The Human Face Evolved to be Punched: Fighting and Violence Shaped Our Evolution

Humans may actually be evolutionarily adapted for a bar fight. Scientists have discovered that the human face evolved to take a punch as our ancient ancestors fought over resources and other slug-worthy disagreements.

"When modern human fight hand-to-hand, the face is usually the primary target," said David Carrier, one of the researchers, in a news release. What we found was that the bones that suffer the highest rates of fracture in fights are the same parts of the skull that exhibited the greatest increase in robusticity during the evolution of basal hominins. These bones are also the parts of the skull that show the greatest difference between males and females in both australopiths and humans. In other words, male and female faces are different because the parts of the skull that break in fights are bigger in males."

The researchers actually took a look at our ancient australopith ancestors. These ancient humanoids actually evolved to minimize injury from punches to the face during fights between males.

"The australopiths were characterized by a suite of traits that may have improved fighting ability, including hand proportions that allow formation of a fist; effectively turning the delicate musculoskeletal system of the hand into a club effective for striking," said Carrier, one of the researchers, in a news release. "If indeed the evolution of our hand proportions were associated with selection for fighting behavior you might expect the primary target, the face, to have undergone evolution to better protect it from injury when punched."

In fact, the researchers found that deadlier hands appeared in the fossil record at around the same time distinct facial features formed. Together, this suggests that many of the facial features that evolved probably were created to protect the facial injury from fighting.

"The hypothesis that our early ancestors were aggressive could be falsified if we found that the anatomical characters that distinguish us from other primates did not improve fighting ability," said Carrier in a news release. "What our research has been showing is that many of the anatomical characters of great apes and our ancestors, the early hominins (such as bipedal posture, the proportions of our hands and the shape of our faces) do, in fact, improve fighting performance.

The findings are published in the journal Biological Reviews.