The average age at which people have had children over the past 250,000 years is 26.9 years. At the same time, the age of fathers was systematically older (on average 30.7 years) than that of mothers (on average 23.2 years).

This is the main conclusion of a new study by American scientists, the first of its kind in such a long period of time, concerning the history of human evolution on the question of the duration of the human generation. Previous estimates date back to 45,000 years ago and refer to both parents, with no distinction between the two sexes.

Indiana University researchers, led by computational biology professor Matthew Hahn, who published his paper in the journal Science Advances, found that the age difference between fathers and mothers has gradually decreased over the past 5,000 years, which is mainly due to the fact that the age at which a woman first becoming a mother is constantly increasing (currently estimated at 26.4 years on average worldwide).

“We found that we can predict the age at which people have children from the types of DNA mutations they pass on to their children,” Dr. Khan said. Children’s DNA inherited from parents contains between 25 and 75 new mutations. The type of mutations in children depends on the age of the father and mother.

In addition to the increase in the age of a mother when she gives birth to her first child, the researchers found that the age of the parents did not increase at a constant rate from past to present, but rather seemed to decrease around 10,000 years ago due to an increase in the population on Earth. which coincided with the agricultural revolution and the rise of civilization.

Source: RES-IPE