1) Well, I expect a lot of them did. A lot of men don't grow very thick beards, though. Maybe even the majority, if you take the whole world into account. I gather that most men in East Asia, and most American Indians, aren't able to grow much facial hair, for example.
2) When was shaving invented? It looks like stone tools that were at least capable of hacking off matted, nasty bits of beards were probably invented by about 3.4 million years ago. We may well have been shaving (or at least trimming) beards for longer than we have been able to make fire and talk.
And given that chimpanzees don't seem to grow beards, it is quite possible that we didn't develop the ability to grow huge, bushy beards until after we had the ability to do something about them.
2 comments:
1) Well, I expect a lot of them did. A lot of men don't grow very thick beards, though. Maybe even the majority, if you take the whole world into account. I gather that most men in East Asia, and most American Indians, aren't able to grow much facial hair, for example.
2) When was shaving invented? It looks like stone tools that were at least capable of hacking off matted, nasty bits of beards were probably invented by about 3.4 million years ago. We may well have been shaving (or at least trimming) beards for longer than we have been able to make fire and talk.
And given that chimpanzees don't seem to grow beards, it is quite possible that we didn't develop the ability to grow huge, bushy beards until after we had the ability to do something about them.
A quick Google yields:
http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=22490
http://wiki.badgerandblade.com/History_of_Shaving
Apparently, it's been an ongoing battle for men.
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