[I]n the west we have three tribes wherein men seem to keep their hair: The Welsh, the Lombards, and one in southern Russia that I can’t name – something in the Georgian region. Now, hair loss in men is caused by complex and asynchronous factors related to testosterone – lower testosterone earlier balding, higher testosterone tends to later balding. The same chemistry that produces facial and body hair causes head hair to go dormant. Some of us simply have more hair than others so it takes longer to go bald, some of us less so that it’s more visible sooner. The reason seems fairly obvious to me, as someone who had so much hair that it would often ‘hurt’, and I would just die in summers – and that is heat dissipation. As we get bigger its harder to dissipate heat when running, and humans were born to run so to speak. So baldness, if it is an adaptation, is likely an adaptation to the increasing need for heat dissipation. it’s more interesting I think to ask why we get beards (armor) on our faces, but lose hair (armor) on our heads.
[pullquote]…on the one hand we could cull about 70% of males and about 20% of females from the average population. But we cannot DEFEND from those who have inferior breeding but a larger number of males with higher aggression.[/pullquote]
If you have ever gone natural long enough (cleaning with water and baking soda and without harsh soap), you can readily grasp that the purpose of body hair is to hold your scent. Which aside from diet is like a less spicy set of variations of sandalwood in both sexes (hence our love of sandalwood incense.) I love that smell on me and women. But the head and facial hair is largely defensive in men, and hair is largely a signal of health and fertility in women. And given that men are about 10% bigger than women, and more ‘dense’ with higher heat retention; and given that about 70% of males will experience male pattern baldness and that women far less; and given that we can clothe our bodies and our heads, apparently nature made a trade off for men: less protection of the head in exchange for greater heat dissipation and durability under stress. One humorous analogy I like to use is that women like a lot of clothes because they aren’t really that different. Men are very different and like uniforms. What I don’t like is the knowledge that nature has evolved men to vary so greatly so that we can serve so many purposes like so many types of warrior ants. And as such a few of us are very valuable mates, and many of us are literally disposable: nature counts on us dying and women selecting our betters for reproduction. Algorithmically this presents a difficult problem. Because on the one hand we could cull about 70% of males and about 20% of females from the average population. But we cannot DEFEND from those who have inferior breeding but a larger number of males with higher aggression. So you see, we have to have this distribution and marriage to survive competition against others. Not because it is the optimum linear algorithm. But it is the optimum game algorithm in an equilibrium. Bet you didn’t see that coming did you? smile emoticon Curt