#face evolution

Science

The original fight club: Study says human face evolved to take punches

Current theory about the shape of the human face just got a big punch in the mouth. Two University of Utah researchers proposed on Monday that the face of the ancestors of modern humans evolved millions of years ago in a way that would limit injuries from punches during fist fights between males. Their theory, published in the journal Biological Reviews, is presented as an alternative to a longstanding notion that changes in the shape of the face were driven more by diet—the need for a jaw that could chew hard-to-crush foods such as nuts.

Studies of injuries resulting from fights show that when modern humans fight, the face is the primary target.

David Carrier, University of Utah biologist

These are also the bones that show the greatest difference between women and men in early human ancestors and modern humans, University of Utah researcher David Carrier added. In both apes and humans, males are much more violent than females, and most male violence is directed at other males, Carrier said. The violence underpinning the need for a more robust facial structure may have involved fist fights over females, resources and other disputes. Australopithecus was a lineage that preceded our genus, Homo, and it emerged more than four million years ago in Africa. Australopithecus was bipedal, smaller than modern people and possessed a combination of ape and human characteristics.

I think our science is sound and fills some longstanding gaps in the existing theories of why the musculoskeletal structures of our faces developed the way they did.