# Possible benefit for long head hair on humans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 7, 2014, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-benefit-for-long-head-hair-on-humans/690247 "2014-06-07T04:17:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-benefit-for-long-head-hair-on-humans/690247/81 "2014-06-15T03:28:54Z")
BTW the photo I’ve been mentioning a lot is in a wikipedia article so I’d assume it is of a typical bushman - and normally extremely short hair is cropped - not natural. > **[San people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmen)** > > The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. They are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.\[a\] Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa. > The San speak, or their ancestors spoke, languages of the Khoe, Tuu, and Kxʼa language families, and can be defined as a peo... > [@](#): > > …San have the following neotenous traits relative to Caucasoids: large brain, light skin pigment, less hair… It doesn’t say that their hair is ever naturally super short. (I’d consider that photo to be of super short hair) ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2014, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-benefit-for-long-head-hair-on-humans/690247/82 "2014-06-15T13:18:30Z")
You’re really fixating on this number of centimeters and missing the original point. Let’s review: I said I thought there was a Western/Asian bias in the question, as there is a great range of “natural” hair lengths in humans, some of which is pretty darn short. I posted to a picture of an orangutan with long hair - easily into your 8 inch range - as an example of another animal to whom we’re tangentially related with hair as long as some humans. That was it. Some humans have hair that doesn’t get any longer than some orangutans (or other animals I could add, like buffalo, llamas, sheep…) so to posit that humans have some sort of special human specific adaptation for long hair doesn’t make much sense. Instead, try asking why humans don’t have this hair all over, as orangutans and buffalo and llamas and sheep do. It’s our \*hairless bodies \*which are unique in the natural world (I’m not counting human bred hairless cats and dogs), not the length of the hair on our heads. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-benefit-for-long-head-hair-on-humans/690247/83 "2014-06-15T15:31:17Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > I was wrong about it being common… :smack: Then what are we even having a conversation for? > [@](#): > > Because people have apparently been HG’s for at least about a million years (I might be wrong) and our evolution was involved during that time. Not for farmers, etc. No You completely misunderstand how evolution works. Current hunter-gatherers (like the Bushmen) are _exactly_ as evolved as farmers. ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2014, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-benefit-for-long-head-hair-on-humans/690247/84 "2014-06-15T21:17:31Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > :smack: Then what are we even having a conversation for? I thought we were talking about the natural hair length of a particular bushman, not about whether shaved heads are common for hunter-gatherers. > [@](#): > > No You completely misunderstand how evolution works. > > Current hunter-gatherers (like the Bushmen) are _exactly_ as evolved as farmers. Then why do people have a fight or flight response or put on a lot of fat if they eat too much? I think it is because we evolved in a hunter-gatherer environment not in the modern world. ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-benefit-for-long-head-hair-on-humans/690247/85 "2014-06-15T21:28:54Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > …Instead, try asking why humans don’t have this hair all over, as orangutans and buffalo and llamas and sheep do. It’s our \*hairless bodies \*which are unique in the natural world (I’m not counting human bred hairless cats and dogs), not the length of the hair on our heads. Humans that have really long hair on their heads are fairly common - most have hair longer than orangutans. And men usually have long hair above their mouth. In pictures of human evolution, our ancestors got shorter and shorter and thinner fur and began with very short head hair. I’m wondering about the head hair part of evolution not the part before that where fur got shorter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-benefit-for-long-head-hair-on-humans/690247.md?page=4)