204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
March 3, 2009

Basics

In a Helpless Baby, the Roots of Our Social Glue

By NATALIE ANGIER



In seeking bipartisan support for his economic policies, President Obama>
has tried every tip on the standard hospitality crib sheet: beer and

football, milk and cookies, Earth, Wind and Fire.



Maybe the president needs to borrow a new crib sheet =97 the kind with a>
genuine baby wrapped inside.



A baby may look helpless. It can=92t walk, talk, think symbolically or

overhaul the nation=92s banking system. Yet as social emulsifiers go,

nothing can beat a happily babbling baby. A baby is born knowing how to

work the crowd. A toothless smile here, a musical squeal there, and even>
hard-nosed cynics grow soft in the head and weak in the knees.



In the view of the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the extraordinary

social skills of an infant are at the heart of what makes us human.

Through its ability to solicit and secure the attentive care not just of>
its mother but of many others in its sensory purview, a baby promotes

many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that

often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to

share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one=92s guard, uncurl one=92s<=
br>
lip and widen one=92s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me,>
myself and mine.



As Dr. Hrdy argues in her latest book, =93Mothers and Others: The

Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding,=94 which will be published>
by Harvard University Press in April, human babies are so outrageously

dependent on their elders for such a long time that humanity would never>
have made it without a break from the great ape model of child-rearing.

Chimpanzee and gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring

pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not.



Human beings evolved as cooperative breeders, says Dr. Hrdy, a

reproductive strategy in which mothers are assisted by as-if mothers, or>
=93allomothers,=94 individuals of either sex who help care for and feed the=


young. Most biologists would concur that humans have evolved the need

for shared child care, but Dr. Hrdy takes it a step further, arguing

that our status as cooperative breeders, rather than our exceptionally

complex brains, helps explain many aspects of our temperament. Our

relative pacifism, for example, or the expectation that we can fly from

New York to Los Angeles without fear of personal dismemberment.

Chimpanzees are pretty smart, but were you to board an airplane filled

with chimpanzees, you =93would be lucky to disembark with all 10 fingers>
and toes still attached,=94 Dr. Hrdy writes.



Our capacity to cooperate in groups, to empathize with others and to

wonder what others are thinking and feeling =97 all these traits, Dr. Hrdy<=
br>
argues, probably arose in response to the selective pressures of being

in a cooperatively breeding social group, and the need to trust and rely>
on others and be deemed trustworthy and reliable in turn. Babies became

adorable and keen to make connections with every passing adult gaze.

Mothers became willing to play pass the baby. Dr. Hrdy points out that

mother chimpanzees and gorillas jealously hold on to their infants for

the first six months or more of life. Other females may express real

interest in the newborn, but the mother does not let go: you never know

when one of those females will turn infanticidal, or be unwilling or

unable to defend the young ape against an infanticidal male.



By contrast, human mothers in virtually every culture studied allow

others to hold their babies from birth onward, to a greater or lesser

extent depending on tradition. Among the !Kung foragers of the Kalahari,>
babies are held by a father, grandmother, older sibling or some other

allomother maybe 25 percent of the time. Among the Efe foragers of

Central Africa, babies spend 60 percent of their daylight hours being

toted around by somebody other than their mother. In 87 percent of

foraging societies, mothers sometimes suckle each other=92s children,

another remarkable display of social trust.



Dr. Hrdy wrote her book in part to counter what she sees as the reigning>
dogma among evolutionary scholars that humans evolved their extreme

sociality and cooperative behavior to better compete with other humans.

=93I=92m not comfortable accepting this idea that the origins of

hypersociality can be found in warfare, or that in-group amity arose in

the interest of out-group enmity,=94 she said in a telephone interview.

Sure, humans have been notably violent and militaristic for the last

12,000 or so years, she said, when hunter-gatherers started settling

down and defending territories, and populations started getting

seriously dense. But before then? There weren=92t enough people around tor>
wage wars. By the latest estimates, the average population size during

the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution that preceded the

Neolithic Age may have been around 2,000 breeding adults. =93What would

humans have been fighting over?=94 Dr. Hrdy said. =93They were too busy

trying to keep themselves and their children alive.=94



Dr. Hrdy also argues that our human ancestors became emotionally modern

long before the human brain had reached its current average volume of

1,300 cubic centimeters, which is about three times the size of a

chimpanzee brain =97 in other words, that we became the nicest apes before<=
br>
becoming the smartest. You don=92t need a bulging brain to evolve

cooperative breeding. Many species of birds breed cooperatively, as do

lions, rats, meerkats, wolves and marmosets, among others. But to become>
a cooperatively breeding ape, and to persuade a bunch of smart,

hot-tempered, suspicious, politically cunning primates to start sharing

child care and provisionings, now that took a novel evolutionary

development, the advent of this thing called trust.



To explain the rise of cooperative breeding among our forebears, Dr.

Hrdy synthesizes an array of new research in anthropology, genetics,

infant development, comparative biology. She notes that recent research

has overturned the longstanding insistence that humans are a patrilocal

species, that is, with women moving away from their birth families to

join their husbands. Instead, it seems that young mothers in many

traditional societies have their own mothers and other female relatives

close at hand, and who better to trust with baby care than your mom or

your aunt? New studies have also shown the importance of postmenopausal

women to gathering roots and tubers, the sort of unsexy foods that are

difficult to disinter and lack the succulent status of, say, a freshly

killed oryx, but that just may help feed the kids in hard times. Other

anthropologists have made the startling discovery that children have

entertainment value, and that among traditional cultures without

television or Internet access, a bobble-headed baby is the best show in

town.



However cooperative breeding got started, its impact on human evolution

was profound. With helpers in the nest, women could give birth to

offspring with ever longer childhoods =97 the better to build big brains>
and stout immune systems =97 and, paradoxically, at ever shrinking

intervals. The average time between births for a chimpanzee mother is

about six years; for a human mother, it=92s two or three years. As a

result of our combined braininess and fecundity, humans have managed to

colonize the planet; exploit, marginalize or exterminate all competing

forms of life; build a vast military-industrial complex all under the

auspices of Bernard Madoff and with one yeti of a carbon footprint, and

will somebody please hand me that baby before it=92s too late.



=A0

204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
March 3, 2009

Basics

In a Helpless Baby, the Roots of Our Social Glue

By NATALIE ANGIER



In seeking bipartisan support for his economic policies, President Obama>
has tried every tip on the standard hospitality crib sheet: beer and

football, milk and cookies, Earth, Wind and Fire.



Maybe the president needs to borrow a new crib sheet =97 the kind with a>
genuine baby wrapped inside.



A baby may look helpless. It can=92t walk, talk, think symbolically or

overhaul the nation=92s banking system. Yet as social emulsifiers go,

nothing can beat a happily babbling baby. A baby is born knowing how to

work the crowd. A toothless smile here, a musical squeal there, and even>
hard-nosed cynics grow soft in the head and weak in the knees.



In the view of the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the extraordinary

social skills of an infant are at the heart of what makes us human.

Through its ability to solicit and secure the attentive care not just of>
its mother but of many others in its sensory purview, a baby promotes

many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that

often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to

share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one=92s guard, uncurl one=92s<=
br>
lip and widen one=92s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me,>
myself and mine.



As Dr. Hrdy argues in her latest book, =93Mothers and Others: The

Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding,=94 which will be published>
by Harvard University Press in April, human babies are so outrageously

dependent on their elders for such a long time that humanity would never>
have made it without a break from the great ape model of child-rearing.

Chimpanzee and gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring

pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not.



Human beings evolved as cooperative breeders, says Dr. Hrdy, a

reproductive strategy in which mothers are assisted by as-if mothers, or>
=93allomothers,=94 individuals of either sex who help care for and feed the=


young. Most biologists would concur that humans have evolved the need

for shared child care, but Dr. Hrdy takes it a step further, arguing

that our status as cooperative breeders, rather than our exceptionally

complex brains, helps explain many aspects of our temperament. Our

relative pacifism, for example, or the expectation that we can fly from

New York to Los Angeles without fear of personal dismemberment.

Chimpanzees are pretty smart, but were you to board an airplane filled

with chimpanzees, you =93would be lucky to disembark with all 10 fingers>
and toes still attached,=94 Dr. Hrdy writes.



Our capacity to cooperate in groups, to empathize with others and to

wonder what others are thinking and feeling =97 all these traits, Dr. Hrdy<=
br>
argues, probably arose in response to the selective pressures of being

in a cooperatively breeding social group, and the need to trust and rely>
on others and be deemed trustworthy and reliable in turn. Babies became

adorable and keen to make connections with every passing adult gaze.

Mothers became willing to play pass the baby. Dr. Hrdy points out that

mother chimpanzees and gorillas jealously hold on to their infants for

the first six months or more of life. Other females may express real

interest in the newborn, but the mother does not let go: you never know

when one of those females will turn infanticidal, or be unwilling or

unable to defend the young ape against an infanticidal male.



By contrast, human mothers in virtually every culture studied allow

others to hold their babies from birth onward, to a greater or lesser

extent depending on tradition. Among the !Kung foragers of the Kalahari,>
babies are held by a father, grandmother, older sibling or some other

allomother maybe 25 percent of the time. Among the Efe foragers of

Central Africa, babies spend 60 percent of their daylight hours being

toted around by somebody other than their mother. In 87 percent of

foraging societies, mothers sometimes suckle each other=92s children,

another remarkable display of social trust.



Dr. Hrdy wrote her book in part to counter what she sees as the reigning>
dogma among evolutionary scholars that humans evolved their extreme

sociality and cooperative behavior to better compete with other humans.

=93I=92m not comfortable accepting this idea that the origins of

hypersociality can be found in warfare, or that in-group amity arose in

the interest of out-group enmity,=94 she said in a telephone interview.

Sure, humans have been notably violent and militaristic for the last

12,000 or so years, she said, when hunter-gatherers started settling

down and defending territories, and populations started getting

seriously dense. But before then? There weren=92t enough people around tor>
wage wars. By the latest estimates, the average population size during

the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution that preceded the

Neolithic Age may have been around 2,000 breeding adults. =93What would

humans have been fighting over?=94 Dr. Hrdy said. =93They were too busy

trying to keep themselves and their children alive.=94



Dr. Hrdy also argues that our human ancestors became emotionally modern

long before the human brain had reached its current average volume of

1,300 cubic centimeters, which is about three times the size of a

chimpanzee brain =97 in other words, that we became the nicest apes before<=
br>
becoming the smartest. You don=92t need a bulging brain to evolve

cooperative breeding. Many species of birds breed cooperatively, as do

lions, rats, meerkats, wolves and marmosets, among others. But to become>
a cooperatively breeding ape, and to persuade a bunch of smart,

hot-tempered, suspicious, politically cunning primates to start sharing

child care and provisionings, now that took a novel evolutionary

development, the advent of this thing called trust.



To explain the rise of cooperative breeding among our forebears, Dr.

Hrdy synthesizes an array of new research in anthropology, genetics,

infant development, comparative biology. She notes that recent research

has overturned the longstanding insistence that humans are a patrilocal

species, that is, with women moving away from their birth families to

join their husbands. Instead, it seems that young mothers in many

traditional societies have their own mothers and other female relatives

close at hand, and who better to trust with baby care than your mom or

your aunt? New studies have also shown the importance of postmenopausal

women to gathering roots and tubers, the sort of unsexy foods that are

difficult to disinter and lack the succulent status of, say, a freshly

killed oryx, but that just may help feed the kids in hard times. Other

anthropologists have made the startling discovery that children have

entertainment value, and that among traditional cultures without

television or Internet access, a bobble-headed baby is the best show in

town.



However cooperative breeding got started, its impact on human evolution

was profound. With helpers in the nest, women could give birth to

offspring with ever longer childhoods =97 the better to build big brains>
and stout immune systems =97 and, paradoxically, at ever shrinking

intervals. The average time between births for a chimpanzee mother is

about six years; for a human mother, it=92s two or three years. As a

result of our combined braininess and fecundity, humans have managed to

colonize the planet; exploit, marginalize or exterminate all competing

forms of life; build a vast military-industrial complex all under the

auspices of Bernard Madoff and with one yeti of a carbon footprint, and

will somebody please hand me that baby before it=92s too late.



=A0