ANTH 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Infant Mortality, Umbilical Cord, Enculturation
14 Feb 2018
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3/1/2011 7:12:00 pm: more than any other animal, human beings depend on the social transmission of knowledge in order to survive. Human infants cannot survive without the help of people. In addition, the maturation process of the human child, i. e. the time period necessary for the child to become autonomous from her/his parents, is slower than that of any other animal offspring. In order for this to happen, the human children need support from others in the cultural environment in which they live. Protected in such a way, the child becomes human. Not any human, but a particular human: a japanese, a spaniard, a brazilian, culturally distinct from a romanian, a serb, or a thai. The process by which children acquire their culture, either formally (through being told what to do or not do) or informally (i. e. through observation and imitation) is called enculturation.
