Have humans always taken approx 25yrs for our brain to mature? Have we always taken 2 decades to finish growing? Why does it take so much longer for humans to grow and mature compared to other mammals?
In: 18
If anything, humans develop faster now than in the past, because of better nutrition and medical care.
The whole “25 years” thing is a recent claim. As the world gets more complicated, that number keeps going up, and new phases of development become recognized.
It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that childhood itself was widely recognized as special. Before then, children were simply considered to be smaller, less-skilled adults.
Adolescence came to prominence alongside the Information Revolution. Before then, teenagers were simply considered to be smaller, less-skilled adults.
The concept of “early adulthood” gained prominence as the Internet Revolution took hold. Back when I was a little kid, the idea of staying on your parent’s health insurance until age 25 would have been LOL ridiculous. You had damn well be raising your own kids in your own house by that time, with a promising career ahead of you, until you dropped dead in your 50s or 60s. Fortunately, things had changed by the time I reached early adulthood myself.
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