I’m not asking this from a biology lens, I get that aspect, but more from the sociology/anthropology lens. My question is which culture started using 18 as this hard cutoff, when, and under what reasoning.
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The number is very arbitrary. Part of it is the amount of power that’s conferred once a person reaches age of majority and in general, people have a tendency to restrict power from others that are different from them. In this case, it’s younger people. We see this a lot with any laws proposed to allow younger people to vote or drink. This is why you are seeing new laws pass to raise the age of buying cigarettes or vapes.
In the past, women and blacks weren’t allowed to vote either because it gave power to a group that previously didn’t have it and those who had the ability to vote felt threatened by people different from themselves.
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