Sexual Maturity
- Thread starter BenTheMan
- Start date
Not really considering that we are humans and not wild animals living in a jungle.
But we were at one time?
Are you saying that this has changed significantly over the past 100,000 years or so?
I think you're all missing the point, unless I am really mistaken.
The point is that, in the wild, however many hundreds of thousands of years ago, males and females would mate as soon as they were sexually mature, defined by the ability to bear children. Because the average life span in the wild should be quite low, it doesn't make sense (to me) that the age of sexual maturity should be so high. Moreover, it also doesn't make sense that children should be so needy of parents'/family attention for 10-15 years before they are able to bear their own children.
Now, it could be that the age of sexual maturity has increased significantly, and I don't know the anthropological evidence one way or the other.
Well, we're animals, right?
It's a long time for an animal. The reason for the long maturation period is our brains. We need time to absorb cultural information and assimilate it properly so we can make our brains worth having. Brains are expensive stuff. We could have a shorter maturation period, but then we wouldn't have all the advanced stuff we have as a result of cultural transmission, ie. science, technology, art, etc.
Somewhere along our evolution we outcompeted rivals who had shorter maturation periods. We had an information advantage. We were more advanced, we could plan better, probably develop better warfare strategies and weaponry. Probably all of this was helped by a more advanced language, which requires a longer time to master than less advanced languages. It's an information advantage.
Under the pretense that according to Christianity, that we were all created by god. But there are differences between us and what we call "animals". As in order of society, for starters.
Ahh good. This is something I hadn't thought of.
Under the pretense that we're not plants or bacteria, actually...
I disagree. Nature would probably select against humans that reproduced too early. The mother would be too small and more likely to die during childbirth than women already were. And just like other animals who mate too young they end up killing off their own offspring because they don't know how to take care of them or just don't take care of them at all. Personally however I think humans don't really sexually mature much slower than other animals with a similar lifespan. Elephants and hippos and some other mammals reach sexual maturity at about 11- 15 as well.
I had wondered about this. If it is true, then humans are not really atypical.
How does it work for other large omnivorous primates, does anyone know?
But it's all relative, right?
I mean, shouldn't mothers who can bear children at 10 be favored, just because they can bear more children? Even if only 60% of them survive to produce offspring, that's still more than if 100% of the other offspring survived.
Would a ten year old be that likely to even survive natural unassisted by modern medicine childbirth? I remember there was this 11 year old girl at the clinic who had gotten pregnant and they were forced to do a C-section because they determined it was physically impossible for her to give natural birth her body was just too small. In prehistoric times she would have most certainly died along with her offspring.
your ONLY looking at it from a stand point of sexual maturity alone where as suvival takes alot more things into acount. Sure if a child is born with an inbuilt flame thrower in there arm they are more likly to survive but if that change means that they are born with half a brain and cant use it is it any advantage?
In this case i think your discounting intelligence, it takes alot longer for a larger brain animal to mature than a smaller brain one (ie chimps, and dolphines also have long infancy times) so its a balance between "is a short maturity time better" or "is more intelligence better"
Natural selection occurs at the level of the individual, not the species.
I think this answer to the original question is along the right lines.