Burkart Judith M, Cerrito Paola, Natalucci Giancarlo, van Schaik Carel P
Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Evol Anthropol. 2025 Sep;34(3):e70016. doi: 10.1002/evan.70016.
Unlike any other great ape, humans give birth to large, secondarily altricial babies, show precocial social development, have bigger brains that require a long maturation period, and engage in cooperative breeding (CB). These traits, which characterize the human adaptive complex, are intricately linked and must have mutually reinforced each other over evolutionary time. Here, we use recent evidence from paleontology, developmental psychology, and pediatrics, complemented with comparative analyses, to ask what may have triggered this coevolutionary feedback loop: bipedality, direct selection on altriciality, a higher-quality diet, or cooperative breeding. An early adoption of extensive allomaternal care during human evolution, that is, the CB-first model, best accommodates the available data. In particular, CB was a catalyst enabling further increases in brain size, because even though larger brains slow down life history and neurodevelopment and thus lead to a demographic dilemma, CB enabled the necessary increase in birth rates.
与其他任何大型猿类不同，人类生育的是体型较大、次生晚成的婴儿，具有早熟的社会发展能力，拥有需要较长成熟期的更大脑容量，并且参与合作育幼（CB）。这些构成人类适应性复合体的特征相互紧密关联，在进化过程中必定相互强化。在此，我们利用古生物学、发展心理学和儿科学的最新证据，并辅以比较分析，来探究可能触发这种协同进化反馈循环的因素：两足行走、对晚成性的直接选择、更高质量的饮食，还是合作育幼。在人类进化过程中早期采用广泛的异亲照料，即合作育幼优先模型，最能契合现有数据。特别是，合作育幼是促使脑容量进一步增加的催化剂，因为尽管更大的脑容量会减缓生命历程和神经发育，从而导致人口统计学困境，但合作育幼使得出生率得以必要的提高。
