The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

Exhibit D: Evolution can be fast. Human evolution did not stop or slow down 50,000 years ago. It sped up. Gene-culture coevolution reached a fever pitch during the last 12,000 years. We can’t just examine modern-day hunter-gatherers and assume that they represent universal human nature as it was locked into place 50,000 years ago. Periods of massiv

As individuals go about their business of learning from others in their group, the overall body of cultural information contained and distributed across the minds in the group can improve and accumulate over generations.

innovation in our species depends more on our sociality than on our intellect, and the challenge has always been how to prevent communities from fragmenting and social networks from dissolving.

Natural selection has made us a cultural species by altering our development in ways that (1) slowed the growth of our bodies through a shortened infancy and extended childhood but added a growth spurt in adolescence, and (2) altered neurological development in complex ways that make our brain advanced at birth yet both highly expandable and enduri

“Survival of the friendliest,” as one observer calls it, rescripting the story of human evolution, shining a light on how our development as a species has relied on prosocial actions and decisions for the collective good.