In our attempt to discover how human culture take issue from that of other animals we have been focusing on the wrong things , a new theme indicate . What is distinctive is how conciliatory our culture is , allowing development in many directions , rather than a capability to work up on antecedently beam cultural behavior .
Humans have drop so much intellectual effort trying to work out what make us unparalleled , it ’s almost like we have a complex about the topic . Over the years , one characteristic after another that was proclaimed as clearly human has turned out to hap in animals , sometimes quite widely . Once we ’ve ruled outreasoning , tools , flaming , laughter , possibility of mind , andcultural transmittal , what is left ?
“ Ten year ago it was fundamentally swallow that it was the ability of human polish to accumulate and acquire that made us special , but raw discoveries about animal doings are challenge these ideas and forcing us to rethink what make our cultures , and us as a species , unparalleled , ” say Dr Thomas Morgan of Arizona State University , Tempe in astatement .
Some people would take this observation and argue that world are not in fact unique , that we ’re just one animal among many , albeit one whose tools are perceptibly more complex . Morgan and atomic number 27 - author Professor Marcus Feldman of Stanford disagree . They note that human being have attain an ecological dominance that sets us aside . In a world where humans and our livestock now make up96 percent of mammalian terrestrial biomass , leaving just 3 per centum for lions , tigers , bears and everything else , it ’s a convincing case .
Much as our individual news has contributed to us touch this gunpoint , it ’s unquestionably not the whole story . Our authority is a product of thousands of technical advances , with no single person creditworthy for more than a few . Our culture allows us to collect together these achievements and build up on them ; as Morgan says , it was thought few if any animals could do this .
Morgan and Feldman spend some clock time in their paper pick up examples from across the animal kingdom to show that societal animals also accumulate culture , albeit sometimes in ways we may not straight off recognize . Having controvert the cumulative theory , they count seven alternative possibility of how human acculturation dissent from that of animals , and refuse each , before exhibit their own explanation : that it is the open - endedness of human polish that sets us apart .
One example the pair use to show creature can have accumulative cultures comes from leafcutter pismire , which depend on farming afungus for food . Future queens take some fungus with them when they go to start a new colony . The symbiotic relationship means the fungus they use has evolved over millions of long time and is now substantially different from those that exist ant - free . The fungus is part of the ants ’ culture , and the accumulative changes in its genome have made it more suited to colony success . This also refutes an substitute version of the accumulative culture speculation , that it is our content for true transmission of changes that set our culture asunder .
If you ’re sputter to consider a fungus a shape of refinement , moot that among the master toolmakers , New Caledonian crows , those living in some regions makemore complex toolsthan others . It ’s improbable there are major transmitted differences that could account for this ; or else , gloat in some parts of the island likely develop a civilization of more advanced creature - qualification . Even clearer regional difference of opinion exist among Pan troglodytes when making white ant - catching tools .
Where humanculturediffers from that of creature , Morgan and Feldman argue , is in the flexibleness it displays in the form of new behaviors it can incorporate . Animals can develop cultures for confronting predators , for example , but these run to come up from a narrow-minded kitchen stove of possibility . When hereditary pattern is epigenetic , it can only work on the genetic range uncommitted to it . Likewise animal cultures find ways to more expeditiously exploit natural phenomenon , but man have demonstrated our capacity to adjust our culture to portion unlike anything we have encountered before .
Summarizing all the theories the authors debate , allow alone the amazing examples they offer to refute them , would require a much long article .
Fortunately , the study is published open access inNature Human Behavior .
