Anthropologists say that our faces are shrinking. Well, OK, not everyone's.

It's not clear to me why softer food would result in smaller faces. I doubt there's a serious survival disadvantage to a long face. And we don't see this sort of variation due to diet alone.

I'd say that some sort of natural selection is indeed playing a role. And sexual selection is probably a good part of it.

Here's my wild-eyed speculation for your reading enjoyment. As it is noted, the morphological change corresponds to a switch to agriculture. It also corresponds to greater population densities and to the centralization of power over these populations. Perhaps the centralization of power is responsible.

Consider that historically, being a male in the ruling elite meant you had far greater access to fertile females (and the ability to spread your genes) than nearly everyone else in the society. It appears to me that a key preference is for a young appearance.

My suspicion is that shorter faces appear somwhat more youthful. So it's possible that our elite here might preferentially pick women who have shorter faces. Over ten millenia, this would probably be enough in itself to explain the shift to shorter faces.

In addition, this process might explain how come different cultures look so different given that their genes are relatively very similar. Virtually every sufficiently old culture would have undergone this process.

AND LEON'S GETTING LAAARRGER!!

They don't have larger faces.

They just have more of them.