• Question: have men always had facial hair?

    Asked by anon-195245 to James, Ed, Anthony on 11 Jan 2019.
    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 11 Jan 2019:


      We don’t really know as beards don’t fossilize. As far as we have pictures or statues we can see beards. Somewhere between splitting from the chimp ancestor we lost most of our body hair apart from a few places including the beard in men.

      The reasons are probably to due with sexual selection. Either a beard makes men more attractive (for some reason), or it makes them look more dominant to other men. The fashion of beards has changed throughout time and in different parts of the world.

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