The emergence of humans: the coevolution of intelligence and longevity with intergenerational transfers
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Two striking differences between humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas, are the size of our brains (larger by a factor of three or four) and our life span (longer by a factor of about two). Our thesis is that these two distinctive features of humans are products of coevolutionary selection. The large human brain is an investment with initial costs and later rewards, which coevolved with increased energy allocations to survival. Not only does this theory help explain life history variation among primates and its extreme evolution in humans; it also provides new insight into the evolution of longevity in other biological systems. We introduce and apply a general formal demographic model for constrained growth and evolutionary tradeoffs in the presence of life-cycle transfers between age groups in a population.
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The unique evolutionary path to the genus Homo was shaped by an increasing reliance on calorie-dense, large-package, skill-intensive food resources, which operated to produce the extreme intelligence, long developmental period, three-generational system of resource flows, and exceptionally long adult life characteristic of our species.
“The unique evolutionary path to the genus Homo was shaped by an increasing reliance on calorie-dense, large-package, skill-intensive food resources, “which, in turn, operated to produce the extreme intelligence, long developmental period, three-generational system of resource flows, and exceptionally long adult life characteristic of our species” (74).”
From Emerging Adulthood, a Pre-adult Life-History Stage (2020) · cites this paper as [74]
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- Authors
- Kaplan, H. S., & Robson, A. J.
- Affiliations
- Western University (CA)
- ORCID
- Kaplan, Hillard S.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2002-07-16
- Volume
- 99
- Issue
- 15
- Pages
- 10221-10226
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC126651
- OpenAlex
- W2022589417
- Cited by
- 288
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 16
- FWCI
- 10.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Chapman University Digital Commons (Chapman University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Killam Trusts
- National Institutes of Health (5r01ag015906-03)
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- National Institute on Aging (AG15906)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Keywords
- human evolution, brain size, lifespan, longevity, intelligence, coevolution, intergenerational transfers, life history, primate brain size, chimpanzees, gorillas, energy allocation, constrained growth, demographic models, evolutionary trade-offs
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Brain, Biological Evolution, Humans, Intelligence, Longevity, Models, Biological, Hominidae
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