April Nowell

So, this is an academic publication and neither written nor edited for a popular market; that being said, there is a lot in here for anyone truly interested. This is my field and I have to separate critique I might share among colleagues from general commentary for this forum, so bear with me.

Nowell presents us here with a synthesis of widely interdisciplinary work to address Plio-Pleistocene (roughly 5 million years ago until about 12,000 years ago) childhood beyond the simple forensic show more study of pre-adult human remains; rather than what they were like when they died, she delves into what kids and adolescents did when they were alive (and before they became adults) in earlier human history. While she's not presenting primary data, her citations and references are a gold mine of the real stuff. While archaeological materials such as skeletal remains, artifacts, environmental data, cave art and such hold primacy, Nowell supplements the discussion with work in ethnography, developmental psychology, neurology, and the sweeping re-evaluations in all these fields over the last 30 years given advances in tools and research questions.

How did human (and human ancestor) offspring interact with adults, the environment, and each other? How did they learn necessary skills? How did they act as vectors of innovation or continuity? What roles did they play in the evolution of culture, communication, art, and their descendants' genome? All good questions and all addressed to some degree in here.

The Big Takeaway: "Growing Up in the Ice Age" does not provide clear answers or settle scores but rather presents a world of changing perspectives on human development and how one can look into the various aspects of it. It is an imperfect work and clunkier in writing and presentation than needed be, but the value lies behind that. This is great grist for the mills of discussion and further research and a very welcome addition to the study of human prehistory. show less