Article 27 Response Paper

*Need 400 words

Daniel Contreras
Professor Osborne
Anthropology
Mon & Wed 4:00-5:30pm
November 28, 2011

Art. 27 "The Birth of Childhood" Response Paper

In the article titled "The Birth of Childhood" Ann Gibbons explains that the modern human has a profoundly longer period of development than any other species. The author asks when and how did this prolonged development start. They begin searching for the answer by looking at our closest relatives: the chimpanzees. Gibbons notes that the modern human takes approximately twice as long as chimpanzees to reach adulthood; however, modern humans are plentiful and long living. She further evaluates the techniques used by researchers that study the fossilized bones from H.erectus and Australopithecus afarensis hominins.
The researchers use methods requiring the study of the fossilized teeth to figure out what age the children were. Surprisingly, they discovered that the early hominin children grew at a much faster rate than the modern child do. Studies revealed that these early children grew close to the rate of chimpanzees. The article begins with an anecdote explaining the unfortunate circumstances of an infant chimpanzee who is left without a family. However, the infant did manage to survive with aid from other chimpanzee youth, on the other hand, if it were a human child getting aid from other human children the family-less infant would not have survived. Although humans tend to take longer to reach adulthood, we generally live one or two decades longer than chimpanzees.
After reading this article I read it again because some parts were unclear. Then I reread it a third time to figure out the author's overall point and purpose of the article.


Works Cited
Gibbons, Ann. "The Birth of Childhood." Ed. Elvio Angeloni. Physical Anthropology 11/12. New York: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Learning Series, 2011. 144-47. Print.

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