Original photo by dimid_86/ iStock
You know your head, shoulders, knees, and toes (knees and toes), but has anyone ever introduced you to the glabella? This isn’t some hidden-away body part like the back of the elbow or something spleen-adjacent — it’s smack dab in the middle of your face. Latin for “smooth, hairless, bald,” the glabella is the small patch of skull nestled in the middle of your two superciliary arches (also known as your eyebrow ridges). Many people know of the glabella because of the wrinkles, or “glabellar lines,” that can appear in the area.
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It's a factEyebrows are a uniquely human feature. As the forehead ridge of Homo sapiens receded to make room for our brain, eyebrows developed to keep moisture out of our eyes while also blocking sunlight.
Although smooth and hairless today, the glabella wasn’t always so. Our human ancestors, including Neanderthals, instead sported formidable brow ridges that likely evolved to display social dominance. As the brain of Homo sapiens grew, this brow receded until only the smallest of ridges survived — along with the smooth bit of bone in between. But the fortunes of this little piece of anatomical real estate weren’t just tied to evolution. Women in ancient Greece saw the unibrow as a beautiful feature, so much so that they’d paint soot on their glabellas to form a faux unibrow. Throughout the following centuries, fashion’s notion of the ideal eyebrow changed, but the glabella remained more or less true to its smooth, hairless name. Unless Frida Kahlo’s famous unibrow becomes a modern fashion trend, it’ll likely stay that way.
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In Japan’s Heian era (794 to 1185 CE), some women removed their eyebrows and repainted them with ______.
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In Japan’s Heian era (794 to 1185 CE), some women removed their eyebrows and repainted them with ink.
Eyebrows played a crucial role in the rise of Homo sapiens.
Eyebrows are an often-overlooked asset of human beauty. Folks write poetry about gorgeous eyes and ballads on beautiful smiles, but eyebrows, while certainly an obsessed-over feature in modern beauty trends, rarely receive as much adoration. Yet according to anthropologists, the fuzzy caterpillars on our foreheads are vital to the survival of our species. A study in 2018 found that eyebrows figure prominently in human social interaction and aided early humans in forming large, complex social groups. One of these interactions occurs when people see each other at a distance — in that situation, people unconsciously raise their eyebrows in a way that apparently shows they’re not a threat. Eyebrows similarly raise toward the middle to signal sympathy, and their micro-movements can also play a key role in expressing trustworthiness or deception. With this ability to convey subtle emotions in only an “eyebrow flash,” humans formed larger and more diverse social groups on our journey toward becoming the dominant animal on the planet.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
