2024-04-01 13:09:26
Childhood is surprisingly difficult to define. “It’s so simple and yet so difficult,” says April Nowell of the University of Victoria in Canada, author of Growing Up in the Ice Age. Western societies often use a simple chronological measure: for example, we can become adults on our 18th birthday. However, this is far from a universal concept. “In many societies, the transition from child to adult depends on having certain skills, or being a certain personality, or having certain abilities,” says Nowell.
Defining childhood in terms of biological indicators of growth is also problematic. For example, most of us become sexually mature well before the age of 18 – but develop long after that. “Our skeletons finally finish forming around the age of 25,” says Brenna Hassett from the University of Central Lancashire (UK). In addition, childhood is not only a time of physical but also mental development, learning and playing. Also, childhood is a time when we depend on adults to provide us with food and other necessities. “For me, childhood is a time when other people invest in you,” Hassett says.
However, however we consider it, the length of human childhood is exceptional – even compared to our closest relatives, the great apes, who also have long childhoods. B. Hassett compares us to whales which sexual maturity is reached only at the age of about 25 years. However, they often live more than 200 years, while humans rarely live to be 100 years old. “We spend a quarter of our time young,” says Hassett.
And it’s not just a question of duration. People’s childhoods are also qualitatively different. Primatologists believe that monkeys and apes go through three stages: baby, young, and adult. Babies spend most of their time snuggled up to their mothers, while cubs move more freely. Meanwhile, people have five stages, according to A. Nowell: baby, child, minor, teenager and adult. “Childhood and adolescence are two new phases of human life history that are embedded in this more primate-like pattern,” she says.
The child stage lasts from weaning to the eruption of the first permanent molar (approximately 2 to 6 years of age). Adolescents are physically capable of reproduction, but are still maturing both physically and mentally. Although there is now evidence that chimpanzees, like us, experience an adolescent growth spurt, it is nevertheless clear that the history of human life has changed radically. When did this happen?
Childhood evolves
The history of human evolution spans about 7 million years. Unfortunately, we only know about the oldest hominins from a few fossils, so we have little or no information about their childhood. “It’s a stray collection of fossils,” says Philipp Gunz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Only Australopithecus, which lived in Africa about 4-2 million years ago. years, we start to have enough examples to say something meaningful.
in 2020 in the study conducted Mr. Gunz and his colleagues scanned eight Australopithecus afarensis skulls dating more than 3 million years ago years. They found that children’s brains were smaller than those of modern chimpanzees of the same age, while adults’ brains were slightly larger than those of adult chimpanzees. “This can only be the case if their brains have been growing for a longer period of time,” says P. Gunz. So it looks like childhood got a little longer already over 3 million years ago. years.
Our own Homo The genus originated 3-2 million years ago. years. Compared to earlier hominins, the first Homo had significantly larger brains and were determined to walk upright. They made and used stone tools and ate a variety of foods, including meat. But did they also have longer childhoods than earlier hominins?
This is still debatedbut the clearest evidence is Standing man child found near Lake Turkana in Kenya. The Turkana Boy, also known as the Nariokotome Boy, lived about 1.6 million years ago. years. Looks like he was about 8 years old at the time of his death. Its brain showed a faster growth rate than that of modern humans, Hassett says, but its growth trajectory was different from earlier australopithecines. And the consequences are clear. “Before H. erectus, which is about 2 million years ago, years, childhood is significantly longer,” says A. Nowell. Even more, childhood growth patterns showthat child and adolescent phases emerged.
Our own species is A wise man – evolved about 300,000 years ago. We follow the same five-step model as before Homo, but “slowed down even more, stretched out even more,” says A. Nowell. This lengthening of childhood may have developed gradually over millions of years — or there may have been rapid spikes followed by periods of stagnation, Mr. Gunz says. Until there are more fossils, it is impossible to say. However, we can ask why this happened.
One of the much-discussed ideas relates to the difficulty of human childbirth. Compared to other apes, human childbirth is very painful and dangerous. This is attributed to our bipedal posture, which resulted in narrower hips and larger brains. Simply put, we push a large object through a small hole. in 2022 Tesla Monson of Western Washington University and her colleagues have shown that pregnancy began to change as early as 6 million years ago. years. “Babies kept getting bigger and bigger, and their brains got bigger with them,” says Monson. As a result, human babies must be born underdeveloped and helpless. “We always say that the first year after birth is almost like a second pregnancy,” says Nowell.
However, this alone cannot explain the longer evolution of childhood. When babies are born, they are free to grow, so in theory they could develop quickly into adulthood. However, this is not the case. This means that we need to look not only at birth, but also at prehistoric children: how they lived and what they did. Until the last few years, archaeologists did not. Now the situation is changing. As the picture of prehistoric childhood expands, so does our understanding of why this stage of life is so important.
Children of the Stone Age
Let us take one such fascinating scene. In Italy’s Basura Cave, footprints and other traces reveal what looks like family outing 14,000 years ago. There were five people here: a man and a woman, a teenager and two children, the youngest of whom was about three years old. They walked barefoot, lit the way with burning sticks and went deep into the cave. It seems that in one place the youths picked up dirt from the floor and smeared it on the stalagmite. “Maybe it was just a rainy day and they were out exploring,” Nowell speculates.
Perhaps these children also had a creative urge – after all, we know that even very young children create art. in 2022 The study looked at hand stencils left on the walls of Stone Age caves in Europe. Some of them were so small that they had to be made by babies with the help of elders. Prehistoric art probably had meaning for the people who created it, but sometimes it may have been created simply for fun. There is plenty of other archaeological evidence that fun and games have long been a part of childhood.
For example, in Laugerie-Basse (France), archaeologists found a bone disc dating from 11,000 to 18,000 years ago. It has a deer in different poses on either side, and a hole in the middle through which a string could have been threaded. Nowell and her colleagues note that when the cord is twisted and released, the disc rotates, creating the illusion of deer movement.
Owl-like plaques from Bronze Age Spain may also have been children’s toys. Most early toys were probably made from perishable materials like wood and therefore rotted. However, other forms of play can still be observed. Neanderthal children found running around in Le Rozel, France as if they were playing chasetraces.
Decades of research leave no doubt that play has a serious purpose as a way to learn new physical, psychological and social skills. And in prehistory, it may have played an additional role that made it even more important to our ancestors. The appearance of certain toys in archaeological research coincides with technological innovations – such as the wheel and weaving – suggesting that children’s play inspired some of the most important human inventions.
Primitive children also needed to learn skills to survive. in 2022 published research looked at 28 young fishermen in modern communities and found that children learn to gather fruits and shellfish easily, but the skills to use resources such as tubers and game are not acquired until adolescence or adulthood. This in the researchers’ findings supports the idea that long childhood evolved as a period, through which complex foraging skills are learned. Likewise, tools at Stone Age sites where artefacts created by expert craftsmen mingle with amateur efforts show that the children tried their best.
The general picture is that prehistoric children lived rich and complex lives full of varied activities, constant learning and researched: “learned how to navigate in difficult social situationswhile gaining basic skills and everything that helps us function in this world as human beings,” says T. Monson.
This long learning curve has obvious benefits for children. Interestingly, it can also shape the society in which they live. “As children grow, so does what they choose to learn from,” says Nowell. In hunter-gatherer societies, children initially learn from their parents, but as they enter adolescence, they begin to seek out other adults— especially those considered innovative. Thus, teenagers can be the basis for the spread of innovation. “Not all knowledge is passed down from generation to generation,” says the scientist. “I think it’s especially important for children and teenagers to decide what they pass on.”
In fact, in prehistory, young people probably played an even bigger role – because there were so many of them. in 2008 conducted review states that children have formed from 40 to 65 percent population, that is, a much larger part than now. “Children were supposed to be a key demographic group that ensured the survival of the whole community,” says Nowell.
One wonders if modern parents can learn anything from our ancestors. But Nowell believes the latest research has a more subtle lesson. “It changes the way we think about children and their contribution to the community,” she says. There was a common perception that children are just empty vessels that we need to fill with knowledge. However, the scientist claims that it is completely wrong to think so. “Children always had the opportunity to act. Children have always contributed significantly to the overall well-being of their communities. And they play an important role in shaping the future direction of our society,” she says.
Adapted from New Scientist.
2024-04-01 13:09:26