Talk:Female cosmetic coalitions

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This is a nice article on an interesting theory, but at the moment it's pretty incomplete and unbalanced. It needs much more content on the response to this hypothesis, and the arguments for and against it. Is there any real evidence for it at all, or is it merely an untested hypothesis? Has it been commented on and taken seriously by other scientists? If there isn't much in the way of responses, is it even a notable theory in the first place? More content is needed to answer these questions, and to give fair representation to competing mainstream explanations of female cosmetic use. Robofish (talk) 20:49, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for this. In response I have inserted a quote from KATE DOUGLAS (editor of the New Scientist) to show how seriously scientists have been debating this idea since 2001. Chris Stringer (also cited) is arguably the world's most prominent and authoritative human origins specialist. Is there a 'mainstream view' as to why human females in the evolutionary past began using ochre cosmetics? If so, I would like to know what it is. Ian Watts is not a fringe archaeologist but the world's leading expert on the African Middle Stone Age ochre record. The article makes very clear that the FCC theory has its critics. What theory doesn't? But 'fringe' is not an accurate description when the authors are well known for their involvement in mainstream conferences and debates and have been publishing exclusively in mainstream peer-reviewed journals such as the 'Cambridge Archaeological Journal', 'Current Anthropology', 'Palaeoanthropology' and so forth. Altg20April2nd (talk) 11:25, 27 September 2013 (UTC). Can we please remove the 'fringe' tag?

This article has HUGE problems. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.122.254 (talk) 03:42, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Would you care to elaborate? 386-DX (talk) 00:49, 22 October 2015 (UTC)


 * There is no propper criticism section, yet the article has a long explanation of the theory, why it is "plausible" and how it could be tested according to its proponent. Also, the article menstrual synchrony seem to contradict the existence of women synchronising "their cycles" as it states: "A 2013 review concluded that menstrual synchrony likely does not exist.[4]" Sietecolores (talk) 17:47, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

This article is problematic
This whole article takes speculation and presents it as fact. It needs to be re-balanced to emphasize that this is just one hypothesis that, speaking as a biologist, is utter nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1702:3200:2850:D17E:9CBC:33B9:5672 (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree, much of this feels very one sided and appears to be the presentation of one line of hypotheticals. I'd like to get some more experienced editors' feelings for where the line should be drawn. Lostsandwich (talk) 08:07, 26 April 2024 (UTC)