The article discusses the role of toys and tools in the development of skills and cultural transmission in hunter-gatherer societies. The authors present a cross-cultural inventory of objects made for and by hunter-gatherer children and adolescents, finding that toys and tools were primarily handled outside of explicit pedagogical contexts, and there is little evidence for formalised apprenticeships. The authors suggest that children's self-directed interactions with objects, especially during play, have a critical role in early-age enskillment. Both boys and girls tend to use objects in work and play that emulate the gendered division of labor in their communities, and many objects made by and for children had full-scale counterparts. Finally, the authors argue that the peer group is crucial to skill acquisition in hunter-gatherer societies.

This paper examines patterns of cultural learning in pastoralist societies and compares them to those found in hunter-gatherer societies. The study analyzed 198 texts from 13 pastoralist cultures in the eHRAF World Cultures database and found that most cultural skills and knowledge were acquired in early childhood, with parents and non-parental adults as the primary sources of transmission. Teaching was the most common form of learning across all age groups, with minimal variation in transmission between different age groups. While similarities were found between the cultural learning patterns of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, pastoralists were less likely to mention learning from peers and more likely to mention learning via local enhancement and stimulus enhancement. The importance of teaching did not increase with age in pastoralist societies, unlike in hunter-gatherer societies.

Social scientists are equivocal as to the importance of teaching (as contrasted with other forms of learning) in traditional societies. While many cultural anthropologists have downplayed the importance of teaching, cognitive psychologists often argue that teaching is a salient human universal. Here the authors investigate cultural transmission among 23 hunter-gatherer populations to explore the relative importance of teaching among foragers.

This paper seeks to understand the roles played by children and adolescents in hunter-gatherer societies in relation to their social and ecological context. The authors set out to investigate how environmental factors, ecological risk, and the energetic contributions of adult men and women to food production may have influenced children/adolescent allocation of time to child care, domestic work, food production, and play. In order to carry out this study, the authors logged the behaviors of 690 children and adolescents from twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence societies (Agta, Aka, Baka, BaYaka, Dukha, Hadza, Matsi-genka, Maya, Mayangna, Mikea, Pume, and Tsimane), totaling 85,597 unique observations. The study found that harsh environmental factors were not associated with child/adolescent time allocation, but that local ecological risk such as dangerous animals and lack of water availability predicted decreased time allocation to child care and domestic work, and that increased adult female participation in food production was associated with less time invested in child care among boys. It also found that all gendered differences in time allocation among children were stronger when men made greater contributions to food production than women. The authors interpret these results to signify that parents may play a role in preparing their children for environmental and ecological difficulty in order to help them develop skills that will help them become useful community members as adults.

What is the relationship between childhood experiences and adult skills? The authors of this article hypothesize that early learning situations can result in psychological effects which can later be reflected in adult skills. To test this hypothesis, they investigate how specific childhood activities which stimulate gestalt brain development, such as creative games and holistic learning experiences, translate into adult gestalt skills, such as complex representations of their environments and originality of art. Through a systems approach which employs three levels of analysis- neurophysiology, psychology, and anthropology- the authors find that children's games and learning techniques are correlated with adult environmental representation and artistic originality, ultimately supporting their hypothesis.

This book discusses the characteristics of adolescence cross-culturally and examines the differences in the adolescent experience for males and females. Several relationships are tested in order to gain an understanding of cross-cultural patterns in adolescence.

Archaeologists often interpret found portable artifacts (e.g. dolls, miniature weapons) as ritual objects. But it is argued that they might instead reflect children's play activities. This descriptive study analyzes the artifacts and context of children's play using the literature and the ethnographic record of 82 hunter-gatherer societies. Six signs of the presence of children, that might survive in archaeological record are noted, which may suggest that many "ritual activities" are children's activities.

This study tests possible explanations for sexual dimorphism in human post-reproductive life-spans. The author focuses on explanations involving male paternal investment and finds that men in agricultural societies are more likely to invest in their offspring than men in hunter-gatherer societies.

There is disagreement between existing theories on the relationship between leisure time and cultural complexity. This study tests Chick's (1986) hypothesis that simple and complex societies have more free time than those of moderate complexity. The relationship between cultural complexity and the economic productivity of children is also examined.

This article tests a model for the patterning of the sexual division of children's labor.