Postmenopausal longevity distinguishes humans from our closest living evolutionary cousins, the great apes, and may have evolved in our lineage when the economic productivity of grandmothers allowed mothers to wean earlier and overlap dependents. Since increased longevity retards development and expands brain size across the mammals, this hypothesis links our slower developing, bigger brains to ancestral grandmothering. If foraging interdependence favoured postmenopausal longevity because grandmothers' subsidies reduced weaning ages, then ancestral infants lost full maternal engagement while their slower developing brains were notably immature. With survival dependent on social relationships, sensitivity to reputations is wired very early in neural ontogeny, beginning our lifelong preoccupation with shared intentionality. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

中文翻译：

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我们祖母生活史的认知后果：文化学习从婴儿期开始

绝经后长寿将人类与我们现存的进化近亲类人猿区别开来，并且当祖母的经济生产力允许母亲更早断奶并重叠抚养时，这可能是在我们的血统中进化出来的。由于寿命的延长会阻碍哺乳动物的发育并扩大大脑的大小，因此这一假设将我们发育较慢、较大的大脑与祖先的祖母联系起来。如果说由于祖母的补贴缩短了断奶年龄，觅食的相互依赖有利于绝经后的长寿，那么祖先的婴儿就失去了充分的母性参与，而他们发育缓慢的大脑明显不成熟。由于生存依赖于社会关系，对声誉的敏感性在神经个体发育的早期就已经存在，开始了我们终生对共同意向性的关注。本文是主题“生命史与学习：童年、看护和老年如何塑造人类和其他动物的认知和文化”的一部分。