One of the defining features of human evolution is our demographic success. As of August 2019, the world’s population exceeds 7.7 billion. The human capacity for population growth has profound effects on people’s lives today, but it is also one of the remarkable stories of our evolutionary past. Although most research and public attention has centered on the past 200 years, when growth has increased exponentially, global population growth prior to that was not trifling. Before the industrial era, humans populated all of the world’s environments with more than a billion people. Importantly, it was deep in the past when the biological and social underpinnings were established that allow humans to excel as reproducers and survivors. The evolutionary trends in fertility and survival that gave rise to human demographic success were fundamentally shaped by our ability to cooperate. This essay focuses on how the human dietary niche and life history presented novel opportunities for cooperation that tied younger and older generations together in ways that gave us our demographic edge.

中文翻译：

---

我们怎么会有这么多人：人口增长的进化故事和合作的生活史

人类进化的决定性特征之一是我们的人口成功。截至2019年8月，世界人口超过77亿。人类的人口增长能力对当今人们的生活产生了深远的影响，但这也是我们过去进化的非凡故事之一。尽管大多数研究和公众关注都集中在过去 200 年，当增长呈指数级增长时，在此之前的全球人口增长并非微不足道。在工业时代之前，人类居住在世界各地，人口超过 10 亿。重要的是，早在过去，生物和社会基础就已经建立起来，使人类能够成为繁殖者和幸存者。导致人类人口成功的生育和生存的进化趋势从根本上取决于我们的合作能力。本文重点讨论人类饮食生态位和生活史如何提供新的合作机会，以赋予我们人口优势的方式将年轻一代和老一代联系在一起。