Submitted by [deleted] t3_yl7h2a in askscience
muskytortoise t1_iv06otc wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in How many children did Homo Erectus tend to have? by [deleted]
Your post is top voted yet it's pure speculation with a few facts thrown in not even relevant to your guesswork. Assumption of the 1 year between pregnancies is based off modern diet and even during modern times in societies that prefer large families is an exception rather than the norm. As another poster mentioned, humans typically take longer than a year and other apes tend to have longer, not shorter times. The 15-30 seems like a very high estimate to the point where there are no undisputed records of more than 44 and anything above 20 being quite literally unique events on a global scale. Theoretical limit is neither what OP asked for nor practical to consider given that it's virtually never achieved even in conditions of resource abundance. Those are outliers. For most ape species it seems that the child mortality is below 50% suggesting that the numbers you mentioned are not only unnecessary to maintain the species but also would be an huge unsustainable strain on the resources available. The number would feasibly comparable to pre-industrial humans and other apes, so at minimum three and unlikely to be more than 10.
https://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Elsevier/Hill_Mortality_JHumEvo_2001_1556100.pdf
Cannie_Flippington t1_iv1bbxa wrote
Yeah, I suppose OP was asking about averages and not most physically possible. Also your second link cause me physical pain.
And your post is just as much speculation as we have no idea the lifespan or how long homo erectus would remain fertile in that lifespan. You're also not considering the high infant mortality rates where many mothers had 10 children or more historically but only some would survive to adulthood. Not to mention lack of birth control - we have no idea what their mating practices were that functioned to avoid over saturating their environment, if any.
In short, I said we've got no idea and your comment supports that.
muskytortoise t1_iv2tumt wrote
We know of ancient humans and modern era apes and for the most part the time between births is regulated by the same mechanisms and the death before adulthood is at about 50%. Speculating that a species evolutionarily closer to us is somewhere between us and species that share a common ancestor with us and them both is a reasonable guess. Your speculation throwing out numbers like up to 60 children per lifespan (completely unheard of among any apes) while claiming that there is no possible way of knowing was a lot less reasonable than mine.
Cannie_Flippington t1_iv3227t wrote
We can't prove or disprove it with our current knowledge. Educated guesses are still guesses and 60 might be very unlikely (just as 30 is for homo sapien) it's still within the realm of possibility for such wildly speculative topics such as this. The realm of possibility tends to be extreme.
[deleted] OP t1_iv4tg1s wrote
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