What's above your neck but below your mouth?

This isn’t a trick question — it is, of course the chin.

We all know that but if you went back in time a few million years then the answer may not be as clear cut.

A new scientific study claims that the chin simply didn’t use to exist and has only come about as a result of change in our diet.

Apparently it was the advent of cooking and us humans eating softer food that created the extra bit on the bottom of our face.

Imagine, there were no cavemen versions of football pundit Jimmy Hill.

There was no caveman cleft chin so we’d have had no neanderthal John Travolta — hence there never having been a Jurassic Period Fever captured in cave paintings.

There would have been no caveman Bruce Forsyth so there would have been no ‘Previous Generation Game’ and the conveyor belt consisting of hunk of raw meat, nose bone and cuddly Tyrannosaurus.

Researchers led by anthropologist Dr James Pampush collected chin data (yes, there is such a thing) from more than 100 primate species and compared it with historical data.

Computer wizardry showed the changes to the front jaw and how the chin evolved.

The study suggests the chin is what is known as a spandrel — which isn’t the cross-breeding of a spaniel and a scoundrel but rather the evolutionary left-over of another event. In this case, the event is possibly the advent of cooking.

Dr Pampush said: “My guess is that it happened around two million years ago when there was a jump in brain size. We had a soft diet, and we no longer needed big teeth.

“Around two million years ago there were a lot of changes to the ‘human-like’ animals. Homo erectus had a larger body size, much larger brains, was probably cooking and there’s a good chance they were using clothing.”

So there you go, the chin is an evolutionary by-product.

But us enterprising humans haven’t let that put us off using it to its fullest.

We enjoying spilling stuff down it, nicking it when shaving (and that’s just the ladies) and err, rubbing it when thinking.

That’s not the end of the chin in our lives though. There seems to be a burgeoning chin balancing scene. I mean people balancing things on their chins, rather than just balancing chins on top of each other.

Did you know for instance that the farthest distance walked balancing a lawnmower on the chin (not powered) is 114.8 m (376 ft 7.68 in).

This feat was achieved by Frank Kasell in Springfield, Virginia, USA, in July last year.

The most cigar boxes balanced on the chin is 223 set by Ashrita Furman (USA) at The Culture Project Theatre, New York City, in 2006.

Ashrita is a particularly talented chin balancer.

He also holds the record for balancing pint glasses on his chin.

I’ll give you a guess how many. Imagine how difficult it is to carry three pints back from the bar so does that inform your guess?

Probably not — Ashrita balanced 81 pint glasses on his chin for 12 seconds.

And they say the chin is an evolutionary by-product.