This is partly a review of prior thought and partly a check list This thought about what is human and how a person "works" is so different and so much the work of many people that the best reminder is my book shelf where I wrote the dates of copyright on the top edge and arrange the books in chronological order of their publication, though that doesn't exactly match the sequence of understanding.
Here we go:
All mammalian animals come out of the insides of slightly older animals. The first mammal came from a transition of evolved reptiles who came from eggs that came out of the insides of slightly older animals. Mammals are reptiles "plus." They have fur, give milk, and respond to the pressure of their environment by being "various". This varying, pressed by the environment which kills those that don't fit, gives rise to evolution because the ones that fit better are more likely to survive and make more examples of themselves with new fitness installed. They preserve much of the last reptile used for a pattern, which is the basis of the book called "Your Inner Fish."
The sexuality of animals is binary if you are considering reproduction. Two humans begin as half-a-double helix from each side which gets across the gap between the two (when doing it naturally) by a penis ejector which sends a cloud of small wiggly cells self-propelled into a vagina, past the cervix, to another big cell with all the basic starter characteristics of a home cell plus the other half of the instructions for making the proteins and so on which begin to organize and grow. This is called gestation.
The two half-helixes wind together into one and then split into two, which split until there are four, then eight cells, called a blastosphere. This takes a little more than a week. The tiny ball splits in half so that one half becomes the placenta, the means of attachment to the inner lining of the uterus. The other half, joined by the umbilical cord to the placenta, begins to develop into a fetus, then an embryo, then a baby. This takes about forty weeks. When complete, the baby is squeezed out through the vagina and its placenta follows shortly. This presses hard on the organs of excretion, as well as releasing a lot of blood, so it is a messy but lubricated event. (That's why the midwife says to boil water for cleaning.)
Before birth -- which is a major and momentous experience for both mother and infant (potentially fatal) -- the incomplete gestate shares its mother's experiences, partly mechanically -- like music or walking -- and partly chemically through the placental exchange. Perception begins as soon as the brain and its feeder nervous system is able to code whatever is coming to it in electromagnetic or chemical messages. This process of perception responding to experience will be lifelong -- the capacity to code responding to experience -- and because of that increasing sensitivity and capacity to record what is sensed.
At birth the baby is outside the mother but still attached by this reciprocal system of experience/coding/memory in which the nurturer participates. The basics of survival -- food, shelter, warmth -- must be present and are encoded as basic to survival. If they are insufficient, toxic, or erratic, the infant will suffer, possibly become deformed.
There is another basic need which is the creation of the first relationship, the "liminal" ground of being that forms between mother and infant through nurturing and play. This is probably carried by the development of the myelinated autonomous vagal nerve which controls expression both produced and as understood. This "third" autonomic (unconscious) is explored in the polyvagal theories of Dr. Stephen Porges. "The Polyvagal Theory". (This book is hard to read, so Dr. Porges promises an easier version soon.)
The autonomic nervous system controls the basics of visceral functions like breath, heartbeat, digestion, and so on. The third vagal myelinated nerve (which needs a better name) connects direct from the brain to the face/voice/expression and to the heart/lung combination which responds to emotion. Vital inquiries are into the relationship to crib death when a baby simply stops living, or into the relationship with the deranged hormones of the mother that push her into depression, so that there is a need for backup intervention. Basic temperament comes out of this period of development.
At first an infant has little expression, only needs, but over time and with the stimulus of urging from other humans, the ability to smile, frown, and so on appear, usually with the mother. From before birth the ability to suck is present, which later develops into babbling, then speech as the ear begins to learn the code. Gripping is also a strong remainder from earlier versions of mammals. Sexual response exists during late gestation (erections and lubricating).
All humans are hominins, which are historical "rough drafts" that we know in three ways: genomic instructions, fossils of bones, and material culture. All hominids and most mammals have material cultures, ways of doing things both experienced and expressed, but only homo sapiens has a fully developed myelinated third vagal nerve. There are hundreds of other hominids but only one version, ourselves, is living. We know how some of the others died as individuals, but rarely understand why the species clade did not. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280714 Obviously, the experiences they had overwhelmed them and the environment didn't sustain them.
Some people think the first three years of life should be considered a continuation of gestation, since they are needed in order to acquire basic human characteristics like walking and talking. (Many mammals are born able to run.) During this time the senses and basic understanding of the structure of their unique experiences form according to where they are. Now the ecosystem comes into play and the culture based on it -- whether a prairie agrarian life or a Manhattan skyscraper world, what the language carries of the culture, what foods and clothes are necessary -- begin to be active experiences.
The next fleshly developments may be guided by DHEAS from the adrenals which carry the timeline forced by maturation. The next step is decrease of the fear of strangeness that was protective at first, so that interest in other people (esp peers) can start and the cerebral cortex begins a long period of development that extends from age 6 to more than twenty. The end is "maturity," but new research suggests that brain plasticity (adaptability) continues lifelong. (I'm guided by https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16917887 The article is called "The Slow Process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitiveby Dr. Benjamin Campbell, an anthropologist.
I'm going to stop here and continue next time by considering A paper called "The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks" by Merlin Donald. Many people consider this a benchmark for developmental cultural theory because it explores the leap to shared knowledge -- as in culture: math, science, philosophy, architecture, religion and the other material and virtual culture we enjoy now in some settings. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280714
I think this capacity arises with Dr. Porges' third myelinated vagal nerve that lets communication leap from person to person without physical means. The empathy and understanding is enabled eye-to-eye. This can also touch the Lakoff/Johnson theory of thought, that it is based on metaphor which comes from experience coded by communication, which can approach the intensity of religion. Taken together, all these theories suggest ways to alter evolution by making environments and ecosystems less conventionally lethal, and by directly intervening in gestation, disease, social organization, and more.
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