Close
Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood
22 August 2022
Brenna Hassett (UCL Institute of Archaeology), writing in The Guardian earlier in the summer, discusses the evolution and critical importance of childhood.
In an opinion piece for The Guardian newspaper (10 July 2022), Brenna Hassett explores the evolutionary basis and impacts of the lengthy childhood of humans which makes us Earth's most complex animal.
Over time, humans have evolved to move the markers of what biologists call “life history” – milestones like birth, growth, maturity, death – into a radically different arrangement to other species.
In contrast to other species in the animal world, human childhood can take almost a quarter of our lives. Humans have repeatedly chosen to invest in the slow growth of the next generation in ways no other animal has managed, building children up physically but also teaching them the skills they need to survive.
Brenna's new book Growing Up Human: the evolution of childhood (Bloomsbury, 2022) looks at how childhood is a critical part of the human story. Brenna is a bioarchaeologist and is also the author of Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Read more
- The Guardian
- BBC Science Focus Magazine
- Instant Genius Podcast: The evolution of human childhood, with Dr Brenna Hassett
- UCL News