The young and the old are key players in the human evolutionary

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Alison Gopnik on Life History

 

The young and the old are key players in the human evolutionary story

 

“Life history” is the term that biologists use to describe how organisms change over time—how long an animal lives, how long a childhood it has, how it nurtures its young, how it grows old. Human life history is weird. We have a much longer childhood than any other primate, and we developed special adaptations to care for those helpless children—most notably, females who outlive their fertility. These grandmothers also pass on two generations’ worth of knowledge; they are crucial to the evolution of learning and culture.

Evolutionary psychologists have tended to focus on the role of adult men—hunting and fighting have received a lot more attention than caregiving. We’ve all seen the canonical museum diorama of the mighty early human hunters bringing down the mastodon. But the children and grandmothers lurking in the background were no less important a part of the story.

You still often read psychological theories that describe the young and the old in terms of their deficiencies, as if these stages of life were just preparation for, or decline from, an ideal grown-up human. But new studies suggest that the young and the old may be especially adapted to receive and transmit wisdom. We may have a wider focus and a greater openness to experience when we are young or old than we do in the hurly-burly of feeding, fighting and reproduction that preoccupies us in our middle years.

Life history is an important idea in evolution, especially human evolution. But it also gives us a richer way of thinking about our own lives. A human being isn’t just a collection of fixed traits but part of an unfolding and dynamic story.

Dr. Gopnik is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, the author of “The Gardener and the Carpenter” and a regular contributor to Review’s “Mind & Matter” column.

Adapted from the Edge 2017 Annual Question, to be published on Edge.org on Dec. 31, 2016. Printed by arrangement with the Edge Foundation, Inc.