Humans are not cooperative breeders but practice biocultural reproduction

Bogin, Barry; Bragg, Jared M.; Kuzawa, Christopher W.

doi:10.3109/03014460.2014.923938

Cited by 115 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…A shift to calorically dense and easily digested foods, and greater food sharing among social groups, would have increased the nutritional quality and stability of the diet (14,15,20). Although direct evidence for childcare strategies are not preserved in the fossil record, recent comparative analyses suggest that cooperative care in raising and provisioning young was likely important in achieving levels of encephalization seen in Homo sapiens (52,53). A system in which extended social networks provisioned food for children, combined with shifts to calorically dense and easily digested foods procured through hunting (14,15), would have allowed the costs of human brain development to be widely distributed and also buffered against shortfall.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metabolic costs and evolutionary implications of human brain development

Kuzawa

Chugani

Grossman

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

454

393

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The high energetic costs of human brain development have been hypothesized to explain distinctive human traits, including exceptionally slow and protracted preadult growth. Although widely assumed to constrain life-history evolution, the metabolic requirements of the growing human brain are unknown. We combined previously collected PET and MRI data to calculate the human brain's glucose use from birth to adulthood, which we compare with body growth rate. We evaluate the strength of brain-body metabolic trade-offs using the ratios of brain glucose uptake to the body's resting metabolic rate (RMR) and daily energy requirements (DER) expressed in glucose-gram equivalents (glucose rmr% and glucose der% ). We find that glucose rmr% and glucose der% do not peak at birth (52.5% and 59.8% of RMR, or 35.4% and 38.7% of DER, for males and females, respectively), when relative brain size is largest, but rather in childhood (66.3% and 65.0% of RMR and 43.3% and 43.8% of DER). Body-weight growth (dw/dt) and both glucose rmr% and glucose der% are strongly, inversely related: soon after birth, increases in brain glucose demand are accompanied by proportionate decreases in dw/dt. Ages of peak brain glucose demand and lowest dw/dt co-occur and subsequent developmental declines in brain metabolism are matched by proportionate increases in dw/dt until puberty. The finding that human brain glucose demands peak during childhood, and evidence that brain metabolism and body growth rate covary inversely across development, support the hypothesis that the high costs of human brain development require compensatory slowing of body growth rate.neuroimaging | diabetes | human evolution | neuronal plasticity | anthropology A prolonged period of childhood and juvenile growth is a defining feature of human life history (1-3). Compared with other great apes, human offspring are weaned early, leading to an extended period of dependence on procured resources rather than breast milk (1, 4). Although this unique human reproductive pattern is viewed as shortening the interbirth interval and thus increasing fertility (5, 6), what is less clear is why humans also grow so slowly during childhood. Although most primates grow slower than other mammals (7), human childhood and juvenile growth stand out as unusually slow even by primate and great ape standards, during which it proceeds at a pace more typical of reptiles than of mammals (8, 9). In humans, a sizeable percentage of preadult growth is deferred until the pubertal growth spurt, when growth rate markedly increases and adult size is achieved (1).Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain this slow and prolonged preadult life-stage, with most pointing to the extra time and energy required for human learning and brain development (5, 10-12). It has long been assumed that human cultural practices are sufficiently complex that they take many years to learn, which could have selected for a slowing down and extension of preadult development (13). A recent variant of this idea notes the importance of ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metabolic costs and evolutionary implications of human brain development

Kuzawa

Chugani

Grossman

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

454

393

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“…Such investments are a special case of the alloparental contributions that subsidize human reproduction (4), and their affective substrates likely evolved as part of a more general prosocial package (98,99) relying on strong affiliative bonds. The interindividual behavioral alignment facilitated by resonance (74) is a critical mechanism that promotes such affiliation across many species (73), and in humans also supports pragmatic collaboration, apprenticeship learning, and the development of ToM, as discussed above.…”

Section: Conclusion: An Evolving Technological Nichementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The interindividual behavioral alignment facilitated by resonance (74) is a critical mechanism that promotes such affiliation across many species (73), and in humans also supports pragmatic collaboration, apprenticeship learning, and the development of ToM, as discussed above. In contrast to other animals, however, human affiliation routinely extends to include "ultrasocial" cooperation and sharing with nonkin enabled by the use of language to create social norms and identities, including purely symbolic affinal and fictive kinship ties (98,99).…”

Section: Conclusion: An Evolving Technological Nichementioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

Stout

Hecht

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

134

154

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Culture suffuses all aspects of human life. It shapes our minds and bodies and has provided a cumulative inheritance of knowledge, skills, institutions, and artifacts that allows us to truly stand on the shoulders of giants. No other species approaches the extent, diversity, and complexity of human culture, but we remain unsure how this came to be. The very uniqueness of human culture is both a puzzle and a problem. It is puzzling as to why more species have not adopted this manifestly beneficial strategy and problematic because the comparative methods of evolutionary biology are ill suited to explain unique events. Here, we develop a more particularistic and mechanistic evolutionary neuroscience approach to cumulative culture, taking into account experimental, developmental, comparative, and archaeological evidence. This approach reconciles currently competing accounts of the origins of human culture and develops the concept of a uniquely human technological niche rooted in a shared primate heritage of visuomotor coordination and dexterous manipulation.brain evolution | cultural evolution | archaeology | imitation

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“…Transfers occur not only from the mother to her offspring but also from the father, the grandparents and other adults of the group [38]. Humans are therefore said to practise 'cooperative breeding' or 'biocultural reproduction' [39]. When compared with apes, key aspects of the human adaptive model are a short interbirth interval and an early weaning age: early weaning allows mothers to share the burden of providing energy to the offspring with other adults from the group at an early stage of development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain ontogeny and life history in Pleistocene hominins

Hublin

Neubauer

Gunz

2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

140

101

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A high level of encephalization is critical to the human adaptive niche and emerged among hominins over the course of the past 2 Myr. Evolving larger brains required important adaptive adjustments, in particular regarding energy allocation and life history. These adaptations included a relatively small brain at birth and a protracted growth of highly dependent offspring within a complex social environment. In turn, the extended period of growth and delayed maturation of the brain structures of humans contribute to their cognitive complexity. The current palaeoanthropological evidence shows that, regarding life history and brain ontogeny, the Pleistocene hominin taxa display different patterns and that one cannot simply contrast an 'ape-model' to a 'human-model'. Large-brained hominins such as Upper Pleistocene Neandertals have evolved along their own evolutionary pathway and can be distinguished from modern humans in terms of growth pattern and brain development. The life-history pattern and brain ontogeny of extant humans emerged only recently in the course of human evolution.

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Humans are not cooperative breeders but practice biocultural reproduction

Abstract: Humans are not cooperative breeders as classically defined; one effect of the unique strategy of human biocultural reproduction is a lowering of human lifetime reproductive effort, which could help explain lifespan extension.

Cited by 115 publications

References 71 publications

Metabolic costs and evolutionary implications of human brain development

Metabolic costs and evolutionary implications of human brain development

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

Brain ontogeny and life history in Pleistocene hominins

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