Female cosmetic coalitions

The theory of Female Cosmetic Coalitions (FCC) is a new and controversial attempt to explain the evolutionary emergence of art, ritual and symbolic culture in Homo sapiens. It is proposed by evolutionary anthropologists Chris Knight and Camilla Power together with archaeologist Ian Watts.

Supporters of this new theory contest the prevailing assumption that the earliest art was painted or engraved on external surfaces such as cave walls or rock faces. They argue instead that art is much older than previously thought and that the canvas was initially the human body. The earliest art, according to FCC, consisted of predominantly blood-red designs produced on the body for purposes of cosmetic display.

'Female Cosmetic Coalitions' is a conceptual approach linking (a) Darwin's theory of evolution by natural and sexual selection, (b) research into sexual signalling by wild-living monkeys and apes, (c) the fossil record of encephalization in human evolution, (d) recent archaeological discoveries of red ochre pigments dating back to the speciation in Africa of Homo sapiens around 250,000 years ago and (e) modern hunter-gatherer ethnography. These seemingly divergent topics are brought together in a co-authored publication attempting to explain why the world today is populated by modern Homo sapiens instead of by the equally large-brained, previously successful Neanderthals. An account of exhaustive archaeological testing of the FCC theory, including robust debate between specialists, is this article published in the journal Current Anthropology in 2016.

Of course, not everyone is convinced, but anthropologists are starting to take the idea seriously. One of its strengths is that it addresses the question of why symbolic culture evolved, rather than simply how it did so, according to Robin Dunbar from the University of Liverpool.

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