Coltan Scrivner

We have a late childhood that other animals don't really have.

We have an extended adolescence that other animals don't really have.

So we have realistically, I think people pretend like they're kids until they're 30 now.

realistically, you're a kid, at least until you're 14, maybe 15, you're still kind of learning.

In our society, it's I think we would say 18, I guess, when you become an adult, right?

A little bit arbitrary, but 18.

So 18 years as a juvenile is an unheard of, even if you take that as a percentage of our lifespan, that's a huge amount of time, where we're just sucking resources and not really contributing.

So the question, of course, is why would we have this longer juvenile period?

And there's a

Animals who have complex food gathering techniques tend to have longer juvenile periods because it takes them longer to learn how to gather the food.

Now, historically, humans have had that.

Now we just push a button on our screen and it just shows up.

DoorDash is pretty easy to use these days.

Yeah, but historically, we were omnivores.

We hunt and we gather and we grow food.

We do all these like really complex food gathering activities.

That's one thing that tends to cause longer juvenile periods.

Another thing is complex social life, which, of course, humans have.

Arguably the most complex social life, at least among mammals and probably among any animal.

And so we have these two things that extend our childhood so that we have time to learn how to be a human.