The most distinctive characteristic of a human is it\'s face - it is unique amon

Question

The most distinctive characteristic of a human is it's face - it is unique among each individual (with the exception of identical twins). It is uncertain to me if whether we best identify other humans by their face due to special brain parts developed for this (there are people with disease that cannot recognize faces) or for actual very distinctive physical face forms; maybe it is a combination of this.

Anyway, the question is about evolution. Why would distinct faces (or ability to recognize distinct faces) be something useful that would be retained by evolution? How is this better at survival?

Explanation / Answer

Given the prevalance of myopia in humans I would have thought that facial recognition was secondary to other indicators such as gait recognition which is also unique to individuals though can be copied to an extent. Voice and shape are also used to identify people.

Being able to recognise individuals would allow the formation of groups, allow for structures of trust, reciprocal altruism to develop as well as punishing transgressors. Repeat interactions with other people require some kind of identification, but I dunno if facial recognition is the only/primary one.

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