I've been puzzling over Dragaeran growth a bit. Here's some of my conjectures. It has been discussed that Vlad's comment about teenage Orca beating him up were the same physical size as a 5-yr-old human is not consistent with Morrolan growing up in the east and being mistaken for a tall human. Vlad's comment occurred in Jhereg and generally anything in Jhereg which conflicts with anything else loses to the anything else. I wouldn't mention Vlad's comment at all other than to discount it before someone else gets a chance to say "But in Jhereg..." except that it makes more sense to me that Dragaerans, living so much longer, mature & grow more slowly. Savn's tale supports that. He & the other youngsters thought & acted like rebellious teenage humans, not venerable 90 year olds. So I was watching Scientific American last night with Alan Alda and it was all about the brain. It was SO interesting. The frontal cortex is the part that concentrates and in little kids it isn't very well developed. There was a great experiment they showed that illustrated that so well. Then there's all sorts of plasticity to the brain but the take home message was, the old adage about people use only 10% of their brain, is simply not true. It's more like a big battle with everything fighting for brain space. After we've grown up, we can change what we use our brain for, but we can't add on to it. Anything new we learn, we have to give something else up. Then I read some article about a new adolescent period which occurs after college as more people choose to go to grad school. (It was in a newspaper. Not scientific or reputable at all.) It claimed (tongue-in-cheek) that hundreds of years ago, people who were 25 years old had been dead for 5 years. Well, that's an exaggeration I'm sure. Still, the point is, kids were grown up at 15. Not being an anthropologist or having any experience or knowledge (that's my disclaimer), I can't say how "grown up" a grown up 15 yr old is in that kind of culture. If we assume for the moment that a grown up 15 yr old behaves similarly to what our culture considers to be grown up (30? am I grown up yet?), then it is clear that adolescence can be prolonged. Physiologically, with adequate nutrition, we are completely mature in our early 20's. Depending on gender. (Reference: I believe it is Asimov's "The Human Brain" that says the brain sutures are finally complete by then.) That's older than what's previously been considered grown up, younger than what we consider grown up. So, does physiology or culture define "grown up"? As with so many other things, probably both. If so, then if you can prolong life, you can prolong childhood. It's a stretch, but let's say Dragaerans are physiologically mature at 20 years old, but have an adolescent period that lasts another 80 years. Right away I've thought of an argument to that theory. Tazendra says she barely remembered her parents' flight, she was only 30. The inability to remember very early events is definitely a physiological thing. I guess you can explain it away by saying that the brain is finite and to learn new things one must forget old things, so Dragaerans can't remember their "early" years. It's not satisfactory to me, however. Any thoughts? Please don't bring Sethra into this--she has mental access to a great big computer so she doesn't count. Rachel