Blonde Girl With Long Hair Posing On The Tree

Texture
Curly hair
Jablonski agrees that it was evolutionarily advantageous for pre-humans to retain the hair on their heads in order to protect the scalp as they walked upright in the intense African (equatorial) UV light. While some might argue that, by this logic, humans should also express hairy shoulders given that these body parts would putatively be exposed to similar conditions, the protection of the head, the seat of the brain that enabled humanity to become one of the most successful species on the planet (and which also is very vulnerable at birth), was arguably a more urgent issue (axillary hair in the underarms and groin were also retained as signs of sexual maturity). During the gradual process by which Homo erectus made a transition from furry to naked skin, their hair texture putatively changed gradually from straight (the condition of most mammals, including humanity's closest cousins—chimpanzees), to Afro-like or 'kinky' (i.e. tightly coiled). In this sense, during the period in which humans were gradually losing their straight body hair and thereby exposing initially the pale skin underneath their fur to the sun, straight hair would have been an adaptive liability. Hence, tightly coiled or 'kinky' Afro-hair may have evolved to prevent the entry of UV light into the body during the transition toward dark, UV-protected skin.