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Cannie_Flippington t1_iv1bbxa wrote

Reply to comment by muskytortoise in How many children did Homo Erectus tend to have? by [deleted]

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.

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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.

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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.

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