Purpose
See also: Human skeletal changes due to bipedalismThe brow ridge functions to reinforce the weaker bones of the face in much the same way that the chin of modern humans reinforces their comparatively thin mandibles. This was necessary in pongids and early hominids because of the tremendous strain put on the cranium by their powerful chewing apparatuses, which is best demonstrated by any of the members of the genus Paranthropus. The brow ridge was one of the last traits to be lost in the path to modern humans, and only disappeared with the development of the modern pronounced frontal lobe. This is one of the most salient differences between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis.
Read more about this topic: Supraorbital Ridge
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“... the word “education” has an evil sound in politics; there is a pretense of education,
when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed—”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)