[9급 지방직 영어 2020년 17번]

Evolutionarily, any species that hopes to stay alive has to manage its resources carefully. That means that first call on food and other goodies goes to the breeders and warriors and hunters and planters and builders and, certainly, the children, with not much left over for the seniors, who may be seen as consuming more than they’re contributing. But even before modern medicine extended life expectancies, ordinary families were including grandparents and even great-grandparents. That’s because what old folk consume materially, they give back behaviorally―providing a leveling, reasoning center to the tumult that often swirls around them.