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Our violent past is all over our faces.

Biologists say that as apes evolved into humans, their faces took on fighting features such as thicker jaws and foreheads.

The characteristics were previously thought to be adaptations for a diet of hard-to-chew foods, such as nuts. 

But researchers at the University of Utah point out that they developed around the same time as humans acquired the ability to curl their hand into a club-like fist.

Biologists say that as humans evolved, their faces took on fighting features like thicker jaws and foreheads

Professor David Carrier said the changes could have been to 'better protect' the face when punched.

He said: 'If indeed the evolution of our hand proportions were associated with selection for fighting behaviour you might expect the primary target, the face, to have undergone evolution to better protect it from injury when punched.

'When modern humans fight hand-to-hand the face is usually the primary target.

'What we found was that the bones that suffer the highest rates of fracture in fights are the same parts of the skull that exhibited the greatest increase in robusticity.'

The features were previously thought to be adaptations for a diet of hard-to-chew foods. But they developed around the same time as humans acquired the ability to curl their hand into a club-like fist (file picture)

Writing in the journal Biological Reviews, he said that many of these fighting features were softer in the modern human.

However, the modern male face still exhibits some 'fighting features' that are less prominent in females. These include thicker, stronger bones in the forehead, cheeks, jaw and neck.

And it seems that even over the course of four to five million years, some things have not changed.

A spokesman for the research team described the early brawls as 'the prehistoric version of a bar fight, over women, resources and other slug-worthy disagreements'.