When and how did we historically land on 18 as the age of adulthood?

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Pretty much the title. It seems 18 is universally recognized as the age of adulthood and I’m wondering why such a specific number. Why not 20 for example?

I know there are tribes around the world where children step into adulthood at a younger age, but usually there is some sort of rite of passage involved.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Roughly the end of puberty/high school would be my thought. Suspect it’s a mixture of factors depending on location and it just happens that they coincide around that age.

You could probably dig into the origins of the legal basis for age of majority in a dozen different countries and find slight differences between each.

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