Homo Faber Juvenalis: A Multidisciplinary Survey of Children as Tool Makers/Users

Abstract

The overall goal of this paper is to derive a set of generalizations that might characterize children as tool makers/users in the earliest human societies. These generalizations will be sought from the collective wisdom of four distinct bodies of scholarship: lithic archaeology; juvenile chimps as novice tool users; recent laboratory work in human infant and child cognition, focused on objects becoming tools and; the ethnographic study of children learning their community's toolkit. The presumption is that this collective wisdom will yield greater insight into children's development as tool producers and users than has been available to scholars operating within narrower disciplinary limits.

The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation

“…Cross‐culturally, groups of children often play in discrete areas within or along the periphery of adult work spaces; this can be demonstrated also in Neolithic and Paleolithic contexts (Box 3). Use‐wear analysis could also be employed here: Children are said to follow a “hammer curriculum” involving a great deal of bashing, which may leave discernible breakage patterns on candidate miniatures.…”

“…However, in a recent cross‐cultural review of human children as tool users and makers, David Lancy summarizes numerous observations indicating that, in fact, children in traditional societies learn vicariously and in a largely unsupervised manner (Box 1). He lists many examples of children learning to use simple tools and perform simple activities through autonomous exploratory play.…”

“…Our focus here is, among other things, on complex technologies having functions that emerge only in the interplay between their different components, which, in isolation, do not hold salient functional cues. Sometimes adult‐made miniatures of such technologies constitute a particular kind of play objects, which Lancy calls “qualifier toys.” We argue here that these objects offer a particularly strong innovation primer by allowing children to explore the complex, emergent mechanical and material affordances of associated adult technologies. Although probably present, such objects of play are difficult to trace in the archeological record but, to initiate discussion, we point to several possible examples.…”

“…9 Scaffolding may not be entirely absent in other primates, 10 but when coupled with particular social learning strategies, intentional teaching in particular is seen to lead to cumulative cultural evolution in humans. 11 However, in a recent cross-cultural review of human children as tool users and makers, David Lancy 12 summarizes numerous observations indicating that, in fact, children in traditional societies learn vicariously and in a largely unsupervised manner (Box 1). He lists many examples of children learning to use simple tools and perform simple activities through autonomous exploratory play.…”

A cross-cultural investigation of young children's spontaneous invention of tool use behaviours

“…In wild nonhuman primate populations, discarded materials and tools used previously by others may aid in infants' and juveniles' explorative tool use, even in the absence of a social model [78]. In humans, tool templates made by another person aid children in creating their own tools in experimental conditions [79] and in everyday community life [31,51,80]. It is likely then that the materials we employed in our task battery might have transmitted indirect cultural information, which might have facilitated performance within the Australian children.…”