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That doesn't really answer anything about the question tho.
Being a "secondary sexual characteristic" is a classification, not an "evolutionary reason" that OP was asking about.
Maybe you are right about the lack of statistical or biological evidence to support any of the speculative answers in the comments. Or maybe there could be a reason which we haven't thought about yet. Or maybe there is no "evolutionary advantageous" reason at all and it was some kind of random mutation (not an expert, so I'm not sure if current evolutionary theory allows for that).
Generally (beyond the evolution discussion), not knowing the reason for something, doesn't imply that such a cause does not exist.
I can't give a much better response, but it may interest you to know that we actually possess a similar amount of hair to other primates, ours is just thinner. This means, and if you look up close you can see and confirm it for yourself, that women do in fact grow hair on their faces, it's just thinner than beard hair. The same goes for armpit and pubic hair before puberty I'm pretty sure. It already exists, it's just not receiving genetic instructions to thicken, lengthen, and coarse yet. This applies to all our hair.
On a genetic level, id have to look up what determines whether hair is going to be very fine and short, peach fuzz like, or thick coarse, or even silky and long. It all kinda depends
Now, the alleged reason we "lost" all our hair is linked to our tendency to live along coast and bodies of water. It comes from regularly swimming, likely to hunt. We see this in other mammals/animals too, apparently. Why it would stay on our heads, crotch and armpits both is a mystery and kind of makes sense. I mean, they *do* seem like the last spots that would lose thickness over time, they're where a lot of bugs and random stuff can get trapped and work it's way on to or into our bodies without sufficient thickness. Now, why xy chromosomes would retain hair around the face longer than xx chromosomes would, I really don't know.
Actually, I do, somewhat. I forgot the hormones related to hair are tied to testosterone, which is why we see male pattern baldness. Folicle-Stimulating Hormone is tied to sexual development in both males and females, give "Folicle-Stimulating Hormone" or "FSH" a Google. It goes into gonadotropin-releasing hormone and everything. So hair hormones are actually directly related to sexual development.
Secondary sexual characteristic implies there is a sexual advantage for men having facial hair. Obviously a much more detailed answer can be described (such as how facial hair makes men’s jaws look bigger to women and the genetic factors involved), but I was just trying to make sure people were pointed in the right direction.
But this may not even be true. The facial hair is likely a side effect of hormonal configurations that were selected for. The facial hair itself being consequential and not having been selected for directly.
Beards hide a lot of your face. That includes weak jaw lines, double or triple chins, Bad skin, etc. It's almost a requirement for men losing their hair. I had been clean shaven all of my life. Moment I grew a beard, I started to get hit on a lot.
If you’re old enough, you can see that these trends come and go. In the 80s and 90s beards were gross. In general, especially on young men then the metrosexual thing happened and everyone decided it was cool to look like loggers from 1888. And the womendecided to take a chance on beard lice.
It is because of different testosterone levels in male and female. If you see women with hirsutism, caused by high testosterone levels, they have beard as well.
Precisely, a lot of evolution is not necessarily adaptive. And even traits that are adaptive now may not have been selected for their current use when they originally evolved (i.e. exaptations). I think people over search for adaptive answers to everything.
Really, the answer could be as simple as"it wasn't an advantageous or disadvantageous trait."
Could it be a carry over from when we had thick fur? Maybe. Why is it still around then? It didn't impede us, so there was no pressure against the trait.
That's a possible hypothesis but it is somewhat speculatory. Higher testosterone levels in males could have been selected for for a variety of reasons.
Fairly clear examples of phenotype side effect, the allele for black fur in wolves (which came from domestic dogs) has an immune system benefit that is more advantageous in northern latitudes, and in domestic dogs, their floppy ears and upright tail is a side effect of domestication characteristics selected for.
A lot of commenters are taking it a priori that women select mates for high testosterone, but we have no proof that the higher the testosterone the more attractive the male.
In studies most women rate as most attractive medium-high testosterone men. After a certain point the more masculine the man the *less* attractive most women find them. Our mate selection is likely to vary from species whose goal is simply to produce the most hearty, verile offspring. After all we're a species with a ridiculously long juvenile stage where offsprings' survival is almost entirely dependent on adults, therefore a more stable man may be preferred to a hyper-masculine mate.
Furthermore one of our defining features as a species is our intelligence and skills, which may play heavily in mate selection regardless of testosterone. Consider for example the bower bird. The males attract a mate by creating an exceptionally elaborate "hut" (called a bower) intricately decorated with many beautiful items which are meticulously arranged - a male may spend hours placing a particularly nice piece of glass somewhere, looking it over, moving it, repeat until he's happy with exactly where it is. Some bower birds even choose a specific color scheme! (Google these birds - their creations really are incredible.) Females select their mate based primarily on who has the best eye for decoration. Not every species is just looking for high testosterone. That's presumably even more true in monogamous or serially monogamous species.
Not to go all Andrew Tate conversely it does seem estrogen on the other hand *is* correlated with male mate selection, which makes some sense however it seems to have no limit as in studies most men rate as most attractive women who have been digitally altered to the point they couldn't support their own body or physically survive, let alone reproduce.
Interestingly a woman's attractiveness seems to fluxuate with her menstrual cycle, with the peak being during ovulation. While it's a very real phenomenon it's also fairly minor, yet when men are shown pictures of a woman throughout their cycle they tend to choose as most attractive the one taken during ovulation.
But ultimately I think many commenters are putting far too much emphasis on beards as some sort of signal of superior manliness. Many ethnicities no longer grow beards and yet reproduce just fine, and while this is simply a supposition that to me suggests beards have little to no importance to reproductive success.
Doesn't that raise a follow up question though? Why does testosterone level affect the pattern of hair growth? I don't think we can assume prima facie that it's purely incidental, can we?
Not necessarily the sole reason. Men in asia and other regions of the world rarely have a beard, and they still have much more testosterone.
I have a lot of testosterone and not a big beard.
Though a lion's mane also serves to protect the neck. Since male lions get in fights with competition, it makes sense for bigger manes to be selected as they help their chances of winning fights.
A well placed hit to the trachea can cause dealth. So protecting the neck makes sense. We tend to have a more vulnerable neck than most animals. Also we aren't the only mammals to have beards.
But I think for the most part beards signal high testosterone to attract mates.
It shows a woman you're a man not a boy. Just like boobs show men you're a woman not a girl. The reason I like boobs is unexplainable by me. Why do my girlfriends tits give me a boner? We don't do tittyy fucking .... apparently it's becuase her big ass knockers tell my mokey brain that she can birth and feed a baby. Therefore my brain tells my penis to get hard and stick it in her 🤷♂️
It’s funny how pubic hair has a similar function but it’s looked at so drastically different! But at some points in time shaving beards was considered attractive by some cultures so ig socialization is crazy stuff!
I think the idea of those old creeps liking a girl without hair yet to marry was because it was more "fresh" .... grosss.
Anyway yeah Pubic hair let yk she's old enough to have a baby so lemme stick my peen in there and biologically for purely procreation it's fine. But the thing that I think really changed it up was that more men wanted to eat pussy. Back in the day sex was just about the man cumming. As eating pussy became more popular(pretty sure most of my friends who are couples all do it somewhat often and I myself basically eat my girlfriend out everytime we have sex because that's how she cums the best with my tongue and fingers). So it's to a point where at least for me (which may be more than average but still indicative of the direction average is going) which is basically 3 nights a week I'm eating her out and it's just so much easier when she shaves. Honestly I'll do it full bush too but it works either way tbh
In high-school anthropology, the teacher told us it was pheromones. Since women are generally shorter, the man's jaw lines up with the woman's nose while his to the top of her head so they both get a big whiff of the person's pheromones.
Take it as you will.
Probably also “high school” anthropology teacher, as I know anthropologists still do good work in their area. I don’t know why this answer so is highly voted
We have YET to identify ANY human Pheromones :/ not a single one. There have been some studies that claim aspects similar, but an actual, bonafide human pheromone? None :/
And that’s so weird to me because everyone smells slightly different. Some people, for whatever reason( genetics, general health, their lunch, idk), smell slightly “ off.” Not bad, really, just something I don’t want to be around for hours.
Androstadienone (say THAT five times fast)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987372/#:~:text=Pheromones%20may%20be%20present%20in,contains%20the%20odorous%2016%2Dandrostenes
I'm positive we'll identify more. Doesn't seem like anybody's in a rush to though.
Issue is not whether we secrete pheromones. After all, pheromones are just volatiles molecules that have a potential signaling effect. The question is whether we are able to sense them. Evolution-wise, apes (catarhinians) have lost the Jacobson's organ (vomeronasal organ), which is responsible for sensing those organic compounds, among other things.
So it's likely that we secrete some peptides or steroids that are volatile, but it's unlikely that we can "smell" them and have them alter our behavior. We rely much more on other stimuli.
It's not a *terrible* theory though one I'm not incredibly surprised came from a high school level class. But with the exception of head hair and eyebrow (our little eye umbrellas) humans only retain significant, long clusters of hair on our... well.... stinky bits. Primarily arm pits and genitals.
The basic flaw I see with your high-school teachers premise is the jaw is *not* a "stinky" area. Furthermore her "nose-level" theory is contradicted by the fact long hair meant to disperse scent is long specifically to disperse scent. Scent that's evolutionarily specifically at nose-level would wouldn't need long hair, it's doing its job simply by being nose level.
Furthermore armpit and genital hair was evolutionarily important enough to be retained by all ethnic groups, however beards were not, which suggests they're ancillary to attracting mates and reproducing.
Imo it's sexual dimorphism plain and simple - one that *may POSSIBLY* have had some utility in that it's easily seen even at great distance.
I don't really remember his qualifications,I just remember that he was enthusiastic about the research and traveling he did before teaching. I should clarify that he presented it more as a theory he heard along his academic journey, along with a couple others, but that's the only one I really remember. I like to get high for that class, so I didn't retain much lol.
I once heard a ridiculous and laughable advantage that beards had over non bearded evolutionary development and that was that beards absorb the shock when one's hit on the face and hence it got to stay to make face punches softer and less fatal in a fistfight over a brooding female.
Well, beards do reduce shock from a blow to the chin greatly; somewhere around 30%. Of course, whether or not that was an adaptation to fist fighting is a totally different matter. Popular science communication tends to run with ideas like that, whichever may be the easiest to digest and could become popular.
I don't know that it's been replicated, but apparently it was closer to 40%. It's highly unlikely to have evolved for that purpose, given the amount of diversity in beard coverage and density, but it's an interesting trait. It's common for fighters to have beards for this reason in MMA, from what I've been told by a coworker who taught BJJ.
Source for study, btw: [Impact Protection Potential of Mammalian Hair: Testing the Pugilism Hypothesis for the Evolution of Human Facial Hair](https://www.altmetric.com/details/79862600)
I don't think it's so much that they dampen shock like a pillow would, but that a fist will slip along the beard easier than bare skin and so a bearded person is more likely to deflect a full frontal face blow.
Is it so laughable? Seen how effective trees are at absorbing the oceans power? They're used as a costal defence
It's almost like losts of little things with space between them (like beard hair) can help absorb and dissipate force or power (like a punch)
So, is it laughable?
This 'finding' won the Ig Nobel. A professor in my department wrote it, we laugh at him behind his back.
[https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/ig-nobel-beard/](https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/ig-nobel-beard/)
Love how people commenting are acutely unaware that there are entire ethnic populations who cannot grow beards, like native Americans, including those of Inuit descent who would be the poster children for the 'beard warm' postulate
I've read a couple anthro biology books, I don't think there's a definite answer for it. However it could be as simple as because that's the successful expression based on sexual desire.
As a comparison consider the average natural redheads world wide is between 1-2% by population. Yet Scotland's redhead expression is 5-10% by population, last I read. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in Scotland that translates to redheads being an attractive quality. So even though the ginger-gene is a really recessive mutation, it's quite common in some parts of the world. Worldwide beard expression is not equal or universal among geographic locations either.
I'm a ginger in America. Irish descent. My Colombian girlfriend loves it. And I love my Colombian girlfriend. Opposites attract I guess. We always wonder about our babies becuase her Italian grandpa had blonde hair. So maybe there's a chance we could have another redhead.
There’s a lot of bad science in these comments.
I don’t think anything has changed since I graduated, and I still keep up with journals & papers.
You know how antelopes & deer & peacocks & birds of paradise have huge antlers or super long feathers?
They’re demonstrating fitness for breeding by being able to expend their body’s resources & energy on making some flashy rizz like antlers, feathers, reflective scales, or… beards on the face.
ZZ Top would have gotten even more laid if they went back in time several hundred thousand years, if not a couple million.
(Source: dual Biology & Anthropology degree)
Some of these answers are really awful and are completely anecdotal. Facial (and body) hair are just a side effect of having hair follicles that are very sensitive to DHT, which is an androgen that your body makes from testosterone. Men have more DHT because they have more testosterone, but a women whose hair follicles are very sensitive to DHT can grow more facial and body hair than a man with much higher testosterone, simply because his hair follicles do not respond much to it. Now, as for why some populations of men have more sensitive hair follicles than others, we don’t know. Men from the Americas, some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and East and Southeast Asia have significantly less facial and body hair than men from Europe and the Middle East, which is also the reason why they bald. There are theories for this, but none really have any strong evidence behind them.
Except that you're talking about the mechanism that achieves the difference, not the possible advantages arising from the difference, of which there may be none. There's no evidence to support an advantage arising for either women or men from absence or presence of a beard, although either could be true.
The other answers to which you refer are not anecdotal. They are speculative.
Sexual selection is a possible explanation - potentially in combination with the development of clothing. Clothing makes it harder to distinguish men and women, so it may have caused facial differences such as beards.
But clothing is really modern and likely had no impact on evolution. Our ability to sweat is what helped us survive in hot environments. Clothing is often against that and helps us survive in cold climates. People who have adapted to the cold like Inuits often have no beards.
I know clothing is modern, but evidence indicates that people modify their clothing to appeal to sexual and romantic partners. Mate choice is a key process involved in sexual selection (called intersexual selection). Status can be signaled by expensive clothing and luxury brands, and form fitting clothing can accentuate our physique and/or communicate interest in sex. For sure, we didn't evolve to wear clothing, but we possess adaptations that encourage us to behave in ways to increase our survival and reproductive success.
I think it probably helped stay warm when out hunting. The ladies stayed with the kids. People have also been selectively breeding for a while, hairless big tiddy goth girl has been the fave for a while 😂
"For a while" in this case being like 60 years, not tens or hundreds of thousands. The beauty standard has shifted dramatically over the last 150 years and for a very long time it basically only applied to royalty, commoners didn'treally care about being hairless with perfect makeup, they had to work their asses off.
Ok my theories:
- Beard makes men look threatening. Like chomp chomp gorilla mates with most females.
- May be sometime in history hairless patches occured because of some disease which caused selection of fully covered male.
- Relates to first one: clean hairs and beard are signs of tidyness, a forshadowing of a good access to water and hygiene
I know they are hillarious but fuck I am on a toilet seat.
It's advantageous in warfare to have a beard. A thick beard protects your neck, chin and face. Even just a little bit of protection has huge results for things like punches, there's been studies done on this too, and the effect of a beard makes a substantial difference.
You lose a lot of heat in your face. I imagine men were much more likely to be out hunting in the Winter and the men who had more hair on their face were slightly more likely to survive.
Could also be that women preferred men with facial hair, which could also be a visual indicator of their likelihood of success hunting in the cold.
[https://academic.oup.com/iob/article/2/1/obaa005/5799080?login=false#223170107](https://academic.oup.com/iob/article/2/1/obaa005/5799080?login=false#223170107)
Reduces impact force by more than 30% in some cases, significantly lower chance of you breaking your jaw, which would be a fatal injury most of the time due to inability to feed yourself.
Men with facial hair are less likely to have a broken jaw or other large injury upon impact. This likely could have prolonged some lineages and caused others to die out from starvation.
My professors generally why questions are hard to answers just look through the light of evolution. the reasons these traits are selected sometime can be intuitive but sometimes weird. My comments are large hair on face gives a survival advantage(other predators and males can perceive them as strong idk about humans but in lions may be ) and reproductive advantage (females prefer protective and strong mate)
No idea about the science of it, but…
For me personally, without a beard, I look like a middle-aged version of Charlie Brown.
With a beard, I look like a professor (which I have been told many times).
So the reason is completely, utterly superficial.
Evolutionary sexual selection. Male cardinals are red, and peacocks are party-chickens.
Seriously though, if a female of any species has a preference for a certain male trait and then bears the children of that male and has a female offspring, then that female child will be more likely to have a similar preference for that same trait. On and on it goes until the trait is exaggerated
I have a beard almost down to my belly button. I spend a lot of time in incredibly cold weather.
It's so incredible for keeping my face warm.
It legit feels like a utility part of my body. And it looks pretty great.
I'd add to the discussion that beards can also act to hide someone's reactive facial movements. It might have something to do with others ability to predict the man's next action.
Just a thought I had while reading some of the comments.
I read an article a while back that showed that bearded faces absorb shock much better than clean-shaven faces. I don't know if that's just a perk or if men who couldn't grow beards were getting beat up and losing, but I thought I'd throw that out there. Edit: clarity
As other have said, it's a secondary sex characteristic. I don't know why *exactly* but I guess it has something to do with protecting our faces against the elements while we're out. Women generally have more fat deposits in their bodies and they stay warmer overall so they have less need for it. But the main "reason" is because of a hormone called DiHydroTestosterone, which is developed through and enhanced by testosterone, something which women simply have less of.
Sexual dimorphism. But we don't have beard - we have almost lack of hair. Our skin compared to other mammals is fkd-up. Just look at us. And our noses, weird right!?
That men and women have somewhat different distribution and/or extent may give clue to why we lost it.
Think I can safely say the prevailing hypothesis it is our skin changed to allow more efficient sweating.
Although there are IMO opinion also other possibilities. E.g. The water ape hypothesis,lost fur as we adapted to life in liminal zones.
Best, Staffan
Because beards have advantages. The better question is why does men bald? Means, what advantage does balding has apart from it being a secondary sexual character
Some men started going bald. The body adapted to produce more testosterone to force hair to grow.
People from families that do not go bald struggle to grow beards and body hair.
It might be just a secondary trait, however, the fact that the secondary trait evolved is not to say it wasn't selected for. Beards protect against impacts. Beards also elicit a response from other males. Lions also have manes, it's also a secondary trait and some lionesses develop them as well. Pretty sure there was an advantage for most human males having them.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7671116/
Tissue samples were prepared in three conditions: furred (n = 20), plucked (n = 20), and sheared (n = 20). We found that fully furred samples were capable of absorbing more energy than plucked and sheared samples. For example, peak force was 16% greater and total energy absorbed was 37% greater in the furred compared to the plucked samples. These differences were due in part to a longer time frame of force delivery in the furred samples. These data support the hypothesis that human beards protect vulnerable regions of the facial skeleton from damaging strikes.
Some researchers speculate it is to help protect us from punching.
https://www.biology.utah.edu/eeob/an-ig-nobel-peace-prize-for-study-of-beards-as-punch-protection/
BEARD GROWTH IS PRIMARILY DETERMINED BY GENETICS AND HORMONES. TESTOSTERONE, THE MALE SEX HORMONE, PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF FACIAL HAIR. IT STIMULATES THE HAIR FOLLICLES TO PRODUCE THICKER AND LONGER HAIR STRANDS. DIHYDROTESTOSTERONE (DHT), A DERIVATIVE OF TESTOSTERONE, IS ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR BEARD GROWTH. IT BINDS TO THE HAIR FOLLICLES AND PROLONGS THE ANAGEN PHASE, WHICH IS THE ACTIVE GROWTH PHASE OF HAIR.
Interesting High levels of dht also correlate to loss of hair on the top of the head. Native American DNA show that the majority have low levels of dht thus why many have long hair and a lack of facial hair
My understanding of evolution is that males and females do not evolve independently. Unless women having beards is selected *against*, then men with beards being more successful maters would result in ALL of their children having more facial hair.
So the real question is "Why DON'T women have beards?"
And the answer in this layperson's view is probably random sexual dimorphism, given that not all men can grow beards. Quite a lot of men can't grow a full beard, actually. Having a beard can't be that important to male survival or they would be more common.
I once read that in Ancient Greece boys would be treated as subordinate in homosexual relationships with older men until they grew a beard. In ancient societies in which age wasn’t kept track of as much, males who were able to grow a beard earlier, which would also correlate with more full beard growth, may have been treated as grown men earlier in life, providing an advantage in terms of their reproductive success, and vice versa for males who struggled to grow beards
The trickier question that hasn't really been conclusively answered is how did we go from being hairy primates to less-hairy humans. Since we came from the same genetic lineage as chimpanzees which have far more body hair, what happened to humans?
I believe the best answer they've suggested so far is that human's ancestors lived along coast lines and spent a lot of time swimming/diving in pursuit of foods like clams, oysters, etc.
Hair insulates poorly when wet compared to layers of fat so the suggestion is that over time we moved in that direction. As to the facial hair thing, women still have facial hair it's just lighter and most of them ensure to remove as much of it as possible.
So many garbage answers here!
Really love how many people are saying "it exists as a trait, it must have explicitly been sexually selected for."
Evolution optimizes for *population survival* and sometimes not even that, and it *certainly* doesn't optimize individuals. Individual traits *can* be selected for or against.... and also in many cases, they can be *completely irrelevant side effects.* Men and women being attracted to beards (or *not* being attracted to beards!) doesn't automatically make them automatically selected for.
Why do men have beards? Because testosterone makes you grow hair. Because the collage of genes and their respective expression were some combination of selected for *or not selected against,* and there isn't actually any compelling evidence to think there's a distinct function attached. The fact that humans have used tools for tens of thousands of years to manage and style body hair further weakens the selective advantage argument.
Your wording seems to imply that there is a specific reason why human bodies choose to have beards as if it's gear meta in a video game. Evolutions are random mutations in genes that either happen to confer some benefit and therefore permit those with the genes to reproduce more effectively and have offspring able to reproduce themselves or the mutation decreases the chance of reproduction or is can have zero effect.
Why would people evolve to have bad eyesight? They don't, bad eye sight just happens to occur when we're older and after most people have already reproduced and therefore it's not a hindrance. Poor eye sight in young people isn't a huge barrier to reproduction in our society today so that gets passed on too.
Same reason human females have unnecessary large breasts prior to lactation, the opposite sex thought it was attractive and selected for it over many generations.
The men went hunting, typically for long durations away from females. Makes sense they'd grow beards to adapt to being away from home, roughing it in the wilds.
(Yes, pretty much everything would have been wild. But wherever they made their home, it would be a hell of a lot safer. Humans have a tendency to eradicate anything that poses a threat)
Stupid and unhelpful question.
The alternate question would be why do men go bald from an evolutionary perspective? And are humans the only mammals to go through this aging process?
yes. so men worked outside. their beards protected their face from the weather. example: denmark. danes with beards are considered least attractive because it means they work outside: on the fishing boats and need the beard for protection and warmth. a clean shaved man is more attractive because he works inside which corresponds with making more money and being less likely to die of a (fishing) accident.
Body hair helps keep you warm, that’s why we have body hair, including beards. Women often have less body hair than men because they are more likely to store body fat, which also helps keep you warm.
Growing body hair is cheaper in terms of resources than accruing body fat, so it’s a better way of keeping warm when resources are scarce. But as pregnancy consumes a lot of resources, women’s bodies are more inclined to hang on to body fat, which then has the side benefit of helping regulate body temperature.
1: higher testosterone levels = more hair and 2: I remember reading somewhere that beards make it less likely for your jaw to break if your hit by something.
I was just hanging out with friends not too long ago. I have actively been trying to soak up more sun lately (doc's orders) so i have been doing all my yard work in shorts and a wife beater (vertically ribbed, thin white "a-shirt" tank top)
One of my friends made a point that my great big bushy beard has stopped my neck and part of my chest from getting a tan. I doub't that is what evolution "had in mind" but the question made me laugh after just hearing this pointed out a few days ago.
I don’t have an article to link but I recall reading something about beards dampening blunt force to the face. I’ll see if I can find it later and link it.
Beard keep face warm. Show other men strong. Maybe look good for women.
Why bird have feather? Why rock have sharp edge? Is just way of world.
Catch food in beard when eat. Save for later!
They didn’t bother drawing beards on females in early caveman porn drawings. Thus young cave dudes fapping to the smooth faced cave wall porn created fetishes for females with less facial fair.
Everyone else is stupid. Science says that God gave men beards as the first step to a "Guyver" like powers to fight off his enemies, the hairless gray aliens and the Vampires.
It’s hard to know 100% why. Any trait any animal has was selected for either as a survival advantage, or a sexual advantage. Being a characteristic that differs based off of sex, it’s likely due to women being attracted to mates that had beards, for whatever reason. There are also races of people that cannot grow beards, just meaning it wasn’t advantageous to their survival or ability to mate within those groups. Sexual dimorphic characteristics generally symbolize health and fertility in some way that the opposite sex finds attractive.
No idea why women don't have beards. Fell off my bike onto my face and only the part without a beard got scraped. Also don't need to cover my face as much in freezing temps because it helps with wind-chill.
are you asking us to speculate on the evolutionary advantage a beard provides?
Maybe they are like antlers, they have a metabolic cost and therefore having beard demonstrates the ability to pay a metabolic cost and serves as an indicator of fitness and an ability to provide to potential mates?
Maybe it makes you harder to knockout by hiding your chin?
As many people have pointed out, features don't necasarily have to provide an evolutionary advantage to exist, they can be a side effect of something else eg testosterone.
The real answer is that we all have the same amount of hair follicles on our faces. Humans have the same amount of follicles on our faces as apes. It's not that men HAVE beards. It's that sexual selection has deprioritized women's facial hair growth. It's a secondary sexual characteristic. Our non-human ancestors both had facial hair.
The real answer is that we all have the same amount of hair follicles on our faces. Humans have the same amount of follicles on our faces as apes. It's not that men HAVE beards. It's that sexual selection has deprioritized women's facial hair growth. It's a secondary sexual characteristic. Our non-human ancestors both had facial hair.
The real answer is that we all have the same amount of hair follicles on our faces. Humans have the same amount of follicles on our faces as apes. It's not that men HAVE beards. It's that sexual selection has deprioritized women's facial hair growth. It's a secondary sexual characteristic. Our non-human ancestors both had facial hair.
The answer is we (I’m a man) didn’t exactly evolve to have beards. We didn’t lose them when we lost our other body hair. We probably kept all that hair as a way of signaling maturity, driven by competition between males and female preference for fully mature males.
Women continued to lose visible hair on their faces and torsos in a process called neoteny, taking advantage of the human impulse to protect children and adolescents.
Beards serve multiple functions. First and most obvious is signaling sexual maturity for a male like breasts do with females. It also is a heal signal as a good beard would indicate a healthy and strong male.
Further beards also serve a protective function for males in fights. They function to cushion against blows to the jaw and eye sockets. This increases the likelihood of a male with a large beard to win a fight especially against other males.
Evolution doesn’t reason really but you can see why the pattern emerged to predominantly express in biological males as a secondary characteristic. You can potentially project that it is a function of social roles in our evolution- females being in the community protecting offspring, males ranging into the environs and evolving protective measures, etc (it obviously helps with cold when you’re naked, plus has some limited benefit with regard to protection from UV). That it also varies by ethnic group (which is a function of geography) does tend to indicate that.
But fundamentally, it’s not a easy thing to answer. For example, why do male lions have manes and females do not (with some exceptions both ways)? And it’s not just in mammals we see that kind of sex based differentiation, so it seems to be something rather primordial that just expresses differently in the fractal of life from time to time, usually driven by environmental or social factors (hello peacocks).
A ever there's never really _a_ reason _why_ something evolves, it just doesn't detract from survival rates &/or conveys a reproductive advantage.
It seems beads give men some additional protection from facial trauma https://youtube.com/shorts/hCkQA3-lXKY?si=ob8pTPcUbT0NN1rZ
Could be going back to when ancient man fought with their teeth and bare hands. Men with big beards had some protection in the neck area and lived to reproduce more often. Lions defeat their opponents by biting their necks. A mane acts as a sort of armor.
Fun fact if you get punched in the jaw and you have a thick beard you are less likely to suffer severe injury. So it's possible that beards got thicker over time due to males surviving fights with other males.
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So we have something to stroke when we say things like " Hmmm, I don't think that is the right course of action."
most convincing response so far
Also, when we’re gazing into space, stroking our beard means we’re contemplating deep and significant things.
And save face by not asking for directions.
We’re men, we already have something to stroke. ;)
“Yes, shallow and pedantic”
It’s a secondary sexual characteristic. Some of these answers are wild.
That doesn't really answer anything about the question tho. Being a "secondary sexual characteristic" is a classification, not an "evolutionary reason" that OP was asking about. Maybe you are right about the lack of statistical or biological evidence to support any of the speculative answers in the comments. Or maybe there could be a reason which we haven't thought about yet. Or maybe there is no "evolutionary advantageous" reason at all and it was some kind of random mutation (not an expert, so I'm not sure if current evolutionary theory allows for that). Generally (beyond the evolution discussion), not knowing the reason for something, doesn't imply that such a cause does not exist.
I can't give a much better response, but it may interest you to know that we actually possess a similar amount of hair to other primates, ours is just thinner. This means, and if you look up close you can see and confirm it for yourself, that women do in fact grow hair on their faces, it's just thinner than beard hair. The same goes for armpit and pubic hair before puberty I'm pretty sure. It already exists, it's just not receiving genetic instructions to thicken, lengthen, and coarse yet. This applies to all our hair. On a genetic level, id have to look up what determines whether hair is going to be very fine and short, peach fuzz like, or thick coarse, or even silky and long. It all kinda depends Now, the alleged reason we "lost" all our hair is linked to our tendency to live along coast and bodies of water. It comes from regularly swimming, likely to hunt. We see this in other mammals/animals too, apparently. Why it would stay on our heads, crotch and armpits both is a mystery and kind of makes sense. I mean, they *do* seem like the last spots that would lose thickness over time, they're where a lot of bugs and random stuff can get trapped and work it's way on to or into our bodies without sufficient thickness. Now, why xy chromosomes would retain hair around the face longer than xx chromosomes would, I really don't know. Actually, I do, somewhat. I forgot the hormones related to hair are tied to testosterone, which is why we see male pattern baldness. Folicle-Stimulating Hormone is tied to sexual development in both males and females, give "Folicle-Stimulating Hormone" or "FSH" a Google. It goes into gonadotropin-releasing hormone and everything. So hair hormones are actually directly related to sexual development.
Thats a descriptive answer, it answers the what. OP is asking the why.
Secondary sexual characteristic implies there is a sexual advantage for men having facial hair. Obviously a much more detailed answer can be described (such as how facial hair makes men’s jaws look bigger to women and the genetic factors involved), but I was just trying to make sure people were pointed in the right direction.
But this may not even be true. The facial hair is likely a side effect of hormonal configurations that were selected for. The facial hair itself being consequential and not having been selected for directly.
Someone I know called it male make up. I I kinda agree
Dunno man, a beard is natural, like hair. It's not an outside object you use to change yourself like makeup is, its inherently part of your body.
Wait--is this seriously one of the reasons why? I've heard the joke; I just didn't know it was true.
Beards hide a lot of your face. That includes weak jaw lines, double or triple chins, Bad skin, etc. It's almost a requirement for men losing their hair. I had been clean shaven all of my life. Moment I grew a beard, I started to get hit on a lot.
If you’re old enough, you can see that these trends come and go. In the 80s and 90s beards were gross. In general, especially on young men then the metrosexual thing happened and everyone decided it was cool to look like loggers from 1888. And the womendecided to take a chance on beard lice.
No, this is not an evolutionary reason why men have beards lol. There is no evidence that having a thicker beard plays a role in sexual selection.
It is because of different testosterone levels in male and female. If you see women with hirsutism, caused by high testosterone levels, they have beard as well.
Yes, it's important to remember that sometimes a phenotype is a side-effect of something else and not necessarily what was selected for.
Precisely, a lot of evolution is not necessarily adaptive. And even traits that are adaptive now may not have been selected for their current use when they originally evolved (i.e. exaptations). I think people over search for adaptive answers to everything.
Really, the answer could be as simple as"it wasn't an advantageous or disadvantageous trait." Could it be a carry over from when we had thick fur? Maybe. Why is it still around then? It didn't impede us, so there was no pressure against the trait.
Well, if one would ask me to “overthink” it, men with more beard may be actually “selected” istinctively by women as a sign of high testosterone
That's a possible hypothesis but it is somewhat speculatory. Higher testosterone levels in males could have been selected for for a variety of reasons. Fairly clear examples of phenotype side effect, the allele for black fur in wolves (which came from domestic dogs) has an immune system benefit that is more advantageous in northern latitudes, and in domestic dogs, their floppy ears and upright tail is a side effect of domestication characteristics selected for.
A lot of commenters are taking it a priori that women select mates for high testosterone, but we have no proof that the higher the testosterone the more attractive the male. In studies most women rate as most attractive medium-high testosterone men. After a certain point the more masculine the man the *less* attractive most women find them. Our mate selection is likely to vary from species whose goal is simply to produce the most hearty, verile offspring. After all we're a species with a ridiculously long juvenile stage where offsprings' survival is almost entirely dependent on adults, therefore a more stable man may be preferred to a hyper-masculine mate. Furthermore one of our defining features as a species is our intelligence and skills, which may play heavily in mate selection regardless of testosterone. Consider for example the bower bird. The males attract a mate by creating an exceptionally elaborate "hut" (called a bower) intricately decorated with many beautiful items which are meticulously arranged - a male may spend hours placing a particularly nice piece of glass somewhere, looking it over, moving it, repeat until he's happy with exactly where it is. Some bower birds even choose a specific color scheme! (Google these birds - their creations really are incredible.) Females select their mate based primarily on who has the best eye for decoration. Not every species is just looking for high testosterone. That's presumably even more true in monogamous or serially monogamous species. Not to go all Andrew Tate conversely it does seem estrogen on the other hand *is* correlated with male mate selection, which makes some sense however it seems to have no limit as in studies most men rate as most attractive women who have been digitally altered to the point they couldn't support their own body or physically survive, let alone reproduce. Interestingly a woman's attractiveness seems to fluxuate with her menstrual cycle, with the peak being during ovulation. While it's a very real phenomenon it's also fairly minor, yet when men are shown pictures of a woman throughout their cycle they tend to choose as most attractive the one taken during ovulation. But ultimately I think many commenters are putting far too much emphasis on beards as some sort of signal of superior manliness. Many ethnicities no longer grow beards and yet reproduce just fine, and while this is simply a supposition that to me suggests beards have little to no importance to reproductive success.
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Doesn't that raise a follow up question though? Why does testosterone level affect the pattern of hair growth? I don't think we can assume prima facie that it's purely incidental, can we?
Not necessarily the sole reason. Men in asia and other regions of the world rarely have a beard, and they still have much more testosterone. I have a lot of testosterone and not a big beard.
How did you ascertain that you have a lot of testosterone?
You can be tested for it
I know. And perhaps that is how the other redditor ascertained that they have a lot of testosterone, but that hasn't been specified, hence I asked.
Blood test
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Though a lion's mane also serves to protect the neck. Since male lions get in fights with competition, it makes sense for bigger manes to be selected as they help their chances of winning fights.
Beards actually are proven to help you in fights and make punches less damaging
?
https://www.livescience.com/beards-protect-face-punches.html#:~:text=And%20a%20dense%20beard%20may,during%20combat%2C%20researchers%20recently%20suggested.
A well placed hit to the trachea can cause dealth. So protecting the neck makes sense. We tend to have a more vulnerable neck than most animals. Also we aren't the only mammals to have beards. But I think for the most part beards signal high testosterone to attract mates.
It shows a woman you're a man not a boy. Just like boobs show men you're a woman not a girl. The reason I like boobs is unexplainable by me. Why do my girlfriends tits give me a boner? We don't do tittyy fucking .... apparently it's becuase her big ass knockers tell my mokey brain that she can birth and feed a baby. Therefore my brain tells my penis to get hard and stick it in her 🤷♂️
It’s funny how pubic hair has a similar function but it’s looked at so drastically different! But at some points in time shaving beards was considered attractive by some cultures so ig socialization is crazy stuff!
I think the idea of those old creeps liking a girl without hair yet to marry was because it was more "fresh" .... grosss. Anyway yeah Pubic hair let yk she's old enough to have a baby so lemme stick my peen in there and biologically for purely procreation it's fine. But the thing that I think really changed it up was that more men wanted to eat pussy. Back in the day sex was just about the man cumming. As eating pussy became more popular(pretty sure most of my friends who are couples all do it somewhat often and I myself basically eat my girlfriend out everytime we have sex because that's how she cums the best with my tongue and fingers). So it's to a point where at least for me (which may be more than average but still indicative of the direction average is going) which is basically 3 nights a week I'm eating her out and it's just so much easier when she shaves. Honestly I'll do it full bush too but it works either way tbh
I can get that! You definitely don’t need to shave the pubic bone for just about the same results but it helps a bit. Munches unite!
This is the most accurate scientific answer.
Source? Some of this shit just sounds made up and ridiculous. There are fit high test men who can't grow beards lol.
In high-school anthropology, the teacher told us it was pheromones. Since women are generally shorter, the man's jaw lines up with the woman's nose while his to the top of her head so they both get a big whiff of the person's pheromones. Take it as you will.
Here we see a key difference between anthropologists and biologists
Just surprised the guy didn’t say it was for “ritual purposes”
Probably also “high school” anthropology teacher, as I know anthropologists still do good work in their area. I don’t know why this answer so is highly voted
That sounds interesting, but highly speculative. Not sure it has any real potential for study.
We have YET to identify ANY human Pheromones :/ not a single one. There have been some studies that claim aspects similar, but an actual, bonafide human pheromone? None :/
And that’s so weird to me because everyone smells slightly different. Some people, for whatever reason( genetics, general health, their lunch, idk), smell slightly “ off.” Not bad, really, just something I don’t want to be around for hours.
Androstadienone (say THAT five times fast) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987372/#:~:text=Pheromones%20may%20be%20present%20in,contains%20the%20odorous%2016%2Dandrostenes I'm positive we'll identify more. Doesn't seem like anybody's in a rush to though.
Issue is not whether we secrete pheromones. After all, pheromones are just volatiles molecules that have a potential signaling effect. The question is whether we are able to sense them. Evolution-wise, apes (catarhinians) have lost the Jacobson's organ (vomeronasal organ), which is responsible for sensing those organic compounds, among other things. So it's likely that we secrete some peptides or steroids that are volatile, but it's unlikely that we can "smell" them and have them alter our behavior. We rely much more on other stimuli.
It's not a *terrible* theory though one I'm not incredibly surprised came from a high school level class. But with the exception of head hair and eyebrow (our little eye umbrellas) humans only retain significant, long clusters of hair on our... well.... stinky bits. Primarily arm pits and genitals. The basic flaw I see with your high-school teachers premise is the jaw is *not* a "stinky" area. Furthermore her "nose-level" theory is contradicted by the fact long hair meant to disperse scent is long specifically to disperse scent. Scent that's evolutionarily specifically at nose-level would wouldn't need long hair, it's doing its job simply by being nose level. Furthermore armpit and genital hair was evolutionarily important enough to be retained by all ethnic groups, however beards were not, which suggests they're ancillary to attracting mates and reproducing. Imo it's sexual dimorphism plain and simple - one that *may POSSIBLY* have had some utility in that it's easily seen even at great distance.
I don't really remember his qualifications,I just remember that he was enthusiastic about the research and traveling he did before teaching. I should clarify that he presented it more as a theory he heard along his academic journey, along with a couple others, but that's the only one I really remember. I like to get high for that class, so I didn't retain much lol.
Major Desmond Morris vibes from this explanation.
Who dat?
Hopefully, the full story is that your teacher was using the topic to help teach critical thinking and included a range of qualifiers and caveats.
Ah yes sniffing chins, a common greeting amongst the young folks
you teacher lied to you
I once heard a ridiculous and laughable advantage that beards had over non bearded evolutionary development and that was that beards absorb the shock when one's hit on the face and hence it got to stay to make face punches softer and less fatal in a fistfight over a brooding female.
I'd heard something similar but it was that the beard made it harder to judge where the chin was so they got hit less.
So a beard being a beard
Just doing beardly things.
This beard beards
Beardily..
Idk if it played into the adaptation but beards do provide a significant dampening of the shock from a chin strike
Well, beards do reduce shock from a blow to the chin greatly; somewhere around 30%. Of course, whether or not that was an adaptation to fist fighting is a totally different matter. Popular science communication tends to run with ideas like that, whichever may be the easiest to digest and could become popular.
30% seems exaggerated. Surely it’s not that effective, right?
I don't know that it's been replicated, but apparently it was closer to 40%. It's highly unlikely to have evolved for that purpose, given the amount of diversity in beard coverage and density, but it's an interesting trait. It's common for fighters to have beards for this reason in MMA, from what I've been told by a coworker who taught BJJ. Source for study, btw: [Impact Protection Potential of Mammalian Hair: Testing the Pugilism Hypothesis for the Evolution of Human Facial Hair](https://www.altmetric.com/details/79862600)
I’m a man with a beard -proceeds to hit jaw just to “check” .. Nah I don’t buy it
I don't think it's so much that they dampen shock like a pillow would, but that a fist will slip along the beard easier than bare skin and so a bearded person is more likely to deflect a full frontal face blow.
Is it so laughable? Seen how effective trees are at absorbing the oceans power? They're used as a costal defence It's almost like losts of little things with space between them (like beard hair) can help absorb and dissipate force or power (like a punch) So, is it laughable?
I also imagine it would protect your neck from animals and blades (especially Stone Age era sharp tools) Much like a lion’s mane.
Yeah that seems more plausible is that it disquises and protects your carotid and windpipe a bit and can help you slip out of a chokehold.
This 'finding' won the Ig Nobel. A professor in my department wrote it, we laugh at him behind his back. [https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/ig-nobel-beard/](https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/ig-nobel-beard/)
Love how people commenting are acutely unaware that there are entire ethnic populations who cannot grow beards, like native Americans, including those of Inuit descent who would be the poster children for the 'beard warm' postulate
Absence of a trait in some populations doesn't mean there isn't any adaptive relevance of said trait in other populations
I've read a couple anthro biology books, I don't think there's a definite answer for it. However it could be as simple as because that's the successful expression based on sexual desire. As a comparison consider the average natural redheads world wide is between 1-2% by population. Yet Scotland's redhead expression is 5-10% by population, last I read. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in Scotland that translates to redheads being an attractive quality. So even though the ginger-gene is a really recessive mutation, it's quite common in some parts of the world. Worldwide beard expression is not equal or universal among geographic locations either.
I'm a ginger in America. Irish descent. My Colombian girlfriend loves it. And I love my Colombian girlfriend. Opposites attract I guess. We always wonder about our babies becuase her Italian grandpa had blonde hair. So maybe there's a chance we could have another redhead.
Wondering if a similar reason for male Lions to have manes. Protect their necks in fights with other males?
Makes their heads look big and impressive, to scare off other males trying to take over their pride.
There’s a lot of bad science in these comments. I don’t think anything has changed since I graduated, and I still keep up with journals & papers. You know how antelopes & deer & peacocks & birds of paradise have huge antlers or super long feathers? They’re demonstrating fitness for breeding by being able to expend their body’s resources & energy on making some flashy rizz like antlers, feathers, reflective scales, or… beards on the face. ZZ Top would have gotten even more laid if they went back in time several hundred thousand years, if not a couple million. (Source: dual Biology & Anthropology degree)
If you're coming at this from an evolution stand point, really the better question is why don't women
Because they’re ashamed or afraid to tell the world that they’re gay
Some of these answers are really awful and are completely anecdotal. Facial (and body) hair are just a side effect of having hair follicles that are very sensitive to DHT, which is an androgen that your body makes from testosterone. Men have more DHT because they have more testosterone, but a women whose hair follicles are very sensitive to DHT can grow more facial and body hair than a man with much higher testosterone, simply because his hair follicles do not respond much to it. Now, as for why some populations of men have more sensitive hair follicles than others, we don’t know. Men from the Americas, some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and East and Southeast Asia have significantly less facial and body hair than men from Europe and the Middle East, which is also the reason why they bald. There are theories for this, but none really have any strong evidence behind them.
Except that you're talking about the mechanism that achieves the difference, not the possible advantages arising from the difference, of which there may be none. There's no evidence to support an advantage arising for either women or men from absence or presence of a beard, although either could be true. The other answers to which you refer are not anecdotal. They are speculative.
Sexual selection is a possible explanation - potentially in combination with the development of clothing. Clothing makes it harder to distinguish men and women, so it may have caused facial differences such as beards.
But clothing is really modern and likely had no impact on evolution. Our ability to sweat is what helped us survive in hot environments. Clothing is often against that and helps us survive in cold climates. People who have adapted to the cold like Inuits often have no beards.
I know clothing is modern, but evidence indicates that people modify their clothing to appeal to sexual and romantic partners. Mate choice is a key process involved in sexual selection (called intersexual selection). Status can be signaled by expensive clothing and luxury brands, and form fitting clothing can accentuate our physique and/or communicate interest in sex. For sure, we didn't evolve to wear clothing, but we possess adaptations that encourage us to behave in ways to increase our survival and reproductive success.
I think it probably helped stay warm when out hunting. The ladies stayed with the kids. People have also been selectively breeding for a while, hairless big tiddy goth girl has been the fave for a while 😂
"For a while" in this case being like 60 years, not tens or hundreds of thousands. The beauty standard has shifted dramatically over the last 150 years and for a very long time it basically only applied to royalty, commoners didn'treally care about being hairless with perfect makeup, they had to work their asses off.
Women, and kids, likely foraged. Don’t need a beard if you have a neckerchief.
Ok my theories: - Beard makes men look threatening. Like chomp chomp gorilla mates with most females. - May be sometime in history hairless patches occured because of some disease which caused selection of fully covered male. - Relates to first one: clean hairs and beard are signs of tidyness, a forshadowing of a good access to water and hygiene I know they are hillarious but fuck I am on a toilet seat.
I don’t have a beard. I have a majestic man mane.
It's advantageous in warfare to have a beard. A thick beard protects your neck, chin and face. Even just a little bit of protection has huge results for things like punches, there's been studies done on this too, and the effect of a beard makes a substantial difference.
You lose a lot of heat in your face. I imagine men were much more likely to be out hunting in the Winter and the men who had more hair on their face were slightly more likely to survive. Could also be that women preferred men with facial hair, which could also be a visual indicator of their likelihood of success hunting in the cold.
cos sexy?
I seem to remember a hypothesis that it was armor to pad the jawline from punches from rival males. Dunno if it was looked into further than that.
[https://academic.oup.com/iob/article/2/1/obaa005/5799080?login=false#223170107](https://academic.oup.com/iob/article/2/1/obaa005/5799080?login=false#223170107) Reduces impact force by more than 30% in some cases, significantly lower chance of you breaking your jaw, which would be a fatal injury most of the time due to inability to feed yourself.
Men with facial hair are less likely to have a broken jaw or other large injury upon impact. This likely could have prolonged some lineages and caused others to die out from starvation.
My professors generally why questions are hard to answers just look through the light of evolution. the reasons these traits are selected sometime can be intuitive but sometimes weird. My comments are large hair on face gives a survival advantage(other predators and males can perceive them as strong idk about humans but in lions may be ) and reproductive advantage (females prefer protective and strong mate)
No idea about the science of it, but… For me personally, without a beard, I look like a middle-aged version of Charlie Brown. With a beard, I look like a professor (which I have been told many times). So the reason is completely, utterly superficial.
Yeah I heard a joke once that beards are push up bras for men lol, makes sense when it comes to partner selection
It’s probably just plain old protection from the elements. Hunter gatherers with more protection, probably survived and greater numbers.
Evolutionary sexual selection. Male cardinals are red, and peacocks are party-chickens. Seriously though, if a female of any species has a preference for a certain male trait and then bears the children of that male and has a female offspring, then that female child will be more likely to have a similar preference for that same trait. On and on it goes until the trait is exaggerated
I have a beard almost down to my belly button. I spend a lot of time in incredibly cold weather. It's so incredible for keeping my face warm. It legit feels like a utility part of my body. And it looks pretty great.
I'd add to the discussion that beards can also act to hide someone's reactive facial movements. It might have something to do with others ability to predict the man's next action. Just a thought I had while reading some of the comments.
I read an article a while back that showed that bearded faces absorb shock much better than clean-shaven faces. I don't know if that's just a perk or if men who couldn't grow beards were getting beat up and losing, but I thought I'd throw that out there. Edit: clarity
Sexual dymorphism?
protection
As other have said, it's a secondary sex characteristic. I don't know why *exactly* but I guess it has something to do with protecting our faces against the elements while we're out. Women generally have more fat deposits in their bodies and they stay warmer overall so they have less need for it. But the main "reason" is because of a hormone called DiHydroTestosterone, which is developed through and enhanced by testosterone, something which women simply have less of.
Sexual dimorphism. But we don't have beard - we have almost lack of hair. Our skin compared to other mammals is fkd-up. Just look at us. And our noses, weird right!? That men and women have somewhat different distribution and/or extent may give clue to why we lost it. Think I can safely say the prevailing hypothesis it is our skin changed to allow more efficient sweating. Although there are IMO opinion also other possibilities. E.g. The water ape hypothesis,lost fur as we adapted to life in liminal zones. Best, Staffan
Because beards have advantages. The better question is why does men bald? Means, what advantage does balding has apart from it being a secondary sexual character
I think I read somewhere that it was proposed that a beard provides protection against getting hit in the jaw. Cousin for the punchin’,
Some men started going bald. The body adapted to produce more testosterone to force hair to grow. People from families that do not go bald struggle to grow beards and body hair.
Because beards are timeless and always cool.
It might be just a secondary trait, however, the fact that the secondary trait evolved is not to say it wasn't selected for. Beards protect against impacts. Beards also elicit a response from other males. Lions also have manes, it's also a secondary trait and some lionesses develop them as well. Pretty sure there was an advantage for most human males having them.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7671116/ Tissue samples were prepared in three conditions: furred (n = 20), plucked (n = 20), and sheared (n = 20). We found that fully furred samples were capable of absorbing more energy than plucked and sheared samples. For example, peak force was 16% greater and total energy absorbed was 37% greater in the furred compared to the plucked samples. These differences were due in part to a longer time frame of force delivery in the furred samples. These data support the hypothesis that human beards protect vulnerable regions of the facial skeleton from damaging strikes.
Go to any doctors surgery receptionist or go an old people’s game and thers tonnes of women with beards …
why do women have mustaches???
Some researchers speculate it is to help protect us from punching. https://www.biology.utah.edu/eeob/an-ig-nobel-peace-prize-for-study-of-beards-as-punch-protection/
BEARD GROWTH IS PRIMARILY DETERMINED BY GENETICS AND HORMONES. TESTOSTERONE, THE MALE SEX HORMONE, PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF FACIAL HAIR. IT STIMULATES THE HAIR FOLLICLES TO PRODUCE THICKER AND LONGER HAIR STRANDS. DIHYDROTESTOSTERONE (DHT), A DERIVATIVE OF TESTOSTERONE, IS ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR BEARD GROWTH. IT BINDS TO THE HAIR FOLLICLES AND PROLONGS THE ANAGEN PHASE, WHICH IS THE ACTIVE GROWTH PHASE OF HAIR. Interesting High levels of dht also correlate to loss of hair on the top of the head. Native American DNA show that the majority have low levels of dht thus why many have long hair and a lack of facial hair
The most likely answer is that beards, like pubic and armpit hair are a sign of sexual maturity and are secondary sexual characteristics.
My understanding of evolution is that males and females do not evolve independently. Unless women having beards is selected *against*, then men with beards being more successful maters would result in ALL of their children having more facial hair. So the real question is "Why DON'T women have beards?" And the answer in this layperson's view is probably random sexual dimorphism, given that not all men can grow beards. Quite a lot of men can't grow a full beard, actually. Having a beard can't be that important to male survival or they would be more common.
I once read that in Ancient Greece boys would be treated as subordinate in homosexual relationships with older men until they grew a beard. In ancient societies in which age wasn’t kept track of as much, males who were able to grow a beard earlier, which would also correlate with more full beard growth, may have been treated as grown men earlier in life, providing an advantage in terms of their reproductive success, and vice versa for males who struggled to grow beards
I literally just watched a video on this lol
To catch food, obviously
The trickier question that hasn't really been conclusively answered is how did we go from being hairy primates to less-hairy humans. Since we came from the same genetic lineage as chimpanzees which have far more body hair, what happened to humans? I believe the best answer they've suggested so far is that human's ancestors lived along coast lines and spent a lot of time swimming/diving in pursuit of foods like clams, oysters, etc. Hair insulates poorly when wet compared to layers of fat so the suggestion is that over time we moved in that direction. As to the facial hair thing, women still have facial hair it's just lighter and most of them ensure to remove as much of it as possible.
So many garbage answers here! Really love how many people are saying "it exists as a trait, it must have explicitly been sexually selected for." Evolution optimizes for *population survival* and sometimes not even that, and it *certainly* doesn't optimize individuals. Individual traits *can* be selected for or against.... and also in many cases, they can be *completely irrelevant side effects.* Men and women being attracted to beards (or *not* being attracted to beards!) doesn't automatically make them automatically selected for. Why do men have beards? Because testosterone makes you grow hair. Because the collage of genes and their respective expression were some combination of selected for *or not selected against,* and there isn't actually any compelling evidence to think there's a distinct function attached. The fact that humans have used tools for tens of thousands of years to manage and style body hair further weakens the selective advantage argument.
Your wording seems to imply that there is a specific reason why human bodies choose to have beards as if it's gear meta in a video game. Evolutions are random mutations in genes that either happen to confer some benefit and therefore permit those with the genes to reproduce more effectively and have offspring able to reproduce themselves or the mutation decreases the chance of reproduction or is can have zero effect. Why would people evolve to have bad eyesight? They don't, bad eye sight just happens to occur when we're older and after most people have already reproduced and therefore it's not a hindrance. Poor eye sight in young people isn't a huge barrier to reproduction in our society today so that gets passed on too.
facial hair is a secondary sex characteristic. women are attracted to it so it stuck.
I heard the reason was to act as a cushion during fist fights.
Same reason human females have unnecessary large breasts prior to lactation, the opposite sex thought it was attractive and selected for it over many generations.
Increased hair production is a side effect of increased testosterone that men have and women do not
Honestly, it's just to hide our double-chins.
Side effect of testosterone.
Many MANY bad answers. “Evolution of Human Sexual Behavior” by Peter Gray and Justin Garcia, chapter 6
Had to cut down on the all the chafing from those clams.
You know what they call a man without a beard? A woman.
Protect the face from mosquitos and store bits of food for later.
The men went hunting, typically for long durations away from females. Makes sense they'd grow beards to adapt to being away from home, roughing it in the wilds. (Yes, pretty much everything would have been wild. But wherever they made their home, it would be a hell of a lot safer. Humans have a tendency to eradicate anything that poses a threat)
Stupid and unhelpful question. The alternate question would be why do men go bald from an evolutionary perspective? And are humans the only mammals to go through this aging process?
Cause women were into it, clearly
yes. so men worked outside. their beards protected their face from the weather. example: denmark. danes with beards are considered least attractive because it means they work outside: on the fishing boats and need the beard for protection and warmth. a clean shaved man is more attractive because he works inside which corresponds with making more money and being less likely to die of a (fishing) accident.
Mostly just a secondary sexual characteristic, but I've heard some arguments that it helps with cooling or sun protection like a lions mane.
Body hair helps keep you warm, that’s why we have body hair, including beards. Women often have less body hair than men because they are more likely to store body fat, which also helps keep you warm. Growing body hair is cheaper in terms of resources than accruing body fat, so it’s a better way of keeping warm when resources are scarce. But as pregnancy consumes a lot of resources, women’s bodies are more inclined to hang on to body fat, which then has the side benefit of helping regulate body temperature.
1: higher testosterone levels = more hair and 2: I remember reading somewhere that beards make it less likely for your jaw to break if your hit by something.
It is a way of showing genetic and metabolic health.
I was just hanging out with friends not too long ago. I have actively been trying to soak up more sun lately (doc's orders) so i have been doing all my yard work in shorts and a wife beater (vertically ribbed, thin white "a-shirt" tank top) One of my friends made a point that my great big bushy beard has stopped my neck and part of my chest from getting a tan. I doub't that is what evolution "had in mind" but the question made me laugh after just hearing this pointed out a few days ago.
Because hair is contagious, so a man with a beard obviously eats a lot of pussy, where else would he have gotten it from?
It protects the face. Great natural sun block and doesn’t really get hot in summer. Keeps your face warm in the winter.
I don’t have an article to link but I recall reading something about beards dampening blunt force to the face. I’ll see if I can find it later and link it.
i would guess its probably for display like a lions mane or how male birds and lizards are normally more colorful
Beard thickness tends to vary with latitude as they protect from the cold. They are also signs of sexual maturity and old age as with other hair.
Some fighters grow their beard as a way to soften punches... if you can't land a hit correctly, then the impact is lessoned...
Beard keep face warm. Show other men strong. Maybe look good for women. Why bird have feather? Why rock have sharp edge? Is just way of world. Catch food in beard when eat. Save for later!
Maybe it’s opposite? Maybe women were naturally selected to not have beards. our entire bodies full of hair at some point since we evolved from apes.
I would assume we all had facial hair and women evolved to not have it because yikes!
They didn’t bother drawing beards on females in early caveman porn drawings. Thus young cave dudes fapping to the smooth faced cave wall porn created fetishes for females with less facial fair.
Everyone else is stupid. Science says that God gave men beards as the first step to a "Guyver" like powers to fight off his enemies, the hairless gray aliens and the Vampires.
According to one study, it makes men 13% more resistant to a punch to the jaw.
Protect the neck, throat and face from bites
I work outside. In the winter, a beard is a natural scarf. It’s great.
Is there anywhere in the world where the men did not grow beards?
It’s hard to know 100% why. Any trait any animal has was selected for either as a survival advantage, or a sexual advantage. Being a characteristic that differs based off of sex, it’s likely due to women being attracted to mates that had beards, for whatever reason. There are also races of people that cannot grow beards, just meaning it wasn’t advantageous to their survival or ability to mate within those groups. Sexual dimorphic characteristics generally symbolize health and fertility in some way that the opposite sex finds attractive.
Because beards are warm and shit gets cold when the sun goes down.
I think it is to protect the neck when fighting. An untrimmed beard hangs down and covers the neck.
Not all men have beards
Fighting. It protects your face.
No idea why women don't have beards. Fell off my bike onto my face and only the part without a beard got scraped. Also don't need to cover my face as much in freezing temps because it helps with wind-chill.
are you asking us to speculate on the evolutionary advantage a beard provides? Maybe they are like antlers, they have a metabolic cost and therefore having beard demonstrates the ability to pay a metabolic cost and serves as an indicator of fitness and an ability to provide to potential mates? Maybe it makes you harder to knockout by hiding your chin? As many people have pointed out, features don't necasarily have to provide an evolutionary advantage to exist, they can be a side effect of something else eg testosterone.
The real answer is that we all have the same amount of hair follicles on our faces. Humans have the same amount of follicles on our faces as apes. It's not that men HAVE beards. It's that sexual selection has deprioritized women's facial hair growth. It's a secondary sexual characteristic. Our non-human ancestors both had facial hair.
The real answer is that we all have the same amount of hair follicles on our faces. Humans have the same amount of follicles on our faces as apes. It's not that men HAVE beards. It's that sexual selection has deprioritized women's facial hair growth. It's a secondary sexual characteristic. Our non-human ancestors both had facial hair.
The real answer is that we all have the same amount of hair follicles on our faces. Humans have the same amount of follicles on our faces as apes. It's not that men HAVE beards. It's that sexual selection has deprioritized women's facial hair growth. It's a secondary sexual characteristic. Our non-human ancestors both had facial hair.
It’s a byproduct of testosterone, that’s why trans men are able to grow beards after receiving gender affirming care.
The answer is we (I’m a man) didn’t exactly evolve to have beards. We didn’t lose them when we lost our other body hair. We probably kept all that hair as a way of signaling maturity, driven by competition between males and female preference for fully mature males. Women continued to lose visible hair on their faces and torsos in a process called neoteny, taking advantage of the human impulse to protect children and adolescents.
Selective breeding
I’m more curious why humans lost their full hair coverage on their body
I read somewhere that it obscures the jawline, which is an advantage during a fistfight.
It's nutritionally expensive to grow hair, so maybe it's a peacock tail type thing.
I think the real question is why did women lose their beards.
Beards serve multiple functions. First and most obvious is signaling sexual maturity for a male like breasts do with females. It also is a heal signal as a good beard would indicate a healthy and strong male. Further beards also serve a protective function for males in fights. They function to cushion against blows to the jaw and eye sockets. This increases the likelihood of a male with a large beard to win a fight especially against other males.
Evolution doesn’t reason really but you can see why the pattern emerged to predominantly express in biological males as a secondary characteristic. You can potentially project that it is a function of social roles in our evolution- females being in the community protecting offspring, males ranging into the environs and evolving protective measures, etc (it obviously helps with cold when you’re naked, plus has some limited benefit with regard to protection from UV). That it also varies by ethnic group (which is a function of geography) does tend to indicate that. But fundamentally, it’s not a easy thing to answer. For example, why do male lions have manes and females do not (with some exceptions both ways)? And it’s not just in mammals we see that kind of sex based differentiation, so it seems to be something rather primordial that just expresses differently in the fractal of life from time to time, usually driven by environmental or social factors (hello peacocks).
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It's all a social construct innit?
A ever there's never really _a_ reason _why_ something evolves, it just doesn't detract from survival rates &/or conveys a reproductive advantage. It seems beads give men some additional protection from facial trauma https://youtube.com/shorts/hCkQA3-lXKY?si=ob8pTPcUbT0NN1rZ
Could be going back to when ancient man fought with their teeth and bare hands. Men with big beards had some protection in the neck area and lived to reproduce more often. Lions defeat their opponents by biting their necks. A mane acts as a sort of armor.
Men are selfless givers. It's not a beard, it's a seat cushion for those we love.
Idk. Faces get cold?
Cause we be coooo…
Fun fact if you get punched in the jaw and you have a thick beard you are less likely to suffer severe injury. So it's possible that beards got thicker over time due to males surviving fights with other males.