Behavioral Ecology

and, James F. O'Connell; Hawkes, Kristen

doi:10.1002/9781119828075.ch19

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…From the perspective of life history evolution, the game changed when members of ancestral populations took advantage of expanding foraging opportunities in spreading savannas. Competition with carnivores for big ungulate carcasses may have provided occasional bonanzas for all there (O'Connell et al, 2002;O'Connell and Hawkes, 2023), but those bonanzas could not have met daily consumption needs for anyone. However, plants like those that invested in USOs would be reliable resources year-round for foragers big and strong enough to extract them.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition

Hawkes

2023

Front. Psychol.

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Greater longevity, slower maturation and shorter birth intervals are life history features that distinguish humans from the other living members of our hominid family, the great apes. Theory and evidence synthesized here suggest the evolution of those features can explain both our bigger brains and our cooperative sociality. I rely on Sarah Hrdy’s hypothesis that survival challenges for ancestral infants propelled the evolution of distinctly human socioemotional appetites and Barbara Finlay and colleagues’ findings that mammalian brain size is determined by developmental duration. Similar responsiveness to varying developmental contexts in chimpanzee and human one-year-olds suggests similar infant responsiveness in our nearest common ancestor. Those ancestral infants likely began to acquire solid food while still nursing and fed themselves at weaning as chimpanzees and other great apes do now. When human ancestors colonized habitats lacking foods that infants could handle, dependents’ survival became contingent on subsidies. Competition to engage subsidizers selected for capacities and tendencies to enlist and maintain social connections during the early wiring of expanding infant brains with lifelong consequences that Hrdy labeled “emotionally modern” social cognition.

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Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My evolutionary perspective assumes that features of living things are the result of a history of natural selection in the past (Fisher, 1930;Williams, 1966a;Grafen, 1988;Hawkes, 2006a;O'Connell and and Hawkes, 2023). Phylogeny always matters because selection can only favor what is present at the time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition

Hawkes

2023

Front. Psychol.

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Behavioral Ecology

Cited by 1 publication

References 70 publications

Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition

Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition

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