# When did humans start to cut their hair?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 19, 2021, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936 "2021-09-19T17:32:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/1 "2021-09-19T17:32:38Z")
Might have been in prehistoric times. Do we even have any idea?
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/2 "2021-09-19T18:11:00Z")
I can’t imagine we can ever know this for certain.
I would guess it happened when hygiene became an issue. For example, a military force living in close quarters could find something like lice a real problem so shaving their heads made sense.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/3 "2021-09-19T18:17:27Z")
Hair got cut the first time it got into someone’s eyes while they were busy doing whatever. Impossible to know.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/4 "2021-09-19T18:18:35Z")
How easy is it to cut hair with stone tools?
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/5 "2021-09-19T18:19:56Z")
IIRC obsidian is one of the sharpest things there are so, if you had some at hand, probably pretty easy.
It may not look great but doable.
If you don’t have obsidian…not sure.
Once metal was available to make tools it shouldn’t be too much trouble to make a sharp(ish) blade.
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### Author:  [@themapleleaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/themapleleaf)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/6 "2021-09-19T18:33:57Z")
I would need to check these facts but I believe that hairs found from Ötzi the Iceman, who lived somewhere between 3100 to 3400 were around 8 cm long and would have been cut.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/7 "2021-09-19T18:35:17Z")
According to this it is possible to cut hair with a reed or sharp piece of wood:
> Traditionally, the Yanomami don the the pudding pudding-bowl haircut. In the past, and perhaps still in very remote villages, they used a piece of wood or reed called “sunuma.” It has very sharp edges. Sharp enough to cut their hair or even shave parts of their head.
[https://www.davidgoodamazon.com/post/my-first-yanomami-makeover](https://www.davidgoodamazon.com/post/my-first-yanomami-makeover)
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/8 "2021-09-19T18:48:29Z")
Wow…I am surprised you can do it with wood (a reed I can see…those things can be sharp/saw-like).
Cool!
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/9 "2021-09-19T19:09:23Z")
Yeah, me too. But that means there’s no limit on how far back the first haircut could have been.
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/10 "2021-09-19T19:21:02Z")
Yeah. So, since we know hair can be cut since forever the question becomes when did humans decide getting their hair cut was worth doing?
Apart from military reasons I got nothing. I can’t imagine it started as a means to look good.
Maybe hygiene when living in close quarters in a cave was sufficient. Just guessing.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2021, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/11 "2021-09-19T19:32:06Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> Maybe hygiene when living in close quarters in a cave was sufficient. Just guessing.
Perhaps after the first caveman bent over the first cooking fire and set himself on fire? That would do it for me.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/12 "2021-09-20T00:21:06Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> So, since we know hair can be cut since forever the question becomes when did humans decide getting their hair cut was worth doing?
[This anthropologist](https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/did-cavemen-cut-their-hair) suggests that current thinking is that humans have probably been cutting their head hair for at least tens of thousands of years, although at that time only males would have been cutting it short.
> [@](#):
>
> Margarita - So we’re talking about 28 - 25 thousand years ago when we had the earliest representations of human beings; the majority of them are female. We do have fairly conclusive evidence that their hair was braided. So it would have been long and it would probably have been braided. Even if it was cut they were still keeping it quite long. Men on the other hand - the few representations we have - don’t seem to show any hair on them. There may be various reasons for that but one of the explanations is that hair, when it’s not washed the way that we wash it today with gazillions of shampoos, would emanate a lot of odour, and that would scare off the prey. So, if you were a hunter in the stone age, of course, you […]
>
> Chris - […] will it not also be a home for parasites and so, by trimming it, you’re giving fewer lice and nits a home?
>
> Margarita - That is also a very accepted theory currently. That is the reason for cutting.
>
> Chris - The critical thing to answer this original question is that we haven’t got any evidence before say 25,000 years of what people did with their hair? We can only, therefore infer that perhaps they had the means - sharp tools.
>
> Margarita - They had the means but whether they did it is an entirely different question.
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### Author:  [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/13 "2021-09-20T01:27:08Z")
How would this interact with the evolution of head hair in the first place?
Great apes don’t have long head hair. We do. So presumably there must have been a transition stage when hair was starting to become long, but the proto-humans concerned were still quite ape-like and low-tech. That doesn’t seem to work very well if you assume a hair-follicles pattern similar to ours, but with hair maxxing out at a shortish-medium length, since hair of a few inches is the hardest sort to deal with appropriately (long enough to get in your eyes, too short to braid).
A more likely evolutionary pathway is probably one where long hairs start off as a display right on the back of the head, where it doesn’t get in your way so much, and then this display lengthening and widening until it’s as large as we have today. That way proto-humans have plenty of time to learn to deal with it before it starts to cause practical problems.
Do we have any sort of evidence for how long it’s been since humans evolved long head hair in the first place?
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### Author:  [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/14 "2021-09-20T01:30:05Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> Perhaps after the first caveman bent over the first cooking fire and set himself on fire? That would do it for me.
Maybe they killed two birds with one stone:
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBLYN7WXQCM)
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/15 "2021-09-20T01:48:05Z")
I could see long hair becoming a problem in a fight. It provides a means for your opponent to grab on to you and toss you about. That might be a reason why males had their hair cut and not females.
Just a WAG but I think it is safe to assume there was a practical reason for cutting hair and not a fashion reason (to start anyway).
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### Author:  [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/16 "2021-09-20T01:56:19Z")
We have a 4,000-year old belt made of woven human hair (from the heads of several different people) that was found at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia. So people evidently had uses for human hair, and this provides a reason for cutting it.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/17 "2021-09-20T02:57:11Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> I could see long hair becoming a problem in a fight. It provides a means for your opponent to grab on to you and toss you about.
Keep in mind that straight hair is probably a pretty recent development.
> **[Can Black People Have Straight Hair?](https://www.addcolo.com/blog/can-black-people-have-straight-hair/)**
>
> Straight hair is not special. Every animal on earth and even almost all humans have straight hair, except the black people. Curly hair that is what some Africans have is actually quite unique. But can
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/18 "2021-09-20T03:13:34Z")
Seems like you could still grab that hair.
I dunno…I am only speculating. I doubt cutting hair started as a fashion. I would think there was a reason for it. Hygiene or fighting or something else…I cannot say.
It was suggested earlier only males did it at the start which would make one think it had something to do with fighting rather than hygiene.
I am way into WAG territory here.
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/19 "2021-09-20T03:24:50Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#):
>
> Keep in mind that straight hair is probably a pretty recent development.
Nice scientific cite (not):
> Therefore, the God left a population of mostly people with curly hair, producing offspring with even more kinky hair than the previous generation until about everyone in that population had the same gene of kinky hair.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2021, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-start-to-cut-their-hair/950936/20 "2021-09-20T03:27:02Z")
Okay, I didn’t read it throughly. Do you have a cite that refutes the basic distinction, though?
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