Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live
by Dr. Marlene Zuk
Introduction
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Suppose you have a village of 100 people. If half of them die at age five, perhaps from such childhood ailments, twenty die at age sixty, and the remaining thirty die at seventy-five, the average life span in the society is thirty-seven, but not a single person actually reached the age of thirty hale and hearty and then suddenly began to senesce.
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Average longevity can be misleading
1 Cavemen in Condos
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dental enamel itself are providing an exciting new way to determine what our ancestors’ diets were like. It’s a rather more benign version of the idea that, when you have sex, you’re also having sex with all of your partner’s
3 Crickets, Sparrows, and Darwins—or, Evolution before Our Eyes
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When we think about rapid change in a species, humans are often the first to come to mind, perhaps because we are so used to
8 The Paleofantasy Family
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Human babies are extremely peculiar little organisms. Children and the way they are raised are among the most unusual things about us. Our sex lives, while obviously of highlighted importance
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If you held your head the right way and squinted, we could practically pass for marmosets. Well, the lack of fur and the use of indoor plumbing would give us away, but you get the point. Monogamy is rare among animals, as we have seen, but hardly unheard of.
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Other primates get on with their own reproduction relatively soon after weaning, with gorillas having their first baby just seven or so years later.
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Even in nonindustrialized societies, girls do not start having children the moment they reach menarche; the average age worldwide for a first baby is nineteen, according to a 2008 article in Science.
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When it comes to childhood, therefore, it was reasonable to suggest that a prolonged period before independence was required once humans began to perform difficult tasks, like hunting or making pottery and baskets. Children could spend their time practicing these skills, which would better prepare them for success as adults in a hunter-gatherer society. In effect, this idea would mean that children are schooling themselves, and were doing so long before formal education was invented.
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Perhaps, then, the skills that must be learned during childhood are social, not physical. Given our complicated and subtle interactions, and the cutthroat nature of politics
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contrast, babies spend a substantial amount of time being held and cared for by someone besides their mother. They are certainly bonded to their mother and can recognize her from an early age, but they are carried around, fed (sometimes including nursing), and entertained by a variety of friends and relatives
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Kruger and Konner reviewed crying, and who responded to it, in groups of !Kung