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Is Middle Age Evolution's Crowning Achievement?
Hugh Pickens writes "Reproductive biologist David Bainbridge writes that with the onset of wrinkles, love handles, and failing eyesight we are used to dismissing our fifth and sixth decades as a negative chapter in our lives. However recent scientific findings show just how crucial middle age has been to the success of our species and that with the probable existence of lots of prehistoric middle-aged people, natural selection had plenty to work on. 'We lead an energy-intensive, communication-driven, information-rich way of life, and it was the evolution of middle age that supported this,' writes Bainbridge, adding that middle age is a controlled and preprogrammed process, not of decline, but of development. 'When we think of human development, we usually think of the growth of a fetus or the maturation of a child into an adult. Yet the tightly choreographed transition into middle age is a later but equally important stage in which we are each recast into yet another novel form' — resilient, healthy, energy-efficient and productive. 'The middle aged may not have been able to outrun the prey, but they were really good at working out where it might be hiding and dividing up the spoils afterwards.' Although some critics say that middle age is a construct of the middle aged, Bainbridge asserts that one key role of middle age is the propagation of information. 'All animals inherit a great deal of information in their genes; some also learn more as they grow up. Humans have taken this second form of information transfer to a new level. We are born knowing and being able to do almost nothing. Each of us depends on a continuous infusion of skills, knowledge and customs, collectively known as culture, if we are to survive. And the main route by which culture is transferred is by middle-aged people showing and telling their children — as well as the young adults with whom they hunt and gather — what to do.'"
Learning is an expensive process, the longer we're able to use those skills the better we're off as a group. I just think that middle age is not qualitatively different from old age, and it's just an arbitrary distinction.
Brains Work Best At Age of 39.
(Lawn. Off.)
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Author David Bainbridge is 44. And 25 years ago he wrote a book claiming that teenagers are the pinnacle of human existence.
(OK, so it wasn't 25 years ago. But that would have been funny.)
Boomer "science". :-)
"Look! We're still the center of the unverse! The reason for human existence!"
Calm down, Grandpa.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
For a moment, I thought this was a libertarian article about the Middle Ages being the crowning achievement of human evolution, or civilization...
I hope I am not giving them an idea...
My very limited understanding was that evolution really could only work if the survivors were of reproductive age. If they are great at surviving and making children then it would work, otherwise not.
Ah.. fine I read the article:
"The probable existence of lots of prehistoric middle-aged people means that natural selection had plenty to work on. Those with beneficial traits would have been more successful at nurturing their children to reproductive age and helping provide for their grandchildren, and hence would have passed on those traits to their descendants. As a result, modern middle age is the result of millennia of natural selection."
So really it's grandparents that this article is really getting at. Middle aged for the purpose of having your offspring's offspring survive. That actually makes sense.
Jesus said, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same."
--Thomas
Hey, it's what I do here.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
As an aging geek, and as much as an aging body sucks, I wouldn't trade my wiser more developed brain for my younger body.
Help wanted: software engineer
Required skills: EJB, Spring, Java core, MySQL, Hibernate, JAXB, Struts, Hadoop, Cassandra, Python, Perl
Optional skills: C/C++, multithreading, high volume server side distributed programming
Experience level: 0-3 years
wtf?
I'm 47 and I feel and know that I'm over the hill. Life's something that takes place before you're 30.
Sure, without middle age there could be no MILFs. Therefore, middle age is evolution's crowning achievement indeed. QED.
What allows anyone to conclude that our current state of techno-cultural 'advancement' is sustainable at our ecological burn rate?
We're only beginning to acknowledge the fact that our species is engaged in global ecological deformation or that the extinction rate resulting directly from homo sapiens' behavior is on par with 5 major paleontological mass extinctions.
Biologically, unregulated growth is cancerous, and left untreated, cancer results in increased morbidity. If 'we' decide to treat ourselves (and our environs) responsibly, one day perhaps our descendants will be able claim that we evolved.
Baby boomers aren't really middle-aged any more. Depending on how you define "baby boomer," "middle age," and "old age," anyway. But if you were born five years after the end of WW2, you're old enough to start collecting Social Security this year.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Crowing achievement? No. That would be Calvin.
This doesn't make sense. Does middle age, or indeed has middle age, make it more likely that a person will pass on their genes? Not really. Most people reproduce before then. Culture and technological advancement are all very nice, especially if you come up with some great idea at 65. But if it doesn't get you laid, and you don't pass on your genes, then it means diddly fuck to evolution, at least as far as your germline is concerned.
I'm being a little bit farcical with my comment. Born in late '64, I am "the last of the boomers".
Close enough to understand and ID the foibles and phenomena, but also really keyed to what were "GenX/Slacker" milestones and ethos.
Heh! We were 20 somethings, that hated the 80's as the happened!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Without the more aged and experienced to teach the next, there is no perpetuation of knowledge, experience and wisdom. Without it, we only have instinct.
Ah yes. You were one of those cynical, jaded people we 80's teenagers looked up to, because you'd seen and done it all. ;)
Seriously, I suspect your cultural milestones are a lot closer to mine than they are to Beaver Cleaver's. Considering that a fair number of your contemporaries were the children of people born in the immediate post-war spike, it seems really absurd to lump the entire group together.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/iah/
The Boom Generation is people born in 1943-1960, so Boomers are 51 to 69, which is late middle age and early old age.
And the main route by which culture is transferred is by middle-aged people showing and telling their children [...] what to do.
Which is why "Now get off my lawn" will never die. ;)
If you were born in '64, you're an Xer. Boom is 1943-60; X is 1961-81.
Really, what cultural milestones would you have in common with Boomers? You were born after the Kennedy assassination, you have no memory of life before the sexual revolution, you were three years old during the Summer of Love, you were four years old when everything blew up at once in 1968, you were five years old during Woodstock, you went to college in the 80s, etc. Fast Times at Ridgemont High and John Hughes' teen movies, all aimed at core Xers, probably describes your teenage culture better than any movie aimed at Boomers.
Let me guess: when you were growing up, kids were treated like little devils to be scorned (X upbringing), not precious little angels to be indulged or nurtured (Boomer upbringing). You were probably neglected by your parents because they were busy spending the 60s and 70s finding themselves--a classic Xer childhood environment--and if you were one of the lucky ones that weren't, you certainly had several friends who were.
At this age ... more important than sex.
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/iah/ has plenty of information
How does being fat, weak, wrinkly, and near-sighted aid in information transfer? Insofar as it doesn't, it appears he really means that man's longevity, even taking into account such problems, provides a benefit to the species. This has nothing to do with the problems of aging, which if anything, inhibit information transfer. You can't teach something you can't remember.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
"Heh! We were 20 somethings, that hated the 80's as the happened!"
And only now are we glad that AIDS wasn't invented yet.
Older women, even when they seem physically fit, bare children with a greater likelihood of birth defects, particularly in the realm of cognition. And it doesn't happen at the same age for all women. Menopause may very well be Mother Nature's way of saying it's time to stop attempting to conceive and gestate because your system has been compromised.
But who knows, perhaps it's just God's way of getting back at men, and that's why the bible blames Eve and not Adam for eating from the tree of the knowledgeable serpent. Of course if the Sumerians had worshiped newts and not serpents, then it would have been the swamp cabbage of knowledge and not the apple.
Yeah! Rollover and dream about ways of living vicariously through your off-spring.
...But do not have opposable thumbs, I thought that's what made us special. I would assume that humans are going to have to survive as a species several more millenia before being crowned as the most successful on an evolutionary scale. If we don't, then perhaps "middle age" will be determined to have been what doomed us.
Gently reply
>"dismissing our fifth and sixth decades"
Middle implies the center of a group of three or more. To me "middle age" is the period around the middle of average lifespan. So I think middle age is probably more accurately ages 30-50.
50-70 ("fifth and sixth decades) are not middle age, unless one thinks the average lifespan is 120...
Who makes up these strange definitions?
if 90 is the lifespan. "middle-aged" is what you are called by people 10 years younger than you. when i was 15, 30-year-olds were creepy old. really bad creepy old. not middle-aged.
Exactly what? The authors don't offer a testable prediction of their hypothesis. For example, one would think that biological limits to maximum lifespan would be affected. What phenotype emergence mechanism is being proposed? This sounds like group selection, which has specific testable, limitations as well. Alll in all, I would really hesitate to use the term "scientific findings show" to describe this hypothesis.
God's way of getting back at men? Because just when we get used to planning our lies around the moon (including the go fishing/overtime week) we have to shift into dealing with completely random bombs and hazards?
Think about it. They can't get away from themselves.
We've still got it easy. Y is still the winner of the chromosome lottery.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Kids don't give a damn about what the middle-aged-pricks say. "The main route by which culture is transferred" is TV.
On one hand I have eight year old kids that remind me how to feel young and play. They haven't turned into rebelous douchbags and I still manage to be thier hero occasionally.
On the other hand it's tough watching my parent become elderly. The people who were a pain in the ass when I was a teen. I love them more than ever. It breaks my heart knowing I won't have them much longer.
I always wondered why women stopped being fertile in middle age, yet live longer than men, if their only (evolutionary) purpose is to squeeze out progeny. So obviously, evolution has indicated something more for them. That something is probably assisting the health of the herd, allowing more members to thrive and procreate, assisting the herd in making decisions that increase its health and/or numbers.
The same would apply to males who become decrepit yet hold on for decades.
When understanding human evolution, one has to look at the human in terms of the herd or pack (pack is probably a better description), and not just standing alone.
"And tell those neanderthals to get off my prairie!"
Table-ized A.I.
Even when you start forgetting what you installed Linux on?
Table-ized A.I.
Not plagued by youth stupidity and desire to hump everything, still able to hump everything with cold mind, rich, lot's of free time to explore world, give back to humanity, ability to support higher education for children.
I am 45 and I am living the best time of my life.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That's why a senator is called a senator ("senex" is the Latin for "old man"). Used to be that a senate was a body of older, wiser, experienced heads who could advise on what to do because they had likely seen it all before, and remembered how to handle it. The last thing you want in a senate is young people with no experience.
You MIGHT be surprised -> http://capelookoutstudies.org/images/skeletondiagram.gif
APK
P.S.=> A thumb, or a "vestigial remainder" is there (sort of like our human tailbone @ the end of our spine seems to be the vestigial remains of a tail)... & that's not even a GOOD photo really... apk
On one hand I have eight year old kids that remind me how to feel young and play.
Tried that "nine women can make a baby in one month" thing, didn't you. :)
... will overcome youth and skill
Would you voluntarily skip the next 15 years of your life (if you could still accrue the wisdom) to get wiser even that much faster? Of course not. As it is you have the present AND the future, how is having JUST the future any better? Hence being young is strictly better, QED.
"We are born knowing and being able to do almost nothing. "
And most die that way.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You can be mentally developed without being trapped in a decayed middle-aged body.
No you are not, you are not even close. Boomers were born from 45-52. You were born just before the second boom-generation, made up by the children of the of the boomers.
The baby boomers are considered to be those born from 1946 thru 1964. Google it.
I read this looking for direct support of how this topic ties into evolution, but found that it starts from evolution as a forgone assumption and only assembles some loose observations into a story. I've been following the debates focusing on the validity of the arguments. Looking to see what's "assumed" on both sides. Many of the proponents on both sides give up or have given up in frustration and resort to name calling and broad assumptions to support their various beliefs. It's amazing to sit back and watch one call the other stupid and ignorant while being largely unable to mount a defensible argument free of logical fallacy. Even the 50 pound brains say stuff that reminds me of kids arguing on a play ground... So much for the scientific method. Doesn't matter what you believe in this case either. Nothing frustrates me more than an advocate for my position making a piss poor argument that is logically flawed whole insignificant in it's completeness. Close examination of the arguments and their assumptions has been an eye opening position to take. Of course, this requires an amount of understanding and a position that says that the words used have a consistent meaning and you are willing to take the time to read them in context so you understand the authors intent. OK, a long way to say that I found most of the article to have the goal of grabbing attention by preaching to the choir. Not much effort into even considering that the observations fit any other paradigm or have any other explanation. An opportunity missed for getting to some of the underlying assumptions that are the real point of departure.
I was left with some very simple questions after the intro section... Where was any of this wonderful stuff not found to be the case in a distant ancestor of man... what we evolved from? Where is there any example of a proto-man not exhibiting these traits? For any of this to be a product of evolution or natural selection, there has to be more than an assumption of the basic theory to support the imagined extrapolation to the present condition.
The assumptions under the section Life Long Learning are spectacular leaps... We have self-sufficient and highly skilled people in history and today under 20 years or in their 20's and they contribute considerably to society and to technological advances. That's not to say that there is a tendency for older to be wiser and more experienced. Learning that sometime being simply right about something is not good enough when surviving or prospering requires more than simple correctness about something specific... being effective and advancing requires more than simple correctness about an isolated instance or topic. I also read this wondering where the line between survival skills and technics which are all learned had much of anything to do with evolutionary theory beyond the manifestation of the advantages of a large brain and capacity to learn and communicate. The closing example of this section has many other plausible conclusions and has several other similar-to examples from lower life forms that have a communal or extended family based existence where others in the group are a part of the support system for the young while the hunters and gatherers are out doing the hunting and gathering. There are other parallels not explored and obviously missing.
An Elite Club... "but male humans often also effectively “self-sterilize” by remaining with their post-menopausal partners. Almost no other species does this." That's a huge leap... This is a cultural issue and while there are examples of this in history, it's also very true and even easy to find where human males don't keep it in their pants or maintain a monogamous relationship throughout their lives. Those that do are a corner case, in fact. Geese are more faithful on average than humans. My dad is a serious genealogy researcher and has large numbers of examples of branches of the family history going back hundreds of years started by children fathered out of wedlock...
No you are not, you are not even close. Boomers were born from 45-52. You were born just before the second boom-generation, made up by the children of the of the boomers.
Generations typically span 20 years. Boomers are generally considered to be those born between 1945 and 1965. So, yes, GP is a late Boomer.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
One cultural indicator is determining the relative importance of The Beatles vs. Nirvana - or Earth Wind and Fire vs. Tupac.
Boomers and Xers generally fall on different sides of those lines.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Middle age was just protection for the new generation, they were food for our predators. Each generation learns its new skills, morals, culture mostly from its peers and rejects any middle age "teaching". Just as there is genetic drift there is culture drift which mostly occurs between people of a similar age. Sure a few middle aged were fit enough to hang around and teach but the demographic needed is a few individuals per 100? Its only in recent times that middle age has become so meaningful.
Larry Niven has already explained all this in Protector.