Comment on How far back into the human/mammal family tree does one think we would have to go to find a genetic relative that doesn't give a whit about how good their hair looks ?

southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

The question in the title is essentially unanswerable. It’s not even possible to point to where an awareness of attraction as opposed to just existing started, or if there even was a starting point.

That being said, chances are that it began at the same point as humans became self aware. Most mammals and plenty of other critters put some degree or another of energy into maximizing their presentation, even if only during mating season.

At some point, any creature that becomes self aware is also going to start seeing the benefits of caring about that.

I suspect you’d be looking at somewhere before homo sapiens, but after whatever “missing link”. Not that I’m confident in the whole idea of a missing link, but that’s tangential. What isn’t tangential is that a lot of the early human-ish critters exhibited signs of self awareness to some degree, so I can’t imagine that sapiens were the first to have it. I seem to recall there being primitive equivalents to combs and such as far back as like ,habilis? Don’t bet money on my memory though

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