Keith Thomas wrote:

>I think there is a lot to be said for Todd's view.  It makes sense.
>However, I have heard two counter-arguments which, on their own, do not
>overwhelm Todd's speculation, but can be borne in mind:
>
>(1) Todd's e-mail itself is an illustration of the first: 'the wisdom of
>the elders' (sorry, Todd!).  That is, bands of early Homos may have been
>able to survive better if they had among them people with memories long
>enough to cover generations of coping with various adversities - droughts,
>diseases, floods, conflicts etc.  This sort of argument is one that
>appeals to us modern Westerners who make a living in the world of human
>intellectual capital.
>
>
>
I'm glad you put a reminder in there that it *is* only a speculation.
Your counter-argument here is one that I've used myself, in response to
the claim that from an evolutionary standpoint people older than prime
reproductive age are dead wood (not a sidelong reference to the earlier
discussion about male sexual performance).  Another way to make the case
would be as follows:  Although humans are arguably not the only species
with culture (i.e., knowledge transmitted across generations
extra-somatically), we appear to be vastly more culture-dependent than
any other species.  That is, a great deal of the knowledge that *we*
depend upon for survival is not instinctual but must be learned afresh
by each generation, or else it can be lost (e.g., the Tasmanians and
fire).  So the argument would be that in a culture-dependent species,
elders (yes, I"ve started getting AARP mailings, sob) are important as
living libraries or memory banks--repositories of culture.  And this
would create selection pressure in favor of greater longevity.

And I consider the "grandmother" argument to be a variation on this
theme, since child-rearing itself is a prime concern in our species
because of it's long childhood, which is itself seemingly a wide window
of time for the transmission of culture (language, moral norms, skills,
etc.).

>This is getting off the topic of Paleofood and even beyond the scope of
>the Evolutionary Fitness list.  But it illustrates how our partitioning
>aspects of life from each other can obscure, rather than illuminate, the
>very topic of our enquiry.
>
>
But it's only slightly off-topic.  It is certainly on-topic to ask
whether a species-natural diet ought to be conducive to longevity or
whether in seeking longevity we are attempting to circumvent the natural
way of things.  I wish I knew the answer.

Todd Moody
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