Grandmother's Game

Grandmother's Game

How to survive: from birth to grandmother

Roll the dice

Token

Instructions

Hints

Start

You Win!

34

30

33

32

31

29

28

27

26

25

24

23

22

21

20

19

18

17

16

15

14

13

12

11

10

Starting from the Start square, roll the dice and follow the instructions of the square you landed on by hovering the mouse over the icon. For ? spaces, click on the icon to learn a fun fact. Reminders of what each space entails is listed below. It is reccomended to review these icons before starting the game. Good luck! Note: if a special spot causes you to move up/back, do NOT act according to the new spot you land on. However, if it is a (?) spot, feel free to read the question/fact for fun!

Use this space to add awesome interactivity. Include text, images, videos, tables, PDFs... even interactive questions!

The Grandmother Hypothesis is a theory that seeks to explain why women live beyond their fertility. This theory uses the idea that grandmothers provide extra support to mothers, allowing mothers to reproduce both more and faster. In turn, the grandmothers genes are passed along more times through grandchildren.

What is the Grandmother Hypothesis?

The first social bonds to evolve in mammals was between a mother and her offspring, leading to the evolution of human empathy, the ability to read the minds of others, and the development of intersubjectivity

What is life history theory?

Life history theory is the study of the distribution of major events occuring over an individual's lifetime and the traits associated with each event.

Living in a matrilineal society helps improve the amount of support a mother recieves from allomothers. In one matrilineal society, the chances of a child dying was 74% higher when no grandmother was around than with a grandmother.

Humans live longer past their reproductive years compared to almost every other animal! Our closest living ancestors often die before reaching the end of their reproductive lifespan.

Why is menopause in humans an evolutionary puzzle?

Yes! Inclusive fitness includes both your direct fitness and indirect fitness of those you share your genes with. By helping rear the offspring of your closest genetic relatives, your own geens are likely to be passed down too! This may have also led to the gene for altruism spreading throughout our population!

Does helping rear the offspring of my siblings benefit me?

You win!

You have successfully passed your genes onto the next generation! You will live with your offspring and become a grandmother to continue your legacy!!!!

Use this space to add awesome interactivity. Include text, images, videos, tables, PDFs... even interactive questions!

Longer lives were selected for over time as more women grew to old age and helped support their offspring in having more offspring. As a result, the genes favoring longer lives were passed through to grandchildren, altering the gene pool and making grandmothers more common.

How does Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection explain grandmothers?

Changing climates altered the types of food most abundant in human diets. Tubers became prevalent in diets but were not easily accessible to children. Grandmothers helped through food gathering and provisioning (and so did fires!)

Why did changing climate conditions influence the importance of grandmothers?

Grandmothers can be more important to the survival of offspring than fathers!

Humans! Ape mothers are much more possessive over their infants than human mothers and spend much more time in direct contact with their baby. However, this allowed shared care and cooperative breeding to evolve in humans and not apes.

Are humans or apes more likely to allow others to hold their baby?

Cooperative breeding allowed humans to have longer childhoods, allowing for more energy to be put into larger bodies and relaxed selective pressures leading to bigger brains!

Better hunter = better mate

In hunting and gathering tribes, men hunting serves more as a signal of the male's quality than as a means of reliable food production!

Weaning! Grandmothers provide additional support through socialization and nutritional support when mothers begin to detatch to focus on their next child

At what point in the develpmental cycle is it most important to have a grandmother around?

Use this space to add awesome interactivity. Include text, images, videos, tables, PDFs... even interactive questions!

Use this space to add awesome interactivity. Include text, images, videos, tables, PDFs... even interactive questions!

Elderly women (40-70 years old) contribute more food in terms of daily calories than any other age-sex category!

Who contributes the most amount of food to Hadza camps?