ArticleAmerican journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council2025
Revisiting "Grandmothers and the Evolution of Human Longevity" 2003 AJHB https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.10156.
Article in American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Menopause Averted a Midlife Energetic Crisis With Help From Older Dependent Children and Parents: A Simulation Study.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Women's mental health: current status and evolutionary perspectives.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Compared to our closest living cousins, the great apes, humans can live longer with a distinctive postmenopausal lifespan; our development is slower, yet our babies are weaned earlier. Continued investigation since 2003 shows our grandmother hypothesis is a robust explanation for those differences and many other distinctive human features: When ecological changes in ancient Africa spread profitable foraging targets for ancestral adults that infants and small juveniles couldn't handle, reliable foraging by females near the end of their own fertility could subsidize dependent grandchildren and shorten their daughters' time to next conception. Coevolution of shorter birth intervals with slower aging expanded the pool of older still-fertile males. With more competitors, guarding a mate wins more paternities, linking pair bonds to our mid-life menopause. Mate guarding plus older males' advantage in reputation building explains many aspects of human patriarchy. In addition, final brain size in placental mammals depends on the duration of development. As increasing longevity slowed development and expanded brain size, earlier weaning of still physically helpless ancestral infants prioritized their attention and capacities to engage carers. Resulting socially precocious infancies wire us with lifelong appetites for cooperation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.