Why do humans have round heads?

Angela

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See:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/why-modern-humans-have-round-heads

"Ever since researchers first got a good look at a Neanderthal skull in the 1860s, they were struck by its strange shape: stretched from front to back like a football rather than round like a basketball, as in living people. But why our heads and those of our ice age cousins looked different remained a mystery.Now, researchers have found an ingenious way to identify genes that help explain the contrast. By analyzing traces of Neanderthal DNA that linger in Europeans from their ancestors' trysts, researchers have identified two Neanderthal gene variants linked to slightly less globular head shape in living people, the team reports this week in Current Biology. The genes also influence brain organization, offering a clue to how evolution acting on the brain might have reshaped the skull. This "very important study" pinpoints genes that have a "direct effect on brain shape and, presumably, brain function in humans today," says paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who was not a part of the work."


"The Neanderthal variants may lower URB4 expression in the basal ganglia and also lead to less myelination of axons in the cerebellum, a structure at the back of the brain. This could contribute to subtle differences in neuronal connectivity and how the cerebellum regulates motor skills and speech, says senior author Simon Fisher of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. But any effects of the Neanderthal genes in living people would be slight because so many genes shape the brain."
 
Obviously,to stop puddles occurring when it rains.
 
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"Ever since researchers first got a good look at a Neanderthal skull in the 1860s, they were struck by its strange shape: stretched from front to back like a football rather than round like a basketball, as in living people..."
this kind of sentance pushes me to loose every hope in some "scientists" - Have all modern humans 'rounded' heads, like basket balls: surely not!
 

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