Ch,u\ XX. Man — Absence of Hair. 60 1 



again with many birds, it appears as if the head and neck had 

 been divested of feathers through sexual selection, to exhibit the 

 brightly-coloured skin. 



As the body in woman is less hairy than in man, and as this 

 character is common to all races, we may conclude that it was 

 our female semi-human ancestors who were first divested of hair, 

 and that this occurred at an extremely remote period before the 

 several races had diverged from a common stock. Whilst our 

 female ancestors were gradually acquiring this new character of 

 nudity, they must have transmitted it almost equally to their 

 offspring of both sexes whilst young ; so that its transmission, 

 as with the ornaments of many mammals and birds, has not been 

 limited either by sex or age. There is nothing surprising in a 

 partial loss of hair having been esteemed as an ornament by our 

 ape-like progenitors, for w r e have seen that innumerable strange 

 characters have been thus esteemed by animals of all kinds, and 

 have consequently been gained through sexual selection. Nor 

 is it surprising that a slightly injurious character should have 

 been thus acquired ; for w 7 e know that this is the case with the 

 plumes of certain birds, and with the horns of certain stags. 



The females of some of the anthropoid apes, as stated in a 

 former chapter, are somewhat less hairy on the under surface 

 than the males ; and here we have what might have afforded a 

 commencement for the process of denudation. With respect to 

 the completion of the process through sexual selection, it is well 

 to bear in mind the New Zealand proverb, " There is no woman 

 " for a hairy man." All who have seen photographs of the 

 Siamese hairy family will admit how ludicrously hideous is the 

 opposite extreme of excessive hairiness. And the king of Siam 

 had to bribe a man to marry the first hairy woman in the 

 family; and she transmitted this character to her young off- 

 spring of both sexes. 22 



Some races are much more hairy than others, especially the 

 males ; but it must not be assumed that the more hairy races, 

 such as the European, have retained their primordial condition 

 more completely than the naked races, such as the Kalmucks 

 or Americans. It is more probable that the hairiness of the 

 former is due to partial reversion; for characters which have 

 been at some former period long inherited, are always apt to 

 return. We have seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they 

 are apt to revert in other characters to a lower animal type. It 

 does not appear that a cold climate has been influential in 

 leading to this kind of reversion ; excepting perhaps with the 



* 2 'The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' rol. i? 

 1868, p. 327. 



