I have one year left before i get my BA in anthro and im trying to find what specifically interests me before considering a higher degree and its def biological anthropology,, a part 2 would be super cool 👀
Life history strategy, slow or fast, is different between modern industrialized and other societies. At least in the modern West, bad conditions are associated with a fast life history strategy, whereas good conditions are linked to slow. But in premodern examples and hunter-gatherer tribes, it's the complete opposite. That indicates confounders are involved. I suspect it might have to do with diet, such as caloric levels. In the past, harsh conditions often meant limited calories. Whereas, in the modern world, most people in harsh conditions still have plentiful access to calories, even if they're deficient in certain micronutrients. We moderns have eliminated the caloric cue that tells our body how to respond. It's possible there are multiple cues to determine life history strategy. We eliminated one of them or maybe several of them. But there are is at least some other cue that tells the body which strategy to take. I'd say another possibility is stress. In the past, general stress (acute and chronic) tended to go hand in hand with caloric limitation. But stress without caloric restriction seems to have the opposite response. That would make sense historically. Caloric restriction is one kind of stress. But there are other kinds of stressors such as poverty, high inequality, toxicity, pathogen exposure, parasite load, etc. The various stressors might elicit different patterns of responses. The research supports this. The stressors of today are different than before. To clarify these complications, we'd need to look into the research on other stressors: mean world syndrome, regality theory, behavioral immune system, parasite-stress theory, sickness behavior, conservation-withdrawal, disgust response, threat reactivity, cognitive load, etc. I'd expect that life history strategy has never been studied in relation to these other theories and factors. As a side note, there is another dietary factor. It might not only be how much calories one is getting but what kind. Agricultural foods may be more conducive to fast life history strategy. This is why agricultural societies were able to outbreed, outcompete, and overwhelm non-agricultural societies. Some of that could be about an easier access to simple carbs. But we know wheat consumption is correlated to higher rates of certain mental illnesses. Then again, if we look at the larger context, we are back to stressors again. Until modernity, agricultural societies would flip back and forth between abundance and famine. But hunter-gatherers tended to avoid such extremes with a more stable food supply and more stable population levels. What we might be looking at is that, in agricultural societies, there was a divergence in life history strategies, depending on socioeconomic or caste status. About stressors, it also depends on the kind of agriculture (see Thomas Talhelm). Wheat-farming areas tend to have lower rates of pathogens and parasites, with higher rates of individualism and analytical thought. Whereas rice-farming areas are reversed, as warmer and wetter areas are linked to disease, and this is seen with greater collectivism and synthetic thought. One suspects that life history strategy would diverge accordingly. These various other potentially confounding factors could be tested by including other known stable factors. The personality trait 'openness to experience' increases with healthy conditions and decreases with unhealthy conditions (stress, sickliness, malnutrition, etc). So, when comparing modern industrialized populations with premodern and traditional populations, we would expect openness to reverse in it's association with life history strategies. I'm not sure if any of my speculations are valid and helpful. But it's the kind of hypotheses we need to articulate, so as to be tested. In any case, most of the present research in this area is problematic. We are entirely missing out on important factors. It's not clear exactly what life history strategy indicates and means. Yet all of what's being discussed here would be easy to set up as studies, if any researcher thought to do so.
Thank you so much for the video. I dodnt know this! A small point of hopefully constructive criticism: it seems you found yourself repeating the same point too many times of slow vs fast LHS organisms. I was hoping to hear more about the uses and implications of this concept after establishing its definition. But again, big fan and wishing you the best!
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Did you know I wrote a course on human evolution? 🧬🦍🦧🐒🌱🌳
Check it out HERE: www.socratica.com/courses/human-evolution
Well-explained! I vote for a part 2!
Here's to nerding out and having a good time!
Part 2!!! great video I was totally nerding out and having a good time!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I would like to see a part 2! I find the topic interesting ☺️
YAY
It's been a while since I've heard about r/k selection theory and it's one of my favorite concepts in ecology!
Right?? So interesting!
@@AliviaBrown I was doing additional research on the topic and I read something about having a more holistic approach to an organism's lifespan...
So informative 😄
Glad it was helpful!
Life history can help you write your auto ethnography too!
Oh wow, would love to hear more about this!
well explained , I vote for the 2nd Part
I have one year left before i get my BA in anthro and im trying to find what specifically interests me before considering a higher degree and its def biological anthropology,, a part 2 would be super cool 👀
Life history strategy, slow or fast, is different between modern industrialized and other societies. At least in the modern West, bad conditions are associated with a fast life history strategy, whereas good conditions are linked to slow. But in premodern examples and hunter-gatherer tribes, it's the complete opposite. That indicates confounders are involved.
I suspect it might have to do with diet, such as caloric levels. In the past, harsh conditions often meant limited calories. Whereas, in the modern world, most people in harsh conditions still have plentiful access to calories, even if they're deficient in certain micronutrients. We moderns have eliminated the caloric cue that tells our body how to respond.
It's possible there are multiple cues to determine life history strategy. We eliminated one of them or maybe several of them. But there are is at least some other cue that tells the body which strategy to take. I'd say another possibility is stress. In the past, general stress (acute and chronic) tended to go hand in hand with caloric limitation. But stress without caloric restriction seems to have the opposite response.
That would make sense historically. Caloric restriction is one kind of stress. But there are other kinds of stressors such as poverty, high inequality, toxicity, pathogen exposure, parasite load, etc. The various stressors might elicit different patterns of responses. The research supports this. The stressors of today are different than before.
To clarify these complications, we'd need to look into the research on other stressors: mean world syndrome, regality theory, behavioral immune system, parasite-stress theory, sickness behavior, conservation-withdrawal, disgust response, threat reactivity, cognitive load, etc. I'd expect that life history strategy has never been studied in relation to these other theories and factors.
As a side note, there is another dietary factor. It might not only be how much calories one is getting but what kind. Agricultural foods may be more conducive to fast life history strategy. This is why agricultural societies were able to outbreed, outcompete, and overwhelm non-agricultural societies. Some of that could be about an easier access to simple carbs. But we know wheat consumption is correlated to higher rates of certain mental illnesses.
Then again, if we look at the larger context, we are back to stressors again. Until modernity, agricultural societies would flip back and forth between abundance and famine. But hunter-gatherers tended to avoid such extremes with a more stable food supply and more stable population levels. What we might be looking at is that, in agricultural societies, there was a divergence in life history strategies, depending on socioeconomic or caste status.
About stressors, it also depends on the kind of agriculture (see Thomas Talhelm). Wheat-farming areas tend to have lower rates of pathogens and parasites, with higher rates of individualism and analytical thought. Whereas rice-farming areas are reversed, as warmer and wetter areas are linked to disease, and this is seen with greater collectivism and synthetic thought. One suspects that life history strategy would diverge accordingly.
These various other potentially confounding factors could be tested by including other known stable factors. The personality trait 'openness to experience' increases with healthy conditions and decreases with unhealthy conditions (stress, sickliness, malnutrition, etc). So, when comparing modern industrialized populations with premodern and traditional populations, we would expect openness to reverse in it's association with life history strategies.
I'm not sure if any of my speculations are valid and helpful. But it's the kind of hypotheses we need to articulate, so as to be tested. In any case, most of the present research in this area is problematic. We are entirely missing out on important factors. It's not clear exactly what life history strategy indicates and means. Yet all of what's being discussed here would be easy to set up as studies, if any researcher thought to do so.
Thank you so much for the video. I dodnt know this! A small point of hopefully constructive criticism: it seems you found yourself repeating the same point too many times of slow vs fast LHS organisms. I was hoping to hear more about the uses and implications of this concept after establishing its definition. But again, big fan and wishing you the best!
Man I really what to know what high and low fecundity means, lol.
Basically means fertility! How many offspring an organism is capable of producing :)