(February 3, 2013 at 12:29 pm)Zone Wrote: The ape men with the slightly less ugly face would have had a slightly greater chance of attracting a mate.

(Edited addition) We're apes, not peacocks. We share a common ancestor with chimpanzees.

Do Chimps Have A New Mate Every Year?

Quote:All the males in a community (group of chimpanzees that live in an area of forest though they don't always all travel together) will mate with each female when she is fertile. This way, any of them could be the offspring's father so none of them will kill the infant. The more dominant males tend to mate the closest to ovulation and therefore they father most of the babies.

If our hominid ancestors were like that, good looks wouldn't have come into it. The most dominant male in the group could have had the ugliest face but he'd still have fathered the most offspring.

Modern humans are inconsistent creatures because we have fashion trends where beauty ideals are concerned. When I was growing up in the 1950's curvy women with big breasts were the beauty ideal.

Jaynne Mansfield Anatomy

Quote:Because of her striking figure, newspapers in the 1950s routinely published her body measurements, which once led to evangelist Billy Graham exclaiming, "This country knows more about Jayne Mansfield's statistics than the Second Commandment."[5] Mansfield claimed a 41-inch bust line and a 22-inch waist when she made her Broadway debut in 1955, though some scholars dispute those figures.[285] She came to be known as "the Cleavage Queen" and "the Queen of Sex and Bosom".[297] Mansfield's breasts fluctuated in size, it was said, from her pregnancies and nursing her five children. Her smallest measurement was 40D (102 cm), which was constant throughout the 1950s, and her largest was 46DD (117 cm), measured by the press in 1967.[298] According to Playboy, her vital statistics were 40D-21-36 (102-53-91 cm) on her 5'6" (1.68 m) frame.[43] According to her autopsy report, she was 5'8" (1.73 m).[citation needed]

It has been claimed that her bosom was a major force behind the development of the 1950s brassieres, including the "Whirlpool bra", Cuties, the "Shutter bra", the "Action bra", latex pads, cleavage-revealing designs and uplift outline.[299][300] R. L. Rutsky[301] and Bill Osgerby[302] have claimed that it was Mansfield, along with Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, who made the bikini popular. Drawing on the Freudian concept of fetishism, British science fiction writer and socio-cultural commentator J. G. Ballard commented that Mae West, Mansfield and Monroe's breasts "loomed across the horizon of popular consciousness."[303] But, as the 1960s approached, according to Dave Kehr, the anatomy that had made her a star turned her into a joke.[285] In this decade, the female body ideal shifted to appreciate the slim waif-like features popularized by supermodel Twiggy, actress Audrey Hepburn and other, demarcating the demise of the busty blonde bombshells.[280][304][305]

It was tough being a female adolescent in those days. We started out hoping we wouldn't be flat chested until Twiggy was all the rage - we then ended up hoping our vital statistics wouldn't be any bigger than 32-23-32.

There are changing beauty ideals for human males as well from the female perspective. In reality, however, most people don't manage to live up to whatever ideal happens to be in fashion but they still manage to find partners and reproduce.

If you want to waste a few minutes just do google searches for things like European men/women ugly and then substitute French/German/Russian/Greek/Australian Aborigenes etc etc for Europeans.

Quote: When I was growing up in the 1950's curvy women with big breasts were the beauty ideal.

Why do you say "were?" In my case, they still are.

(February 3, 2013 at 1:36 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote: When I was growing up in the 1950's curvy women with big breasts were the beauty ideal.

Why do you say "were?" In my case, they still are.

I was talking about society's beauty ideal. You've just proved my point that humans who don't live up to whatever is in fashion for a society ideal still manage to find partners.

(February 3, 2013 at 1:27 pm)Confused Ape Wrote: (Edited addition) We're apes, not peacocks. We share a common ancestor with chimpanzees.

The same sexual selective prinicipal applies to us as applies to peacocks. Chimpanzees you'll notice have a damn ugly face while humans are not so ugly. Therefore there was a rearrgangement of facial structure to suit differing tastes of what would be considered attractive in a mate. What accounts for that is sexual selection.


Do Chimps Have A New Mate Every Year?

Quote:All the males in a community (group of chimpanzees that live in an area of forest though they don't always all travel together) will mate with each female when she is fertile. This way, any of them could be the offspring's father so none of them will kill the infant. The more dominant males tend to mate the closest to ovulation and therefore they father most of the babies.

But chimpanzees only have a brain that is one third our size therefore they may not have our sense of refined aesthetics. You'll notice that what all the other great apes have in common with each other along with a smaller brain capacity is a face like a slapped arse. Once you get to say homo erectus with a brain that is about half the size they seem to have developed higher standards.



It's an improvement but it still needs some work.

(February 3, 2013 at 1:27 pm)Confused Ape Wrote: If our hominid ancestors were like that, good looks wouldn't have come into it.

Clearly it must have been some kind of a factor if we don't have a chimp like face which there's no reason we couldn't have. The human face is smoother, more refined, less in the way of jutting jaws and protruding foreheads. There's been some sculpting there. And the only thing that would do that is sexual selection.

(February 3, 2013 at 1:27 pm)Confused Ape Wrote: The most dominant male in the group could have had the ugliest face but he'd still have fathered the most offspring.

Our ancestors weren't necessarily anything like chimpanzees, they may have had pair bonded in couples like we still generally have today in most cultures. But even chimps seem to have standards, I remember seeing once a female offering herself to a male but he declined because he didn't find her attractive.

(February 3, 2013 at 1:27 pm)Confused Ape Wrote: Modern humans are inconsistent creatures because we have fashion trends where beauty ideals are concerned. When I was growing up in the 1950's curvy women with big breasts were the beauty ideal.

That's why there's still quite a lot of variation. But if you compare a human face to a chimp or gorillas face you will note the differences. We're as closely related to a chimp as a gorilla but chimps and gorillas look closer to each other than they do to us.

I hate today's beauty standards. I do not find the outlines of rib cages attractive.

(February 3, 2013 at 2:03 pm)Zone Wrote: The same sexual selective prinicipal applies to us as applies to peacocks. Chimpanzees you'll notice have a damn ugly face while humans are not so ugly. Therefore there was a rearrgangement of facial structure to suit differing tastes of what would be considered attractive in a mate. What accounts for that is sexual selection.

I've been googling for information as to why we ended up with chins. There are several different ideas including sexual selection but nobody really knows. Maybe we'll have to wait until they find out before we can definitely say that the modern human face is all down to what our hominid ancestors found attractive.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of examples of what some female sci-fi fans find attractive.

Kern, a Star Trek Klingon

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Kurn.jpg

Todd, a Stargate Atlantis Wraith

http://images.wikia.com/stargate/images/...l_Todd.jpg

If the female fans didn't have to settle for ordinary, human looking men, sexual selection would result in many future humans having heavy brow ridges and bumpy foreheads.

PS: I rather fancy Klingons, myself.

But that's clealy not the kind of face we have so they can't have been in majority. We easily could have ended up with faces like those had that been the preference.

(February 3, 2013 at 6:13 pm)Zone Wrote: But that's clealy not the kind of face we have so they can't have been in majority. We easily could have ended up with faces like those had that been the preference.

I'm going to wait until somebody figures out the real reason why we've got chins rather than making a decision that it was all down to sexual selection. In the meantime I can be sad that evolution didn't result in us looking like Klingons.

(February 2, 2013 at 6:42 pm)Zone Wrote: The thing about these ancestors is that they're the ugliest sons of bitches you ever did see. Is a good thing we evolved better lookingness.

We had to due to evolutionary pressure from lack of beer goggles.

Is it just me or do they all look like an artist's impression of various legendary Zen masters?