Hair-raising evolution of hominids

“AND they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed’ says Genesis.

But when Adam and Eve misbehaved, “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons”. So, according to the Bible, we humans were created largely hairless.

Science gives a different account. The earliest hominids, it says, were hairy but lost their coats. Dressing up is a comparatively recent and local practice. So when did our ancestors lose their hair and why? Writing in the February edition of Scientific American, palaeontologist Nina Jablonski argues that we lost our hair over two million years ago because of climate change.