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 The man began to lose hair due to the "pranks" of fashion, which played, perhaps, a noticeable role in those distant times.
Just as the fashion for long-haired guys and girls in mini-skirts is now widespread, among primitive people there could be a fashion for girls with minimal hair, who, naturally, "got married" faster, while "unfashionable", hairy girls most often remained old maids. This is how natural selection took place; hairy people became less and less, and "naked monkeys" more and more. However, it could be the other way around: the fashion was for hairless men, and hairy men remained old bachelors ...
This hypothesis deserves consideration, since fashion is such a natural phenomenon that can lead to the most unexpected consequences, even more serious than loss of hair.
C. Darwin attributed the decrease in the hairline in humans to the action of sexual selection. "I am inclined to think," Darwin wrote, "that originally a man, or rather a woman, lost her hair for decoration, as we shall see when we consider sexual selection."
 Darwin believed that the human ancestor could not lose hair as a result of normal natural selection. He pointed out that the members of the primate order, to which humans belong, are all covered with hair and, as a rule, are most dense on the back, despite the fact that they live in hot countries. This circumstance, as well as the thick head of hair on a person's head, contradicts, according to Darwin, the assumption that a person became naked from the sun.
This point of view may raise some objections. It should be noted that many monkeys (especially green monkeys) suffer greatly from overheating when they find themselves in spaces not protected from the sun. In addition, for an upright creature, such as a man, conditions arose under which it was useful to protect the head from the scorching rays of the sun, which was achieved by the abundant growth of hair on the head; the body, on which the rays of the sun standing at its zenith only glided, it was advisable to bare it for the free release of its heat into the surrounding space and thus get rid of overheating. It should be borne in mind that overheating especially threatens a large creature, in which the heat transfer surface is small in comparison with the body weight. It is no accident that it is in tall anthropoids - gorillas and chimpanzees - that severe hair thinning is found, mainly on the chest.
It should also be remembered that the closest ancestor of man found himself on the ground, heated by the sun, and, moreover, was forced to lead a hunting life, that is, to move quickly and work hard, making tools. Natural selection could gradually, as it were, "take off a man's fur coat," which greatly interfered with his activities. What could be the role of sexual selection? It can be assumed that individuals with thick hair turned out to be less attractive to the other sex, not because such was the whim of taste, but because the owners of a rich coat were somewhat less active, clumsy, tired faster and brought less prey. Thus, it is not excluded that sexual selection followed "in the footsteps" of natural selection and enhanced its effect.
It is not without the likelihood, moreover, that the intensity of sexual selection increased due to the psychology of man as a social being. For a person, perhaps, it was not indifferent to the expressiveness of his movements and body shapes, which appeared due to naked skin, which was visible to everyone, since it testified to the level of development in him of properties characteristic of a person and important for his existence.Sexual selection, figuratively speaking, created a living sculpture of the human body, which, after thousands of years, became the most important subject of plastic art.
Ya.Ya. Roginsky
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