Hidden facial features make man sexy
Forget jutting jaws, pheromones or hypnotic stares. What has made men sexy since they lived in caves could well be a foreshortened face, according to a new study.
Theories abound as to why humans are attracted to each other, and on the role facial features might have played in the human evolutionary saga.
But palaeontologists at the British natural history museum have uncovered something that had somehow gone unnoticed: for at least the last two million years, the space twixt brow and upper lip in hominids has been, proportionately, shorter and wider in males than in females.
"There has to be a reason for why at puberty the face of men and women develop differently," said lead author Eleanor Weston, pointing out that there is no plausible mechanical explanation for the divergence.
"There is evidence to suggest that sexual selection, operating mainly through mate choice, has shaped the human face," she said.
Over the course of evolution, she conjectures, females may have been drawn to males whose smaller middle face accentuated all the peripheral trimmings: bushy eyebrows, strong cheekbones, squared jaw.
A man with a compact face, in other words, is a turn on.
Weston, who describes her work as ‘pioneering’, said that her hypothesis on human evolution has yet to be tested, and would surely prove controversial.
She also acknowledged that -- even if upper face size may turn out to have be a critical element in the sex life of early hominids -- the same facial features may have lost some of their magnetic charm today.
from : http://www.expressindia.com/
