How Children Invented Humanity

I use the commentaries of Legare, Clegg, and Wen and of Frankenhuis and Tiokhin as jumping-off points to discuss an issue hinted at both in my essay and their commentaries: How a developmental perspective can help us achieve a better understanding of evolution. I examine briefly how neoteny may have contributed to human morphology; how developmental plasticity in great apes, and presumably our common ancestor with them, may have led the way to advances in social cognition; and how the "invention" of childhood contributed to unique human cognitive abilities. I conclude by acknowledging that not all developmentalists have adopted an evolutionary perspective, but that we are approaching a time when an evolutionary perspective will be implicit in the thinking of all psychologists.