Were hominid women fat or slender,did their weight shift according to seasons,did the heaviest survive longer?

Question

Were hominid women fat or slender,did their weight shift according to seasons,did the heaviest survive longer?

Answer 1

You are a hominid and, if you are a woman, you are a hominid woman.  Homo sapiens (you and me), homo erectus, and homo habilis are all hominids.  So were the Neanderthals.  So were the Australopithecenes.  They are all sufficiently similar to us, and to our nearest living relatives, the great apes, that there is no reason to suspect that their weight characteristics differ very much from our own.

Would you say women today are fat or slender?  Women of other hominid species likely showed similar degrees of variation.

Does their weight shift according to the seasons?  In wealthy countries today, the availability of food is not dependent on the seasons.  A few hundred thousand years ago, the amount and quality of available food was highly dependent on the seasons.  We can expect, therefore, that everyone tried to get fat when they could and tried not to starve to death at other times.

Excess fat today is a genuine health problem.  It wasn't then, partly for the reason given in the seasonal paragraph and partly because no one lived long enough to develop clogged arteries and heart disease.  Die in your thirties and you don't have to worry about most of the diseases that plague us today.

Answer 2

They were shorter, stockier people.  Their weight probably didn't shift drastically during seasons, because they didn't originate from areas where seasons were incredibly varied (they didn't go into 'hibernation' like bears or rabbits).  The length of life wasn't as important as the number of children they bore and raised to adulthood, and so the amount of fat that optimizes pregnancy would be selected for.  But, in an environment where food is scarce, we are selected to seek out sweet, fatty foods because those provide the most calories which contribute to bearing a healthy baby.

Answer 3

yes, sometimes, and no