How a Shift in Human Head Shape Changed Everything
Quite interesting, indeed.
Pacific Standard
How a Shift in Human Head Shape Changed Everything
By Avital Andrews • August 15, 2014
This question is often asked: What separates humans from animals? Anthropologists, however, would rather ask—and answer—what separates humans from earlier humans.
About 50,000 years ago, homo sapiens developed the capacities for “innovation, planning depth, and abstract and symbolic thought,” as a study published in Current Anthropology earlier this month puts it. In academia, this moment in human evolution is referred to as the shift toward “behavioral modernity.” Until recently, not much was known about why our species veered toward more sophisticated sensibilities.
“As population density and social complexity increased, females may have preferred males with more feminized faces that signal a greater propensity to invest in parenting effort.”
A group of anthropologists and biologists at Duke University had a theory: It’s because our skulls changed shape. This would have led to, as their study argues, a “change in average human temperament toward a less aggressive, more socially tolerant individual.”....
MORE at http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/homo-sapiens-changed-head-shape-changed-everything-88477/
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