Cara

How are beards advantageous?

new coup for you

you've clearly never lived in a cold place.

they keep you warm. they keep the biting wind from tearing apart your vulnerable baby-like face.

I have a seasonal beard all winter.

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And why does your tone suggest that you do not care about children?

Mach

beards :

The key to remember is that we probably started with fully body hair, and a beard as we know it is simply an area that never lost that hair (or loss less). Hair was probably quite important to our ancestors for a variety of social/mating reasons, and when we starting shedding hair (for the heat-exchange advantage of bare skin coupled with sweat), arguably keeping some of it for other reasons, that didn't significantly hurt the heat-exchange advantage, is not really strange.

Some typically cited reasons for why it hung around:

- it differentiates physically mature males from their younger selves
remember, once we start hiding our...packages...having some other outwardly visible indicator is useful.

- as NCFY ponits out, can be a protection against the elements.
I don't think that indicates she never lived in a cold place, more so that she can't grow a beard

-Mach

__________________
Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

A_Wise_Fool

I am a little confused with this sequence:

Supposed early humans all Started with hair-

African region aboriginal humans lost hair. Because it was better for the climate, even though practically every land dwelling, above ground mammal of the region did not.

After leaving Africa and then inventing clothing because they suddenly needed it in the cold environments... Northward migrators kept facial hair, (or grew it back???) to fight off elements, supposedly.

African aboriginal humans kept faicial hair because...?


..... of Fertility, though it did not need to fight off any elements...

.. so if that were the case, why did females loose their beards in the very same region while men kept them? And why did women not grow beards in the colder region just like the men did??

The simple response probably would be women look more fertile without beards, but taken in perspective there is simply no reason to believe this. Women can easily spot an attractive, healthy looking, alpha-gene male who has a beard. It goes to follow that men could easily be genetically predisposed to like women with beards, the same way women already are. Actually, since women could care less if men had beards its probably not a fertility mechanism anyway. Contrasting that with hair on the head: if men have a "bald head" its automatically unattractive, hence hair on the head must be a healthful-fertility indicator in men, whereas with a "bald face" women don't care.

The fact that women don't have beards for no apparant reason shows that beards really aren't necessary. Sure they feel better in cold weather, but you aren't going to "propate fewer kids" if you don't have one in cold weather; and to believe otherwise and argue so is completely nonsensical, even in a hunter-gatherer sense.

Mach

They didn't lose hair because it was better for climate directly, because originally it was for insulation we assume. What happened so the theory goes, is that humans are resourceful enough to replace the loss of insulation with clothing, blankets, fire, etc. and the ones we're dicussing were in very hot climates where the marginal benefit of hair may have been reduced in terms of insulation. But at the same time they benefit from losing the hair in terms of persistence hunting, and if this became dominate (climiate benefit reduced, offset by clothese/fire, etc.), it sets the stage.

See link below. Basically humans can (and stil do today!) outlast much faster animals in a chase of endurance, the hair serves to restrict most animals ability to shed excess heat, and humans can hunt in the hottest times, strip down (drink up), and wear the animal out (heat stroke/exhaustion). I saw this on discovery, I certainly never thought about before then:

Why Are Humans Hairless and Sweaty? - An adaptation to long distance running - Softpedia

I would assume coverings like primitive clothes and fur/hide blankets were developed at or before that time. I suspect cold nights were always a problem with or without a covering of hair, depending on the area and how much hair they had at that stage of development.

Facial hair in some primates is used for a variety of social reasons, similar to with humans. How so depends on the race/culture/environment.

And sometimes things hang around for thousands of years simply because they do neither harm nor good at that time.

I'll have you know, not from first hand exprience mind you, but some women do have beards! Then social signaling is more likely a primary reason if that's the case. Weather protection seems to be an added bonus perhaps, but not the primary factor as you point out. It's theorized that spotting a human adult at a distance, one could easily distinguish male from female this way. Just one of the guesses.

In complex primate species, it appears to be linked to both social (dominance), and mate selection, not necessarily fertility of the female. Female communicate fertility in other ways, like 1:00am phone calls so I hear.

-Mach