Faces Of Our Ancestors

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(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?

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.

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.

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.

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.