Learning, menopause, and the human adaptive complex

Jonathan Stieglitz

Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse,  jonathan.stieglitz@gmail.com

(Talk in English)

Jonathan Stieglitz will present a two-sex learning- and skills-based explanation for the evolution of human menopause. The theory proposes that the role of knowledge, skill acquisition, and economic transfers in determining productivity and resource distribution is the distinctive feature of the traditional human ecology that is responsible for the evolution of menopause. The explanation proposes that male reproductive cessation and post-reproductive investment in descendants is a fundamental characteristic of humans living in traditional foraging and simple horticultural economies. Here, data relevant to this two-sex explanation collected among Tsimane forager-farmers of the Bolivian Amazon over the last decade will be presented. The data show that whereas reproductive decline is linked to increasing risks of mortality in chimpanzees, human reproductive senescence precedes somatic senescence. Under traditional conditions, most human males undergo reproductive cessation at the same time as their wives. After ceasing to reproduce, both men and women provide net economic transfers to children and grandchildren. Given this pattern of economic productivity, delays in menopause would produce net economic deficits within families (all else equal).

Recent publications:

- Gurven M, Stieglitz J, Hooper PL, Gomes C, Kaplan H. (2012). From the womb to the tomb: the role of transfers in shaping the evolved human life history. Experimental Gerontology 47:807-813.

- Kaplan H, Gurven M, Winking J, Hooper PL, Stieglitz J. (2010). Learning, menopause, and the human adaptive complex. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1204:30-42.