Review of K. Hawkes & R. R. Payne (eds), The Evolution of Human Life History

 Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14(3): 708-709 (2008).

This is an important and authoritative book, pioneering a new disciplinary field and in the process overturning much conventional wisdom. Some will view its conclusions as highly controversial, but the contributors are major and respected figures in their fields. The evolution of human life history is the published outcome of a seminar sponsored by the School of American Research in 2002. Unlike other multi-authored volumes of this kind, it is impressively coherent and tightly edited.

The volume consists of eleven chapters, including an introduction and three somewhat technical appendices. One of the two editors Kristen Hawkes– co-authored chapters 1 and 2 and singly authored 3 and 4; clearly, she is the dominant influence throughout. This reviewer found her chapter 4 (‘Slow life histories and human evolution’) a tour de force. Subsequent titles include ‘Primate life histories and the role of brains’ (Carel van Schaik and colleagues), ‘Lactation, complementary feeding and human life history’ (Daniel Sellen), ‘Modern human life history’ (Barry Bogin), ‘Contemporary hunter-gatherers and human life history evolution’ (Nicholas Blurton Jones), and ‘The osteological evidence for human longevity in the recent past’ (Lyle Konigsberg and Nicholas Herrmann). Of more than specialist interest, the volume is the latest instalment in a bold project to restructure the science of human evolution as a whole.

Humans develop more slowly than the other great apes; we are the only living higher primate to have childhood and adolescent growth phases. Children depend on parents or other carers for subsistence longer than do the offspring of any other mammal, yet we wean our babies earlier than do most other apes. We have a higher survival rate, begin our reproductive effort later, and have shorter inter-birth intervals. We have the longest lifespan of any terrestrial mammal, yet women stop bearing children in the middle of it.

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Hawkes, Kristen & Richard R. Paine (eds). The evolution of human life history. xiii, 505 pp., figs, tables, bibliogr. Oxford: James Currey; Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2006.£19.95 (paper)