In the Santa Fe New Mexican, SFI Omidyar Fellow Paul Hooper writes about his research to understand the origin of some traits that make us uniquely human, including the support of both parents and grandparents during our unusually lengthy period of child development.
"Some 2 million years ago, our ancestors started down a path that made them depend more and more on their brains to make a living," he writes. "There were some huge consequences that accompanied these increases in brain power. One of them is that human children needed more time to develop — first to grow their brains, and then to fill them with the knowledge and skills necessary to be clever, competent adults. As a result, human offspring take far longer to raise than those of any other primate, including our closest relatives, the chimpanzees."
Read the article in the Santa Fe New Mexican (May 6, 2013)
The article is the latest in a series of columns in the Santa Fe New Mexican written by SFI scientists.
Watch Paul Hooper describe his research in this SFI video (3 minutes)