Human faces are shrinking as we eat more processed food, scientists say.
An international team of archaeologists have tracked the evolution of the human face which has got thinner over 100,000 years.
Neanderthals and monkeys have a pronounced brow ridge and wide faces with bigger teeth. Ours started to get more narrow when we learned to cook food, meaning we needed less powerful teeth and jaws to eat.
Researchers including from York and Hull universities have traced changes in the evolution of the face from the early humans which originated in African to our modern faces.
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Study author Paul O’Higgins, professor of anatomy at York University, said: “Softer modern diets and industrialised societies may mean that the human face continues to decrease in size.
“There are limits on how much the human face can change however, for example breathing requires a sufficiently large nasal cavity.
“However, within these limits the evolution of the human face is likely to continue as long as our species survives, migrates and encounters new environmental, social and cultural conditions.”
The human face also evolved so we could be more sociable and expressive with our eyebrows, scientists say.
Humans developed a smooth forehead capable of a greater range of movement to express subtle emotions from recognition to sympathy.
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More visible, hairy eyebrows were crucial to human social development in to complex societies, scientists say.
Human faces narrowed significantly as we switched from being hunter gatherers to farmers, producing corn and wheat to make staple food such as bread.
The theory is published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
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Prof O’Higgins added: “We know that other factors such as diet, respiratory physiology and climate have contributed to the shape of the modern human face, but to interpret its evolution solely in terms of these factors would be an oversimplification.
“We can now use our faces to signal more than 20 different categories of emotion via the contraction or relaxation of muscles.
“It’s unlikely that our early human ancestors had the same facial dexterity as the overall shape of the face and the positions of the muscles were different.”
