Theories on How male pattern baldness Developed Over The Years?

[ali777]

Simple. When we lived in caves, our lifespan was very short, 30 or 40 years tops right? So baldness was a means to distinguish old males from young and fertile males, hence being more sexually attractive those who carried a nw1 as opposed to bald men, who were viewed as more mature or "elders".

I disagree with this theory.

We are at our peak in the late 20s and that peak may last well into the 30s. So, the alpha-male in the tribe would be someone in his late 20s to mid 30s.

I've already said it in my previous post, most men do shed the juvenile hairline before reaching that age. So, NW1 is definitely not a sign of sexual maturity.

 

[toocoolforhair]

I think baldness evolved to show the wisest and the strongest. Professors are always bald and bouncers are always bald.

 

[s.a.f]

I think baldness evolved to show the wisest and the strongest. Professors are always bald and bouncers are always bald.

LOL :mrgreen:

 

[Tdevil]

I think baldness evolved to show the wisest and the strongest. Professors are always bald and bouncers are always bald.

As funny as that statement was, you are actually getting at something....Male silverback gorillas lose their hair shortly after puberty and it is considered a sign of enhanced status & maturity. The females select their mate according to this trait.

 

[HairDont]

As funny as that statement was, you are actually getting at something....Male silverback gorillas lose their hair shortly after puberty and it is considered a sign of enhanced status & maturity. The females select their mate according to this trait.

So this means I have a great chance of dating a female silverback gorilla

 

[powersam]

I'm not so sure about the assumption that baldness stays hidden for that long. Although I do believe most of the women were very likely to be married very early on and still are in the developing world, the statistics show that the age of first marriage for men was around 25 even 100 years ago.

Well as we are talking about evolution then we need to look back much much much further than 100 years ago(thousands upon thousands). Hence my assertion that up until very recently (300 - 500 years at a guess) men would have bred long before hair loss would become noticeable.

What really interests me is whether balding developed independently in stumptailed macaques and human beings, or whether it developed only ONCE in a common ancestor of them both. It would be fascinating to know that, because if it turns out to have developed separately in both, I feel that would strengthen the brain cooling theory.

Well it would be somewhat improbable that a random mutation would appear in two species separately. So I guess the trait has to have appeared before the two species diverged, or it is brain cooling or something similar.

But how could genetic hair loss to enhance brain cooling appear in two different species except via a common ancestor? Could the random mutation for hair loss really appear separately twice?

The only other way for that to happen would be for the heat itself to be causing the hair loss, and we can be reasonably certain that isn't happening otherwise finasteride would not treat hair loss...

 

[powersam]

If scalp hair was so important in the evolutionary process, either NW1 or NW7 would have dominated the gene pool and the opposite side would have been filtered out. At the age of 40 we are 50-50, so the presence or absence of scalp hair doesn't seem to have a huge effect in the human evolution.

In our times, hair is purely cosmetic.

as baldness tends to occur well after sexual maturity is reached, most men would have fathered children before their baldness set in. especially in earlier societies when kids were married off at 14 or thereabouts. no chance for it to be bred out.

Either your theory is waaaay off target, or those guys need to realise that there's nothing wrong with being bald....

or just that up until very recently most men would have fathered children way before baldness had a chance to take its evil toll.

Ok...where did you get the notion that baldness happened because men fathered children after baldness settled in to them? Because by that logic it would seem a family with purely bald men can reverse its (the family's) condition, in time, by making every male in the family reproduce when they still had a full head of hair. That just seems silly. If that was the case...that would be the motive by now, and I don't think it is. Not saying this is wrong but, this is the first time I've ever heard such a thing.

Quite obviously that is not what I said. Read my post again, a little more carefully. Also read the links I have posted below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_ ... y_and_fact

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics

Have a read.

 

[Vigaku]

Sorry for misunderstanding. It's likely I didn't have a lot of time to sit and read everything posted. I recall not reading what was quoted and read only the reply, which caused the misunderstanding. I re-read and understood perfectly. It has nothing to do with my understanding of genetics. :whistle: