In the book, Before the Dawn, Nicholas Wade writes about human evolution and answers many interesting questions about how we came to be as a species. One of the things he talks about is how humans lost their fur. When humans first split off from chimpanzees, they looked much more like apes than humans. However, this changed once Homo ergaster came to be. Ergaster was the first human ancestor to have an external nose and have "nakedness". Some paleontologists believe that this nakedness came from their need to sweat. It is impossible for a creature to sweat efficiently if it has fur, so it would make sense for ergaster to shed its fur in order to cool its body and bigger brain. Conversely, other scientists proposed that human ancestors lost their hair as a consequence of sexual preference. One theory behind this preference is that they would be less likely to have parasites and bugs on them if they shed their thick fur, making sexual encounters a little less risky. Darwin was a big proponent of sexual selection, and he really pushed the idea that humans preffered mates without pests crawling on them.
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