth is the same difference as between human teeth and cannine teeth: Human teeth are distributed in a parabolic arch, which allows for the various intonations of intelligent speach, while ape and dog teeth are located in parallel jaws.
Just because wisdom teeth are unneccesary does not mean they disappear from the gene pool. There has to be some factor that makes people without wisdom teeth more likely to reproduce. Possibly it is infection rates from impacted wisdom teeth. 1000 years ago if 25% of people who had infected wisdom teeth died of infection, that would impact the gene pool. Today it is not as likely, but it is still more likely that someone with infected wisdom would die than someone without wisdom teeth. Therefor it still impacts the gene pool, only slightly.
I don't know what you're babbling about here, but your failure to retract or apologize for your transparently false slander is duly noted.
Could someone please explain to me why the anti-evos have such an incredibly poor track record when it comes to telling the truth, and so seldom show any shame whatsoever when they're caught blatantly lying? I just don't get it. I never have.
Thanks for your explanation...it makes sense...
LOL !!!!!
The original contention was that "1 in 10000" on FR accepts that evolution is even possible. The fact that Catholics have no problem with evolution, and certianly there are lots of Catholics on FR, makes that point laughable.
Argument from authority was not what I was doing. You missed another one.
I'm afraid I can't read your post...maybe you could use larger fonts and brighter colors...? One day you might also like to address what you find objectionable about my definition of evolution, as well.
The evolutionist says humans have arms for tree climbing, but our skin is not furry and protected from rough surfaces, leaving us vulnerable to dangerous abrasions which can become infected and deadly -- a more common danger than dying from impacted wisdom teeth.
If some of our molars rotted and fell out, we would have room and need for wisdom teeth to grow in and replace them, regardless of the length and strength of our jawbones. Dentistry is the cause of tooth crowding trends moreso than you will admit.
The factors I bring up are valid, even if evolutionists prefer not to address them.
So we are now taller and bigger than we used to be but our heads have shrunk? malarky
I posted that, not ichy .. I got it from a college website, so it must be a highly educated statement, and not ignorant like all of mine are.
Not really. My family has all four wisdom teeth in all generations. There are thousands of us. My parents had 6 kids, each set of grandparents had 10 kids. Only our generation has less kids. The reasons aren't because of wisdom teeth.
What we lack in faces, we more than make up for in our asses and bellies...
;~>
Very punny.
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