Google rocks and why humans have long hair... (RL)

[thistlechaser]

First off, yay Google! As if we needed more proof that they rock: Google Gives All SF Homeless Free Voicemail. Free voicemail for life! Think how helpful that'll be to get people up onto their feet again.

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Earlier this week I was sitting in yet another boring company meeting. As usual, my attention wandered. I noted that there was only one other blond person there (two blonds, one red head, one silver/grey, and a hundred or so black haired folks). It's not the first time I observed that, but this time I noticed I was one of the very few long haired people (three of us!). That got me thinking, where in the world did humans get long hair from? Why'd it evolve? Animals generally have uniform length fur, but a our head hair could grow forever. It doesn't seem like that's a good thing -- think how it'd get caught on bushes and get into the eyes of early hunters and such.

My first thought was that perhaps it was appearance. Maybe cave men (or whatever proto-human species first evolved long hair) liked the way long hair looked. I mostly dismissed that thought though, as I was projecting modern day values onto long-dead people.

With no Google at hand, I had to make more guesses on my own. In winter, I appreciate my long hair (it's surprisingly helpful in keeping me warm). Summertime is just the opposite, but there were periods of time where species of early man lived in all cool/cold areas...

Finally I had time to check online, and the 'keep warm' idea seems to be the most popular one. We lose a lot of heat out of our heads, so it'd make sense to have the most extra protection there.

Interesting stuff, I love evolution. :)

Edit: I'm so behind the times, wiki is never my first stop for these things. It makes interesting arguments for long hair being evolved for appearance (sexual attraction) or a sign of good health.

Comments

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

I figure it's probably a combination on those 2 things, heat and appearance.

Generally in the animal kingdom there are 2 purposes in life:

-Be able to survive.
-Be able to pass your gene's onto the next generation for the good of the species.

Now, being able to survive for the proto-human (I like that btw) would have been hard with less fur covering the body. However thanks to brains (wooo brains) we figure out the whole wearing the fur of the animals we hunted idea, and fire. However, the longer hair would also help to serve a purpose of keeping your head (and by extension your brain) warm so that it can function better and can act as a basic defense against the elements for the brain, in a way.

But, in a dog eat dog (or human) world were it's a predator prey relationship you aren't going to want long wavy hair flowing behind you as you are running the hell away from predators. They catch you by the hair, you're toast. This seems to be counter intuitive to the first point which is survival... For that reason I would think that it has another purpose and that very well could be in order to attract a mate. Similar to how a male lion uses his mane as a way to show off to the females it could very well have been true for proto-human males.

But then why would females also have long hair? As far as I know, I could be wrong, long hair doesn't correlate to fertility (at least not any more...it may have). That's where I'm going to stick with the first purpose which would be to keep the head/brain warm.

Either way it's impossible to say for sure one way or the other unless we had like a time machine and could go back and observe exactly what the purpose of longer hair was in our ancestors and then figure out why we ended up with the ability to grow long hair.

Side Note: Red hair kicks ass! <3 my hair.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

proto-human (I like that btw)

Thanks! I don't think that's an official term, but one of our pieces of software at work is Proto(our name), and it became a dead evolution line in our tools, so I sort of picked it up and use it in place of pre/early/less evolved.

But, in a dog eat dog (or human) world were it's a predator prey relationship you aren't going to want long wavy hair flowing behind you as you are running the hell away from predators. They catch you by the hair, you're toast. This seems to be counter intuitive to the first point which is survival...

Agreed. But with fire and wearing animal hides comes flint tools, with which they could cut their hair. (Early man was tattooing and scaring themselves, so the idea of altering their body for functional reasons had to be within their grasp as well).

But then why would females also have long hair? As far as I know, I could be wrong, long hair doesn't correlate to fertility (at least not any more...it may have).

Know how they say a healthy dog has a glossy coat? I bet like that. if someone (male or female) has long, glossy, full hair, someone could see they're healthy, and healthy = fertility.

Plus, we've become a vision-based instead of scent-based species, so long flowing hair would be eye-catching, I guess?

I feel like I'm arguing both sides of it! :P But I can see and could believe both, so...

Side Note: Red hair kicks ass! <3 my hair.

Yes, red rocks!

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Actually, everybody does seem to have a set point for how long their hair gets. For some of us, it's long, but for others, not so much. I had a friend growing up who couldn't even get all of her hair to grow down to her shoulders, it was so brittle and prone to breakage. It's definitely different than other mammals, though.

I don't have a good explanation for it, but I seriously doubt it was a warmth thing. Most of human evolution took place in warm parts of Africa. It's a trait that various Homo species would have already had as they dispersed. I'd lean more towards it being a sexual thing like pubic/armpit hair if little kids couldn't grow it long. On the other hand, little kids can be fat too, and that's often been used as a sign of health and wealth through most of history, so who knows. There really are things that are just random and "just because." On the savanna, it might have just been a neutral characteristic.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I had a friend growing up who couldn't even get all of her hair to grow down to her shoulders,

Oh, huh. My hair never ever stops growing (and grows darned fast), I thought that's how everyone's was.

Most of human evolution took place in warm parts of Africa.

A lot of the early evolution did, yeah. But the most modern human species (Cro-Magnon) were in northern Europe and still had some evolving left to do to become us (I'm pretty sure? Cro-Magnon aren't modern human, if I recall my college classes correctly. I'm pretty sure they were one step before us).

I'd lean more towards it being a sexual thing like pubic/armpit hair if little kids couldn't grow it long.

I could buy that as part of the reason. One of the pages I read said that it takes about seven years to grow your hair "long" (they didn't define how long that was), and by seven pre-modern humans were mating.

There really are things that are just random and "just because."

Yeah... that's just not as satisfying of an answer. :D

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis is a theory about human evolution having gone through an aquatic phase. It's not proved and even rejected by some scientists, but I find it very interesting.

Humans differ from other simians in that we have mostly hairless bodies, keeping only long hair on our heads and some hair on other places. It could be that aquatic early humans carried children around and the children grabbed the hair to hang on?

Humans also have a fat layer under the skin which other simians don't, but some aquatic mammals do. Also, the aquatic theory may explain why humans more able to hold their breath were more successful; at first this made us better at swimming without drowning, but might have eventually led to humans being able to use spoken language (which requires some breath control)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah! I read about that, too. Seemed really interesting, but I'm not sure I believe it. I only know of a tiny number of species which moved out of, back into, then out of water again (elephants did, I think).

It could be that aquatic early humans carried children around and the children grabbed the hair to hang on?

I love that image. This whole aquatic human species idea would make a great RPG setting.