Hair is made primarily of protein keratin. It can be preserved for thousands of years under the right conditions (like the 5300-year-old iceman Ötzi that got frozen in a glacier). His body, hair, and clothes were all intact, whereas in a wetter and warmer climate the hair survives for a few weeks only.

There are many different hypotheses as to why we lost all body hair, but the one on our heads remained. Some think it all happened as a kind of cooling mechanism that allowed our brain to develop further and become larger, while other scientists believe it was left on our heads to regulate body temperature when travelling long distances.

Straight, curly, brown, blond, red – there are so many hair types that it’s easy to ignore the fact that our hair is actually quite weird. Yes, you read that right! We’re the only mammals who have hairless bodies, with hair covering only our head. Even if we find the answer to why we look the way we look, the reason behind why we have so many hair types would still remain a mystery! Scientists are only starting to turn their inquisitive gazes towards human hair, so here’s what we have so far. Our ancestors might have shifted to hunting, but still there were predators out there that could easily wipe them from the face of the Earth. That’s why they had to hunt in the heat when all other predators were resting, hence, they lost bodily hair to evolution, having some left for heat regulation.