Threshold 6 · Collective learning
Collective Learning
One lineage of primates learns to make tools, control fire, speak, and pass knowledge on, and becomes the first species whose knowledge accumulates.
Every species learns. Only one stores what it learns outside its own bodies, in words, tools and traditions, and hands it on so that each generation starts where the last one finished. That trick, collective learning, is the threshold that makes human history different in kind from the history of any other animal.
This chapter traces the lineage that crossed it: the primates, the hominins, the toolmakers, the fire keepers, and finally our own species, which appeared in Africa around 300,000 years ago and spread across every continent, including early routes into India.
It ends with people living as foragers, the way our species lived for most of its existence, on the eve of an experiment that would change everything: farming.
Lessons
- 6.1 Primates and homininsDraft
The family tree from the first primates to the hominins.
- 6.2 From habilis to sapiensDraft
Homo habilis, Homo erectus and the arrival of our species.
- 6.3 Fire, tools and cookingPlanned
Stone tools, controlled fire and the cooking hypothesis.
- 6.4 Language and symbolic thoughtPlanned
The evidence for language and the first art.
- 6.5 Collective learningPlanned
Why humans, alone among species, accumulate knowledge across generations.
- 6.6 Out of Africa, into IndiaPlanned
The peopling of the world, including the early routes into the subcontinent.
- 6.7 Foraging lifewaysPlanned
How people lived for most of human history.