Why human children take so long to reach maturity

The simplest answer may also be the best: there's a lot to learn. And it seems that as society becomes more complicated, there's more you must learn to survive.<p>There is a strong evolutionary advantage to taking care of our sick and elderly -- experts are very hard to train. As medical care improves we can afford to invest more time (childhood) and energy into training increasingly specialized experts.

It seems like a positive feedback loop. Improved brains require slow development and allow for greater social complexity, which requires bigger brains and even slower development.<p>To summarize, this article adds that perhaps slow development contributes to the loop, rather than detracts from it.