Menopause’s Role in Human Evolution: The Grandmother Hypothesis with Kristen Hawkes

The Resetter Podcast with Dr. Mindy Pelz

Dr. Mindy Pelz

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4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

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Summary

Kristen Hawkes' "Grandmother Hypothesis" provides a fascinating perspective on human evolution, menopause, and the unique social structures of humans. This theory posits that the long post-reproductive lifespan of women evolved because grandmothers played a critical role in supporting their descendants. By helping care for grandchildren and providing resources like food, grandmothers enhanced the survival and reproductive success of their families, which indirectly passed on their genes favouring longevity and cooperative behaviour. These contributions are thought to have driven distinct human traits, including increased brain size and social complexity, by encouraging intergenerational support and skill-sharing

To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep273

Kristen Hawkes PhD MS BA examines foraging and social strategies among hunter-gatherers to shed light on human evolution. Her work includes three projects focused on life history evolution, aging in captive chimpanzees, and understanding fire’s effects on foraging payoffs, all informed by ethnographic studies of the Ache in Paraguay and the Hadza in Tanzania. Observations suggest that men’s hunting primarily serves status competition rather than provisioning, while grandmothers play a crucial role in supporting their grandchildren, especially when mothers have more children. This aligns with the grandmother hypothesis, which explains human longevity and highlights differences between humans and chimpanzees, such as longer lifespans despite similar fertility rates and a male-biased sex ratio. Mathematical modeling underscores the impact of grandmothering on post-menopausal longevity, shorter birth intervals, and social behavior. Kristen Hawkes continues to collaborate on data collection and analysis to enhance understanding of ancestral foraging strategies and aging in captive chimpanzees.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On this episode of The Resetter podcast, we dive into the grandmother hypothesis with the
0:08.7	queen anthropologist herself, Kristen Hawks.
0:13.2	Now, if you've been listening to me for a while, I have been obsessed on this hypothesis.
0:17.4	It was first brought to my attention by Lisa Mascone back in the spring of
0:23.2	2024 when I interviewed her here. And what I've learned since then of studying the grandmother
0:30.3	hypothesis is that there is an evolutionary reason why female humans live so long in our post-reproductive years. The grandmother hypothesis
0:42.8	says that the purpose of the grandmother was multifaceted, but the biggest piece is that we
0:50.9	were necessary. We are necessary for the survival of our species. We forged for food.
0:57.4	We took care of the young back in the primal days and that there was a purpose to us living so long
1:05.8	in these reproductive years. And Kristen is going to talk about that here. What's exciting about bringing you Kristen Hawks
1:13.0	is that she has actually spent a majority of her career, not just understanding this hypothesis,
1:18.9	but also witnessing it in the Hadza tribe. So the Hadza tribe is a tribe in Tanzania that displays this grandmother hypothesis in action. And so I got to ask her
1:32.3	firsthand, like, tell me what you saw because she witnessed these beautiful tribe. What did you see
1:39.0	there as far as the hierarchy of men versus women? And what did you see about the necessity of women of the, of the grandmother
1:46.9	and the post-reproductive woman in the survival of the tribe itself? So I'm getting it directly
1:55.5	from the resource who has witnessed this, which should be hopefully enlightening to you all.
2:02.0	I loved this conversation. I also, at the end of it, was really interesting because when you
2:08.6	dive into the grandmother hypothesis, you hear a lot about the only other mammal that lives as long
2:14.7	as we live are orca whales. And she talks a little bit about what she
2:20.9	understands around the grandmother in an orca whale pod mixed with what she saw in the Hads of
2:30.5	tribes. So this is a deep conversation. It is all built around evolutionary biology.
2:36.9	But most importantly, why I wanted to bring Kristen to you is that nothing that the human body does
	...

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