Humans adapt to their environment primarily through cultural rather than biological means. While children are often portrayed as expert learners who acquire adaptive knowledge from adults, in this talk I will argue that children—through the cultures they produce with their peers—also transmit and create adaptive knowledge that helps communities adjust to rare but significant social and ecological change. Drawing on my fieldwork with BaYaka hunter-gatherers in the Congo Basin, as well as primary and secondary data from other communities, I show that both cultural evolutionary theory and empirical evidence support this view.