The Evolution of Human Life History

About this book

Human beings may share 98 percent of their genetic makeup with their nonhuman primate cousins, but they have distinctive life histories. When and why did these uniquely human patterns evolve? To answer that question, this volume brings together specialists in hunter-gatherer behavioral ecology and demography, human growth, development, and nutrition, paleodemography, human paleontology, primatology, and the genomics of aging. The contributors identify and explain the peculiar features of human life histories, such as the rate and timing of processes that directly influence survival and reproduction. Drawing on new evidence from paleoanthropology, they question existing arguments that link human's extended childhood dependency and long 'post-reproductive' lives to brain development, learning, and distinctively human social structures. The volume reviews alternative explanations for the distinctiveness of human life history and incorporates multiple lines of evidence in order to test them.

Contents

Introduction by Richard R. Paine & Kristen Hawkes; The derived features of human life history by Shannen L. Robson, Carel P. van Schaik & Kristen Hawkes; Life history theory & human evolution: a chronicle of ideas & findings by Kristen Hawkes; Slow life histories & human evolution by Kristen Hawkes; Primate life histories & the role of brains by Carel P. van Schaik, Nancy Barrickman, Meredith L. Bastian, Elissa B. Krakauer & Maria A. van Noordwijk; Lactation, complementary feeding & human life history by Daniel W. Sellen; Modern human life history: the evolution of human childhood & fertility by Barry Bogin; Contemporary hunter-gatherers & human life history evolution by Nicholas Blurton Jones; The osteological evidence for human longevity in the recent past by Lyle W. Konigsberg & Nicholas P. Herrmann; Paleodemographic data & why understanding holocene demography is essential to understanding human life history evolution in the pleistocene by Richard R. Paine & Jesper L. Boldsen; The evolution of modern human life history: a paleontological perspective by Matthew M. Skinner & Bernard Wood; Appendices; References.

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Biography

Kristen Hawkes is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles; Richard R. Paine is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah