Journal
HUMAN NATURE-AN INTERDISCIPLINARY BIOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
Volume 22, Issue 3, Pages 249-280Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s12110-011-9119-3
Keywords
Middle childhood; Growth and development; Adolescent growth spurt; Life history
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The evolution of modern human life history has involved substantial changes in the overall length of the subadult period, the introduction of a novel early childhood stage, and many changes in the initiation, termination, and character of the other stages. The fossil record is explored for evidence of this evolutionary process, with a special emphasis on middle childhood, which many argue is equivalent to the juvenile stage of African apes. Although the juvenile and middle childhood stages appear to be the same from a broad comparative perspective, in that they begin with the eruption of the first molar and the achievement of the majority of adult brain size and end with sexual maturity, the detailed differences in the expression of these two stages, and how they relate to the preceding and following stages, suggest that a distinction should be maintained between them to avoid blurring subtle, but important, differences.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available