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Millions of Years of Moms

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The Leakey Foundation

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Partner:: Leakey Foundation
Location:: California Academy of Sciences
San Francisco, CA
Event Date:: 04.28.12
Speaker:: Daniel Lieberman
Tags:: female; women; mother; motherhood

Summary: Natural selection was hard at work changing the human body over the last few million years, and much of that selection was driven by the challenges of being a mom. I will present a brief review of the evolution of the human female body, focusing on how natural selection helped mothers cope with the biomechanical demands of being a pregnant biped, with carrying infants and food over long distances, and with giving birth to large-brained babies."

Bio

Daniel Lieberman

Dr. Daniel Lieberman is a Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and Chair of the Biological Anthropology Department, while also serving on the Curatorial Board of the Peabody Museum. Dr. Lieberman is recognized as a leading expert on morphology and is especially interested in when, how and why early hominins first became bipeds, and then became so exceptional as long distance endurance runners. He is a member of the Leakey Foundation Scientific Executive Committee.

Chapters

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27 min 12 sec

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01.: How Natural Selection Works

02 min 30 sec

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02.: Pregnancy

06 min 46 sec

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03.: Childbirth

06 min 49 sec

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04.: Energetic Demands Determine Length of Pregnancy

01 min 59 sec

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05.: Energetic Flux and Higher Body Fat

06 min 09 sec

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06.: Energy Shaped the Female Body

02 min 58 sec

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A Different Theory of Why Human Birth Is Difficult

01 min 59 sec

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Harvard Anthropology Professor Daniel Lieberman postulates why human mothers give birth to such large babies. He argues that we live in a new energetic paradigm where the body can gestate the fetus for much longer than other primates.
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27 min 12 sec

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Encyclopædia Britannica Article

human evolution: Evolution of modern human beings from extinct nonhuman and humanlike forms. Genetic evidence points to an evolutionary divergence between the lineages of humans and the great apes on the African continent 8–5 million years ago (mya). The earliest fossils considered to be remains of hominins (members of the human lineage) date to at least 4 mya in Africa; they include the genus Australopithecus and other forms. The next major evolutionary stage, Homo habilis, inhabited sub-Saharan Africa about 2–1.5 mya. Homo habilis appears to have been supplanted by a taller and more humanlike species, Homo erectus, which lived from c. 1,700,000 to 200,000 years ago, gradually migrating into Asia and parts of Europe. Between c. 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis, sometimes called archaic Homo sapiens, lived in Africa, Europe, and perhaps parts of Asia. Having features resembling those of both H. erectus and modern humans, H. heidelbergensis may have been an ancestor of modern humans and also of the Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis), who inhabited Europe and western Asia from c. 200,000 to 28,000 years ago. Fully modern humans (H. sapiens) seem to have emerged in Africa only c. 150,000 years ago, perhaps having descended directly from H. erectus or from an intermediate species such as H. heidelbergensis.; human evolution on britannica.com