Hair likely played a significant role in evolution by protecting the first modern humans and their developing brains from the blazing sun.
The Wall Street Journal
The sun was high in the sky and so I decided to amble over into the shade of a tree, but my two buddies Ug and Nutz for some reason didn’t join me.
“Aren’t you guys hot?” I called out to them.
“I’m fine,” said Nutz, as he ran his fingers through the thick, lustrous head of hair he’d developed.
“How about you, Ug?” I said to the lesser traffic light on the road to evolution. “Don’t you want to cool down a bit?”
Ug gave me the blank stare that always falls over his face when anything more complicated than food, flight from a predator, or fornicating with a female is involved.
“Ug?” I repeated, a bit louder, and dawn broke on his marble head.
“What?”
“I’m thinking you might be more comfortable under this tree,” I said, but my words didn’t seem to register with him.
“You’re wasting your time,” Nutz called out. “He’s been out in the sun too long, his brain is fried.”
I scanned Ug’s face for some sign, however slight, that there were some synapses snapping inside that bald skull of his, but could find none.
“Do you think it would help if I gave him a palm leaf hat?” I asked.
“He’s so far gone he wouldn’t know where to put it,” Nutz said. “Probably take a dump in it.”
I scanned back and forth between my two best buds: one, hirsute on top with a brain that seemed to be fueled by low cunning; the other with a pate that reflected the sun so brightly mastodons probably saw him coming a mile away.
“Nutz,” I said, “is it too much to ask for you to feel a little empathy for your fellow Neanderthal?”
“I don’t see why I should,” Nutz replied. “The longer it takes this schlump to develop the gift of gab, the more fertile females for me to reproduce my genetic material with.”
Put it that way Nutz had a point, but he always had a point. It was exhausting talking to him, whereas Ug was the kind of creature you could have a fermented beverage with and never worry about who had the upper hand. You were just guys being pre-historic guys.
“C’mon,” I said to Nutz. “Let’s get him in the shade.”
We collared our chrome-dome colleague, and escorted him to a spot where fern fronds from a tree high above us–and try saying that five times fast–offered his burgeoning brain a chance to develop.
“There,” I said as I sat Ug down. “Doesn’t that feel better?”
Ug was still a bit dazed from the heat and glare, and didn’t speak at first. I gave him a banana to eat, and the potassium-rich fruit revived him.
“You’ve gotta stay out of the sun,” I said when he seemed to be inching, ever so slowly, towards coherence.
“Why?” he asked when he’d recovered his limited power of speech.
“Because you have to develop a brain.”
Surprise your favorite female hominid with a frappucino!
“What brain?” Ug asked.
“Like I said,” Nutz interjected. “He’s got some remedial evoluting to do.”
“The brain is some new,” I said to Ug, “but pretty soon you’re going to need one to survive.”
“Why that?”
“Well, saber-tooth tigers aren’t getting any dumber. The great apes are breathing down our necks, and a wooly mammoth could crush you like a bug with just one false step–or even a true one.”
“Glzzz,” Ug replied. I could see far off in the distant future when he’d do just fine as a lifeguard, but he was never going to draw any cave paintings, much less invent fire, if he continued down his sun-struck path.
“Look at Nutz,” I said, pointing towards our preening pal. “His head is cool from all his hair, and it allows his brain to make enlightened, self-interested decisions. He’ll probably be able to retire before he’s devoured by a Tyrannosaurus rex, and move to a sunnier clime where bodacious babes half his age peel grapes for him, while you’re stuck here hunting and gathering in the hope you can survive the Ice Age.”
Ug had cooled off, and to my surprise his thinking became clearer.
“So . . . me wear hat to keep sun off head?”
“Right.”
“Then me survive, live long life . . .”
“Yes.”
“And at end of long life, me move South . . . where there’s more sun to heat up my head again?”
For once in his intellectually-destitute existence, Ug had me by the mental short hairs.
“I guess you’ve got me there,” I said, shaking my head.
“Looks like you’ve created a monster,” Nutz said.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I allowed him to just go on stumbling blindly towards extinction, his brain shriveled up like a raisin, while you and I continued our long march towards literacy, numeracy, and other great cognitive skills.”
“You’ve got a point,” Nutz said, “but if you comb your hair right, no one will notice.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Let’s Get Primitive.”