image by: Misha Popovikj

HWN Suggests

Humans really don’t need chins

Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker is one of the art world’s most recognizable images. The monumental depiction of a man hunched forward, right hand resting against his chin, is synonymous with humanity’s capacity for deep contemplation, abstract thinking, and self-reflection. But while Rodin crafted his work of art in hopes of highlighting our unique cognitive abilities, the sculpture inadvertently highlights another facet that sets us apart from all other species: Homo sapiens are the only primates to boast chins.

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Featured

 Why Do Humans Have Chins? We’re the Only Species That Does.

According to new research, that knobby slab of bone jutting from our lower jaw is more than just a bit of angular bone or a sign of facial superiority. It’s likely just an evolutionary accident.

Articles of Interest

Your chin is an evolutionary accident

Chimpanzees, humans’ closest living relatives, do not have a chin. Neither did Neanderthals, Denisovans, or any other extinct human species. Humans, it turns out, have a unique capacity to “take it on the chin” because we’re uniquely in possession of that physical feature. That exclusive nature makes the chin well suited for identifying Homo sapiens in the fossil record. In simplest terms, a chin is a bony projection of the lower jaw. So why is it there? How and why did it evolve?

Only humans have chins: Study shows it's an evolutionary accident

Dashiell Hammett mentioned Sam Spade's jutting chin in the opening sentence of his novel, "The Maltese Falcon." Spade's chin was among the facial features Hammett used to describe his fictional detective's appearance, but starting with that distinctive chin was—at least from an evolutionary perspective—an unintentional redundancy, since every chin is distinctive in the sense that humans are the only primates to possess that physical characteristic.

The human chin revisited: what is it and who has it?

Although the presence of a "chin" has long been recognized as unique to Homo sapiens among mammals, both the ontogeny and the morphological details of this structure have been largely overlooked.