Chin up: A novel functional explanation for the evolution of the chin
Meyer-Rochow, Victor Benno (2024-11-29)
Wiley-Blackwell
29.11.2024
Meyer-Rochow, V. B. (2025). Chin up: A novel functional explanation for the evolution of the chin. Acta Zoologica, 106, 404–408. https://doi.org/10.1111/azo.12527
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© 2024 The Author(s). Acta Zoologica published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
© 2024 The Author(s). Acta Zoologica published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202412097095
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202412097095
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Abstract
The human chin, also frequently referred to as the mental prominence, is a part of the human anatomy whose evolutionary origin and function have divided scientific opinion to this day. There were suggestions it could have been used in defence, assisted in the mastication process, aided in the formation of words (i.e. speaking), or that it played a role in mate choice. None of these explanations were satisfactory. This paper, backed up by observations on people from different parts of the world and cultures, using their chin to hold or clamp down objects resting on a person's arms in front of the body or to free the person's hands for other tasks, offers an explanation that has support from results on the evolution of bipedalism from apes to bipedal australopithecines, including Homo sapiens, and the importance of the hands in hominids as well as the heritability of the trait.
The human chin, also frequently referred to as the mental prominence, is a part of the human anatomy whose evolutionary origin and function have divided scientific opinion to this day. There were suggestions it could have been used in defence, assisted in the mastication process, aided in the formation of words (i.e. speaking), or that it played a role in mate choice. None of these explanations were satisfactory. This paper, backed up by observations on people from different parts of the world and cultures, using their chin to hold or clamp down objects resting on a person's arms in front of the body or to free the person's hands for other tasks, offers an explanation that has support from results on the evolution of bipedalism from apes to bipedal australopithecines, including Homo sapiens, and the importance of the hands in hominids as well as the heritability of the trait.
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