The authors make an excellent case for the existence of a distinctive peer culture that is relatively free of adult intervention. They build their case and probe the evolutionary implications of peer culture by drawing on research and theory across disciplines. Throughout the paper, they identify linkages that could be examined in greater depth. They refer to these links as “New Research Avenues.” I plan to lay out one such avenue – Street Kids – that can be tied to many of the characteristics of peer culture. For example, the authors document peer culture as enabled by the great autonomy granted to children in indigenous communities. Peers fulfill many of the parenting responsibilities that WEIRD culture assigns exclusively to adults. Street kids enjoy even greater autonomy from adult control and are reluctant to relinquish it in exchange for the comfort and safety of an orphanage. There are many similarities in the play of street and village kids. As the Opies demonstrated, well-established game rules are altered to suit the situation, giving greater flexibility to innovate and expand the game’s utility (Lancy & Grove, Reference Lancy and Grove2011). Play takes place in public spaces unsupervised by adults. Children’s play and games lead to innovation and serve as a repository for many cultural traditions.

“Children as agents of cultural adaptation” is a central theme of this article that could be robustly supported by the literature on street kids. Children in the streets are compelled to “apprentice” themselves to older and/or better-established peers to learn the skills to cope with an ever-changing postindustrial environment. Street kids are often reported as commuters, returning temporarily to rural villages with “modern” artifacts, language, and ideas to pass on.

Another aspect of the culture of street kids that is supportive of the authors’ position is the invention of novel words and speech forms developed to separate themselves from adult society as well as from rival “gangs” (Davies, Reference Davies2008). In addition, street kids, like their village counterparts, claim a recognizable territory for their activities and, consequently, discover resources ignored by adults.

Many of the ethnographic examples cited by the authors describe village children learning subsistence skills in the company of peers. Tasks are distributed among the group by older members in accordance with each child’s skill and physical strength. Weisner notes that “children care for other children within indirect chains of support” (Reference Weisner, Jessor, Colby and Shweder1996, 308). In the streets, the youngest children are readily qualified as beggars. Somewhat older children are grouped with other young scavengers or paired with an older boy to learn how to earn tips from guarding parked cars (Lancy, Reference Lancy, Lancy, Gaskins and Bock2010). Older children “graduate to more lucrative means of earning a living … forming discrete occupational geographies” (Frankland, Reference Frankland and Staples2007). In short, there are close parallels between the foraging parties seen among Hadza children in Tanzania and children’s foraging parties in the heart of the city.

Because children are not “held back,” they plunge into learning opportunities, leading to a universal precocity, which is certainly seen in street kids. For example, “The best thing that ever happened to me was to become an adult and manage my own life,” noted Jorge, age 12 (Kenny, Reference Kenny2007, 63). Aptekar and Stoecklin (Reference Aptekar and Stoecklin2014) have conducted fieldwork with street children in many cities and find that in the absence of parents, siblings do a more than adequate job of caring for their young kin (Lancy, Reference Lancy2022, 570).

In short, there is evidence that children’s capacity to acquire, build, and sustain culture is subtly on display in what may seem a very unpromising environment.