The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
Joseph Henrichamazon.comSaved by sari
The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
Thus, cultural evolution initiated a process of self-domestication, driving genetic evolution to make us prosocial, docile, rule followers who expect a world governed by social norms monitored and enforced by communities.
Joseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success
excerpts from the secret of our success:
culture is smarter than we are
... See moreThe secret of our species’ success resides not in the power of our individual minds, but in the collective brains of our communities. Our collective brains arise from the synthesis of our cultural and social natures—from the fact that we readily learn from others (are cultural) a
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The key to understanding how humans evolved and why we are so different from other animals is to recognize that we are a cultural species. Probably over a million years ago, members of our evolutionary lineage began learning from each other in such a way that culture became cumulative. That is, hunting practices, tool-making skills, tracking know-h... See more
Joseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success
The secret of our species’ success lies not in our raw, innate, intelligence or in any specialized mental abilities that fire up when we encounter the typical problems that repeatedly challenged our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the Pleistocene. Our ability to survive and thrive as hunter-gatherers, or anything else, across an immense range of globa
... See moreJoseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success
The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy
amazon.com
The key to understanding how humans evolved and why we are so different from other animals is to recognize that we are a cultural species. Probably over a million years ago, members of our evolutionary lineage began learning from each other in such a way that culture became cumulative.
Joseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success
interaction between cultural and genetic evolution generated a process that can be described as autocatalytic, meaning that it produces the fuel that propels it. Once cultural information began to accumulate and produce cultural adaptations, the main selection pressure on genes revolved around improving our psychological abilities to acquire, store
... See moreJoseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success
Yes, we are intelligent, as earth creatures go; nevertheless, we are not nearly smart enough to account for our immense ecological success. Moreover, while we humans are good at certain cognitive feats, we are not so good at others. Many of both our mental skills and deficiencies can be predicted by recognizing that our brains evolved and expanded
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