Most mysterious of all is the chin. The chin is unique to humans, and no one knows why we have one. It doesn’t seem to confer any structural benefit to the head, so it may be simply that we find a good chin dashing. Lieberman, in a rare moment of lightness, observed, “Testing this last hypothesis is especially difficult, but the reader is encouraged to think of appropriate experiments.” It is certainly the case that we talk about “chinless wonders” and otherwise equate modest chins with deficiencies of character and intellect. —
