Recent studies show that grandmothers may be the missing key to human evolution. ‘Man the Hunter’ has long been known, way back during the 1900s, and is pictured as a man holding a spear as he chased around wild beasts. Kristen Hawkes from the University of Utah is an anthropologist currently studying the hunters and gatherers who once have lived in northern Tanzania. Groups such as ‘Hadza’ are still occupying the area and they might just help researchers on learning about ancestral livelihood.

During the study, Hawkes and her colleagues have observed how the Hadza group collects resources, like food, and how often they go out for hunting. The average rate of success for every excursion is only 3.4%, which meant that if they highly depended …show more content…
This then led to a complete re-evaluation of what Hawkes knew about the evolution of humans. Primatologist Sarah Hrdy from U.C. Davis supported the theory that women have performed a lot of work for their tribes or communities to survive. She further argued, "People often try to explain the fact that humans are so good at cooperating by saying, well, we needed to cooperate in order to succeed at big game hunting, or so that men in one group could bond with other men to go wipe out the neighboring group. What that doesn't do is explain why these traits emerge so early.” It is also important to know that humans are the only members of the great ape species who possess the incentive to care for other people and their thoughts. According to a developmental psychologist, Michael Tomasello, "Humans as individuals aren't that much cleverer than other apes. It's the fact that we can put our heads together with others and communicate and collaborate and learn from others and teach others. Human children are adapted for cooperation and shared intentionality in ways that apes …show more content…
Anthropologist Lisa McAllister from University of California, Santa Barbara stated, “We have evolved a drive to seek success. The more successful individuals in any society are the ones who would traditionally leave behind more offspring and therefore get to be more represented in the next generation.”

McAllister lived with a community in Bolivia called ‘Tsimané.’ As a hunter-gatherer tribe, women were placed in higher hierarchies, depending on the number of healthy children they could produce. This made them alike to Hadza women, which provided food for all of the members of their community. However, at present, individuals no longer measure a woman’s worth by the number of children she has. Instead, as McAllister mentioned in the article, “In our society, we don't measure a woman's worth as much by a woman's ability to mother or have children anymore. We often measure it by, What kind of job does she have? [or] Does she drive a nice car?” This is the evolution of motherhood in modern