Egyptian priest not only shaved their head but also plugged their eyebrows, beard and the rest of the bodyhair..they surely didnt do this to attract women. And thus you cant assume that having no hair or having no eyebrows were attractive at this point.
The same goes for samurais. Just bc warriors shaved their hair like this for some retarded reasons doesnt mean it was a sign of beauty.
Our perception of beauty basically hasnt change since the stoneage. The only thing that slightly various is the perception of bodyweight - in hungry times fat women were perceived as more attractive for obvious reasons and vice versa.
Everything else, the face, body ratio etc hasnt changed since the stoneage. Man 5.000 years ago got a boner for the same reasons we do today, a nice face, a nice body. Women got wet for the handsome hunter with big shoulders and small waist.
And why is that? Body is understable (good proportions are somehow affect pregnancy for women, a big guy can better protect you, hunt etc)..but why face? Why are we attracted to high cheekbones, a nice jawline, nice shaped eyes? Noone is better at hunting just bc you have high cheekbones.
For the same reason women are attracted to men with hair - its a marker of good genetics, hormonal profile and development. The feature itself is useless but it tells you a lot of the genetic mating qualities.
But yeah - for 80% of men is also a sign of ageing which also affects genetic mating qualities - sperm quality drops with every year after 20. Chances of autism and other disease for the kid raises.
But here is the thing. You know what is also a sign of ageing? Grey hair
But people are way less forgiving for hairloss then for grey hair - and im pretty sure that has a reason..
Maybe it just shows that your body is really sh*t at ageing and thus not only your hair suffers but also your cardio system, your sperm etc..maybe it signals the women that you maybe die at the next hunt at a heartattache while the grey fox over there might be older than you but still has some more years left..i dunno
Look, I find this discussion interesting from a scientific point of view and we can go on and forth about it, but I am the first to admit that I am speculating heavily on some points, just like anyone else is because there is not a lot known about stoneage sexual preferences.
I will say this: Androgenetic baldness during the stoneage, probably was not a mating criteria at all, since baldness, especially premature baldness pretty much is a side effect of civilization and more so of modern life. Tribal people today, for some reason, show very little to no balding even in old specimen.
In the same vein: baldness was virtually non-existent in Japan until they modernized rapidly, today Japan is the 'baldest' Asian nation on earth.
What does that mean? We can only speculate, if baldness as a mating criteria derrived from prehistoric selection bias at all, then maybe only in that sense, that there had to be something seriously wrong with your immune system, if you were balding before the age of 40, or that it would indicate that you are very, very old.
Facial structures are different. You are basically born with them, they are a consistent indicator. Conversely, even today full blown baldness kicks in for most of us at a age, long after we would have procreated in the past. 24 is an early age for baldness and most certainly accelerated by modern life styles, in prehistoric times we would have already had 8 children by then, heck even my grandpa had two kids at that age already.
What a shitty indicator of genetic potential is that, when it becomes only visible after you produced children for most of human history?
You say, we are just scrapping the tip of the iceberg, but that is pure speculation. There are probably a variety of clusters , that could be constructed with other traits as well, hair color, eye color, height, foot size...it's always questionable how evolutionary significant these are if they occur at a later age. For example tall men, have a far higher risk of getting a heart attack, that's why there are no old tall people...doesn't stop tall guys getting laid like hell.
To be honest, your grey fox example makes a lot of sense...yeah maybe a female would be discouraged from mating with certain older specimen, if they show baldness signs, because it indicates approaching death. It's still speculative and would be a attavistic criteria in that case, since the outbreak of heart attack, prostate cancer and premature hairloss, don't fall into the same agerange at all anymore. And I'd argue, that she had to mate with the tribe leader either way, balding or not.
All in all, I don't find the evidence that the genetic properties of the cluster of baldness + x per se are responsible for its unattractiveness very convincing so far. Baldness at a mating age probably meant something very different thousands of years ago, than what it does now.
Also why would black men get a pass when it comes to balding? The basic mechanics are just the same as for anyone else.
Who knows...this discussion is mere academic, it's obvious that baldness decreases your looks and that you should fight it. There's no responsibility about being honest about your genetic make up anyways though. Especially not to women, who cheat all the time by wearing, high heels, make up, eye lashes, push ups, fake nails, lip stick, tit implants, *** implants and most importantly: wigs.
