Granny power: Why grandparents ensured human survival
Countless generations have relied on grandparents for childcare, emotional support and a helping hand.Now a theory claims that the older generation may have played a key role in the evolution of mankind.Fossil experts say the number of grandparents shot up dramatically 30,000 years ago as people started to live longer.
Survival: Grandparents passed on skills such as tool-making and water supplies allowing their offspring to survive for longerWith older people able to look after children, pass on knowledge and share in food gathering, our ancestors were able to spread around the world and develop farming, tools and civilisation.
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Gran knows best:Good foraging grannies played a significant role in the evolution of homo- sapiensAccording to Professor Rachel Caspari,of Central Michigan University, most of our prehistoric ancestors died before the age of 30 as a result of disease, famine, injury or childbirth.But 30,000 years ago the number of adults seeing their 30th birthday soared. Around the same time our hunter-gatherer ancestors went through a major change in behaviour. Artwork became more sophisticated, tools became more complex and food production shot up.Professor Caspari believes the two events are linked. Living to an older age ha! s profou nd effects on the population sizes, social interactions and genetics of early modern humangroups and may explain why they were more successful than other archaichumans such as the Neanderthals, she told the magazine Scientific American.Professor Caspari is unsure why peoplestarted living for longer. Some experts have claimed that food-gathering skills improved around the same time. But the arrival of the grandparenting generation would have given our ancestors a massive boost.Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum said older people would have passed on skills including tool-making and knowledge such as the location of food.They would also help to bind distantly related families together.When it came to disputes over access to water holes or to land rich in game, the more elders there were to remember distant relations in other tribes, the easier it would have been to negotiate and share resources, he told the Observer.
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