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Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals
Our large brain, long life span and high fertility are key elements of human evolutionary success and are often thought to have evolved in interplay with tool use, carnivory and hunting. However, the specific impact of carnivory on human evolution, life history and development remains controversial....
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3329511/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22536316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032452 |
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author | Psouni, Elia Janke, Axel Garwicz, Martin |
author_facet | Psouni, Elia Janke, Axel Garwicz, Martin |
author_sort | Psouni, Elia |
collection | PubMed |
description | Our large brain, long life span and high fertility are key elements of human evolutionary success and are often thought to have evolved in interplay with tool use, carnivory and hunting. However, the specific impact of carnivory on human evolution, life history and development remains controversial. Here we show in quantitative terms that dietary profile is a key factor influencing time to weaning across a wide taxonomic range of mammals, including humans. In a model encompassing a total of 67 species and genera from 12 mammalian orders, adult brain mass and two dichotomous variables reflecting species differences regarding limb biomechanics and dietary profile, accounted for 75.5%, 10.3% and 3.4% of variance in time to weaning, respectively, together capturing 89.2% of total variance. Crucially, carnivory predicted the time point of early weaning in humans with remarkable precision, yielding a prediction error of less than 5% with a sample of forty-six human natural fertility societies as reference. Hence, carnivory appears to provide both a necessary and sufficient explanation as to why humans wean so much earlier than the great apes. While early weaning is regarded as essentially differentiating the genus Homo from the great apes, its timing seems to be determined by the same limited set of factors in humans as in mammals in general, despite some 90 million years of evolution. Our analysis emphasizes the high degree of similarity of relative time scales in mammalian development and life history across 67 genera from 12 mammalian orders and shows that the impact of carnivory on time to weaning in humans is quantifiable, and critical. Since early weaning yields shorter interbirth intervals and higher rates of reproduction, with profound effects on population dynamics, our findings highlight the emergence of carnivory as a process fundamentally determining human evolution. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3329511 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-33295112012-04-25 Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals Psouni, Elia Janke, Axel Garwicz, Martin PLoS One Research Article Our large brain, long life span and high fertility are key elements of human evolutionary success and are often thought to have evolved in interplay with tool use, carnivory and hunting. However, the specific impact of carnivory on human evolution, life history and development remains controversial. Here we show in quantitative terms that dietary profile is a key factor influencing time to weaning across a wide taxonomic range of mammals, including humans. In a model encompassing a total of 67 species and genera from 12 mammalian orders, adult brain mass and two dichotomous variables reflecting species differences regarding limb biomechanics and dietary profile, accounted for 75.5%, 10.3% and 3.4% of variance in time to weaning, respectively, together capturing 89.2% of total variance. Crucially, carnivory predicted the time point of early weaning in humans with remarkable precision, yielding a prediction error of less than 5% with a sample of forty-six human natural fertility societies as reference. Hence, carnivory appears to provide both a necessary and sufficient explanation as to why humans wean so much earlier than the great apes. While early weaning is regarded as essentially differentiating the genus Homo from the great apes, its timing seems to be determined by the same limited set of factors in humans as in mammals in general, despite some 90 million years of evolution. Our analysis emphasizes the high degree of similarity of relative time scales in mammalian development and life history across 67 genera from 12 mammalian orders and shows that the impact of carnivory on time to weaning in humans is quantifiable, and critical. Since early weaning yields shorter interbirth intervals and higher rates of reproduction, with profound effects on population dynamics, our findings highlight the emergence of carnivory as a process fundamentally determining human evolution. Public Library of Science 2012-04-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3329511/ /pubmed/22536316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032452 Text en Psouni et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Psouni, Elia Janke, Axel Garwicz, Martin Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals |
title | Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals |
title_full | Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals |
title_fullStr | Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals |
title_full_unstemmed | Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals |
title_short | Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals |
title_sort | impact of carnivory on human development and evolution revealed by a new unifying model of weaning in mammals |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3329511/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22536316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032452 |
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