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There is data which would say that man did not become the most helpless of
animals until after the brain had expanded. I think the following says that
your assumption is wrong. All the fossil children may have grown up faster
than ours. Our teeth leave growth marks which can be used to tell how old a
child is.
"The perikymata aging technique has already challenged the conventional view
of growth in australopithecines (the early African hominids of 1.5-4 million
years ago), which held that they were essentially human in their development.
The technique distinguished the robust australopithecines from their more
gracile counterparts, but neither show a modern human type of extended
growth. Indications are that both the earliest known australopithecine, A.
afarensis, and the later gracile form A. africanus, were very apelike in
maturing dentally at nearly twice the rate of human children -- thus the
first known australopithecine fossil, the Taung child, would have been closer
to three years of age at death than to the six years commonly estimated."
Chris Stringer and Clive Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals, (New York:
Thames and Hudson, 1993), p. 85
and
"The young age of the Devil's Tower child makes its brain size -- estimated
at about 1400 ml, close to the modern adult average -- even
more remarkable. The development of the child's molar teeth would also have
been well-advanced for a three-year-old. This specimen thus suggests that
Neanderthal children grew up quite fast." Chris Stringer and Clive Gamble, In
Search of the Neanderthals, (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), p. 86
glenn
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