Growing Up in the Ice Age

Book excerpt: It is estimated that in prehistoric societies children comprised at least forty to sixty-five percent of the population, yet by default, our ancestral landscapes are peopled by adults who hunt, gather, fish, knap tools and make art. But these adults were also parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles (however they would have codified these kin relationships) who had to make space physically, emotionally, intellectually, and cognitively for the infants, children and adolescents around them. The economic, social, and political roles of Paleolithic children are often understudied because they are assumed to be unknowable or negligible. Drawing on the most recent data from the cognitive sciences and from the ethnographic, fossil, archaeological, and primate records, Growing Up in the Ice Age challenges these assumptions. This volume is a timely and evidence-based look at the lived lives of Paleolithic children and the communities of which they were a part. By rendering the “invisible” children visible, readers will gain a new understanding not only of the contributions that children have made to the biological and cultural entities we are today but also of the Paleolithic period as whole.