Wiser Children

A Wiser Sympathy

Mary Kuhn | Lapham's Quarterly | 15th February 2023

Are plants intelligent? Scientists and writers in the 19C were much preoccupied by this question. Georges Cuvier, Charles Darwin and the botanist Asa Gray all contemplated it. One 1863 article even asked "Is the plant stupid?". For Emily Dickinson, though, the crucial factor was not sentience but sentiment: whether the natural world shared her own ability to have autonomous emotions (2,722 words)

Children Of The Ice Age

April Nowell | Aeon | 13th February 2023

Previously neglected by archaeologists, in part because children's fragile bones are harder to excavate, the question of what childhood was like during the Palaeolithic era is now being answered. There is plenty of evidence that children played an active role in community survival, learning to make stone tools and ceramics. Footprints also show them playing tag and throwing clay balls (4,493 words)