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The research reveals that the technology boom 50,000 years ago correlated with apparent reduction in testosterone, which resulted in a change in facial features and skull shape for humans. Modern humans appear in the fossil record about 200,000 years ago, but it was only about 50,000 years ago that making art and advanced tools became widespread. The new study finds that human skulls changed in ways that indicate a lowering of testosterone levels at around the same time that culture was blossoming.

"The modern human behaviors of technological innovation, making art and rapid cultural exchange probably came at the same time that we developed a more cooperative temperament," said lead author Robert Cieri, according to the August 1, 2014 news release, "Society bloomed with gentler personalities and more feminine faces." Cieri is a biology graduate student at the University of Utah who began this work as a senior at Duke University. Authors of the study are Robert Cieri, Steven Churchill, Robert Franciscus, Jingzhi Tan, and Brian Hare.

In the image with this article, you see a composite image showing the facial differences between an ancient modern human with heavy brows and a large upper face and the more recent modern human who has rounder features and a much less prominent brow. The prominence of these features can be directly traced to the influence of the hormone testosterone. For a senior honors thesis at Duke University that became an academic paper three years later, Robert Cieri used facial measurements from more than 1,400 ancient and modern human skulls. Some of the measurements he made himself; others were taken from previous studies.

Human society advanced when people began to act nicer to each other

The study, which is based on measurements of more than 1,400 ancient and modern skulls, makes the argument that human society advanced when people started being nicer to each other, which entails having a little less testosterone in action.

Does the study argue that to become more polite to strangers, friends, and relatives, that the levels of testosterone or their hormone receptor number have to change, which in turn 'feminized' the human face? Does the study say that maybe people have to be more feminized to be more polite to one another, more compassionate and considerate?

What actually happened over time is that heavy brows were out, rounder heads were in, and those changes can be traced directly to testosterone levels acting on the skeleton, according to Duke anthropologist Steven Churchill, who supervised Cieri's work on a senior honors thesis that grew to become this 24-page journal article three years later.

The question is whether the hormone receptors diminished in number or whether humans manufactured less testosterone, so the levels of testosterone dropped. The result was a change in facial features where the face came to look more 'feminized.'

What the researchers can't tell from the bones is whether these humans had less testosterone in circulation, or fewer receptors for the hormone

The research team also included Duke animal cognition researchers Brian Hare and Jingzhi Tan, who say this argument is in line with what has been established in non-human species. In a classic study of Siberian foxes, animals that were less wary and less aggressive toward humans took on a different, more juvenile appearance and behavior after several generations of selective breeding.

"If we're seeing a process that leads to these changes in other animals, it might help explain who we are and how we got to be this way," said Hare, according to the news release. Hare also studies differences between our closest ape relatives -- aggressive chimpanzees and mellow, free-loving bonobos.

Those two apes develop differently, Hare said, according to the news release, and they respond to social stress differently. Chimpanzee males experience a strong rise in testosterone during puberty, but bonobos do not. When stressed, the bonobos don't produce more testosterone, as chimps do, but they do produce more cortisol, the stress hormone.

Their social interactions are profoundly different and, relevant to this finding, their faces are different, too. "It's very hard to find a brow-ridge in a bonobo," Hare said, according to the news release.

Cieri compared the brow ridge, facial shape and interior volume of 13 modern human skulls older than 80,000 years, 41 skulls from 10,000 to 38,000 years ago, and a global sample of 1,367 20th century skulls from 30 different ethnic populations.

The trend that emerged was toward a reduction in the brow ridge and a shortening of the upper face, traits which generally reflect a reduction in the action of testosterone

There are a lot of theories about why, after 150,000 years of existence, humans suddenly leapt forward in technology. Around 50,000 years ago, there is widespread evidence of producing bone and antler tools, heat-treated and flaked flint, projectile weapons, grindstones, fishing and birding equipment and a command of fire. Was this driven by a brain mutation, cooked foods, the advent of language or just population density?

The Duke study argues that living together and cooperating put a premium on agreeableness and lowered aggression and that, in turn, led to changed faces and more cultural exchange. "If prehistoric people began living closer together and passing down new technologies, they'd have to be tolerant of each other," Cieri said, according to the news release. "The key to our success is the ability to cooperate and get along and learn from one another." This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (SBR-9312567), the Leakey Foundation and the University of Iowa Orthodontics Department. Or see "How testosterone levels changed human facial features."

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