Kristen Hawkes, PhD

Distinguished Professor, Anthropology Department

University of Utah

Grandmothering & Human Evolution

The Life History Framework of Our Lives

Observations among modern hunter-gatherers prompted adding grandmother effects to demographic models built to explain mammalian life history variation. That could account for the evolution of post-menopausal longevity, later maturity, and shorter birth intervals that distinguish us from our closest living evolutionary cousins, the great apes. Unexpected connections are now emerging between those life history shifts and our bigger brains, our appetite for mutual understanding, and our ubiquitous habit of pair bonding – more reasons the grandmother hypothesis is worth taking seriously.