Parental selection: A third selection process in the evolution of human hairlessness and skin color

SummaryIt is proposed that human hairlessness, and the pale skin seen in modern Europeans and Asians, are not the results of Darwinian selection; these attributes provide no survival benefits. They are instead the results of sexual selection combined with a third, previously unrecognized, process: parental selection. The use of infanticide as a method of birth control in premodern societies gave parents – in particular, mothers – the power to exert an influence on the course of human evolution by deciding whether to keep or abandon a newborn infant. If such a decision was made before the infant was born, it could be overturned in the positive direction if the infant was particularly beautiful – that is, if the infant conformed to the standards of beauty prescribed by the mother’s culture. It could be overturned in the negative direction if the infant failed to meet those standards. Thus, human hairlessness and pale skin could have resulted in part from cultural preferences expressed as decisions made by women immediately after childbirth.