18 - Conclusions: Putting it all together

Summary

Introduction

The primary goal of this volume has been to address the question: “When and how did the modern human pattern of growth and development appear?” This is a similar question to: “When did modern humans appear?” – but the emphasis on growth and development stresses that the adult morph, which is the usual focus of analysis, is only the end product of a long and complicated ontogenetic sequence. Furthermore, for much of the time that the genus Homo has been in existence, almost half of any individual's lifetime was spent growing up (see Krovitz et al., Introduction, this volume). Thus, a growth and development perspective leads to a much broader inquiry than one simply focused on adult individuals. Questions such as “When do distinctive traits appear?” and “How do trait complexes work together throughout growth to produce the final outcome?” become relevant, and the whole of an individual's life history becomes the research focus.

In this volume, the parts were designed to (1) provide an understanding of what the modern human pattern of growth and development is, and how it compares to our primate relatives, (2) examine the Lower and Middle Pleistocene fossil evidence for the genus Homo, and (3) examine the fossil evidence from the Upper Pleistocene. The summary chapters in this volume (Thompson et al., Krovitz et al., and Nelson et al.) provide discussions on the modern context and evolutionary origins of modern human developmental patterns.