The childhood and the play of yesterday and today: A multidisciplinary perspective

The purpose of this article is to address the play as essence of the child and the material or materialized toy that conducts this action, involving affections, cultures and historical. For that, a literature review was carried out with contributions from historiographical authors on childhood; of philosophy with the perceptions of Plato; of the archeology that identified toys in prehistoric finds, like the rock art; of psychology and its observations of playing as a hereditary predisposition and its relation to cognition, as well as of the psychoanalysis which at the same time observed in play unconscious contents. For neuroscience this behavior comprises the oldest regions of the brain (subcortical regions), which influence the structuring of the neocortical regions responsible for human intelligence. The multidisciplinary dialogue widens the gaze on the nature of play and its characteristics, its historical and cultural aspects, ancestral origin and involvement with the complex brain structure related to intelligence.