Pendragons Princess

So I was out shopping this lovely Friday morning, at a local thrift store where I like to peruse the book section. I usually find something that appeals to me for a great price. So, I picked up a copy of Michael Medved’s “Saving Childhood.” Reading about social issues has been a long time interest of mine, ever since I was in high school back in the 1980’s. I patiently wait in line by the cash register while I overhear a conversation between the people in front of me:

“So my son and his wife are going to be adopting a 2 year old child.”

“Oh that is wonderful. It is almost as good as having a baby while they are still young.”

Yeah. Whatever. At least the second person did not say something stupid like:

“Two year olds are not as good as babies!”

But, in our child centered society, almost anything can be expected, I guess.

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Now, for the relevant news:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19926734.300-neanderthals-matured-at-the-same-rate-as-modern-humans.html

Excerpt:

NEANDERTHAL women had as much trouble in childbirth as modern women - and their kids took as long to grow up. So say Christoph Zollikofer and his team at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who have reconstructed the first 3D images of the skulls of a newborn Neanderthal from Russia (pictured), and two toddlers from Syria.

They found that the newborn’s cranium was the same diameter as a modern human baby’s. Neanderthal mothers had a larger birth canal, but their babies’ prominent faces made them just as hard to push out as modern babies, suggesting that, like us, Neanderthals needed social support to help with childbirth.

Conflicting evidence has led to debate over whether Neanderthals grew up faster than Homo sapiens: our prolonged childhood is thought to let greater intelligence develop.
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I definitely agree with that last statement. Our prolonged childhood is thought to let greater intelligence develop. My own prolonged childhood allowed me to explore the world intellectually. I still remember the joy of being able to sit on the couch in the living room, in front of that big sunny window, reading volumes of The World Book Encyclopedia, the 15-volume Childcraft reference books, and other reference books as well as art books, nature books, and the Bibles that graced two big bookcases in our living room when I was a child. I had zero worries of growing up too fast; I probably did not even know the real meaning of “growing up too fast” as a pre-teen, when I was too busy either reading, or swinging from the trees like a monkey, or exploring the woods in our backyard. Being a Daddy’s Girl helped a lot too, since recent scientific studies show that girls who have good relationships with their fathers during their developing years are less likely to stray and seek love in all the wrong places and wind up getting pregnant before even entering high school. But I digress. The article is still interesting with regards to the intellectual development of the human species.