Why are human beings “hairless apes”? Perhaps because prehistoric mothers thought hairiness was unattractive in offspring.
Harris’ paper describes Stone Age societies in which the mother of a newborn had to decide whether she had the resources to nurture her baby. The newborn’s appearance probably influenced whether the mother kept or abandoned it. An attractive baby was more likely to be kept and reared.
Harris’ theory is that this kind of parental selection may have been an important force in evolution. If Stone Age people believed that hairless babies were more attractive than hairy ones, this could explain why humans are the only apes lacking a coat of fur. Harris suggests that Neanderthals must have been furry in order to survive the Ice Age. Our species would have seen them as “animals” and potential prey. Harris’ hypothesis continues that Neanderthals went extinct because human ancestors ate them.
The whole paper is here.
(via BoingBoing)
Many years ago I read a book that proposed that our near-chimp ancestors went relatively hairless (except for head hair — useful for paddling infants to grab), upright and so on as a result of a small population taking up a coastal, largely-in-the-surf lifestyle during the Miocene when the forests of Africa shrank to a shadow of themselves. The forced-out-of-the-woods-to-become-hunters idea (Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape) leads more logically to baboons, not naked apes.
Probably nonsense, though I liked that book a lot. (Despite the fact that the title and name of the author evade me; I was maybe 16. Back in the early Renaissance.) No sillier, I think, than the idea that the females of a furry species would just decide that fur is unattractive. Less so.
Wait… We’re descended from surfers?!?
Dude, that’s totally tubular!