{"id":162,"date":"2003-08-20T10:57:10","date_gmt":"2003-08-20T14:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tradermike.net\/movethecrowd\/2003\/08\/why_humans_have_no_fur\/"},"modified":"2003-08-20T10:57:10","modified_gmt":"2003-08-20T14:57:10","slug":"why_humans_have_no_fur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/08\/20\/why_humans_have_no_fur\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Humans Have No Fur"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has an interesting article which theorizes on how and why humans lost their fur<\/a>. The article covers how dark skin evolved:<\/p>\n

\nThree years ago Dr. Rosalind Harding of Oxford University and others made a worldwide study of the MC1R gene by extracting it from blood samples and analyzing the sequence of DNA units in the gene. They found that the protein made by the gene is invariant in African populations, but outside of Africa the gene, and its protein, tended to vary a lot.<\/p>\n

Dr. Harding concluded that the gene was kept under tight constraint in Africa, presumably because any change in its protein increased vulnerability to the sun’s ultraviolet light, and was fatal to its owner. But outside Africa, in northern Asia and Europe, the gene was free to accept mutations, the constant natural changes in DNA, and produced skin colors that were not dark.<\/p>\n

As soon as the ancestral human population in Africa started losing its fur, Dr. Rogers surmised, people would have needed dark skin as a protection against sunlight. Anyone who had a version of the MC1R gene that produced darker skin would have had a survival advantage, and in a few generations this version of the gene would have made a clean sweep through the population.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What part sexual selection played\/plays:<\/p>\n

\nOnce hairlessness had evolved through natural selection, Dr. Pagel and Dr. Bodmer suggest, it then became subject to sexual selection, the development of features in one sex that appeal to the other. Among the newly furless humans, bare skin would have served, like the peacock’s tail, as a signal of fitness. The pains women take to keep their bodies free of hair — joined now by some men — may be no mere fashion statement but the latest echo of an ancient instinct.<\/p>\n

Another conundrum is why women have less body hair than men. Though both sexes may prefer less hair in the other, the pressure of sexual selection in this case may be greater on women, whether because men have had greater powers of choice or an more intense interest in physical attributes. “Common use of depilatory agents testifies to the continuing attractions of hairlessness, especially in human females.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article hits on some other topics too, like how long humans have been wearing clothes and the role that lice may have played in all of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has an interesting article which theorizes on how and why humans lost their fur. The article covers how dark skin evolved: Three years ago Dr. Rosalind Harding of Oxford University and others made a worldwide study of the MC1R gene by extracting it from blood samples and analyzing the sequence of… Continue reading Why Humans Have No Fur<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":67,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/11\/is_race_real\/","url_meta":{"origin":162,"position":0},"title":"Is Race Real?","date":"July 11, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"The NY Times Op-Ed section has an article about race today. It addresses whether race actually exists. Some snippets: \"There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification at all,\" said Bryan Sykes, the Oxford geneticist and author of \"The Seven Daughters of Eve.\" \"I'm always\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Race"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":154,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/08\/14\/plastic_surgery_boom_in_asia\/","url_meta":{"origin":162,"position":1},"title":"Plastic Surgery Boom in Asia","date":"August 14, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Time Asia has a very interesting article about the surge in plastic surgery in Asia. 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They're spinning hip-hop, reggae, rare groove, funk, etc. Here's the playlist from the latest episode to give you an idea of what you're in for: intro gene harris - don't call me nigger, whitey talk (over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":174,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/08\/29\/21st_century_slaves\/","url_meta":{"origin":162,"position":3},"title":"21st Century Slaves","date":"August 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"This issue of National Geographic looks like a must read for the story on modern day slavery: There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach\u2014and in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Current Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":269,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/26\/damn_no_wonder_why_the_cows_are_mad\/","url_meta":{"origin":162,"position":4},"title":"Damn, No Wonder Why the Cows are Mad!","date":"January 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I just saw this news alert: \"FDA bans cow blood in livestock feed, part of broader restrictions after mad cow discovery,\" which made go looking for more information. My thinking was WTF are they doing feeding blood to cows. If that wasn't bad enough there's some other nasty ish in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Current Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":264,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/05\/a_haitian_history_lesson\/","url_meta":{"origin":162,"position":5},"title":"A Haitian History Lesson","date":"January 5, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's an excellent article by Randall Robinson about Haiti and its fight for independence 200 years ago. Some highlights: St. Domingue (as Haiti was then called by the French) was at that time the most prosperous colonial possession of any European power. It created far greater wealth for France than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Race"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}