What sets human culture apart from other animals?

Have you ever wondered what sets human culture apart? It’s a loaded question that has puzzled scientists for centuries.

Indeed, human culture – our shared knowledge and practices passed down over generations – has an undeniable vitality that seems unparalleled in the animal kingdom.

Thomas Morgan, an evolutionary anthropologist and a scholar from Arizona State University, is shedding new light on this enduring question. He brings exciting ideas to the table which might alter how we view ourselves and the world.

“Ten years ago it was basically accepted that it was the ability of human culture to accumulate and evolve that made us special, but new discoveries about animal behavior are challenging these ideas and forcing us to rethink what makes our cultures, and us as a species, unique,” said Morgan.

Teaching and learning across species

What’s fascinating is that the act of passing knowledge to subsequent generations isn’t exclusive to humans. Animals also engage in this practice.

Take leafcutter ants, for example. When a new queen hatches, she takes a bit of her mother’s fungus to start her colony.

This practice has been ongoing for millions of years to the point that the fungus within these colonies has evolved to be genetically different from the wild fungus.

The parallels don’t stop there. Much like human languages evolve over time, humpback whale songs undergo the same process. They change, spread between groups, and become more complex over time.

Chimpanzees also learn to use tools, something they’ve been doing for thousands – or perhaps even millions – of years.

Locusts, too, adapt to local conditions, relying on epigenetic changes to transition between various forms based on overpopulation.

Open-ended nature of human culture

With the growing evidence of evolving cultures among animals, it leads us to question: What is special about human culture that sets us apart from other animals?

In their paper, “Human culture is uniquely open-ended, not uniquely cumulative,” Morgan and Stanford University Professor Marcus Feldman provide an intriguing answer. They suggest that it’s the human ability to conceive and understand endless possibilities that make us so influential.

The distinguishing feature of the human brain, according to Morgan, lies in our ability to build and remember complex sequences of instructions. This permits us to exhibit an almost limitless range of behaviors – a trait referred to as open-endedness.

Limited evolution of animal cultures

“The way that animals think about what they’re doing constrains the way that their cultures can evolve. One way might be that they can’t imagine elaborate sequences very easily, or they can’t imagine subgoals,” said Morgan.

“For example, when I’m making my boys’ breakfast in the morning, it’s a nested, multistep process. First, I need to get the bowls and pots and other equipment. Then I need to put the ingredients in the pot and start cooking, all in the right amounts and order. Then I need to cook it, stirring and monitoring temperature until it reaches the right consistency, and then I need to serve it up.”

“Each of these steps is a subgoal, and these subgoals have steps within them that I need to execute in the right order, so this whole thing is an elaborate procedure.”

Redefining cultural evolution

Unlike previous comparisons of human and animal cultures, Morgan and Feldman’s research stands out.

The study includes comparisons of animal examples of epigenetic inheritance and parental effects, such as the leafcutter ant (parental effect) and the locust (cumulative epigenetic inheritance).

While both epigenetic inheritance and parental effects are stable and accumulate in non-human species, they eventually stop developing, noted Morgan. “Just like animal cultures, there are constraints that these systems run-up against and that halt their evolution.” 

“I think the key question is what is special about human culture, and we tried to answer that by comparing human cultures with animal cultures, with epigenetics, and with parental effects – as many evolving systems as we can think of,” said Morgan.

“And in the end we concluded that the special thing about human culture is its open-endedness. It can accumulate but then it never has to stop, it just keeps going.”

Understanding human culture

As Morgan and Feldman’s research pushes the boundaries of how we perceive human culture, it opens the door to new questions and areas of exploration.

What other aspects of human cognition might contribute to this unparalleled open-endedness? Could understanding this trait lead to advancements in artificial intelligence that mimic human learning processes?

The answers to these questions could further illuminate the unique intricacies of human culture, solidifying our place as a species defined not just by cumulative knowledge but by the potential for infinite cultural innovation.

The study is published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

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