Animals can do cumulative learning too, so what sets humans apart?

Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are humans the only ones who paint self-portraits, walk the moon and worship God?

For decades, many scholars have argued that differences stem from the ability to learn from each other. Through techniques such as education and imitation, complex information can be created and transmitted across many generations.

So, for example, if a human finds a better but more complicated way to make a knife, they can pass on new instructions. One of those learners may stumble over their own improvement and pass it in order.

If this loop continues, you will get a ratchet effect. In this case, small changes can accumulate over time, creating increasingly complex behaviors and techniques. This process creates our unique and complex culture. Scientists call it cumulative cultural evolution.

However, extensive data has emerged that suggest that other animals, including bees, chimpanzees and crows, can also create cultural complexity through social learning. As a result, debates about human identity have shifted in new directions.

As an anthropologist, I study the different characteristics of human culture that researchers are beginning to consider: the diversity of our traditions. While animal culture influences several important behaviors, such as courtship and feeding, human culture covers a large, constantly expanding set of activities, from clothing to table manners and storytelling.

This new view suggests that human culture is not cumulative. It’s a unique, open-ended.

What is cumulative culture?

In the early 2000s, a research team led by psychologist Michael Tomasero tested 105 human children, 106 adult chimpanzees and 32 adult orangutans in a series of cognitive ratings. Their goal was to see whether humans retained an innate cognitive advantage over their primate cousin.

Surprisingly, human children performed better with only one ability, social learning. Thus, Tomasero concluded that humans are not “generally smart.” Rather, “There is a special kind of smart.” Our sophisticated social abilities allow us to send information by teaching and learning from each other accurately.

The obvious social learning ability of humans suggested a clear explanation of our unique cultural characteristics. Knowledgeable humans – for example, those who have discovered a better way to make spears can successfully transfer that skill to their ally. But, for example, original chimpanzees who have discovered better ways to crush nuts, cannot share innovation well. No one listens to Einstein the chimpanzee. Therefore, our inventions continue and are based on one another, but their inventions disappear on the floor of the jungle.

Or the theory went.

But now, scientists have the harsh evidence that, just like us, animals can learn from each other and therefore maintain their culture for a long time. The group of swamp sparrows appears to have used the syllables of the same song for centuries. Meerkat forces settle in different awakening times and maintain them for over a decade.

Of course, long-term social learning is not the same as cumulative culture. However, scientists also know that humpback whale songs become complicated across many generations of learners, and that homing pigeons learn from each other and make small improvements to create efficient flight paths by cumulatively changing travel routes to promote plant growth.

Again, animals have had countless periods throughout scientific history, which has led to us shooting down our claims about our uniqueness. At this point, you may wonder if you only solve your own questions by answering “We’re not.”

If it’s not a cumulative culture, what makes us unique?

However, humans and their cultures remain completely different from animals and their equivalents. Most scholars agree on that, even if they don’t agree on the reason. Cumulative complexity does not seem to be the most important difference, so several researchers have sketched out new perspectives. Human culture is uniquely open-ended.

Currently, anthropologists are discussing unlimited in two related ways. To get the first sense, try counting the number of things you are involved with now that you have come to you through culture. For example, I chose clothes today based on fashion trends that I didn’t develop. I write in a language I didn’t invent. I used the methods my dad taught me to tie my shoes down. I have paintings, postcards and photos on my walls.

Please allow 10 minutes. You can probably add 100 more items to that list. In fact, it’s difficult to think about every aspect of what I’m doing now, except for biological actions such as breathing. This width is very strange. Why should we spend our time pursuing such a wide range of goals, especially when most goals have nothing to do with survival?

Other animals are much more wise. Their cultural change and complexity is almost entirely related to issues of self-sufficiency and reproduction, including gaining food and mating. Meanwhile, humans are known to spend six years trying to build lip syncs, build space stations, and not grand, parked at all 211 spots in grocery stores. Our cultural diversity is unparalleled.

Diversity isn’t the only thing that is unlimited as a unique human quality. It reflects the quantum leap that our culture can evolve. To illustrate this specificity, consider a hypothetical example of the rocks chimpanzees use to crush nuts.

These chimpanzees can benefit from using rocks that can swing as hard and accurately as possible, but let’s say you don’t know immediately what kind of rock they will become. By experimenting with different options and observing each other, they may accumulate knowledge of the best quality among the nut-covering rocks. But in the end they reached the limits of available power and accuracy by swinging the rocks with your fist.

How can they overcome this limit? Well, they could tie a stick to the rock of their favourite. Additional leverage helps them grind the nuts even harder. However, as far as we know, chimpanzees are unable to realize the benefits of taking advantage of this additional quality. But we – people invented the hammer.

Importantly, discovering the power of leverage allows for more than just better nut smashing. Open innovations in other domains. If adding handles to used objects allows for better nut smashing, why not throw, cut, or paint? The space of cultural possibilities suddenly expanded.

Through the evolution of free cultures, humans create something covered in culture. In this respect, our species is unparalleled.

What’s next?

Researchers have yet to answer most of the key questions about open-endness. How to quantify it, how to create it, whether there are any true limitations.

However, this new framework must change the tide of related debate. Whether there is something other than social learning ability that clearly differs in how the human mind functions. After all, all cultural characteristics manifest themselves through interactions between minds. So how do our minds interact to create such a degree of cultural breadth?

No one knows yet. Interestingly, this changing argument about how this perception affects culture is consistent with the bridges of psychology and anthropology. This repeats certain behaviors across human culture, such as divine songs, therapeutic blood blood, and storytelling.

The human mind creates unparalleled diversity in their culture. However, it is also true that these cultures tend to express variations on a strict set of themes, such as music, marriage and religion. Ironically, our open-ended sources not only make us very diverse, but they may illuminate what often makes us the same.