The Friends of Charles Darwin

Senior citizens played an important role in the dramatic spread of human civilisation some 30,000 years ago, a study of the human fossil record has shown. Rachel Caspari at the University of Michigan and Sang-Hee Lee at the University of California at Riverside studied dental fossils belonging to early humans and pre-human species dating back 3 million years… [They] found a five-fold increase the number of individuals surviving into old age in the Early Upper Palaeolithic period—around 30,000 years ago. This coincides with an explosive population growth of modern humans and the spread of archaeological artefacts that suggest the development of more complex social organisation… Anthropologists have long suspected that older people may have played an important role in the development of early human societies by providing extra care for children, helping to accumulate useful information and strengthening kinship bonds.