reproductive conflict

Did conflict between old and young women drive origin of menopause?

edyong | April 1, 2008

You could argue that life is all about cheating death and having enough sex to pass on your genes to the next generation, as many times as possible. From this dispassionate viewpoint, human reproduction is very perplexing for our reproductive potential has an early expiry date.  At an average age of 38, women start becoming rapidly less fertile only to permanently lose the ability to have children some 10 years later during menopause. From an evolutionary point of view, this decline is bizarre. Other long-lived animals stay fertile until close to the end of their lives, with elephants…