Rousseau was wrong . . .


. . . but Conrad* was right. At least according to a new theory about why the bones in men's faces are so big.

Item:

violence played a greater role in human evolution than previously thought. 

When modern humans fight hand-to-hand the face is usually the primary target. Dr Carrier and Dr Morgan found 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 fossil hominins.

Story.

Now if we could just get a theory explaining bone-headed behavior . . .

*(Jean-Jacques Rosseau with his noble savages theory, and Joseph Conrad, with Heart of Darkness, et al)