“Grandmothering was the initial step toward making us who we are,” says senior author Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah. In 1997 Hawkes proposed the “grandmother hypothesis,” a theory that explains menopause by citing the under-appreciated evolutionary value of grandmothering.  Hawkes says that grandmothering helped us to develop “a whole array of social capacities that are then the foundation for the evolution of other distinctly human traits, including pair bonding, bigger brains, learning new skills and our tendency for cooperation.”

WOW: New Evidence That Grandmothers Were Crucial for Human Evolution | Science | Smithsonian

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Her campaign to challenge world leaders on the climate emergency has made Greta Thunberg the favourite to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Adam Currie questions why the public are so keen to hear the Swedish teen’s message over the Indigenous youth who raised their voices

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