ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Cognitive consequences of our grandmothering life history: cultural learning begins in infancy.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Human Life History is Shaping Embodied Medicinal Plant Knowledge Across the Lifespan.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Revisiting "Grandmothers and the Evolution of Human Longevity" 2003 AJHB https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.10156.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Epigenetic Clock Deceleration and Maternal Reproductive Efforts: Associations With Increasing Gray Matter Volume of the Precuneus.Frontiers in genetics · 2022Article
- The Creative Neurons.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Sustaining a Transformative Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy: Grandmothers' Telling and Singing Tsunami Stories for over 100 Years Saving Lives on Simeulue Island.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Introduction to special issue: 'Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals'.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Extended parenting and the evolution of cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- The emergence of emotionally modern humans: implications for language and learning.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Childhood as a solution to explore-exploit tensions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Postmenopausal longevity distinguishes humans from our closest living evolutionary cousins, the great apes, and may have evolved in our lineage when the economic productivity of grandmothers allowed mothers to wean earlier and overlap dependents. Since increased longevity retards development and expands brain size across the mammals, this hypothesis links our slower developing, bigger brains to ancestral grandmothering. If foraging interdependence favoured postmenopausal longevity because grandmothers' subsidies reduced weaning ages, then ancestral infants lost full maternal engagement while their slower developing brains were notably immature. With survival dependent on social relationships, sensitivity to reputations is wired very early in neural ontogeny, beginning our lifelong preoccupation with shared intentionality. This article is part of the theme issue 'Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.