A young chimpanzee, clinging to its mother, will stretch out its hand or make vocal requests for a bite of what the mother is eating. Sometimes, the mother obliges and offers the infant some food; other times, she remains focused on her own meal, leaving the infant to fend for itself. The infant must be persistent, begging repeatedly in hopes of securing nourishment.

This process, common among primates, emphasises that the responsibility for acquiring food falls on the infant. The same is the case with practical skills or knowledge. For example, when a young chimpanzee observes an adult cracking nuts with a stone, the infant is responsible for learning the technique through observation. The mother might facilitate the process a little, but she doesn’t stop to actively teach or guide. She cracks her nuts, and the infant must figure it out by watching and trying on its own. 

Compare this to human behaviour. A human mother doesn’t wait for her child to ask, let alone beg, for food. Instead, she actively ensures that the child is fed, sometimes to the point of forcing them if they refuse to eat. This proactive approach extends into teaching. The mother wouldn’t simply let the child observe how she cracks a nut whenever she happens to be feeding herself nuts. Rather, she goes and gets the child because it is ‘nut cracking time’. Then, she actively guides the child along with instructions in speech, gestures and other signals. In humans, teaching is deliberate, structured, and closely related to communication.

This stark contrast between primates and humans suggests that the origin of human culture is in the behaviour of teaching, not learning. Yet, modern scientists keep looking at social learning for clues. Why is that?

Culture

First of all, scientists define culture in terms of social learning, not teaching. This means that teaching cannot be the origin of human culture, by definition! 

Culture is a ‘set of learned behaviors, beliefs, and customs that characterize a group, passed down through generations primarily through social learning and observation’ (Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Culture is the ‘collection of learned behaviors, values, and knowledge that are acquired through socialization and adaptive processes’ (Henrich, 2016). Culture is the ‘transmission of socially learned knowledge, behaviors, and values from one generation to the next, ensuring the continuity and evolution of group practices’ (Mesoudi, 2011). 

The closest those definitions get even to a conservative notion of teaching—a change of behaviour in one individual to facilitate learning in another—is a vague, almost magical notion of ‘transmitting’ or ‘passing down’ something. The emphasis is clearly on psychological and theoretical notions such as learning and adaptation, not on behavioural observation.  Anthropologists, ironically, seem reluctant to acknowledge what goes on in the real world of humans, opting instead for an idealised view of human cooperation in which the offspring are always happy to learn.

Modern Myths II

In my previous post, I addressed the fact that humans evolved to prioritise kin cohesion over dispersal, breaking a pattern of primate behaviour that is 50 million years old. In primates, dispersal is the norm, with one sex typically leaving the natal group upon maturity. Humans, on the other hand, stay close to our parents, even into adulthood. 

Here, again, most scientists posit that this happened because we were naturally selected to remain close to kin. This beautiful story of a very special evolutionary process makes us feel more connected to the animal kingdom. Yet, as it occurs today, it was probably our parents—and their parents—who actively wanted us to stay close and help out, just as Homo sapiens did with dogs and other domestic animals, not natural selection. 

This shift to ensuring close family ties allowed for the rise of multigenerational households, something virtually unseen in other animals. The presence of grandparents and extended kin is an exceptional feature of human societies. Indeed, if we lived longer, we would likely see great-grandparents and beyond as integral parts of the family unit. However, it makes little evolutionary sense that an ape—our evolutionary ancestor—would be naturally selected for such deep devotion to its cultural ancestors, their signs, symbols, and abstract ideas. 

A more plausible explanation is that human culture has less to do with learning by innocent animals and far more to do with teaching them. Humans have an aptitude for learning, and we are keen to observe and imitate, but this is a consequence of human domestication and teaching. What we learn is often irrelevant to the survival and reproductive needs of the organism, just as food and sex are irrelevant when you are not hungry or fertile. As members of a society, we have to learn abstract ideas, rituals, moral codes and gratitude to the dead.

Conclusion

Life is hard. It is always comforting to imagine that our children desire to eat whenever we want them to; or that they ‘go to school’ to ‘learn’, when they are in fact taken there by us so that they may be taught. In the past, the idea that parents forcibly teach or feed their children would not be controversial because these behaviours were regarded as necessary, even morally good. The prevailing view of human uniqueness then was centred around spirituality. However, there is clearly a sense in which the current materialistic focus on animal culture remains spiritual, a projection of human ideals onto nature.

 

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. University of Chicago Press.

Henrich, J. (2016). The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton University Press.

Mesoudi, A. (2011). Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences. University of Chicago Press.