The Evolution of the Face: A Letter to Some Readers in Tennessee
By Carl Zimmer | December 15, 2008 3:10 pm
chimpface600.jpgSomething strange recently happened to me in
Tennessee. I wasn’t actually in Tennessee when it happened. The
strangeness emanated from there–actually, from one spot in
Tennessee–and eventually reached me here up in New England.  It
started with a column I wrote in the October issue of Discover,
about the evolution of the human face. Sometimes people write
letters to the magazine about my pieces. My editors dropped a
note to let me know that all at once they got 40 60 letters
about my column. All from the outskirts of Memphis. All pretty
much identical in style and substance. Some had been written on
a computer, but some were written by hand–young hands, judging
from their appearance.  Here’s a sample…  “I enjoyed reading
your article and was interested in the research done on how the
face and its muscles work to make expressions. I however believe
that the brain and facial expressions