Synchrony between growth and reproductive patterns in human females: Early investment in growth among Pumé foragers

Life history is an important framework for understanding many aspects of ontogeny and reproduction relative to fitness outcomes. Because growth is a key influence on the timing of reproductive maturity and age at first birth is a critical demographic variable predicting lifetime fertility, it raises questions about the synchrony of growth and reproductive strategies. Among the Pumé, a group of South American foragers, young women give birth to their first child on average at age 15.5. Previous research showed that this early age at first birth maximizes surviving fertility under conditions of high infant mortality. In this study we evaluate Pumé growth data to test the expectation that if early reproduction is advantageous, then girls should have a developmental trajectory that best prepares them for young childbearing. Analyses show that comparatively Pumé girls invest in skeletal growth early, enter puberty having achieved a greater proportion of adult body size and grow at low velocities during adolescence. For early reproducers growing up in a food‐limited environment, a precocious investment in growth is advantageous because juveniles have no chance of pregnancy and it occurs before the onset of the competing metabolic demands of final reproductive maturation and childbearing. Documenting growth patterns under preindustrial energetic and demographic conditions expands the range of developmental variation not otherwise captured by normative growth standards and contributes to research on human phenotypic plasticity in diverse environments. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.