Forget jutting jaws, pheromones or hypnotic stares. What has made men attractive since they lived in caves could well be a foreshortened face, according to a new study.
Theories abound as to why humans are attracted to each other, and on the role facial features might have played in the human evolutionary saga.
But palaeontologists at the British natural history museum have uncovered something that had somehow gone unnoticed: for at least the last two million years, the space twixt brow and upper lip in hominids has been, proportionately, shorter and wider in males than in females.
"There has to be a reason for why at puberty the face of men and women develop differently," said lead author Eleanor Weston, pointing out that there is no plausible mechanical explanation for the divergence.