Social Learners

……. Research suggests that optimal conditions for rapid cultural changes are those where there are large groups of interacting social “learners” and this is the case not only in humans but in our closest living relatives, the great apes. Studies of both oragantans and chimpanzees suggest that innovations in food acquisition and processing including the basic us of tools, happen most often not when the environment is challenging or when groups have spare time on their hands, but when large social groups are in close proximity, allowing ideas to diffuse, and useful ones to thrive. Applying the conclusion to early humans such as Neanderthals and modern humans would imply that the populations who progressed the most culturally were not necessarily the most intelligent and skillful (although those facts were important in the first place, of course), but those who were able to network and pass on learning in large groups, and to maintain those group sizes most consistently through time and space. …. Page 222