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It's easy to forget in modern society, but in tribal society the elders were fountains of wisdom. When computers, reference materials, technical documents, libraries, school systems, etc don't exist, the value of lived experience goes through the roof.

Being able to consult the elders when the group faces perplexing problems (who may have lived through something similar, or at least heard stories from the recently deceased generations who have) might mean the difference between between 20% of the population starving and no one starving.

This is all true but these indirect effects are generally too weak to actually modify allele frequencies in humans. These so-called grandmother effects were probably more forceful in the hunter-gatherer phase of human evolution—but even then may have been weak.

Like the gay uncle hypothesis. (-;