Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Kaplan HS
PROVIDER: S-EPMC126651 | biostudies-literature | 2002 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Kaplan Hillard S HS Robson Arthur J AJ
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20020716 15
Two striking differences between humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas, are the size of our brains (larger by a factor of three or four) and our life span (longer by a factor of about two). Our thesis is that these two distinctive features of humans are products of coevolutionary selection. The large human brain is an investment with initial costs and later rewards, which coevolved with increased energy allocations to survival. Not only does this theory help explain l ...[more]