Human Hairlessness Hypotheses Hysteria

There are a lot of characteristics which make human beings unique in the animal kingdom—we walk upright, have very large brains in proportion to our body size, and can cook food using fire. But one of our most overlooked characteristics (by the general population) is our hairlessness. It is actually quite unique for mammals to be naturally without near-total fur or hair covering their bodies. Some domesticated animals without fur such as sphinx breeds of house cats or the hairless guinea pig were bred purposefully by humans to be that way. But as humans we did not breed ourselves to be without body hair. It happened naturally through evolutionary pressures.

There are several prominent hypotheses for our evolutionary loss of body hair, all of which are completely absurd and reflect the same various anthropological biases and religious prejudices which still permeate science and research, the very same which have prevented the discovery of cures to diseases like cancer or diabetes, which distract from fundamental basics of human biology and lead researchers in the wrong direction.

John Gurche is the best paleo artist in the world, and in my opinion the only one who truly captures the essence of our humanity in his art.

Many depictions of our evolutionary ancestors plainly demonstrate these biases in their art. For instance, as humans we clearly demonstrate instincts for grooming and self-care, as do many animals such as cats or canines who lick and groom themselves and each other in evolutionary instincts to take care of their skin, hair, etc., to prevent disease and maintain sexual attractiveness. Even dolphins practice grooming, in one behavior they swim through special corals in the oceans which produce antibiotic mucous which acts like a skin lotion for the dolphins, birds preen themselves and elephants roll in mud and toss dirt on their skin as a natural sunscreen and insect repellant, but most paleo art depicts our ancestors as complete degenerates with no grooming skills whatsoever, reflecting deep prejudices about our human condition and the subconscious resentment of being compared to apes and other animals we believe to be beneath us. So too inexplicably are most paleo art and reconstructions lacking facial hair in human males, as if we all just spontaneously evolved beards in the last few thousand years? It’s such an insanely absurd oversight as to make the entire profession appear inept.

John Gurche is the best paleo artist who has ever worked in the field, and I was lucky to have stumbled on his art a while ago, which in my opinion is the first I have ever seen which actually captures our true humanity in our ancestors. One of the reasons that previous depictions of human ancestors have been so offensive is because of this very lack of any evidence of what really defines humanity, which is not banal characteristics like standing upright or having less body hair, but our emotional intelligence and social inclinations. Because he so intuitively understands what it means to be human, he is able also to accurately reflect characteristics of our pre-human ancestors in which for the first time I have seen myself reflected back in art depicting long-extinct relatives, including things like evidence of grooming, emotions, and male facial hair.

When it comes to conceptions of various human evolutionary characteristics, none is so inanely off as why we no longer have body hair, which mirrors similar deficiencies in understanding the human condition as what has prevented us from understanding disease as discussed in my book, Fuck Portion Control.

The most prominent and promoted of these hypotheses which is also the most absurd is called the “Savannah Hypothesis.” This posits that our ancestors used to live in trees and densely forested areas, but for some reason unexplained decided to move out onto the Savannah. This hypothesis really should be called the “Sun Exposure Hypothesis” because in fact it really has nothing to do with living on a Savannah, but is explained by its proponents as being a result of increased sun exposure and losing our body hair in order to better regulate our body temperature.

There are such deficiencies with this idea that I would hesitate to call its originator, Raymond Dart, a scientist. Assuming so many incorrect ideas about many aspects of biology, there are also no other examples of this process in any other animal in all of nature, again reflecting our incorrect and egoistic conception of ourselves as divinely appointed to the earth and thus exempt from natural laws, which handicaps our ability to solve problems like many diseases we currently suffer, because we fail to understand our place in the natural world and how biology really works. Suggesting we lost our hair because it helped us cool down is completely ignorant to principles of thermodynamics. Hair and fur does not only keep heat in, it also keeps heat out. The insulation in the walls of your home does not only work in the winter when it’s cold outside, it also works in the summer when it’s blistering hot, else your air conditioning would not actually make much difference in keeping the inside cool. This Savannah hypothesis is also often paired with conceptions of humans as distance hunters, even though we are not at all, while other true distance hunters like wild dogs or wolves did not shed their fur, and even in hottest tropical Africa wild dogs and other predators all maintain full coats of dense fur. This is because fur is an efficient insulator against heat, and panting or other thermoregulation strategies keeps their insides cool while fur and hair insulate to help maintain those temperatures and protect animals from the sun and heat. Scientists count sweat glands and because humans have more than our primate relatives made the inappropriate correlative assumption that we lost our hair to accommodate more sweat glands, when in reality we got more sweat glands to accommodate the loss of hair, that efficient thermoregulatory layer without which we were less able to regulate internal body temperature. Humans easily get heat stroke in the same scenarios that animals with fur do not, and die more easily from overexertion in extreme heat, opposite to those who retain their coats.

There was a ridiculous PBS Eons episode (which I normally love) which also presented this hypothesis as the only explanation for reduced human body hair, and presented a case of a hunter in Africa chasing down a Kudu. First, the human wounded the Kudu, so it wasn’t able to flee properly in the first place. In reality humans are ambush hunters, not distance hunters. Dogs and wolves give chase regardless if they wound an animal, and pursue it until it tires, which is true distance hunting and something humans are not capable of with our own physiology. Chasing down the Kudu, the human also nearly died of heat exhaustion and exertion in the chase, and had to carry with him generous quantities of water to stay hydrated and not die too, and then to treat his legs from severe cramping which is a result of rapid lactic acid buildup in the tissues from overexertion, something that does not happen to canines. The biggest flaw in the Savannah hunter hypothesis is the weaponry required to hunt in the first place. As humans we do not possess claws, strength, or speed to hunt large animals. To do this we require tools. The Savannah hypothesis assumes that our tool use for hunting led to upright walking and losing our hair, but that is quite the gap to bridge considering that hair does not survive in the anthropological record, and could have occurred far before we ever even discovered tool use. There is no inherent or rational correlation between tool use and hair loss. Hair and fur is also a natural and powerful UV barrier, so the idea that we lost our hair because we stood out in the sun is so stupid I just can’t even. Hair directly blocks UV rays, which is why we still retain hair on our heads, because it directly blocks sun rays at the hottest time of the day, a natural umbrella under which the rest of our body is shaded from the most direct rays of the sun, so why would we retain it on our heads if losing it gave protection from the sun, in direct opposition to this completely ridiculous idea which serves more to promote the idea of ourselves as a superior animal than to figure out where our hair went. It is also why hair on the human head grows so long, literally as a natural sun-shade, while also helping to protect and thermoregulate temperature in the skull, as it could easily be just as short as the fur and hair of most other animals. So distance hunting in hot climes would probably be better served by having hair, as it does in other predators like canines and cats, and thus completely contradict this ridiculous and poorly considered but widely disseminated hypothesis.

Another hypothesis for human nakedness posits that we lost body hair for increased resistance to lice. While this is not completely absurd and is actually close to one of the real reasons we lost hair, we still get lice, even on the body, so no. Similar theories which are also incorrect also involve other insects or parasites, but all animals with fur or hair have those parasites and still have fur and hair, and other animals without fur like elephants and hippos also have parasites and suffer insect pests. I just. I just can’t with this kind of stupid.

Darwin thought that hairlessness was a result of sexual selection, because men found less hairy women more attractive. This is actually blatant misogyny, and fantastically assumes that our ancestors could conceptualize the idea of less body hair at a time when all pre-humans were very hairy, which is really quite an illogical leap, not to mention again the personal prejudices and biases which inform this idea in the first place. For sexual selection to work it must also be widespread, and there are many women who are more hairy than others who are also more beautiful physically than other women, so the idea that less body hair would be a sexual selection factor would also imply it would trump most or all other traits of sexual selection, which would be extremely difficult to accomplish considering the many sexual factors which promote attraction which are far greater than body hair composition, never mind that it completely ignores and trivializes sexual preferences of women. Evolutionary pressure is also far more influenced by environment than sexual selection, which as an evolutionary factor can in fact endanger a species—say for instance our human ancestors valued skinniness the way we wrongly do today. This would have imperiled our ancestors, who were highly susceptible to food insecurity. One harsh winter or famine or pandemic and the entire species would be wiped out due to the lack of body fat. Before modern medicine and technology human mortality rates were as high as any other wild creature, so sexual selection is not something which can have much impact on any evolutionary process except for what is useful and helpful, and so in support of Darwin’s better ideas it has nothing really to do with sexual selection but instead the environment in which it is useful.

Another really dumb idea about human hairlessness is one which says human mothers with less hair loved their babies more because of skin-to-skin contact. Having never lived with a full coat of hair I have no idea how a contemporary human could think the lack of hair would at all be better in this way. Hair is a sensory organ, so there is no reason to think that bare skin to skin contact is any different than hairy skin to skin contact (ever had someone run their fingers through your hair?), and there is also no evidence that primate or indeed any other mammal mothers love their babies any less than human mothers, especially in their well-documented behavior surrounding loss and death, except for this grossly irresponsible anthropomorphisation of other species (it is a negative rather than positive anthropomorphisation). Parent/child love relationships are an evolutionary survival strategy, not one unique to humans, and the fact that other animals exist is evidence of their possession of these and other similar evolutionary strategies, and they still exist while having hair, in less numbers because they do not have toilets, cars, antibiotics, farming, fire, spears, arrows, etc.

The real reason we as humans do not have hair but one which is marginalized and for some reason elicits severe emotional reactions in some “scientists,” or people who consider themselves scientists is the same reason as all other naturally hairless mammals also lack much body hair (save for the naked mole rat), which is that all other hairless mammals evolved from aquatic or semi-aquatic ancestors.

This theory was originally posited by marine biologist Alister Hardy, and has been supported by many scientists and biologists, most notably figures like David Attenborough, with far more logical explanations than the others which get more undeserved validation. There is one simple reason for the validity of this theory, which is that hair is not very useful as a thermoregulatory mechanism when it is wet. Instead, fat is a much better insulator in water, because water more efficiently conducts heat and as such requires a more dense thermal barrier to regulate temperature. Hair and fur regulate temperature by trapping air against the body, because air is actually a poor conductor of temperature, so trapping air against the body prevents the efficient transfer of heat and thus excellent thermoregulation properties, which is why fur and hair is also good at keeping organisms cool as well as warm. But if there is water on the skin and fur or hair it displaces the air, thusly inactivating this thermoregulatory barrier and rendering hair and fur incapable of efficient thermoregulation, in fact actively increasing thermal conductivity by trapping water against the skin, which is the principle by which sweat works (and animals like horses sweat while also having fur and hair). This is one of the reasons why pinnipeds (seals) often have SO MUCH more body fat than their other aquatic counterparts like dolphins, because they require more fat to compensate for the retention of hair, which keeps water trapped against the skin. Their hair is also short, though, and as such holds less water than other mammals like dogs, cats, or early humans and was probably retained as a physical barrier to help protect the skin from injury (such as from aquatic predators smaller than great whites or orcas). Sea otters are also a perfect demonstration of this principle because their fur is so dense it actually traps air even when they are submerged in water, and repels water from penetrating the inner layer, thus retaining the efficient thermoregulatory function of air and so no need to pack on dense fat (this is also why otters spend much of their time grooming their fur, which is how the air gets trapped in the first place, which seals do not do because their fur is not capable of trapping air like this). Even dogs demonstrate this principle with their ability to shake water off their bodies because of evolutionarily loose skin specifically designed by nature to immediately shed water which might otherwise impair the thermoregulatory function of their fur and hair.

The other theories of hairlessness fail to demonstrate the kind of necessity which would be required by our environment to develop such characteristics. We didn’t need to stand upright or live on the Savanah to hunt—there are plenty of animals in the forests and jungles. Our primate relatives often kill smaller animals for subsistence, even without tools. Pigs, birds, deer, and many other prey species live in forests and would have been ample sources of meat if we suddenly discovered tools which somehow allowed us to walk upright, easily able to outcompete other predators, which still also doesn’t answer the question why or how tool use facilitated walking upright, because tool use, walking, and body hair are not mutually exclusive nor explicitly correlative.

I even saw one article refuting the aquatic ape theory (which really should be the semi-aquatic ape theory), claiming that all hairless animals are in the ocean. Like, they forgot about elephants, hippos, and rhinos? Seriously the stupidity surrounding this debate really is astonishing. The reason for this and why it is so divisive is because of biases and prejudices the various theories support, and not because of their scientific validity. For instance, if we began walking upright and lost our fur in order to be hunters this can, in the minds of obtuse humans, justify the mass slaughter, predation, and exploitation of animals and the natural world. The semi-aquatic ape theory demonstrates us as humans to have more benign and gentle origins which subsisted on the generous bounty of shallow seas. Our violent nature in truth does not originate from hunting, but in competition with other humans for territory and resources, which is why we are still, to this day, very inclined to war and violent conflict.

Yet another environmental factor which would have led us near water in the first place is our historical consumption of water-loving plants such as sedges, for which there is ample anthropological evidence, which only grow near very wet environs. Sedge tubers can be extremely sweet, tasting very similar to Honey Smacks cereal, and many animals still eat them and we still cultivate varieties like water chestnut or tiger nuts. Foraging for foods like sedges, lilies, and other water loving plants found in the anthropological record would easily have brought us near water in the first place, where the other hypotheses make great leaps from disparate environmental conditions and human behaviors without any supporting transitional evidence.

Another criticism of the aquatic ape theory is that it is too simple, too elegant, accounting for many of our features including our hairlessness and walking upright (as if the Savannah hypothesis does not?). But isn’t that usually the explanation in nature? The simplistic explanation generally being the correct? Our ancestors from whom we evolved were a subset of primate who found a niche at the transition from land to sea (or lake) where we subsisted both on fruits, nuts, and roots of the land and the bounty of shallow water and its abundant populations of shellfish and other tasty sources of protein. This led to elongated limbs as we waded in and out of water and consistent upright behavior caused by environment, not human will, and loss of our hair as we swapped it for fat to stay warm in water and while wet. Our ancestors previously subsisted on insects and fruit, and to say we suddenly went from eating insects to spearing giant megafauna is undisciplined and fantastical. Shellfish are not a far leap from eating bugs, and being so easily accessible to intelligent species such as our primate relatives is a far easier leap than a sudden desire to stand up on two legs and start chasing Kudu. Critics say there is no evidence in the anthropological record for an aquatic ape ancestry as if we have found generous sites and specimens of human evolution instead of the very, very scant and scarce samples which we do have. The absence of evidence is not evidence, especially with such an abysmally small sample available. But this also ignores all the other evidence we have to support this hypothesis which does not exist for the others, such as convergent evolution of similar traits in other species like hippos, rhinos, or elephants, with none such supporting the other theories in all the other species which live on earth. We also as humans love water and swimming (if we learn) and are particularly built for aquatic locomotion, with generous range of motion in the shoulders, neck, and legs and feet which facilitate swimming which other animals do not possess. Another reason to shed hair if an animal is aquatic is because of mold and yeasts which can grow on damp hair and fur (for instance as appears in sloths) and promote skin infection (this is also probably the reason that naked mole rats no longer have fur, living in very humid, dark, underground conditions which never have air exchange). In order to prevent this an animal with frequently damp hair also has to develop antibiotic strategies to address the growth of opportunistic microorganisms on the hair, which seals and otters have, but us as humans are often susceptible to yeast and fungal infections of the skin, and just losing the hair which retains moisture against the body is an easy adaptation to deal with this problem, where oppositely our ancestors which did not lose their hair would have been more susceptible to such infections if exposed to so much water and thus died more easily and thus not passed on genes for retaining hair while those without hair were less susceptible to this kind of opportunistic infection and thus persisted, directly satisfying the necessity of the evolutionary loss of body hair because of environment and supported by many other examples of convergent evolution, where the other hypotheses have absolutely ZERO.

Ancient Lake Mega-Chad (in blue, today’s Lake Chad in green), in the remnants of which have been found some of our oldest human ancestors.

Also in total refutation of the absence of anthropological evidence and further demonstration about how little proponents of the other theories actually know about the anthropological record, there are emerging new discoveries about ancient Lake Mega-Chad, which was the worlds largest lake before it dried up to today’s smaller Lake Chad, in the remnants of which have been found some of our most ancient human ancestors, centering the origin of human evolution in an area precisely hypothesized and required for the semi-aquatic ape theory.

The ideological conception of humanity is in truth the reason why this debate is so varied and includes such disparate and illogical hypotheses unsupported by demonstrative and convergent evolution in other animals. But it is also this same anthropomorphisation and idealization of the human condition which is why, even though we can smash sub-atomic particles together and launch rockets into space, we are still plagued by a great many diseases such as cancer, diabetes, autism, etc., and why shedding of these ideologies allowed me to solve them. Science is science but not all scientists practice science. Bias, personal trauma and ideology, and the residue of millennia of religious mythology are the only reasons we have not yet reached a homogenous destination of good health for all and real understanding of the human condition. If you want to understand the reality of the human condition, get a copy of my book, Fuck Portion Control. If you wish to rid yourself of the ideological and prejudicial trauma which impairs our true emotional and intellectual potential as a human animal, get my book The Perfect Child.