<The real purpose of body hair is probably to disgust the young females, so that they don't want to mate with someone whose DNA is becoming defective.>
Well, I understand your theory here, but I'm not sure I agree. First, when does male DNA become defective? Certainly, history and current events are full of men in their sixties and seventies siring perfectly healthy children. The key seems to be more in choosing a healthy young woman to bear the child, rather than in the age of the father.
Also, you would have to assume that cave women died in childbirth in large numbers, like is true through the rest of history and even now everywhere except in the first world, where modern medical practices have cut the death rate. At the same time, it is plausible at least that many younger men died in battle and in hunting accidents. So it is quite possible that a strong and intelligent guy who was developing nose, ear and body hair in disgusting quantities might still attract women who wanted to mate with him, particularly if he was a seasoned warrior and perhaps had acquired a reputation and some wealth or status within the tribe. After all, this hair seems to begin sprouting in the early to mid forties, which is not so old, really. While the AVERAGE life expectancy was short, there are plenty of archaeological finds indicating that some people have always lived to be elderly.
Don't forget that women choose men not based on physical traits and youth so much as on whether they are able to provide for and protect the woman and any babies they might have together. So women are instinctively going way beyond physical attraction, and that might even allow for quite a bit of fur on their guys, if they had plenty of wampum!
I am not saying that evolution CARES about making us comfy in our old age, incidentally. I am simply arguing that the guys with the most body/ear/nose hair in old age might have survived longer and had more chances to reproduce, since it kept them warm in an age where that was very important, and that this may explain why the trait was passed along, resulting now in serious tweezer sales to geezers. In other words, that the guys who did end up looking like Chia pets froze to death before they could inseminate so many early lovelies. |
