too
A few readers reminded me of the recent Rachel Caspari article in Scientific American, The Evolution of Grandparents. It’s actually based on her earlier research, published in PNAS in 2004, Older age becomes common late in human evolution. I was already pointed to this paper by Milford Wolpoff, who seems to be of the opinion this is a very underappreciated dynamic in our species’ history (note: he’s married to Caspari). And Wolpoff sent me a copy of the Scientific American article too, so it’s been in my “to read” folder for a bit.
Honestly it’s a lot more persuasive than the scientific paper because it’s so non-technical. It really makes me appreciate the power of science communication. I don’t know anything about the analysis of dental remains, so I really hummed along through a lot of the paper with minimal comprehension. With the article Caspari could present her results and interpretation more cleanly.
The major finding in the PNAS finding, which is reported in the Scientific American article, is the ratio of parents to grandparents in a total sample of ~750 remains separated by population class varies a great …