Anatomy of Love (Completely Revised and Updated) by Helen Fisher

Author:Helen Fisher [Helen Fisher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2016-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Origin of Teenage

Our Homo erectus ancestors most likely acquired another burden—the teenager. From characteristics of ancient teeth and bones, it appears that at some point (perhaps some 900,000 to 800,000 years ago) the human maturation process slowed down.22 Not only did women now bear exceedingly helpless babies, but childhood had also become prolonged.

Hail the origin of teenage, another hallmark of the human animal, another distinct divergence from our relatives the apes. A chimpanzee reaches puberty at about age ten. Girls in hunting-gathering societies, however, often did not reach menarche until age sixteen or seventeen (although today in Westernized societies female menarche is far earlier). Boys went through a prolonged adolescence too. In fact, today humans do not stop growing physically until about age twenty.

Even more remarkable, human parents continue to provide food and shelter for their teenagers. After chimp mothers have weaned their infants, these youngsters feed themselves and build their own nests every night. The juvenile chimp still stays near mother much of the time. But mother no longer feeds or shelters her offspring.

Not so humankind. At age five the human child can barely dig a root. Even the most sophisticated youngster in a hunting-gathering society cannot forage and survive until they are years older. So human parents continue to rear their offspring for many years after their children have been weaned.23 With the evolution of our slow human maturation process, our childhood and adolescence would eventually become almost twice as long as that of chimps and other primates.

Why did the human maturation process become so extended?

To gain time: time in childhood to learn about an increasingly complex world. Boys needed to learn where to quarry flint and other stones, how to hit these rocks at the precise angle to remove a flake, and how to fashion their weapons for perfect throwing. Boys had to watch the animals, learn which creatures led the herd, understand how the winds and seasons changed, as well as which prey to track, how to track, where to surround, how to fell their quarry, how to cut the game and divide the spoils, and how to carry flame.

Girls had even more to learn: where the berry bushes grew, what bogs to avoid, where to find birds’ eggs, what the life cycles of hundreds of different plants were, where small animals burrowed or reptiles sunned, and which herbs were best for colds, sore throats, and fevers.

All this learning took time, trial and error, and intelligence. Perhaps the young also had to commit to memory long tales, stories like morality plays that taught them about the weather and the habits of the plants and animals around them.

Equally important, they had to learn the nuances of the mating game. With the evolution of teenage came all of those extra years to experiment at courting, sex, and love—crucial parts of life in a social world where men and women needed to pair up to share their food and raise their children as a team.

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