So because of the big brains of hominins - the females had to live longer as grandmothers so that they could help their grandchildren be protected and fed... and the brothers also help out. The women sing "wrong species, wrong time, no sex" as a group - the Eland Bull ritual.
Primate mating systems and the evolution of language by Kit Opie 18 March 2025
Cheap signals, such as language, can only emerge from an alliance where trust has already been built. The coalition that enabled the evolution of language in modern humans was built to deal with the problem of some males trying to get the benefits of mating without the costs of provisioning.
In this talk Kit Opie draws on research on mating systems across primates to investigate the details of the problem that early modern human females faced and suggest that a coalition was their only way to solve it. The coalition that females built had a ratchet effect of supporting the males who cooperated, while undermining the males who cheated.
Kit Opie is Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Bristol.His research interests are in the evolution of social systems in humans and other primates.
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