
Why human children take so long to reach maturity - lurkage
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/57123;jsessionid=baag3bXuJ30X8O
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ericwaller
The simplest answer may also be the best: there's a lot to learn. And it seems
that as society becomes more complicated, there's more you must learn to
survive.

There is a strong evolutionary advantage to taking care of our sick and
elderly -- experts are very hard to train. As medical care improves we can
afford to invest more time (childhood) and energy into training increasingly
specialized experts.

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sdurkin
It seems like a positive feedback loop. Improved brains require slow
development and allow for greater social complexity, which requires bigger
brains and even slower development.

To summarize, this article adds that perhaps slow development contributes to
the loop, rather than detracts from it.

