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Sweating and Evolution
The Savannah Hypothesis About 4 to 6 millions years ago, hominids moved or began to migrate from a forested environment to the open savannah on the plains of Africa. This population shift introduced a significant change in terms of climate exposure. Not only was there a major heat stress due to an increased exposure to sunlight, three evolutionary responses occurred: bipedalism, loss of hair and the emergence of sweat glands. All three responses are thought to have played a role in dealing with the heat stress. Bipedalism reduced the overall body surface area exposed to sunlight, loss of hair made cooling through water evaporation possible and in turn favoured the emergence of sweat glands.
The Sweat Map Researchers from the UK were able to put together a 'sweat map' of the human body. In others words, they were able to map out the areas of the body and their relative propensity to sweat. What they observed from this map was somewhat intriguing and difficult to explain.
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They noticed that the central and lower back, especially along the spine, showed unexpectedly high rates of sweating - in fact, twice the rate of the chest area. This observation is counter intuitive to our sweating / evaporation cooling mechanism. Relative to the chest or frontal regions, the back is less efficient because it is less exposed to airflow upon walking or running.
'If this pattern is a remnant from when we moved on all fours, before we walked upright, then sweating on the back would make sense. The chest would be protected from air movement and enclosed by the extremities, while the back pointing upwards would be more exposed to wind.' - George Havenith, Prof. of Environmental Physiology and Ergonomics |