The Secret of our Success

Cultural Evolution, not innate intelligence, is what makes humans unique

Image | Joseph Henrich

Caption: Dr. Joseph Henrich (centre, kneeling) and his team doing field-work in Fiji (Mereani Tuidama)

Audio | Quirks and Quarks : The Secret Of Our Success - 2016/03/05 - Pt. 5

Open Full Embed in New Tab (external link)Loading external pages may require significantly more data usage.
Humans are the most successful species on the planet - well, maybe after the ants - and we generally give the credit to our large brains, and our individual intelligence.

Image | Secret success

Caption:

But in a new book, Dr. Joseph (external link)Henrich(external link), a professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, says that individually humans aren't really that special. He makes the case that it's our collective intelligence - our culture - enabled by our unique ability to learn from each other - that's driven our biological evolution, and that's really behind our unique success.
Dr. Henrich's book is called, The Secret of Our Success - How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating our Species, and Making us Smarter(external link).
Related Links
- The Secret of Our Success(external link)
- Dr. Henrich's interview at Edge.org(external link)