CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 1,343Evolutionary Psychology and Human BehaviorAnimal Behavior and ReproductionPleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

Grandmothering, menopause, and the evolution of human life histories

Open access
Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J. F., Jones, N. G. Blurton, Alvarez, H., Charnov, E. L.·1998·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI 10.1073/pnas.95.3.1336PMC PMC18762
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Long postmenopausal lifespans distinguish humans from all other primates. This pattern may have evolved with mother–child food sharing, a practice that allowed aging females to enhance their daughters’ fertility, thereby increasing selection against senescence. Combined with Charnov’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 extended learning and paternal provisioning in human evolution.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1073/pnas.95.3.1336

Cites

62 of 62 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • An accelerated metabolic rate in the hominin lineage would be consistent with humans' high rate of reproduction and large brains relative to other apes.

    “An accelerated metabolic rate in the hominin lineage would be consistent with humans’ high rate of reproduction (7) and large brains (9, 11) relative to other apes.”

    From Metabolic adaptation for low energy throughput in orangutans. (2010) · cites this paper as [7]

  • Orangutans have lower reproductive rates than all other hominoids and the slowest growth rates of any primate except humans.

    “Orangutans, including species of Pongo on both Borneo and Sumatra, have lower reproductive rates than all other hominoids and the slowest growth rates of any primate except humans (7, 8).”

    From Metabolic adaptation for low energy throughput in orangutans. (2010) · cites this paper as [7]

  • The distinction between reproductive and post-reproductive fitness may not be absolute in humans, suggesting late-onset traits could still exert indirect evolutionary consequences.

    “Nonetheless, the distinction between the reproductive and post-reproductive fitness may not be absolute in humans, suggesting late-onset traits could still exert indirect evolutionary consequences ( Hawkes et al., 1998 ; Davison and Gurven, 2022 ).”

    From The genetic architecture of human skin pigmentation: evolution and adaptation across global populations (2026) · cites this paper as Hawkes et al., 1998

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

1 retracted

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 14

  1. [2]Hawkes, K., O'Connell, J. F. & Blurton Jones, N. G. (1989) in Comparative Socioecology of Mammals and Man , eds. Standen, V. & Foley, R. (Blackwell, London), pp. 341-366.
  2. [4]Blurton Jones, N. G., Hawkes, K. & O'Connell, J. F. (1989) in Comparative Socioecology of Mammals and Man , eds. Standen, V. & Foley, R. (Blackwell, London), pp. 365-390.
  3. [6]Harvey, P., Martin, P. & Clutton Brock, T. H. (1987) in Primate Societies , eds. Smuts, B., Cheney, D., Seyfarth, R., Wrangham, R. & Struhsaker, T. (Univ. of Chicago, Chicago), pp. 181-196.
  4. [7]Charnov, E. L. (1991) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 88, 1134-1137.
  5. [8]Beverton, R. J. H. & Holt, S. J. (1959) in Ciba Foundation Colloquia in Aging. V. The Lifespan of Animals (Churchill, London), pp. 142-177.
  6. [17]Goodall, J. (1989) in Understanding Chimpanzees, eds. Heltne, P. & Marquardt, L. (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA), pp. 2-21.
  7. [23]Kirkwood, T. B. L. & Rose, M. R. (1991) Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London B 332, 15-34.
  8. [25]Charnov, E. L. & Berrigan, D. (1991) Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London B 33, 241-248.
  9. [30]Stewart, K. J., Harcourt, A. H. & Watts, D. P. (1988) in Natural HumanFertility: Social and Biological Determinants, eds. Diggory, P., Potts, M. & Teper, S. (MacMillian, New York), pp. 22-38.
  10. [29]Leighton, M., Seal, U. S., Soemarna, K., Ajisasmito, Wijaya, M., Mitra Setia, T., Shapiro, G., Perkins, L., Traylor-Holzer, K. & Tilson, R. (1995) in The Neglected Ape, eds. Nadler, R. D., Galdikas, B. F. M., Sheeran, L. K. & Rosen, N. (Plenum, New York), pp. 97-107.
  11. [42]Washburn, S. & Lancaster, C. (1968) in Manthe Hunter, eds. Lee, R. & DeVore, I. (Aldine, Chicago), pp. 293-303.
  12. [44]Hawkes, K., O'Connell, J. F. & Blurton Jones, N. G. (1991) Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London B 334, 243-251.
  13. [53]Murdock, G. P. (1967) The Ethnographic Atlas (Univ. Pittsburg Press, Pittsburg).
  14. [64]Trinkaus, E. & Tompkins, R. L. (1990) in Primate Life History and Evolution, Monographs in Primatology 14, ed. DeRousseau, C. J. (Wiley-Liss, New York), pp. 153-180.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J. F., Jones, N. G. B., Alvarez, H., & Charnov, E. L.
Affiliations
University of California, Los Angeles (US)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Published
1998-02-03
Volume
95
Issue
3
Pages
1336-1339
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
DOI
10.1073/pnas.95.3.1336
PMC
PMC18762
OpenAlex
W2049107009
Cited by
1,343
References
62
Citations by year
2026: 42 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 38 · 2022: 86 · 2021: 80 · 2020: 60 · 2019: 49 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 61 · 2015: 65 · 2014: 43 · 2013: 59 · 2012: 57
FWCI
36.01
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • UNM’s Digital Repository (University of New Mexico) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
Keywords
grandmothering, menopause, senescence, late maturity, fertility, human evolution, social organization, habitat selection, extended learning
MeSH terms
Animals, Biological Evolution, Family Characteristics, Female, Humans, Longevity, Models, Psychological, Mother-Child Relations, Postmenopause

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review