On the origins of culture

4AM.  Helena Iara woke up hungry, and ate more than she should have, perhaps thinking that Rita's breast was a kind of all-you-can eat rodízio, and the extra milk gave her a stomach ache.  So once again, we made our way to the hammock, where Helena looked out the windows onto the bright stars that shone down on the jungle and the Morro do Lampião.

Why did I start talking about contemporary paleo-anthropology?  Maybe because she didn't like talking about Schleiermacher the night before, maybe because I was thinking how much harder it was for most parents of newborns.  In any case, Sara Blaffer Hrdy came up as I tried to talk about anything that would distract her from the colic in her stomach.  And it seemed to work.

Now, any number of anthropologists have hypothesized about the origins of culture, society, and human language, so the fact that Hrdy would try for a kind of grand unified theory of man is hardly new.  What is new, however, is where she situates this origin: in babies.  Specifically, in the premature birth of human babies.

The argument goes something like this: humans, unlike dogs or horses or almost any other mammal, can't do anything for themselves when they are born.  Horses can run, cats can worm their way close to their mothers' breasts.  And unlike marsupials (which are also born helpless, but whose mothers can get raise the baby on their own), one human being cannot take care of a baby.  The task is just too big: the food and the crying and excreting and cold and health...  As any mother knows, she needs the support of her own mother, of sisters, of a husband, of social services and professionals.  Four of us live here with Helena Iara, who is a great little baby who makes few demands in comparison with other babies, but even so, Rita, me, her sister, and her brother in law are all exhausted from the work.  Society, culture, and language, Hrdy suggests, all emerge from this human weakness, the need to have others help us in the essential task of reproducing the species.

I don't know if Helena was really interested in all of this, or just calmed by the rocking of the hammock, but she certainly perked up when she heard me mention her mom, whose anthropological research in the favelas of Recife led her to exactly the same conclusion: collaborative child care is the root of civil society in poor neighborhoods.  Women care for each others' kids, allowing one to work Monday, another Tuesday, another Wednesday.  When kids get to know each other, they introduce their parents, who might have been divided by warring favelas or high walls.  And because even gang leaders want the best for their kids, everyone can come together in a common purpose to create a day-care center or a soccer league.

We often think of kids as students, as the objects of adult education, discipline, and action.  In fact, though, of Hrdy and Rita are right, little babies may be the most important social agents around.  Without even trying, they are the ones who make human culture.