The Descent of Man

mals gradually reach maturity, the naked surfaces
grow larger compared with the size of
their bodies. The hair, however, appears to
have been removed, not for the sake of nudity,
but that the colour of the skin may be more
fully displayed. So again with many birds, it
appears as if the head and neck had been divested
of feathers through sexual selection, to exhibit
the brightly-coloured skin.
As the body in woman is less hairy than in
man, and as this character is common to all
races, we may conclude that it was our female
semi-human ancestors who were first divested
of hair, and that this occurred at an extremely
remote period before the several races had diverged
from a common stock. Whilst our female
ancestors were gradually acquiring this new
character of nudity, they must have transmitted
it almost equally to their offspring of both sexes
whilst young; so that its transmission, as with
the ornaments of many mammals and birds,