Childhood and Human Evolution

In this accessible and groundbreaking work, Friedrich Kipp shows that childhood and youth—an extended period of nurture and protection from the struggle for existence—have been, and will continue to be, a necessary condition for human evolution. His observations confirm our intuitive feeling that this prolonged phase of human life holds the promise of our future.

Kipp's comparative study of the juvenile stage in animals and humans also sheds surprising new light on the process of human evolution and our relation to the animal primates. In their earliest developmental stage, animals—and the animal primates in particular—display characteristics reminiscent of human children. However these more universal, humanlike characteristics are quickly lost as the animals adapt to specific ecological conditions. The animals' early closeness to the human form and their developmental trajectory away from the human suggests that the main trunk of the evolutionary tree is intimately associated with human evolution.