The Evolution of Human Infancy: Why It Helps to Be Helpless

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen R. Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Cultural Adaptations ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Emotional Relationships

Humans have a prolonged childhood, which begins with an immature developmental state at birth. We take care of these helpless infants through a variety of cultural adaptations, including material culture, provisioning of food, and shared child care. Our species has long been characterized as having secondary altriciality, but an examination of human life history shows that we are fundamentally precocial, despite seeming helpless at birth. Human babies are also relatively large and overall require substantial attention and energy from caregivers. Previous work has focused on how culture permits us to give birth to helpless young and how our cultural adaptation solves problems stemming from encephalization. The birth of these dependent, costly creatures poses challenges but also creates opportunities by enhancing the development of social and emotional relationships with caregivers as well as language acquisition and enculturation. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 50 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals The Life History Of Human Foraging: Cross-Cultural And Individual Variation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Koster ◽  
Richard Mcelreath ◽  
Kim Hill ◽  
Douglas Yu ◽  
Glenn Shepard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Substantial Variation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Study Sites ◽  
Human Foraging ◽  
High Skill

ABSTRACTHuman adaptation depends upon the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning will benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring individual hunters’ of hunting skill gain and loss from approximately 23,000 hunting records generated by more than 1,800 individuals at 40 locations. The model provides an improved picture of ages of peak productivity as well as variation within and among ages. The data reveal an average age of peak productivity between 30 and 35 years of age, though high skill is maintained throughout much of adulthood. In addition, there is substantial variation both among individuals and sites. Within study sites, variation among individuals depends more upon heterogeneity in rates of decline than in rates of increase. This analysis sharpens questions about the co-evolution of human life history and cultural adaptation. It also demonstrates new statistical algorithms and models that expand the potential inferences drawn from detailed quantitative data collected in the field.

scholarly journals The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (26) ◽  
pp. eaax9070 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Koster ◽  
Richard McElreath ◽  
Kim Hill ◽  
Douglas Yu ◽  
Glenn Shepard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Substantial Variation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Study Sites ◽  
Human Foraging ◽  
High Skill

Human adaptation depends on the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring hunters’ increases and declines of skill from approximately 23,000 hunting records generated by more than 1800 individuals at 40 locations. The data reveal an average age of peak productivity between 30 and 35 years of age, although high skill is maintained throughout much of adulthood. In addition, there is substantial variation both among individuals and sites. Within study sites, variation among individuals depends more on heterogeneity in rates of decline than in rates of increase. This analysis sharpens questions about the coevolution of human life history and cultural adaptation.

scholarly journals The human life history is adapted to exploit the adaptive advantages of culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1803) ◽  
pp. 20190498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Richerson ◽  
Robert Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Life History Strategy ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Variation ◽  
Juvenile Period ◽  
Cultural Adaptations ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Cognition And Culture

Humans evolved from an ape ancestor that was highly intelligent, moderately social and moderately dependent on cultural adaptations for subsistence technology (tools). By the late Pleistocene, humans had become highly dependent on culture for subsistence and for rules to organize a complex social life. Adaptation by cultural traditions transformed our life history, leading to an extended juvenile period to learn subsistence and social skills, post-reproductive survival to help conserve and transmit skills, a dependence on social support for mothers of large-brained, very dependent and nutrient-demanding offspring, males devoting substantial effort to provisioning rather than mating, and the cultivation of large social networks to tap pools in information unavailable to less social species. One measure of the success of the exploitation of culture is that the minimum inter-birth interval of humans is nearly half that of our ape relatives. Another measure is the wide geographical distribution of humans compared with other apes, based on subsistence systems adapted to fine-scale spatial environmental variation. An important macro-evolutionary question is why our big-brained, culture-intensive life-history strategy evolved so recently and in only our lineage. We suggest that increasing spatial and temporal variation in the Pleistocene favoured cultural adaptations. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals'.

scholarly journals Is There a Cap on Longevity? A Statistical Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Léo R. Belzile ◽  
Anthony C. Davison ◽  
Jutta Gampe ◽  
Holger Rootzén ◽  
Dmitrii Zholud
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Social Security Systems ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Upper Limit ◽  
Biological Interest ◽  
Lower Limits ◽  
Human Life Span

There is sustained and widespread interest in understanding the limit, if there is any, to the human life span. Apart from its intrinsic and biological interest, changes in survival in old age have implications for the sustainability of social security systems. A central question is whether the endpoint of the underlying lifetime distribution is finite. Recent analyses of data on the oldest human lifetimes have led to competing claims about survival and to some controversy, due in part to incorrect statistical analysis. This article discusses the particularities of such data, outlines correct ways of handling them, and presents suitable models and methods for their analysis. We provide a critical assessment of some earlier work and illustrate the ideas through reanalysis of semisupercentenarian lifetime data. Our analysis suggests that remaining life length after age 109 is exponentially distributed and that any upper limit lies well beyond the highest lifetime yet reliably recorded. Lower limits to 95% confidence intervals for the human life span are about 130 years, and point estimates typically indicate no upper limit at all. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, Volume 9 is March 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Demographic Consequences of Phenological Shifts in Response to Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy M. Iler ◽  
Paul J. CaraDonna ◽  
Jessica R.K. Forrest ◽  
Eric Post
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life History ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Vital Rate ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Vital Rates ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Phenological Shifts

When a phenological shift affects a demographic vital rate such as survival or reproduction, the altered vital rate may or may not have population-level consequences. We review the evidence that climate change affects populations by shifting species’ phenologies, emphasizing the importance of demographic life-history theory. We find many examples of phenological shifts having both positive and negative consequences for vital rates. Yet, few studies link phenological shifts to changes in vital rates known to drive population dynamics, especially in plants. When this link is made, results are largely consistent with life-history theory: Phenological shifts have population-level consequences when they affect survival in longer-lived organisms and reproduction in shorter-lived organisms. However, there are just as many cases in which demographic mechanisms buffer population growth from phenologically induced changes in vital rates. We provide recommendations for future research aiming to understand the complex relationships among climate, phenology, and demography, which will help to elucidate the extent to which phenological shifts actually alter population persistence. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, Volume 52 is November 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Wheel Bug, Arilus cristatus (Linnaeus) (Insecta: Hemiptera: Reduviidae)

EDIS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (2) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
F. W. Mead
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Original Publication ◽  
Medical Importance

Contents: Introduction - Synonymy - Distribution - Description and Identification - Life History - Notes on Behavior - Importance as a Predator - Medical Importance - Enemies - Selected References This document is EENY086, one of a series of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, UF/IFAS Extension. Original publication date June 1999. Revised December 2005, August 2014, and March 2017. Visit the EDIS website at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu. This document is also available on the Featured Creatures website at http://entnemdept.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/.

scholarly journals The Life History of Learning Subsistence Skills among Hadza and BaYaka Foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo

Human Nature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheina Lew-Levy ◽  
Erik J. Ringen ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Ibrahim A. Mabulla ◽  
Tanya Broesch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Republic Of Congo ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

AbstractAspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural variation in how and from whom learning occurred. Learning patterns and community perceptions of task difficulty were assessed through interviews. We found no relationship between task difficulty, age of acquisition, and oblique transmission, and a weak but positive relationship between task difficulty and rates of teaching. While same-sex transmission was normative in both societies, tasks ranked as more difficult were more likely to be transmitted by men among the BaYaka, but not among the Hadza, potentially reflecting cross-cultural differences in the sexual division of subsistence and teaching labor. Further, the BaYaka were more likely to report learning via teaching, and less likely to report learning via observation, than the Hadza, possibly owing to differences in socialization practices.

Endogenous Retroviruses Drive Resistance and Promotion of Exogenous Retroviral Homologs

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott S. Chiu ◽  
Sue VandeWoude
Keyword(s):  
Immune Modulation ◽  
Viral Infections ◽  
Viral Evolution ◽  
Endogenous Retroviruses ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Biological Functions ◽  
Self Tolerance ◽  
Vertebrate Hosts ◽  
Insight Into

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) serve as markers of ancient viral infections and provide invaluable insight into host and viral evolution. ERVs have been exapted to assist in performing basic biological functions, including placentation, immune modulation, and oncogenesis. A subset of ERVs share high nucleotide similarity to circulating horizontally transmitted exogenous retrovirus (XRV) progenitors. In these cases, ERV–XRV interactions have been documented and include ( a) recombination to result in ERV–XRV chimeras, ( b) ERV induction of immune self-tolerance to XRV antigens, ( c) ERV antigen interference with XRV receptor binding, and ( d) interactions resulting in both enhancement and restriction of XRV infections. Whereas the mechanisms governing recombination and immune self-tolerance have been partially determined, enhancement and restriction of XRV infection are virus specific and only partially understood. This review summarizes interactions between six unique ERV–XRV pairs, highlighting important ERV biological functions and potential evolutionary histories in vertebrate hosts. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, Volume 9 is February 16, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Language and life history: A new perspective on the development and evolution of human language

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Locke ◽  
Barry Bogin
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Adult Development ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Juvenile Period ◽  
Development Of Language ◽  
New Perspective

It has long been claimed that Homo sapiens is the only species that has language, but only recently has it been recognized that humans also have an unusual pattern of growth and development. Social mammals have two stages of pre-adult development: infancy and juvenility. Humans have two additional prolonged and pronounced life history stages: childhood, an interval of four years extending between infancy and the juvenile period that follows, and adolescence, a stage of about eight years that stretches from juvenility to adulthood. We begin by reviewing the primary biological and linguistic changes occurring in each of the four pre-adult ontogenetic stages in human life history. Then we attempt to trace the evolution of childhood and juvenility in our hominin ancestors. We propose that several different forms of selection applied in infancy and childhood; and that, in adolescence, elaborated vocal behaviors played a role in courtship and intrasexual competition, enhancing fitness and ultimately integrating performative and pragmatic skills with linguistic knowledge in a broad faculty of language. A theoretical consequence of our proposal is that fossil evidence of the uniquely human stages may be used, with other findings, to date the emergence of language. If important aspects of language cannot appear until sexual maturity, as we propose, then a second consequence is that the development of language requires the whole of modern human ontogeny. Our life history model thus offers new ways of investigating, and thinking about, the evolution, development, and ultimately the nature of human language.

scholarly journals The process of culturally adapting the Healthy Beginnings early obesity prevention program for Arabic and Chinese mothers in Australia

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Marshall ◽  
Sarah Taki ◽  
Penny Love ◽  
Yvonne Laird ◽  
Marianne Kearney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Childhood Obesity ◽  
Obesity Prevention ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Prevention Program ◽  
Delivery Mode ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Cultural Adaptations ◽  
Local Study ◽  
Culturally Adapted ◽  
Obesity Prevention Program

Abstract Background Behavioural interventions for the early prevention of childhood obesity mostly focus on English-speaking populations in high-income countries. Cultural adaptation is an emerging strategy for implementing evidence-based interventions among different populations and regions. This paper describes the initial process of culturally adapting Healthy Beginnings, an evidence-based early childhood obesity prevention program, for Arabic and Chinese speaking migrant mothers and infants in Sydney, Australia. Methods The cultural adaptation process followed the Stages of Cultural Adaptation theoretical model and is reported using the Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications-Enhanced. We first established the adaptation rationale, then considered program underpinnings and the core components for effectiveness. To inform adaptations, we reviewed the scientific literature and engaged stakeholders. Consultations included focus groups with 24 Arabic and 22 Chinese speaking migrant mothers and interviews with 20 health professionals. With input from project partners, bi-cultural staff and community organisations, findings informed cultural adaptations to the content and delivery features of the Healthy Beginnings program. Results Program structure and delivery mode were retained to preserve fidelity (i.e. staged nurse calls with key program messages addressing modifiable obesity-related behaviours: infant feeding, active play, sedentary behaviours and sleep). Qualitative analysis of focus group and interview data resulted in descriptive themes concerning cultural practices and beliefs related to infant obesity-related behaviours and perceptions of child weight among Arabic and Chinese speaking mothers. Based on the literature and local study findings, cultural adaptations were made to recruitment approaches, staffing (bi-cultural nurses and project staff) and program content (modified call scripts and culturally adapted written health promotion materials). Conclusions This cultural adaptation of Healthy Beginnings followed an established process model and resulted in a program with enhanced relevance and accessibility among Arabic and Chinese speaking migrant mothers. This work will inform the future cultural adaptation stages: testing, refining, and trialling the culturally adapted Healthy Beginnings program to assess acceptability, feasibility and effectiveness.

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