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Middle Childhood and Modern Human Origins

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

Jennifer L. Thompson would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of Anthropology at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A. J. Nelson would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of Anthropology at The University of Western Ontario. We thank Dr. Menghin, the Director of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin, for permission to study the Le Moustier 1 specimen and to Mrs. Almut Hoffmann for her assistance. Both authors would like to express their thanks to Professor Alan Morris, Dept. of Anatomy, University of Cape Town, and to Dr. Jerome Cybulski, Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, for permission to examine human skeletal material in their care. We both thank Ben Campbell for inviting us to participate in this volume and for his helpful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV, 89154-5003, USA

    Jennifer L. Thompson

  2. Department of Anthropology, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 5C2, Canada

    Andrew J. Nelson

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Thompson, J.L., Nelson, A.J. Middle Childhood and Modern Human Origins. Hum Nat 22, 249–280 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-011-9119-3

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