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'Grandmother Hypothesis' Takes a Hit
from Nature News
Grandma may not be as important as we thought--at least when it comes to evolution. A model published this week questions a popular theory dubbed the 'grandmother hypothesis,' which says that human females, unlike those of the other great apes, survive well past their reproductive prime because of the benefits that post-menopausal women offer to their grandchildren.
The evolutionary biologist William Hamilton initially proposed the idea in a 1966 paper that built on the theoretical work of George Williams and Peter Medawar. But the grandmother hypothesis really took off during the 1980s and 90s on the basis of field data collected by Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and her colleagues.
These researchers found that among Tanzanian hunter-gatherers, the Hadza, mothers faced a trade-off between foraging for food for themselves and any weaned offspring, and caring for new infants. But if grandmothers helped with foraging, they were rewarded with healthier, heavier grandchildren who weaned at a younger age.
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