GRANDMOTHERING, MENOPAUSE, AND THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN LIFE-HISTORIES

Long postmenopausal lifespans distinguish humans from all other primat es, This pattern may have evolved with mother-child food sharing, a pr actice that allowed aging females to enhance their daughters' fertilit y, thereby increasing selection against senescence, Combined with Char nov's dimensionless assembly rules for mammalian life histories, this hypothesis also accounts for our late maturity, small size at weaning, and high fertility, It has implications for past human habitat choice and social organization and for ideas about the importance of extende d learning and paternal provisioning in human evolution.