And why? Well, because without them, you wouldn’t be here. And for reasons you might not suspect.
Unlike any other species on earth, grandmothers played a huge role in the chain of evolution separating us from the other apes.
Only in humans do females outlive their fertility, a phenomenon so glaring that it requires an explanation. Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have found it in the “grandmother hypothesis,” which holds that for a creature uniquely helpless for years after birth, grandmothers played a critical role in child-rearing, allowing hunter/gatherer moms more time for the all-important role of foraging [which provided most of the group’s caloric intake as opposed to much rare hauls of meat brought in by hunting males [whose bonding in the course of hunting may have played a greater role in evolutionary success than the calories they brought in only sporadically].
Here’s an eloquent and fascinating explanation of the role of grandmothers from University of Utah anthropologist [and, yes, they do teach evolution in Mormon country] Kristen Hawkes, delivered as the annual lecture here at the Unversity of California, Berkeley, in honor of psychologist Robert Choate Tyron.
From UC Berkeley Events:
The Robert Tryon Lecture – The Grandmother and Human Evolution
Program notes:
Kristen Hawkes, Distinguished Prof. of Anthropology, University of Utah
Hunter-gatherer ethnography, evolutionary life-history theory and mathematical simulations point to ancestral grandmothering as a key to the evolution of human life history. Possible consequences of grandmothering extend from distinctively human sociality to patterns of male competition and pair bonds. Questions about how we do it continue to uncover surprises.
eats shoots 'n leaves 