Environmental complexity, life history, and encephalisation in human evolution
Environmental complexity, life history, and encephalisation in human evolution
复制标题
DOI：
10.1007/s10539-017-9564-4
复制
发表时间：
2017-06-01
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
Grove, Matt
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Grove, Matt
在人类进化的过程中，大脑的大小增加了三倍，而体重大约增加了一倍。大脑和身体尺寸的增加表明，在这一时期，繁殖速度（因此也是进化速度）一定大大放慢了。然而，在同一时期，环境异质性大大增加。生命史理论的一个核心原则是，在异质环境中，具有快速生命史的生物体将得到青睐。因此，人类谱系是在与这一理论直接矛盾的情况下发展起来的。这篇论文试图通过戈弗雷-史密斯的环境复杂性论文来解决这一矛盾，该论文指出，认知的功能是使生物体能够处理环境的复杂性。这表明，在繁殖缓慢的生物体中，由高级认知能力提供的行为灵活性是适应异质环境的基本组成部分。在人类谱系中，这种灵活性尤其表现在日益复杂的物质文化上。
Brain size has increased threefold during the course of human evolution, whilst body weight has approximately doubled. These increases in brain and body size suggest that reproductive (and, therefore, evolutionary) rates must have slowed considerably during this period. During the same period, however, environmental heterogeneity has increased substantially. A central tenet of life-history theory states that in heterogeneous environments, organisms with fast life histories will be favoured. The human lineage, therefore, has proceeded in direct contradiction of this theory. This contribution attempts to resolve this contradiction by recourse to Godfrey-Smith's Environmental Complexity Thesis, which states that the function of cognition is to enable the organism to deal with environmental complexity. It is suggested that among slowly reproducing organisms the behavioural flexibility provided by advanced cognitive abilities is a fundamental component of adaptation to heterogeneous environments. In the human lineage this flexibility is manifest particularly in the increasing complexity of material culture.