Good ideas never go away, it seems human adulthood is remarkable for its playfulness. No matter how advanced the technology, gadgets are, after all, just grown-ups’ toys. Back in the 1960s Dutch historiographer John Huizinga’s book Homo ludens created a storm of interest. Now Clive Bromhall’s The Eternal Child (Ebury/Random House, £7.99) tries to pinpoint the moment in our evolutionary history that distinguishes us from our primate cousins, and reckons it’s arrested development: humans just don’t mature, they stay childish.
So did we do this of our own free will? Or was that no choice at all, just genetic hardwiring?…
